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Clea DuVall and Melanie Lynskey on “The Intervention” and the legacy of “But I’m a Cheerleader”

Jamie Babbit‘s But I’m a Cheerleader came out 17 years ago, but the queer-themed indie dark comedy is still a favorite of LGBT women and beyond. Clea DuVall, Melanie Lynskey and Natasha Lyonne had all been in at least a handful of projects before starring together as teen lesbians sent to a conversion therapy camp called True Directions, but their on-screen chemistry and off-screen friendship have fans excited to see them together in Clea’s feature directorial debut, The Intervention.

Clea and Melanie met before shooting But I’m a Cheerleader together, and they know each other so well now that they finish each other’s sentences.

“We hung out one night,” Melanie said.

“On Halloween,” Clea added.

“On Halloween, yes. That’s our anniversary. So we had hung out that one night and I knew [Clea], but I lived in London at the time, so we didn’t hang out that often.”

“But then we made But I’m a Cheerleader that December. And it’s been non-stop the last 40 years,” she joked.

The Intervention is an ensemble film about a group of college friends who reconvene for a weekend in Savannah, Georgia. Jessie (Clea) and Sarah (Natasha) are a couple who don’t yet live together, while Annie (Melanie) is stalling her wedding with fiancee Matt (Jason Ritter). Annie is also a recovering alcoholic and intent on staging an intervention with unhappily married friends Peter (Vincent Piazza) and Ruby (Cobie Smulders). She’s dismayed when Jack (Ben Schwartz) brings along new young lover, Lola (Alia Shawkat) to join the party, and focuses her attention on anyone but herself and the true feelings she’s having about her relationship and future.

“I wrote the part for Melanie, she was the only person I was thinking of when I was writing it,” Clea said.

Melanie said she felt honored that Clea thought of her for such an important career move, her first time writing and directing a feature.

“I knew that Clea thought it was funny when I pretended to be drunk, which is always fun; always fun for me,” Melanie said. “So I was like ‘Oh my god, it’s a whole movie where I’m drunk.’ But I felt really special, honestly. I felt very moved by it the first time I read it. I was like ‘Oh my God, she trusts me with this. Yu know, this has been a dream of Clea’s for a really long time to be a writer and a director and to give me–first of all, she wrote the greatest part so it’s an amazing opportunity for me. But also, to just trust me to do a good job with this thing, like your first time doing something that means a lot to you, felt really so, so, so lucky.”

Clea has directed music videos and other short projects before, but says The Intervention was the first movie she’s written with “the intention of trying to have it produced.”

“It was weird because I was writing a character for myself, but I wasn’t really thinking about actually having to play the character,” Clea said. “The script sort of took on a life of its own, and I was thinking way more about everybody else’s characters and making sure they were solid because I knew that I would just show up, and I knew everything in my head. So it didn’t need as much attention. But then it was a lot harder than I thought, playing a character close to myself with my real life best friends. It was really more challenging than you think. It’s almost easier to play something far way from yourself with a bunch of strangers. It’s less vulnerable.”

Both Clea and Melanie talk about how nice it was to work with people they know so intimately.

“I know Clea better than anybody; I know Natasha pretty well. I’ve worked with Cobie and Jason’s my boyfriend, so it’s like people who can just sort of sense a shift in your energy and just give you a little bit of space,” Melanie said. “That was a very comfortable thing.”

The long-time recognizable friendships between Melanie, Clea and Natasha are surely going to bring some fans to the film, and they all seem fairly aware of the legacy But I’m a Cheerleader has created for them. Melanie jokes, though, that people don’t remember her from the film at all.

“I’ve literally been standing next to Clea and people will be like ‘But I’m a Cheerleader!'” Melanie said.

“I think that’s a movie that is very meaningful to a lot of people and it–I don’t know. The idea that those characters, even though we are not those characters, but that that still exists somewhere, and it can go on–[The Intervention] almost feels like an extension of that,” Clea said. “It’s really nice. I’m trying to think if there’s any movie or show where the people are still friends, and I like that they hang out in real life.”

“That’s a good question. Do you know if Blake Lively and Leighton Meester are friends in life?” Melanie asked.

