Ever since “Teeth” hit Sundance back in 2007, actress Jess Weixler has been in the spotlight while also flying under the radar, choosing smaller, independent projects, letting her sink her teeth, no pun intended, into meatier roles and get the opportunity to work in the most appealing environments. Well, the abandoned mental hospital she shot “The Normals” is wasn’t particularly appealing, but after a major redesign courtesy of a top-notch art department, it was all beagles, mind games and a ton of mints.
Weixler stars as Gretchen, the sole female in a group of people opting to spend a couple of weeks at a drug testing facility to earn some quick cash – well, in addition to other activities. Gretchen follows the rules, taking her pills, giving blood and eating her meals as required, but in her free time, she enjoys taking advantage of being the only lady on team green, much to Billy’s (Bryan Greenberg) dismay.
“The Normals” already wrapped its run at the Cinema Village in New York City, but you can pop this little gem of a comedy whenever you’d like courtesy of iTunes, Amazon, Movies On Demand and more. In honor of the VOD release, I had the opportunity to chat with Weixler herself about life as a drug test subject, her hopes to make her directorial debut, our hair woes and more. Check it all out in the interview below.
Jess Weixler: I spent a lot of time in the last few years reading scripts and looking at the characters and seeing if it was something interesting that I would have fun playing, something I hadn’t done before. Every now and then you read a script and you just think it’s beautiful and the character is interesting, but you feel great about the movie as a whole, and sometimes it feels like it’s more about the characters that you get to play. In this one it’s a real ensemble comedy. I just thought the characters would be really fun for us all to mess with our dynamic with each other. That’s sort of how I chose this one.
I feel like the purpose my character serves was to give Bryan’s character a false beam of light. He’s searching for meaning in his life because he’s so lost and wayward – all of us are, really, because none of us have jobs. We’re like those weird people who can take several weeks out of their life and go do something bizarre like drug testing, so I feel like I served like a false start. Like he thought, ‘Oh, maybe I can see this girl on the outside. Maybe this is a real thing. Maybe this is something that could be real for me,’ but I wasn’t that person because I was really just interested in getting a bunch of attention from all of the guys. [Laughs] So he then has to make a sharp left and try to find meaning somewhere else and clearly he does it in the wrong place.
I sort of just figured she’s one of those free spirits. What I liked about playing this role is she’s quite predatory and sexual. I think I tend to get cast fairly innocent, accept for Teeth. Usually there’s a twist at the end or something. [Laughs] But I guess with her backstory, I knew she had to be messed up in some way to be having all this time off. But maybe that’s the wrong thing to say. I felt like she knew what she was doing and she was one of the most clearheaded of the group there. She agreed to do this thing for money, she thought it would be fun to go and be in a group with a bunch of guys and get a lot of attention and then quickly realized she was on placebos so she wasn’t feeling anything. She probably was like Bryan there, looking for some meaning in her life and didn’t really find it until she met the guys who were breaking the dogs out of the nearby building. She didn’t come planning to be part of this escape-the-dogs squad, but then I think halfway there, probably sometime after she met Bryan, she was like, ‘Oh, what I actually want to be doing is be part of this really cool squad of dog savers.’
[Laughs] It’s really funny to see you and everybody else moving in slow motion when you’re running.
The movie definitely goes bananas at a certain point. It’s such a strange movie in that way. [Laughs] It doesn’t follow the rules of normal moviemaking, that’s for sure.
Oh, lord, no! That place was terrifying! It’s an abandoned mental institution. I think some buildings are still working, but I don’t know how many buildings there are. I’m gonna guess like 70, or something like that. It’s a large facility with a bunch of squatters in nearby buildings. Our incredible set design team, which I give like 50% of the credit for the whole movie, came in and cleaned out what was essentially, to me, seemed like a scary, haunted, abandoned, filled with squatters, old mental institution with medical equipment still everywhere. The hospital beds were everywhere and machinery. It was crazy!
They get so much credit! It was like the best edition of Home Makeover you’ve ever seen. They were sweeping out what were probably dead animals. It was awful!
Yeah! We left them with a better home. [Laughs]
I think we did. I don’t think it was too long of a shoot. I want to say it was around a month. I don’t remember exactly. Since I wasn’t the lead of this one, I didn’t have to be there the whole time. It was easier on me than say something like “Teeth” or “Peter and Vandy” where you’re there like 24 hours a day, every day – or it feels like that. This one was more relaxed for me personally, but I’m sure Bryan got exhausted on the shoot.
Yeah, I looked into it a little bit and there were certain things that I was just like, I’m just gonna defer to the book on this because the truth is they separate men and women in those drug facilities. They don’t put you in the same group with men and women so you can’t go all college dorm style like we did. I think as it goes, half of the people are on placebos and half aren’t, and people are trying to figure out who’s actually being affected [laughs], which would be fascinating.
Oh, yeah. I think they were little mints. [Laughs] We were popping tiny mints and probably went on sugar overload a few times.
I think we did the pill sequences all in like one or two days, so it was maybe just those two days that we got a little too much sugar in our bodies. [Laughs]
I don’t think they actually do that stuff in real life. I would be surprised. But it was really fun to do and I can see how it would be a good test to see who’s still sharp and who’s not. But some people are just bad at those games, and some people are actually good at them! I didn’t mind sitting there for a little while playing those games with my friends.
Yeah, I liked shooting those, too. If I’m correct, I think you have to have maybe for SAG reasons, you have to do at least one day on a set as opposed to a location and that was our one set was that room. That was the one thing that we created out of nowhere, maybe in a warehouse or something.
[Laughs] I knew when I turned my head that they would kind of be able to see me because they wanted to establish that we were beginning to make eye contact early on, but I don’t think I realized how much I was in the frame. If I did realize I probably would have been even more uncomfortable. [Laughs] You don’t want your head so big on a screen.
I did shoot it after “Free Samples!” I shot them both within like three months of each other. [Laughs] Good call! I moved away from bangs after that and it makes life a little easier without bangs, but now I miss them!
All women understand the struggle!
It’s gonna take some time, but there’s something that I want to direct next and it’s something that I’ve written so hopefully I will make that happen next year. I’m sort of squatting and writing and getting that worked out right now. And I love the two movies that I shot this year, “Look of Love” and “[The Disappearances of] Eleanor Rigby,” so I’m very excited to see how those turn out. The cast in both of those that I got to be around and work with were inspiring.
I’m not sure. I think so, but I don’t know. I think so. I’m sure they’re trying to figure that out, too.
Yeah, it’s like an experiment at this point because it hasn’t been done.
No, I’m sort of talking to some of my friend who I’ve worked with. My buddy Josh [Leonard] directed “The Lie” and the whole cast storyboarded it together and it was interesting watching him do it and it sort of made me realize, ‘Oh, yeah, I think I can do this.’ I’ve been on so many independent film sets at this point that I have faith I’ll be able to at east handle myself on the other side of the camera. But, you know, I don’t want to put the cart before the horse because raising money is an uphill battle. Until I have the green light on this I can’t talk about it too much. I’ve gotta have a green light and my car. [Laughs]
I don’t know. I wouldn’t specifically say that working on “The Normals” that there was something that changed with me about it. It felt like a fun independent movie, sort of in the world of some of the other fun, take-a-risk independent movies I’ve been on. Every time I get on a set I respect the director though. Every time I see a director have to juggle all the balls and negotiate everybody’s artistic visions, I respect that so it sort of just went in line with being impressed by those around me and dealing with multiple creative personalities.