By Janday Wilson  |  Send to Friend

Jonathan Parker’s (Untitled) is a satirical comedy set in a timeless contemporary art and modern music scene of New York City. Marley Shelton (Pleasantville, Grindhouse) is the fiercely principled young gallery owner, Madeleine Gray, forced to sell commercial art to pay the bills. She gets caught in a love/lust triangle with Josh Jacobs (Eion Bailey), the source of her selling out, and his brother, Adrian (Adam Goldberg), who is a composer of painfully inaccessible music. It is pretty obvious which brother Madeleine will choose in this world of artistic vs. mainstream and art vs. commerce. In a phone interview, Marley chats with two.one.five about the unavoidable awkwardness of shadowing people you plan to poke fun at and (ahhhh!) the joys of motherhood.

Before this film, what was your familiarity with the contemporary art world?
I am fortunate enough to have a couple of friends who are contemporary artists based in New York and so they were generous enough to let me pick their brains and I immediately went to them and asked them all sorts of questions [about] their take on the art world, particularly [as] young gallerists. Kind of from the artists’ point of view, what were their impressions of gallerists and what were they like, and what were their motivations. So, that was incredibly helpful. They also gave me names of gallerists to talk to and galleries to go to. So once I got to New York, I spent a lot of time pounding the pavement in Chelsea and going to contemporary art galleries and talking to gallerists.

Was there a particular method of getting these elements incorporated into your role of a gallerist?
In this particular case, a lot of time was spent in terms of what her look was because she operates out of perception. I spent a lot of time with our costume designer and she really, really spent a long time. Her wardrobe is her armor -- neutrality -- but what she wears because she is so obsessed with perception. So, then, of course, the glasses, which I think are a metaphor for her: She doesn’t have any issues with her eyesight. But it’s a visual metaphor for telling the world ‘I see it. I have taste.' So I think that the glasses were key and then I think that the fine line that this film walks in terms of the visual style, including Madeleine’s wardrobe is, how do you do a satire on a world, the contemporary art world that is forever changing? It’s like, in five minutes it’ll be different. So we were really concerned about not dating ourselves and so there’s a classic element even though some of her ensembles are really avant garde, they’re also kind of classic, if that’s possible. I mean, that’s what we were attempting at least so that the movie would hold up, hopefully years from now and sort of live in its own parallel reality, rather than becoming de passé or dated.

The clothing was really funny. The first moment I laughed in the film, was when you could hear Madeleine's clothes crinkling and wrinkling. How was it to work with this kind of comedic energy, especially with an actor like Adam Goldberg?
Well, needless to say, Adam is incredibly funny, whether I’m laughing with him or at him [laughs]. So there was definitely that energy, which also said, I think, the chemistry our characters had onscreen. In terms of the comedic tone, I think we were all attempting to play it as straight as possible and then just let the story evolve. We didn’t want to do too much winking at the camera but all the stuff with her clothing, a lot of that was added in post-production. Usually you bend over backwards on a movie or on a project to get rid of distracting noise from clothing or shoes; you’ll wear special mics so that when you’re doing a walk and talk, you can’t hear the shoes clacking along. And in this situation, they added in my shoes clicking afterwards. They got this incredibly brilliant sound designer to come in and add all these noises that Madeleine makes and I got in a friendly debate with Jonathan [Parker], our director. I was like, ‘Are you sure we’re not going over the top here?’

To switch tracks a bit, how do you like motherhood so far?
Motherhood is the most enlightening, revolutionary experience that I’ve ever gone through. It’s incredible. She’s just this miracle to us and you know, it’s definitely become much more of a juggling act but I think that ultimately, that’s a good thing. I think one of the secrets to good acting, which I’m always striving for, at least, is having the focus of attention off of yourself, which is easier said than done. But in a scene -- that’s when a scene always ends up working the best -- when all the folks’ attention is off of you and on the other actor. And motherhood innately is all about that. It’s all about serving this little being. So my hope is that it will create a really nice synergy between my acting life and my life as a mother. But at this point, it’s definitely a huge learning curve, a huge juggling act. I just feel like I’m always playing catch up, but it’s so worth it.


Read our review of (untitled)