The High Art (and Dark Vision)
of Lisa Cholodenko

by Loren King
June 8, 1998

New York indie filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko discusses her debut feature, High Art.

High Art

Lisa Cholodenko began the script for High Art while in her second year of Columbia University's filmmaking program, under the tutelage of director Milos Forman. The Oscar-winning director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest read Cholodenko's script and encouraged her to make the film, whether in color or black-and-white. "He told me the writing was good and offered me some insightful notes," said Cholodenko of her mentor. "It was a shot in the arm, to be told that by [Forman] with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. So I persevered. It is important to have icons tell you when something is good."

Not surprisingly, Forman was right. High Art, Cholodenko's feature debut , captured the Waldo Salt Screenwriting award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where it also snagged a distribution deal with October Films. High Art had it's European premiere in the prestigious "Director's Fortnight" showcase at the Cannes Film Festival last month.

Not a bad start for a filmmaker who made two well-received, lesbian-themed shorts, Souvenir and Dinner Party before embarking on a feature. Cholodenko said it was always her plan to direct a feature when she moved from Los Angeles to New York to attend Columbia. "If I was going to take out all those loans, I knew I'd better be serious about it," she said. "This was a story I was hung up on and I stayed interested in it as I developed the script. My intent was to direct it, so I kept that in mind as I wrote, mindful of the budget."

High Art, which opens in theaters this month, is set in the artsy/drug world of New York's creative fringe. It explores themes of art and power and seduction, but with the backdrop of heroin and its lure to self-destruction. The central characters -- Lucy, a photographer played by Ally Sheedy; her German girlfriend, Greta (Patricia Clarkson) and Syd (Radha Mitchell), a young and ambitious editor at a glossy photography magazine -- become embroiled in a romantic triangle fueled by their various needs for drugs, sex, power and artistic recognition. Cholodenko says it's a world she saw first hand as an artist hanging out with other artists in the early 1990s as heroin emerged as a cheap, accessible and chic drug among the downtown set. Although not a user herself, Cholodenko saw "how people crossed the line so easily" into addiction, aided by the media's invention and exploitation of "heroin chic."

"I was intrigued by the whole idea but I wanted to look at it in a more honest way," Cholodenko said. "I'd seen enough to know that the party ends. People close to me stopped living their lives and having relationships. That's the tragedy, and I wanted to put that out there."

High Art, for all its edge and irony, is a dark and disturbing film. Cholodenko says she worried that it was too grim, too tragic, but in the end "swallowed the doubt" and stuck to her story. On the other hand, she also worried that the humor and irony necessary "to the milieu I was depicting" would turn absurdist. "People were telling me to make it funnier but it wouldn't be honest to the tragedy if it turned into a screwball comedy," she said. In the end, High Art remained true to Cholodenko's original, dark vision. "I don't know how I would do it any other way and remain honest [to the characters]," she said. "I'm thrilled that people like the film. It's more than I expected."

"Name" actresses were interested in the part of Lucy Berliner, but Cholodenko says there was never any pressure from her producers to hire a well-known actress. "We spent a month casting and saw some wonderful actors but no one that I felt physically fit the type," she says. "Then I got a call at home from Ally; someone had given her the script and she asked if she could come out and read. I was not at all familiar with her work from the '80s; I'd never seen The Breakfast Club. I wasn't watching a lot of American films at that point. So she came in and read and it blew me away. She looked right, she brought an intensity and a knowledge that I wasn't seeing with the other actors...It was a risk for her and she pulled it off."

The role of Lucy's lover, the German actress Greta, was also proving to be difficult to cast. Patricia Clarkson (who is not German, incidentally) "came in on an emergency session," recalls Cholodenko. "She'd finished an episode of 'Murder One' just days before. I was bowled over by the dark, funny, complex stuff she brought to it."

Cholodenko, who is part of a New York, independent film circle that includes Maria Maggenti (The Incredible Adventures of Two Girls in Love), Alex Sichel (All Over Me) and Dolly Hall, who produced all of their movies, is now working on another script, which she describes vaguely as "set in the music industry of Los Angeles. It's a character study that leans more toward comedy."

That a first-time director was able to draw such complex, insightful performances from her High Art cast is a tribute to Cholodenko, but it is the aspect of directing she likes best, she says. "I love working with actors. It is exciting to get them to enact your imagination. It is such a thrill. For me, this is it."

* Read the PopcornQ review of High Art!