"Go Make It Great" - An Interview with Katie Aselton and Mary Bud of Their Town

A few hours before the beginning of MIFF 29, we had the pleasure of sitting down for a conversation with director Katie Aselton and producer Mary Bud in preparation of the Opening Night screening of their film Their Town. It was a wide a varied chat that covered quite a bit and was genuinely so much fun. Their Town hasn’t posted a distribution schedule, but we’ll be sure to let you know when we find out! - Charlie Beck

The Maine Playweek: [while setting up] So, you’ve done before movies together, have you worked together a lot?

Katie Aselton: We’ve been working together for 48 years. [laughs]

Mary Bud: I mean, I was the first person in casting.

KA: She was my first director I’ve ever worked with. I didn’t work again for a long time.

She scared me. So Mary put on plays when we were little, growing up, and I was much younger, as you can tell, from everyone. And so I was oft cast as the baby, or the deer, or…

MB: Whatever could be easily manipulated.

KA: Scene stealer, though, one might say.

PW: I was always, whenever my sister would do stuff like that, it was the same thing. “You’re gonna be over here. You’re gonna be a part of it, but you’re gonna be in the corner not really talking much.”

KA: I always thought I was the lead, so...

MB: There are no small parts.

KA: There are no small parts. Exactly. Unless you’re a sleestak, in which case, that is a small part.

PW: Why don’t we get started with a little bit about your history? You grew up in Millbridge, way Downeast, what inspired you to become an actor? Was it working with your sister, doing small plays?

KA: I am the youngest of four kids. I grew up in a very funny, smart family that really prized comedic timing and biting humor. So I feel like it was probably entertaining, humor [was] always a big thing in our house. Our mom was a high school art teacher, and was really great about taking us to shows in Boston, or we went to New York one time. And so nothing felt out of reach. It was crazy to think that I wanted to be an actor, uh, coming from a town of 300 people, where, in high school, I was in the drama club, and Mary and my other sister, Amy, were in the drama club, and they put on really extraordinary plays. Like, pretty great.

MB: Very small school.

KA: Yeah. Narraguagus [Senior High School]. So when I got to high school, I signed up for the drama club. We didn’t put on one play.

PW: Really?

KA: Yeah, I’m in the yearbook photos every year as being a member of the drama club. Aspiring actor. Not one play. I auditioned for a couple Stephen King movies, that was exciting.

PW: Back when they were shot in Maine.

KA: Yeah. None of the big ones. Although maybe it was Pet Sematary. I think it was. And they asked me if I had had any experience, and I did say I played the Sun in the school play, and they said, “Most important part!” I said, “I know, center of everything!” So I had no experience.

I just had big dreams. And then I had the real wild experience of entering one pageant. And that went extraordinarily well. And I won Miss Maine Teen. Don’t know how or why, but I did. Because it’s my journey. Went on to the nationals, which I didn’t even know that was a part of the deal, but got to be a part of a live telecast on CBS. Like, I was on live television and the amount of rehearsal and work that went into that was…

MB: And she was a pro. A pro. During the interview portion, she was like, “Hi, Bob.”

KA: “Hi, Bob.” Bob Goen [of Entertainment Tonight], to be clear.

MB: And she was up against all of these pageant queens who had been doing it like Little League since they were five, you know? And all the grace and poise in the world, it was extraordinary. So, it’s just kind of like this light or this gift. And when she had the chance, she took it and that, I think, made you hungry for more.

KA: Well, truly, that experience was, like, the rehearsal process for a live telecast was 10 hours of rehearsals for two weeks. Choreography, stage direction; it was a finely tuned machine, and I freaking loved it. I was so into it. I loved the stage manager. I knew all of the crew members. It was intoxicating— that’s the only way I can put it. I was addicted to it. And I came back and I told my parents, “I think I want to be an actor.” And they were like, “Mm hmm, okay. Go to school in New England for at least two years and we’ll talk about it.” And I think they thought that I would fall in love with the program I was in, which was journalism at BU, or probably fall in love with a guy. But they didn’t realize that, like, I was sitting there with a calendar, just, like, crossing off days. And at the end of my two years, I turned to them and I said “I want to go,” and they were like, “No.” And Mary and my other sister, Amy, said “you have to let her go.”

MB: We convinced them.

KA: It was Mary, my producer, always.

PW: Producer, agent…

KA: Yeah. producer, agent, director.

MB: I said “dude, she’s good, send her to the big leagues.”

PW: It’s like, yeah, “you got that spark, kid!”

KA: “Yeah, you got it, kid!” […] So that’s my journey, which is, I think, really unique just to me. I don’t think anyone has ever had that same journey.

PW: Well, especially the, like, the Miss Teen USA too, and the fact that it was just you seeing an actual production saying “oh my god, this is so crazy. This is so wild, it’s so much fun. And that’s what you took away from it. That is not a normal thing for most people…

KA: Most people who enter a beauty pageant, that’s not their takeaway: “Oh, live television broadcast? The dream!” Most of them are like, “Wow, I should wear wedged espadrilles with a bikini because it does make my legs look longer.” I also learned to put hairspray on my butt to keep your bikini from going in and becoming a wedgie.

