Getting Hyperreal With... Julia Hebner and Bad Lobster

Hyperreal’s in-house interviewer Justin Norris sat down with filmmaker and fellow contributor Julia Hebner about her newest short, Bad Lobster. Together, the two talked working with a live lobster, New York’s associations with jazz, and yup, eating the crustacean at the center of the story.

Hyperreal Film Club (HFC): Bad Lobster! Let’s talk about it. Let's just go with the idea. How did it come to you?

Julia Hebner (JH): It actually came from a semi-true story. I was on a project and I was the Director of Photography (DP) on this erotic vampire thriller. It was a really fun project that was shot on 16 millimeters but I don't know where it is now. I didn’t get a transfer or anything but on that set, one of the actresses—the lead actress—was a professional dominatrix. When we had downtime on set, I was just mining her for fun stories; I was just like, “What's the weirdest thing somebody has asked you to do in that position?” And she said that somebody did request that she cook a lobster and that the lobster would be kind of transfigured. Like the client would be transfigured through the lobster and he would anthropomorphize this lobster and make it beg for its life. So that was all very similar, but in real life, she just did it because that's her job, it pays good money. I forget how much [she was paid], I think she said it was like three grand. So I was like, “I guess I’d do it, too!” [Laughs]. I’ve never cooked a lobster, but yeah, I heard that and I thought it would be funny if she just had this vegetarian morality that kind of prevents her from doing it. It was just kind of a “Wouldn’t it be fun if we did this?”

HFC: I liked the little twist you threw in with just the two of them, the woman and the lobster, where it's just them talking and the camera switches to each one and then it's revealed that there's a guy too. I was like, “Oh, this is going to be some magical realism or something.” But I liked the little pivot! Was it always going to be a lobster? Did you ever kick around any ideas for other animals to take the lobster’s place?

JH: No, it was always going to be a lobster. In real life, it was a lobster, and it was so absurd and so funny and, like, feasible to do. Also, I mean, if it had been a dog or a cat or something like that, it would’ve been…

HFC: Darker.

JH:  Yeah. I mean, obviously we wouldn't harm any of the animals, but I have trouble dealing with implied harm to any sweet animals. I mean, the lobster is saved in the end in this short. I think it wouldn't have lent itself to comedy as easily if we were worried about a companion animal being harmed.

HFC: I noticed y’all used a live lobster and a little doll. When y’all were getting this live lobster and y’all were picturing it being filmed, did you have any specific expectations that this live lobster would perform a certain way? 

JH: We were just kind of going to play it by ear. I have no experience with lobsters. I figured he was probably just going to move kind of slowly. We kept the rubber bands on the claws for safety but yeah, we just figured we'd play it by ear. I knew that we had to get a fake lobster to place on him just for safety and also because he's very hairy. [Laughs]. We ended up using three lobsters. One live. One dead. We got two from a grocery store and one was already dead. That was the one that was thrown in the river. Then we had that plastic one and I had originally planned a shot of the lobster being thrown and hitting the wall before she cries out and that would be the last straw, but it didn’t work because we obviously weren’t going to throw the live one. The plastic one would just kind of hit the wall in a less than satisfying way. It wasn’t real. This came up in the Q&A, but I’d never bought a lobster from a grocery store before and we hadn't thought about the long term—like, what's going to happen to this lobster? No one’s going to keep the lobster as a pet. You can't return a lobster. And we looked into it and apparently in order to humanely keep a lobster—and you really can’t keep a lobster as a pet—you need a lot of space and saltwater.

HFC: Don’t lobsters grow into their tanks?

JH: Yeah! So, it's not realistic. When you buy a lobster, the clock is ticking and then you're going to have to cook that lobster. It made me feel so guilty in the Q&A to endear everyone to this little creature and then have to tell them that he met an untimely end. But I just found a friend who was comfortable doing it and who had done it before and they said, “Sure, I'll take a free lobster.” But I felt incredibly guilty after having this little creature on set all day who kind of became a friend. It was my Silence of the Lambs moment.

HFC: As soon as this short kind of started, you have a woman with this lobster, and I was imagining this was taking place in New York since I know you're from there. So, obviously, I jumped to Annie Hall. That's vaguely where I saw it kind of going initially before the reveal. I thought it was going to be her and lots of talking but going off that, while making this, were there any sort of inspirations from other works that were kind of operating in the foreground for you or in the background subconsciously?

JH: Yes. Well, indirectly, I'd say, and it’s—I mean, this is another Woody Allen reference, which I mean, take it or leave it for what that’s worth [chuckles] but I kind of thought of her as, like, a little bit of a Mighty Aphrodite type, like, “Oh, no, we can’t! He’s looking at me!” Just very sweet and affable in that way.

HFC: Is there one particular moment in the short that you're a fan of?

