The Rabbit and the Duck: A Chat with Maurane and Billy Pedlow

Chatting with the co-directors of a new film that broaches the uncomfortable topics of consent and victimhood.

On December 4th, Bleeding Edge presents the Toronto debut of Me and My Victim, a film that provoked controversy at its debut at the Fantasia Film Festival this summer, at Market Video.

Maurane, a Montreal-based artist, and Billy Pedlow, a New York-based poet, discuss the history of their relationship over a period of several months. The discussions are overlayed with absurd visuals, a digital debris of text messages and dating app profiles, along with absurd visuals provided by Maurane that highlight the conflict playing out between the two not-quite-lovers.

A gripping examination of 21st century relationships and a fascinating document of post-cinematic screen culture, please join us for the film with a Q & A from Maurane!

Bleeding Edge: When did you first decide to create something out of this story, and was it always going to be a film, or were there other ideas for how to approach it?

Billy Pedlow: Yeah, we decided off the cuff at a poetry reading, we were just drinking together and hanging out, and I said to Maurane, We should make a movie out of our relationship…

Maurane: Yeah. I said yes immediately, but it was always a movie from the beginning. At one point of the process, because, like, the movie was really long, we were talking about making a series, but it didn't make sense.

BP: Really? We were talking about making it a series?

Maurane: I mean, I did, and you were like…

BP: No, it's gonna be a long movie.

BE: Does that mean there's a four hour super cut out there somewhere?

Maurane: Well, the recording of the audio lasts seven hours.

BP: And that that's what we started with. We started with this idea of, like, oh, we should just get in the studio and record audio, like a dialog between us, and that'll be the easiest way to build off of that into a low budget, easy movie that will be narratively compelling.

BE: It’s been compared to a podcast, which is why I was asking if it was always going to be a movie. Was it inspired at all by podcasts with visual elements?

Maurane: It's not that we were inspired by podcasts. It's more like it was what was accessible to us. So we started to record the audio, because we had a studio at Billy’s place where we could do that.

BP: It made movie making incredibly accessible. I think it sort of flattens the medium. It's very accessible and also very timely. It came together as Oh, this will all be like modern shit, but also make it really easy to make a movie. So we dove into it for that reason. But we weren’t like, Oh, we should make a podcast movie. It was like, Wait, it would be easy to make a podcast movie, and we'd be able to get the story that we want out of it.

BE: Before we dive into the content of the story. I want to ask, from a formal perspective—Maurane, you're an artist and Billy, you're a poet among other things—what did each of you bring to the final project, artistically speaking?

Maurane: We really did this movie together, so we both touch everything, like every part of it. But I guess what I bring the most to the movie is all the video editing. But we really did everything together.

BP: I guess it was my concept in a way, but there's a lot of push and pull at every step of the way. Like, I'm gonna have ideas and she's gonna be like, Oh, maybe not that. And then she's gonna have some visuals and I'm gonna be like, Oh, maybe not that. We say yes a lot, too. I mean, enough to make the movie. But for sure we had our own little domains…

BE: Was the visual stuff primarily coming from you, Maurane? The designs and stuff that are filling up the frame while you're talking.

Maurane: Yes and no. A lot of them yes, but also, Billy came up with concepts and visuals or ideas that he would share with me and I would try stuff.

BP: Also, we planned out the shots together, in terms of when we actually did shooting together, and then my one visual contribution is the red thing. I had the red thing idea. That was my idea. I think she probably did everything else, but I did that one thing. Maurane did a lot of the absurdist visuals, like the zebras, the Olympic skater, stuff like that.

Maurane: Because that makes me laugh!

BP: I love that shit.

BE: And the stuff that you actually filmed, how much work went into the reenactments and other stuff that you actually had to go out and shoot?

BP: How many days of actual filming? Probably four or five actual days of filming, right?

Maurane: I mean, probably more than that.

BP: We dragged it out because I'm always working. So we had to sneak it between my work schedule and it was usually just us. We had a couple people working with us on and off.

Maurane: But the way the movie is done visually, sometimes we filmed for one day, but we just use, like, 10 seconds of it.

BP: Or we didn't get anything the whole day, like the day the of the park date. We did so much filming for every single shot, and then, like, Fuck that. This shit sucks.

Maurane: We had a second date scene when we go to the park. We filmed a lot, but Billy's hair didn't look good...

BP: For the actual filming, I was always filming without my glasses because I was trying to differentiate myself from my character by taking my glasses off.

BE: Like Clark Kent.

BP: She always thought it was really funny. I would take my glass off and so I couldn't see anything. I'd be mad disoriented and we would just do the shot in one take. Because I couldn't see I would be a little frustrated and I wouldn't even necessarily watch the shot over because I didn't want to put the glasses on. I'd be like, Let's just go to the next shot! So we would just go through a day of shooting where I didn't watch any of the footage, and it was all like, first take, and I was super frustrated the whole time. Some of those days were terrible, but some of those days were good! It was pretty unprofessional shit.