“That would make me really happy, thinking of them hanging out, eating salad.”

“Or Leighton Meester getting lunch with Chuck Bass! I don’t know his real name. He changed it; he legally changed it,” Melanie joked.

(Clearly they’re both Gossip Girl fans.)

“[But I’m a Cheerleader] was very meaningful for people,” Melanie said. “It was so long ago now that I’ve been working with young gay kids who are like ‘That was the first time I saw a movie that, oh my god, they’re making movies about this? And it’s so funny, and I feel OK to be myself.’ It’s happened a couple of times.”

She also noted that she works with young actors now who are openly gay, a huge change from when she first started working.

“It’s so exciting to me,” she said. “I did a movie with this kid, and he was like ‘Yeah, my boyfriend’s coming up to visit’ and I was like ‘God, I love that.’ It made me feel really old.”

“We are really old,” Clea said.

In The Intervention, Alia Shawkat’s characters a shine to Clea DuVall and makes her intentions well known. But Clea’s Jessie is trying to keep her girlfriend from noticing, and stop herself from having sensual dreams about the young temptress.

“I felt like I wanted to write gay characters in the movie where the movie was not about them being gay because I think that is something that is really under-represented on screen,” Clea said. “There are a lot of coming-of-age movies, and they are so important, but I think it’s just as important to see the other side of that where your life is fine, and it’s just normal and boring, and that it’s not a struggle. From “it gets better” to “it has gotten better,” you know? I think it’s good for people to see.”

Clea said that the “moral of the story” of The Intervention is that meddling in others’ lives usually has more to do with the meddler’s own issues than anyone else’s, something she was inspired by from her own life.

“I realized I was focusing a lot on exterior things, and I wasn’t really looking inside,” Clea said. “There were things I needed to focus on that I wasn’t and then just taking that into a comedic place of ‘What if somebody actually did try to intervene in something that they really didn’t have any business commenting on?”

“Sort yourself out first,” Melanie said. “Then you can be like, ‘Guys, I’ve noticed some issues.”

Melanie praised her friend as a director she’d recommend to any financier looking for someone to helm their next feature.

“I would be like, ‘You should get my friend Clea. She’s so efficient. Her time management skills are so amazing; she’s really, really, really prepared and is still managing to be open, feeling comfortable to have a conversation about the scene if you’re like ‘Wait a minute–why? What’s happening within this scene?'” Melanie said. “There was collaboration, but I felt like [Clea was] in charge. It never felt loose or sort of like nobody was steering the ship. It was just a great balance of creative and also practical. But I never felt [Clea] get stressed out about the time, even though it was so stressful.”

Clea’s facial expression indicated there might have been some stressful moments for her; it’s part of the job.

“You apologized like 19 times,” Melanie said to Clea. “‘I apologize for today.’ I’m like ‘For what!?’ I’m sure it was a huge disaster in your head.” She turned back to me. “I had to stop crying the first day. I was like, ‘I’m just so proud of you!’ You were like, There’s no time for that; no time!'”

Clea has worked with all kinds of directors in her long career in television and film, and she said that what she values most as an actor is the freedom to, well, act.

“The directors I like working with the most are the ones that allow the people that they hire to do their jobs,” Clea said. “I don’t like working with people who micromanage me or anyone else. It’s not a creative environment; it’s not a fun environment, and you’re not gonna do your best work when someone is telling you exactly what to do and how to do it, every step of the way. So I didn’t want to be that director. I wanted to allow the cast and the crew to have the creative freedom to bring to the movie what they wanted to and still guide it to tell the story in the way I wanted to tell the story. But I was very open to the idea that people would tell the story I wanted to tell, even if they took different avenues to get there.”

Clea said she is focusing more on writing and directing as of now. She is also open to acting but she “only wants to do it if it’s something that I love.”

“Or for money,” Melanie joked.

As for what we can expect next, Clea has several TV and film projects in the works but one she can speak on just yet.

“Starting as an actor, you do all different kinds of movies and work in so many different genres,” Clea said. “I am interested in a lot of different kinds of movies. I’d like to direct something that I didn’t write. Comedies and dramas and scary movies, just whatever idea I have that I connect with, I will pursue.”

The Intervention is in theaters now.

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