JH: It's funny because you can't predict it. You have your moments while writing it and I honestly don't remember what those are anymore, but you can't quite predict what are the moments that are really going to hit based on the actor’s delivery. But the way he says, “We're taking it from the top,” it makes me laugh every time. Also, I just love her little end montage where she's running in her high heels! I love it. And it always gets a laugh!

HFC: Yeah! I loved that little last section. It was very tranquil. The jazz soundtrack felt very New York. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but to me, as a non-New Yorker who hasn't lived there, it felt like it fits right into that space of other works that were all about New York life.

JH: That wasn't necessarily an intent, but I've always thought of it as a New York story and I don't know, it's a funny thing, because I grew up in New York, so I'm very aware of that as a trope and the idea of New York as a character being a trope, and sometimes that's an eye roll inducing inaccuracy, but like, it's there for a reason. I love New York so much because it is a magical place where weird things happen serendipitously all the time. 

HFC: It can happen in random rooms. In random streets. It’s just a day in the life of these people.

JH: It's a beautiful confluence of weirdos. Yeah. [Laughs].

HFC: Was the jazz music an original score or was that something y’all found?

JH: The music was actually the toughest part for me because I do not have a musical background and I actually engaged two different composers. One was this girl I went to high school with and another was this girl I met in film school, and they're both really good composers but what we were working on was taking up too much time. It was taking too many iterations. So I felt like, “Oh, this isn't quite right. This isn't quite right,” and I felt that for a free favor, I was taking up too much of their time. So, I just kind of cut it off at a point and said, “Okay, well, I'm gonna find something royalty free,” which is incredibly difficult to do! 

HFC: I think the jazz fit perfectly, so shout out to your ears and shout out to whoever composed the score you ended up picking out of the great beyond of the internet! You touched on the music being a sort of challenging part. Would you say that was the most challenging part of making this short throughout the entire process?

JH: The other thing I would just say is that it was time consuming. This wasn’t necessarily a challenging aspect, but I ended up editing it myself, and I am a competent editor, but I'm not an editor. Also, I do not think it is ideal to edit your own work, just because you've seen it too much and it starts to become like a word you say over and over again. And you start to not be able to tell if something makes sense or not. So that's a hurdle as well. I just had to end up overcoming that by sending it to a bunch of people asking, “Does this make sense?”

HFC: Of all the hats—because you did triple duty here with writing, directing, and editing—that comes with filmmaking, what was your favorite one to wear? Directing, writing, editing? Anything else?

JH: It's very hard to say because I think, most naturally, temperamentally, I'm a writer, and that's my primary mode of expression. But writing is also very solitary and part of what is so wonderful about filmmaking is that it's so social. Like it's collaborative, yes, but it's so social. I do love being on set. I love the energy of the set. Sets can be very sensitive to the tone that people set, so I've definitely been on some toxic sets, but if there's a set with the right vibe, it's magical.

HFC: It doesn't feel like work. Even when it's stressful, it's not bad because it’s a bit more fun! If there was a hat you wanted to try on, but you haven’t really had the opportunity to, what would that be? 

JH: I want to be a better editor. On set, I've been a director, and then I'm also trained as a cinematographer, so I've done a bit of that, and I enjoy that as well. I’ve edited when there's been no other choice, and I mean, editing is also a very time-consuming, solitary act, so I would never want to be an editor because it's just not my temperament, but I'd like to be a better editor. I'd like to be a faster editor because editing is an art too. It's an art of montage and it's so essential to the final product and obviously the director’s overseeing the edit and consulting with the editors, but I'd like to get better at just performing that montage.

HFC: Final question. Very important question that was nagging at the back of my mind the moment I saw this short: Are you a fan of lobster? As a delicacy.

JH: As a food! Oh, no! I mean, lobster is expensive! I probably only had it a handful of times. I’ve had a couple of lobster rolls but I feel like it's always at a wedding or something. 

HFC: At weddings?! What weddings are you going to?!

JH: Weddings in the northeast! Lobsters aren’t cheap in the northeast but they’re right there, you know?

HFC: It’s funny because I could’ve sworn I heard lobster used to be considered food for people of lower stature back in the day but now it’s this delicacy.

JH: Right because lobsters are bottom feeders. But I'm not sure, I don't know the history of lobster consumption. Like I said we got those lobsters at the grocery store, but can you get them here at the grocery stores?

HFC: They used to do it at Walmart back in the day, but they stopped as far as I remember. They used to have a tank, usually at the front that you'd walk by, and you could just pick a lobster!

JH: Okay, because in the northeast, or at least in the New York area, certainly in the Boston area at any grocery store of a certain size, there's absolutely a lobster tank. But I don’t know, I didn't go do the purchasing of the lobster for the film, so I actually don't remember how much was spent but my producer went and got ‘em. [Laughs]. But they weren't crazy expensive at all. But yes, I've had lobster, I like lobster, and now I feel very bad about it.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.