Comedian John Early wrote and directed the new film "Maddie's Secret." He also plays the lead character, Maddie Ralph, wearing a wig and prosthetics. Early will be screening the film and doing a Q&A at the Community Theater in Catskill this weekend. As he tells WAMC's Sam Dingman, he sees the character of Maddie as a version of himself...
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
[clip from "Maddie's Secret"]
Deena: Hey, Maddie! Don't you ever get tired of being such a good girl?
Maddie: No! [giggles]
John Early: It's just kind of the little voice that I do, and that I've always done to, I guess, in some ways, to roast myself. The kind of...the good girl in me, the goody two-shoes in me, the the part of me that's kind of hopelessly Presbyterian. Using this voice which I associate with the kind of classic 1950's ingenue, like Sandra Dee or something, you know? This kind of like...
[clip from "Maddie's Secret"]
Maddie: Guys, no, no, no, stay seated! I'm covered in turmeric. I don't want to stain you! This is a grilled halloumi with a yuzu kosho crisp. Enjoy!
Dinner guest: Thanks for having us, Maddie.
Maddie: Oh, it's my pleasure!
Early: When I started to take her voice and make her say these kind of grim, ugly things from contemporary life, like "Condé Nast...Hulu password," you know, that was the seed of the whole thing, really. Like, putting this person who's pure of heart in this ugly contemporary internet moment.
Sam Dingman: Yes, this is fascinating to hear, because this character who's supposed to be kind of rooted in a past version of American femininity, the story of the film is very much about her trying to dissociate from her own past.
Early: Yes, you're absolutely right! Of course, totally unintentional on my part. But yeah, I mean, I guess you could say that it's like this movie is...by kind of embracing old forms, by, like, kind of drilling into the past instead of trying to escape it. Hopefully, it finds its own unique style.
Dingman: Well, let me ask you a little bit about the way that dynamic kind of manifests itself in the story, because you have these environments that Maddie finds herself in that are, to my mind, somewhat exaggerated.
Early: Very exaggerated! You're very polite. They're very exaggerated.
Dingman: Yeah, she's working at this food influencer multimedia company called "Gourmaybe." There's also these moments of very direct and sincere engagement with pretty profound traumas that Maddie has endured. As a kid, she dealt with bulimia. She's still dealing with that in her adult life. She has these really horrific situations that she endured with her mom that are hinted at throughout the film. Eventually, we get some detail about that. Those are delicate tones to hold within the same story.
Early: Well, you know, I think it's a kind of gay thing - obviously [laughs]. But like, think about like Tennessee Williams and how you know, I read or see something like "Suddenly Last Summer," which this movie you know alludes to at least a little bit. I think about "Suddenly Last Summer," and it's so lurid.
[clip from "Suddenly Last Summer"]
Elizabeth Taylor: He was lying naked on the broken stone. It looked as if...as if they had devoured him!
Early: I read that play, or you know, I watch it, and I feel like he had to have been laughing. I think it's like: it can kind of tickle you and be funny and feel kind of over the top, and it's very over-the-topness is what gives you access to the emotion. And just kind of unabashedly feel the emotion at the same time.
I don't find bulimia funny. I find the genre, the tone - when you have these explosive traumatic revelations, and then like everything's healed, like the the kind of simplistic paperback Freud thing of those movies - that makes me laugh. But you know, in order to really do them, and for them to not feel like some hollow genre exercise, you really have to commit.
Dingman: That is so interesting to hear, John, because I think in particular of a scene where you and some other characters have a vigil for another character who has passed away, and your performance in that scene is very sincere. You start crying, and it's not an exaggerated cry. It feels very tender, very reverent.
[clip from "Maddie's Secret"]
Maddie: I never wanted to be a mother. I'm too scared to do to a child what my mom did to me!
Early: Well, that is the moment. And this didn't happen consciously. The structure I was following, the narrative - which, you know, is hastily constructed through just theft, you know, just like so many TV movies, and, you know, melodramas. And of course stealing from my own life and my friends' lives. In other words, it was a very unconscious process of cobbling it all together. But once I got to that scene, that is where for me as the writer, the last of the comic residue dried up.
Dingman: It also seemed like something you were interested in creatively in this story was the idea of appetites. There's obviously the literal fact that Maddie wants to be a food influencer. She has trouble managing appetite issues, as we've discussed with regard to her eating disorder. But Jake, Maddie's husband in the movie, also has this totally ravenous appetite for food, and for sex, with Maddie specifically.
[clip from "Maddie's Secret"]
Jake: Hello, my beautiful wife. How was work?
Maddie: Emily tore into me again. Have you eaten anything yet?
Jake: I had some candy and some chips.
Maddie: That's not food, Jake.
Jake: Then how did I eat it?
Maddie: You'll eat anything!
Jake: I'll eat whatever's in front of me...
Dingman: And then there's also this other idea, it seemed to me, of a cultural appetite for content.
Early: I do think there's a strange decadence that I see on my phone a lot. Often, you know, I turn on my phone, on my Instagram algorithm, and it's like a busty LA girl biting into a sandwich, and there's like the juices from the meat are like pouring down her face, and she's wiping...you know, it's it's just very carnal and sexual! And you know, and there's so much obsession with like these kind of prestige food TV shows on Netflix. There's something very decadent about all of it. And it's also, you know, timed with an empire that's crumbling. And, you know, that's like a classic thing: the decadence of kings as, like, an empire is crumbling. You know, like, right before the fall. That's the monstrous, ravenous world - the dark forest that Maddie has to walk through.
Dingman: Well, John Early, writer and director of "Maddie's Secret," thank you for this conversation.
Early: Thank you so much. This was a real thrill.
