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The Director and Actors of "Gayby" Talk About Unconventional Babymaking

Jenn Harris and Matthew Wilkas in a scene from Gayby.

Gayby was first made as a 12-minute short film by director/writer Jonathan Lisecki. The premise of the short was fairly straight-forward (no pun intended) -- and a tad bit bizarre. Jenn (Jenn Harris) wants to have a baby so she solicits the help of her gay best friend Matt (Matthew Wilkas). He agrees to help, but she wants to conceive without the help of a turkey baster. Yup. You heard that right. She wants to conceive the old fashioned way: sex. Sex with her gay best friend.

After gaining traction at over a hundred film festivals, Lisecki decided to blow it up into a full feature-length film, and with the help of the short's two original stars, the film made its world premiere at this year's South by Southwest film festival in Austin -- and people liked it. They liked it a lot.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Lisecki, Wilkas, and Harris to talk about the movie's journey to feature status, creating good characters, improvisational pole dancing, and their favorite baby movies.

After Elton: Did you ever envision Gayby to be a full feature-length feature film?

Jonathan Lisecki: At first, yes. Actually, that was the original intention -- but I didn’t feel like I was ready to deal with the idea so I decided to try out it as a short first. That part was very fast, but the feature came from people wanting more. Audiences really responded to it and just want more of the story and of the characters.

AE: What was your initial reaction when seeing the finished full-length feature?

Matthew Wilkas: I was really pleased. I was really excited to hear people laughing. I felt like they laughed at almost all appropriate times (laughs) -- and I was laughing with them which I thought was kind of great.

AE: Was SXSW the first time it was screened in front of an audience?

JL: We had one test screening of an earlier cut for about 40 people. This is the first time that an audience has seen it. This is the world premiere!

Jenn Harris:I was really proud of it. I was so proud of everyone. I was proud of Johnny. I feel like his life has been Gayby for the past three years. It’s about everything that he put in to it, like came out so nicely and he just cast it so well -- and a lot of the castings were actually the day we started shooting -- like an hour before.

JL: Some of them were really close calls!

JH: Everyone that walked on that set surprised the shit out of me. Most of them were my friends and a handful of them were not. The finished product was very touching but really entertaining. It didn't exclude anyone. Johnny set it up real well.

It doesn't leave anyone thinking like they're dumb if they don't get like a phrase or a joke. You feel like you get to learn about some of the phrases in the gay world. You don't feel like, "Oh, God. There's another, inside joke that I don’t get." It's all very inclusive.

AE: I talked to a lot of filmmakers and critics before coming to SXSW and a lot of them were excited to watch your film.

JL: The good thing about playing all these long festivals with the short film is that I got to make my community of filmmakers across the United States and even further now. I met so many amazing people along the way.

AE: Why do you think SXSW was a good platform for this movie to make its world premiere?

JL: Because out of all the festivals, this festival really accepts comedies. Well, it's not they don't accept them they don't --

JH: Celebrate them?

JL: Yeah, it’s not celebratory. I mean a lot of festivals are very "heavy" and this festival seems to balance comedy and drama really well. It gives us a really huge stage to premiere a film like this. There are so many other things that could have happened to this film which would have been so great but I feel, for this film, SXSW is perfect for a comedy that has a straight woman and a gay man as the leads of a movie. This is the best of all worlds for us. This is such an accepting town, accepting environment and a great festival.

MW: There's something about this town that feels appropriate. It's just a really unique progressive interesting community.

AE: Why do you think now is the time to release a movie like Gayby?

JL: This movie could have been released any time in the past couple of years, but there is something in the air right now like the election that's happening this year, the strides that gay people are making as a community and the acceptance of different definitions of family. Even though this is a comedy, there is definitely a view point that "acceptance is the key" -- that is an important message. So, I think it does feel like now is a good time.

JH: Also, from another aspect that has nothing to do with homosexuality, women are having babies in many different ways and it's just accepted. Women are having children whether they’re gay or straight -- they're having them.

MW: It's like my sister. She just turned 38, and she wanted a baby so bad...

JH: …and she had a baby.

MW: She ended up getting pregnant with, essentially, her high school sweetheart.

