“Elizabeth would take me to clubs that she used to go to, and we would sit in the corner, watch people, and take out fake cocaine and pour it on the table just to see what would happen,” Morgan Saylor said about working with Elizabeth Wood on developing Leah’s character.
“People would be like ‘can we have some?’ And we were like ‘sure take it’,” Wood laughed.
Elizabeth Wood, a New School Alumna of ‘06, has her first feature film out, and it’s far from your regular love story. Wood, 33, wrote and directed “White Girl,” which shares the same producers as Larry Clark’s “Kids,” is about Leah, a young college student in New York for the summer who goes on a sex-drug-alcohol frenzy after meeting Blue, a drug dealer from her block, who quickly becomes her boyfriend. It’s fair to say there’s a new “Kids” on the block, and the title is “White Girl.”
What you don’t know is that the story started at The New School, where Wood studied Creative Writing and Integrative Design. The film, starring Morgan Saylor and Brian “Sene” Marc, reflects the conversations and experiences Wood had during her time at TNS.
Wood was living in Ridgewood, Queens during her sophomore year at The New School— like Leah does in the film— and she took a class by Jane Lazzare called “Writing on Whiteness.” At the same time, she was taking a class at Parsons where she made a video on drug laws while also taking a philosophy class. What she learned in all of these classes, affected Wood in her social interactions with friends, and stuck with her long after college eventually playing a huge role in the writing and execution of her film.
“I do think this film is actually a product of the thinking I was doing at The New School and the way I lived it,” Wood said.
While at the New School, Wood first illustrated what she wanted the film to look like in her diary but didn’t start writing it until she finished undergrad. She applied for grad school at Columbia University and wrote the screenplay for her application.
During her two years at Columbia, she worked on editing the screenplay and having it fully completed so that when she graduated the film would be ready to be made. Once finished, she started sending the screenplay out, thinking about casting, and about getting the finances together, but because it was her first film, she wasn’t sure how, or even if, it would all work out.
“It’s hard when you haven’t done something to know all how it’s going to work out right?” Wood said. “And I think that’s scary because there’s no way to know how to do it before you’ve done it.”
Through connections, Wood was able to get an interview with Christine Vachon and once Vachon was on board, lots of different investors began funding the production. Due to the low budget of the film, Wood had to cut 20 pages from her original script so they could bring down the budget. As Wood developed her creative team and found her actors and producers, she became more comfortable with the filmmaking process and more excited about what was going to happen and what they were about to make.
Though it seemed things were starting to come together for Wood, the film hit a rough patch when production and funding were pushed— the filming was supposed to start in the summer, but ended up being shot in 22 days in October of 2014, and edited on and off for ten months after.
“It was really just a mystery, that’s a good lesson for life, that taking risks and doing scary things, you just have to keep going you know what I mean? That’s the only way to go,” Wood said.
Wood and Saylor worked together a lot before actually shooting the film. Since the film focuses a lot on sex and sexuality, Wood wanted to discuss the risqué matters early on with Saylor in an open way so those moments would feel more intimate and real when on set.
Wood sat on a bench on the deck of her West Village apartment giggling with her lead actress, Morgan Saylor, recounting tales of hanging out and rehearsing for the film, from clubbing to blowjobs to finding that sexy pose.
“She would give me assignments,” Saylor said, “like ‘film yourself dancing to Pussy or My Neck My Back.’ And it helped, I look back at those videos, and it’s me figuring out like as every young girl does, what feels sexy? What feels sexy to me? What feels sexy in a picture?”
When it came to the sex onscreen, Wood would let the actors have time to play around with the scene and see what felt right. Sometimes Wood would let the scene play out so long that the crew would ask her if she thinks they got enough just out of sheer discomfort.
“I’d feel like I’m uncomfortable too, but then I’d have this moment where I’m like if everyone right now is uncomfortable watching, that means it’s actually starting to get strangely intimate,” Wood said.
Casting Saylor as the lead was an important move, especially since she isn’t at all like the character she plays in the film. A math student at University of Chicago and an actress, Saylor shaped Leah’s character into a confident, sometimes reckless girl who doesn’t apologize for her actions.
“I was so impressed to find someone her age— [Saylor] was 19—who could tackle this material,” Wood said. “Who was also so intelligent, who understood the themes behind it, like I was kind of worried I would find a 19-year-old who was unstable who would want to play this role because it’s really I think a stable person who is just living out a crazy moment.”
The film undoubtedly has its fair share of crazy moments, from seemingly endless lines of coke, shameless street sex, to a startling rape scene, but what it also has are themes of race, privilege, and sexuality that stem from its title, “White Girl.”
“I was listening to Cam’ron one night while writing the song “White Girls,” Wood said, “and it’s perfect really because I mean this film is about exploring whiteness and privilege and what it’s like to be a girl. And also it’s the slang for cocaine.”
Wood had a professor at Columbia who reacted negatively to the title and told her she couldn’t call a film “White Girl.” Needless to say, she did anyway.“[I’m] inviting discussions… and it’s a provocative name,” Wood said.
Despite popular opinion and advice, Wood stood her ground.
“I found that often people think you should do something differently, especially if it’s your first time,” Wood said. “You have to be humble and be like you’re right, but most of the time I was right, and how I knew that was because I prepared harder for this than anything.”
“White Girl” is about more than just a double-entendre. It is a film purpose-built for conversation. The film, according to Saylor, is about being young and figuring out your own ideas in very real world situations. For Wood, the film is a combination of her experiences and learnings enveloped and represented by a story of a girl exploring herself and the world around her, and her place within it.
“All of it [is based on The New School],” Wood said. “Classes at Lang with students talking about privilege, race, and gender. But once I wrote it into the script I realized we don’t need to hear people explain it, let’s just see how it plays out in these social interactions. It was very much about having this experience while also learning about it while actually experiencing it in New York City for the first time.”