BE: Did you reenact the the poetry readings, or were those just actual poetry readings that you went to?

Maurane: That's the only part that we didn't reenact. It's a real event that we did to have footage of us reading the poems. Also, when the subtitles are yellow, often it means that it's real…

BE: One thing that comes up in the movie a lot is the Caveh Zahedi influence and the connection there. Can you talk about that and how you see Caveh now and his whole philosophy about total honesty?

Maurane: It really changed over the year. We met him and showed the movie in his class [at The New School]. But at first, it's really that Billy knew Caveh’s work, and he talked about it at our first date, or maybe the second one, and the honesty and Caveh’s work really affected the way I acted with Billy in real life. So I was, like, really direct or even rude sometimes, or straightforward. My point of view about honesty changes a lot each week. I think honesty in art makes art super good, but in real life, I think I believe in honesty, but I don't think it's a good thing when you use honesty to be mean or cruel, if that makes sense. I think that's my point of view for now.

BP: That's the thing, honesty does lead to meanness. It does lead to transgression of autonomy from one into another. In general, what makes honesty good in art is that it's mean, it creates drama, it creates conflict. So I think, Maurane, you're hitting the nail on the head in terms of identifying those things. I think that that's why, in life, I don't think honesty is a great ideal, but we did go into it for this piece of art, and I think we both felt that the consequences are pretty unpredictable and dramatic.

BE: This is the thing about Caveh and his work. It's definitely very compelling, but at the end of the day, the fruits of this philosophy is that his life is falling apart, and all these people hate him, which is entertaining for the audience, of course…

Maurane: In Caveh’s work, he's honest, but honesty is not necessarily the reality. It's his perception that he puts out into the world. It's really interesting for his work, but you have to be able to see the difference between your honesty and the reality, if that makes sense…

BP: I like being able to dip my toes into that radical honesty when I decide to, and then to get out of the water and dry off.

BE: How was it screening the film for his class? What was the response like from the students?

Maurane: It was so fun, but mainly the class didn't like the movie. We entered the class and Caveh said that 70% of the class didn't like it, but that was super interesting. And I think a lot of people in the class did like it, but they were too shy to say it out loud.

BP: We thought it was going to be like 15 people. But instead of an intensive film class, it was a Gen Ed class, so it had like 100 people, and not all of them really gave a shit about film. We walked in and I shook hands with Caveh. I was like, Caveh, pleasure to meet you. He's like, Hey, 70% of the class hated your film. Why don't you sit there? We'll do the interview. So then we did the interview, and we got dinner with him. But then, afterwards, there was a bunch of shit-talking on Letterboxd. And I got really drunk at this dinner with Caveh, so I immediately started talking shit about the New School students on my Instagram. Then the next day, I got a message from a girl who's in the class that they put up my Instagram story in their class on the board. They reacted to my reaction.

Maurane: When we do a Q&A, sometimes we perform a bit, or a lot. That one, we really performed...

BP: Yeah, we were like, We created a genre! I compared myself to Jesus, evidently. I just said that Jesus was the first canceled man and they were like, Oh, this guy thinks he's Jesus. I was being really arrogant.

Maurane: Because Caveh was around, it created an energy.

BP: Caveh had a very chill, quiet energy. So I doubled down on being really arrogant.

BE: I guess we can get into the parts of the movie that have upset people and are more controversial. Without being too specific, the film gets into matters of consent and an incident that happened between the two of you. What were you hoping to accomplish by bringing that into the film?

Maurane: At first we did the movie for ourselves, so we were just trying to get into that relationship and go date by date, and that was part of what we lived through together, and that’s why we decided to keep it in the movie the way we did. For myself, it was to trying to show what is sexual assault in a real way, because I don't think we see that in a lot of movies. But also it was to show two different points of view from two people that don't agree, and even when the movie ends we still don't agree, and that happened in life.

BP: For me personally, I don't make art with a moral intention, generally. If anything, I like to do more investigative work. But why do it? Because we thought it'd make a compelling narrative. That's just the first level. We're like, Oh, this is beautiful, this is interesting, it's romantic! And it's also an ambiguity that is rarely displayed on film. Lately I’ve been comparing it to looking at the picture of the rabbit or the duck, and you can see a rabbit if you want to, you can see a duck if you want with this movie. A lot of these #MeToo, narratives, like, for example, the Aziz Ansari #MeToo moment, reading that article about what happened to him, putting aside how you feel about it morally, is just incredibly compelling, narratively. You're like, This is so juicy! Do I think it's bad? Do I think it's not bad? I'm going to get into it! People do fixate on that. You can see it on the internet, you can see the interest, and it is a sick, perverse interest, but is one that I do have. I do love those narratives that get really into the nitty gritty of something, where you're not sure how you feel, and maybe it's a little sick and gross, but you're just fixated on it because of that. And I felt like it was one of those narratives. In reality, all the time, you have these things that happen where they could be a rabbit or a duck, it could be a false accusation or a really bad action. It's rarely shown in a movie where you can actually see it both ways, depending on what you believe or what your interpretation is. I felt that the narrative in our film struck like a perfectly 50/50 line, where I feel pretty comfortable with how anybody feels about any of it. I'm like, Oh, I get it, that's probably in there. I get it. And on all sides. And a lot of people feel different ways. And to me, that's what art should do, where you dig into yourself and dig into how you feel about the world, and learn how you feel about the world from how you feel about a movie.

