Interview with ‘Rid of Me’ Director/Writer/Producer James Westby, Actress/Producer Katie O’Grady and Actress Orianna Herrman – PART 1

I just loved the ideas that I had for it and those changed how digital cinema became realistic and it wasn’t like making a soap opera anymore. Just shooting something that looks better than 16mm film and it doesn’t cost anything. So the advent of those technologies and this script they came together into kind of an art project, video collagey home movie. It’s been a lot of fun to kind of revisit it as a director and then working with these two [Katie O’Grady, Orianna Herrman] especially, and doing whatever we wanted. And then rewriting and editing.

Q to Orianna: How did you get involved in the project?

Orianna: I met Katie through this acting class we took together with acting coach, Laurel Smith, which was a life-changing experience. So we each were there and saw each other’s work and you get really close when you’re in an acting class with someone, you really learn a lot about each other. So Katie introduced me to James when this project was on the table. I was actually singing at the time. I’m a singer, I’ve got a band [Oracle http://www.oracleportland.com/]. I was performing and she brought James to the show.

Katie: And that was really it, there was never going to be another Trudy after that.

James: We did a table read with Orianna and that was our casting, it was clear who could easily play the part.
Katie: And it’s to his [James’] credit because neither of us [Katie or Orianna] looked like our part at all, and it’s difficult to find directors that are willing to take a risk on you.

Orianna: Well I think originally, I think, Trudy was written as a 19-year-old obese girl with pink hair.

Katie: And Meris was supposed to be blonde.

Actress/Producer Katie O'Grady & Director/Writer/Editor/Producer James Westby

Q to James: Did things change in the editing process?

James: Tons, first of all there are lots of deleted scenes. There’s a whole sequence where Katie’s character, Meris, goes into the library and steals a high school yearbook and obsesses over it the whole movie. It was a big component of the film including the scene when she steals the yearbook with a guy that work in the library, but that was cut out completely. Structurally, though, all the flash forwards, the steal where you steps in the dog poop, that all developed while editing. Including what Katie alluded to which is the infamous menses scene. It used to be chronological. Where it is now, at the beginning, is very effective. So many things happen in the editing room whether it’s just something just completely adding or condensing a big, huge scripted moment.

Katie: I had never been part of an editing process before, so it was fascinating to me to work on a project where it’s like the dinner scene at the restaurant where they’re talking about Masud being a terrorist. It was just straight across-the-board dinner scene, and then to watch James edit in those beautiful clips of the supposed terrorist playing with is baby, looking romantically at his wife, I really got to see how you take a great scene and make it emotionally layered. Because once he added in the shots of the baby, and the sweet noises and the family relationship, that scene when from observing it, to really being a part of it. It was one of the best examples of editing. He [James] is just one of the best editors out there.

James: Awww. Thanks. And it’s also something that just happens, a way to truncate the story of something that is just too long. Our first cut was 2 hours long. We watched it several times and it was good, and it represented the script, and it’s fun to cut the script and mess with it.

Q: Talk about the style of edting.

Katie: It’s a very specific style. I first noticed it on The Auteur, and then we definitely discussed that we’d like more of that in Rid of Me. Because it’s hard to tell what’s a dream and what’s not. With what’s really the voice in her head, from the way he edited that. What are they thinking versus what they say.

James: I also like to edit trailers while I edit the features to inspire. Whether it’s a moment that fits the script or it’s an arbitrary scene that belongs in the trailer. I think I cut 10 trailers for this film. Including the final one which I’m really happy with which is a combination of every one that came before.