MB: Life skills!

KA: A lot of life skills! I learned things, and I learned a lot about myself, and that’s everything you can have.

PW: I feel like I learned something similar from that, like, from Miss Congeniality…

KA: Okay, so Miss Congeniality? The choreographer and the stage manager were mine!

PW: You’re kidding!

KA: Yes!

PW: So funny…

KA: They cast my actual, like, the people I was loving so much…

PW: That’s so cool! Have you been able to catch up with those people since then?

KA: On a pilot I worked on recently, the script supervisor came up to me and said, “We’ve actually worked together before.” And I said, “Oh, my God,” ‘cause this does happen. Like, crews are big, you don’t meet everyone. And I was like, “oh my god, I’m so sorry.” And she goes, “You wouldn’t remember me. I was an assistant to one of the executives on Teen USA,” and she goes, “and you were robbed.” Oh, that was the other thing, I almost won!

PW: That’s pretty cool.

KA: Yeah, I got it all the way. I got second place. I got first runner up, which felt like it gave me leverage with my parents, like, I’ve got something. Not enough to win, but... But I could be a supporting character, maybe. [laughs]

PW: So, you go to BU for two years, and then you move out to LA?

KA: Mm hmm.

PW: And what was that grind like?

KA: Oh, it was easy. I immediately booked a job and just started working. As one does. [laughs]

PW: Oh, yes. It’s a classic babysitter to actor pipeline.

KA: Yes, exactly. Uh, no. It was a grind. It was... I went out there. I really knew no one. I got discovered at Mel’s Drive In by James Woods’ friend who was a manager and it was as sketchy as it sounds. Thankfully, it didn’t go south. And I did get my first agent out of that, and then I never worked with the manager again. So that happened, I got to put that in my journal. I really did go out with the intention of like, “I would be so happy just to book General Hospital.” I would work on a soap, like, I just want to do it. I love it.

And so I started auditioning for things and I was getting close to a lot of soap operas. And I booked my first job, which was an MTV show called Undressed, making my parents very proud. I got on set, and I was like, “I don’t think I’m a very good actor.” And I was like, “Oh, shit. I would like to be very good at this. I should probably think about that.” And so I started looking into acting programs and this one really caught my eye that was in New York called the American Academy of Dramatic Art. It’s a two year program, like a conservatory, and, and I was like, “oh, that sounds so interesting.” I sort of, like, put it in my drawer, tucked it away.

Did a couple other guest star things. I did a role in Spin City, and a McDonald’s commercial, and I was waiting tables, a lot of really weird side jobs. I worked for a private investigator, I worked at a county fair dressed in a big costume. I would be a telemarketer for a while. I worked for Mary remotely for a while, editing some stuff. And then I met my husband [Mark Duplass], who looked at me, and all of my friends, who were also out-of-work actors, and was like, “I don’t understand why you don’t just get together and make a movie.” And I was like, “’Cause that’s not how it’s done. You can’t just make a movie. You gotta go through the studios” like I knew what I was talking about. And he was like, “No, you don’t” and I was like, “You do!” So, at the time, Mark was living in New York, I was living in LA, we were long distance for about a year, and after about a year, I was like, there is this acting program in New York that I’m really interested in. And I was hitting my ceiling of being an out-of-work actor in LA, I couldn’t do it anymore.

So I pulled the trap door, moved to New York, enrolled in this program, which was maybe the best thing I’ve ever done in my life for what I wanted to do because I was just on stage every day, doing terrible work, just working out all of your weird little ticks and being cool and being embarrassed. All of that just falls away when you’re doing it all day, every day. And it was this extraordinary program that worked everything from Shakespeare to voice, and dialects, and movement, and it was the best. And then Mark still was like, “I just feel like we should make a movie. We should…” And the day after I graduated, we made The Puffy Chair.

PW: Oh, wow.

KA: We started The Puffy Chair, which we shot mostly…

MB: And he was kind of transitioning out of music at that time. And so they were both kind of at this pivot point.

KA: And then from there, it was still a grind.

PW: Yes, yeah, yeah, of course.

KA: You know, I remember, like, that movie premiered at Sundance, and I was like, “I got signed by William Morris like on stage at Sundance. This is so exciting.” And I was like, I’ve made it! I have made it!” We went to LA ‘cause we were just gonna go for pilot season, and I was like, “The world is gonna come to me now. It’s time.” It didn’t. It didn’t. It was another five years before The League happened. And then things happened easier. And then they didn’t, because that’s our business. It is just, it’s hot and cold.

I just said this earlier in a thing, but, like, we’re sharks. Like, you just have to keep swimming. You have to keep moving forward and betting on yourself because no one else is gonna bet on you. You just have to believe that it’s going to work out. It’s delusional. We’re crazy. Anyone who sticks in this has a good deal of crazy in them. But I also don’t know what else I’d do.