Maurane: Yeah, also we got to dig into ourselves that way. I think it helped me, and I think it helped to not recreate that in life with other people I’m gonna meet in the future. It really was like a therapy to do the movie, and to analyze the way we act with others.

BP: We wanted to get closer to each other through it, too. We weren't ideological about it, and if we were ideological about it, we didn't have the same intentions, necessarily, but we knew that it was a story that we found compelling, that we felt making it would bring us closer together.

BE: Just from browsing Letterboxd reviews, particularly after it screened at the Fantasia Film Festival, there's an insinuation that Billy, you made Maurane do all the editing and stuff on it, which I find disrespectful to Maurane, because it's taking her agency away. So I’m wondering, Maurane, what's your perspective on that? Do you feel that you have agency in this endeavour?

Maurane: I was really surprised about this reaction. I expected people to be shocked, but to remove the credit or my work in it… I was aware of what I was doing, and I was doing it because I wanted to do it. And really, at no point did Billy push me to do this movie. I really wanted to do it and I'm really proud of it, and I know why I did this movie. I understand why some people think that. Like, after seeing Billy and I in a Q & A and Billy takes more space than me, just in general. So it's confronting for people. So that's like an easy way of thinking to say that I'm manipulated by doing this movie, but that's not true.

BP: It's sick that people think I'm so clever and manipulative. They watch this movie where I'm kind of like a bumbling romantic, and they're like, He's so manipulative! I was so offended by it because it was such a collaboration. I think, honestly, that is why the movie makes people freak out a little bit is because of the cognitive dissonance. Like, if the movie was made by just me, by a man, like they could just discount it, but because it's made by us together, they they don't really know how to wrap their heads around it. If their response to this movie is just to discard it because I'm evil and Maurane is a victim they're confronted by, first of all, the title, and the narrative and like the the question of victimhood in the movie. But also, on top of that, they're confronted by the fact that Maurane made the movie too, and we're both responsible for each other's depictions in the movie.

Maurane: That's what I'm the most proud and what is the most strong about the movie is that we did it together. This movie doesn't exist without me. And without Billy. Not a lot of people would have been able to do it because of the subject of the movie, so to remove that from the movie, it's kind of to remove the beauty of the movie.

BP: I think it's the way to shut it down. It's the cognitive dissonance to shut Maurane out of the movie. Don't confront the whole complexity of what's going on. Don't look at the whole picture that way. I can discard it. It makes sense, but it is frustrating.

BE: Have there been any reactions to the movie from people that you know and respect that have been hostile to it?

Maurane: Some of some of my friends were really shocked by it, and have a hard time to love Billy and understand why I would be friends with him. That's a really strange thing to receive from people I like because I really care for Billy and people that come to me and say not nice things about him, but that makes sense, because that's that's what we showed in the movie. But that's really hard to deal with emotionally.

BP: It's hard to be like, This is real, but I’m also kind of playing character, we showed bad things, because I'm the villain or whatever. It's okay you can maybe at some point consider hating the character and not me, but, you know, do what you want. For me personally, I had problems with personal relationships that were a little difficult, but not friendships. My friends either like the movie or they don't.

Maurane: Your family didn't watch it.

BP: Yeah, there's this really cool movie theater in my hometown, and I think about the fact, like, Oh, I made this sick indie movie, it makes a lot of sense to show in the sick indie movie theatre in my hometown. But it's also like putting the scarlet letter on my chest. I don't know

Maurane: I don’t know if it's a good idea.

BP: Every inch of success the movie has, it's like, Yes!… Ohhhh. I just get more and more negative attention. But it's fine. I knew what I was asking for, I knew what I was doing.

BE: You do seem to embrace the negative attention, like you were saying with the Instagram stories…

BP: I can't help it. It's not like a strategy so much as it's just what's natural to me. I don't know. I've got problems.

BE: I wanted to ask Maurane, I've seen you posting on Instagram about making another autobiographical film, Can you tell us anything about that?

Maurane: I’m really in the beginning of the process. So it's going to be super different. But I still want to use my character, because I'm really into autofiction, but I don't think I'm going to say it too much.

BE: Can you talk at all about what you're working on, Billy?

BP: We originally were going to work on my second movie together, and Maurane departed the film to work on her own movies. So there's a little drama, a little juicy drama. But my movie is called Beautiful Blackmail and it's about some friends giving me consensual blackmail in their lives to help me fix their lives. And it's about friendship and group chats. I'm planning to make a trilogy in the style of Me and My Victim.

BE: All right, I think that's all I have. I'm excited for the screening next Wednesday!