JH: It's not blasphemy when we think of that idea. Like my parents totally accept my lifestyle and my friends. When like maybe 10 years ago, if I would have said, "I'm old enough and I just want to have a baby. I don't need to be married" they might have said, “No, no, no, no, no, no!” Now, I can honestly say, if I came to my parents and said hat I wanted to have a child. They'd be like, "Yeah, cool, awesome". It would not shock them.

MW: Because they know that the child isn't going to be abandoned. There is a support system in your life and in my sister's life. We all have this ability to create our own families now. Maybe we always did, I guess.

JH: It’s accepted more.

AE: When you guys play characters, whether it be in this film or any other project, how do you inform them?

MW: It depends -- but I think it always is going to has to start with me. For example, I'm playing something right now that is so far from me. I play…(hesitating) a bully in something...

JH: …in Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark on Broadway! (laughter)

MW: I was bullied in school and when I was working on (the character). I was watching all those old '80s movies.

AE: Like William Zabka from Karate Kid?

MW: Yeah! He was one of them! That's where I drew a lot of my inspiration from but I also, having been picked on while growing up -- I drew from that too.

JH: I always feel like I get it from the script. The script always inspires. It's in the writing. I just keep reading stuff over and over. I’ll get an idea and then that will just sort of fly -- an it usually involves some type of music video that I saw when I was a kid or some crazy performance art crap that I sort of lived for.

AE: How much room for improv was there when shooting the film?

JH: As much as possible until Johnny would say cut.

JL: There are some moments. Every scene in the original cut ended with something that had (improv). We cut a lot of it because I liked my script a lot!

JH: It is a great script.

JL: Like a lot of the physical comedy (was improv) -- like there's a scene when Matt and Jenn spoon (after sex). We talked about that, but I didn't tell them to do exactly that.

JH: Then there was the pole dancing I did…

AE: That wasn't planned?

JL: It was not planned. That was an amazing moment we captured.

AE: I thought you probably had to go through intensive pole dance training.

JH: No girl! I do that every Thursday night on the Lower East Side. (laughs)

MW: Then there's the scene when Jeff Hiller comes in and we start talking about Showgirls.

JL: Yes! That was TOTALLY improvised. I have a big thing about that movie! I trust these people to bring it and they do -- but there are amazing outtakes.

JH: We need to watch those!

Wilkas in a scene from Gayby

AE: What are some of your favorite baby movies?

JH: Oh my God! I know exactly what mine is. When that lady goes out into the woods, she has her baby and she makes baby food. It’s that Baby Boom?

JL: With Diane Keaton?

JH: That's a good movie!

JL: Mine is Raising Arizona. I love that movie!

MW: I was just thinking of Away We Go -- is that a baby movie? I kind of loved that!

JH: Now I know it’s not a baby movie, but does Child’s Play count?

AE: Sure, why not?

JH: I love Child’s Play!

AE: What about Rosemary's Baby?

JL: I love Rosemary’s Baby like nobody’s business -- I love it when she’s drinking those herbs.

AE: Speaking of herbs, Jenn's character takes herbs in the movie to help get her pregnant -- do those herbs exist?

JL: According to the internet, they are totally really real. I did a lot of internet research for this movie and some of the stuff we say about her cervix is right from Web MD.

AE: How do you think this movie will push the "gay movie" forward?

MW: The conflict in this film isn't about being gay, it has more to do with the obstacles in the film.

JL: I wanted to liberate this silly comedy from just straight people. The idea on this one is absurd! I mean, straight people get to have their absurdist comedies all the time, why can’t we have a gay absurd comedy? This story is obviously something that probably wouldn’t happen.

JH: I don't want people to say i“Oh it’s too gay or too this or too that!” It's just funny. Just laugh!

MW: Then there are those comments on YouTube about the trailer. It's how you might expect people to react to it…

JL: The good thing about those comments is that those comments are exactly what the movie isn't. The trailer tells the story of what happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie. Everything comes after is very different.

AE: What future/current projects are you working on? Feel free to plug away.

MW: Well, as mentioned, I'm in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

JH: I’m in Silence The Musical, which is a musical parody of the film Silence of the Lamb. I do my idea of Jodie Foster’s performance and I take it to my own level -- a parody.

Watch the trailer for Gayby:

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