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AN ASSEMBLAGE OF RISING TALENT ACROSS WRITING, DIRECTING, ACTING, AND COMPOSITION

Presenting: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Lucy Tcherniak, Brad Oberhofer, Pippa Bianco, Avan Jogia, and Yalitza Aparicio

Featuring Prada Spring-Summer 2019

Written by Miles W. Griffis Photographed by Carlos Serrao in collaboration with Alice Isaac Styled by Mui-Hai Chu

If the winter rains happen to curtain the Californian desert, russet flats collect puddles. Dormant seeds scattered and buried by the past years’ winds begin to drink. And in spring, if the conditions are just right, a superbloom can crawl from the Anza Borrego all the way to the craggy blips of Death Valley. We open here, in a lesser visited corner of the Mojave with drone footage of rose quartz mountains and valleys of sprouting asters, lilac sunbonnets, and bear poppies. We open here, with close ups of twining snapdragons, cottontop barrels, silver chollas, hummingbird trumpets, yerba mansas, jewelflowers, wild heliotropes, live forevers, forget-me-nots, cream cups, pink rushes, and a few very showy milk vetches. Like most features filmed in the Mojave, this one is a western. But it isn’t your problematic grandpappies’. This is a revisionist, anti-western heavy on the florals. Yes, in the lineage of Eastwood’s Unforgiven and Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but much more so in the spirit of Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Light of Iris” (1924) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s short story “Yellow Woman”—an old tale told in a colorful way. But that isn’t to say this feature, boasting its unfair share of talented actors, writers, directors, and composers, is one that is scared of the absurd—this is just as much an acid western galloping quickly through the metaphysical. A story scored with electric dobros that tramples over clementine-hued badlands choked with arroyos, through psychedelic valleys of extensive periwinkleness, and into townships with hootenannies that would lasso John Wayne’s bigotry and drag it to dust across the sagebrush. This is a script ornamented not only with once-in-a- lifetime footage of a night-blooming cereus, but also one that ventures 29 million light years away to the dustlane of the Sombrero Galaxy. This is a super bloom bouquet of Hollywood’s blossoming brilliance—interviews complimented with botanical footnotes about the native flower of our six featuree’s biodiverse homelands and their kindred characteristics.

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Kelvin Harrison Jr.1

While only 24, Harrison has stood out from the crowd with a prolific streak of acclaimed roles, including Travis in the 2017 horror film It Comes at Night and Weeks in Dee Rees’ Mudbound. His ascent continues in 2019 with a slew of projects, including the films Luce, The Wolf Hour, Gully, and the T.V. series The Godfather of Harlem.

Besides your natural talent for acting, we read you’re quite the accomplished trumpeter and pianist, and that music is a family tradition. My mom’s a jazz vocalist and my dad’s a jazz saxophonist, so music is a huge part of my family. My uncle, my cousins, almost everyone in my family plays music to some extent, so it was something that naturally happened. I played piano in the church, and music was a huge part of my upbringing. My dad wanted me to be a musician because we have connections and we understand the art form in the world, so it was something that felt fixed. So to derail from that path and start acting felt like a bold step.

Your latest film, Luce, about an adopted boy from Eritrea living in America debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Why is Luce Edgar’s story such an important one to tell? What was the biggest take away from playing the character? At first I had a lot of questions, because I judged the character. And you can’t judge the character or else you won’t be able to play the role. But I was like, why would this kid have such a vendetta? Why is he so angry? Then I started to peel back the layers and it was such a fascinating exploration of what it feels like to be a young man from another country, trying to find his place in America. [Luce] has been asked to take away pieces of himself to become who he needs to be to find some type of equality in a world that doesn’t necessarily offer that to him as a black man in America. That was interesting to me, and that’s what I kind of wanted to explore. I identify with his struggle to protect his identity.

It seems like you’re taking on some pretty heavy, rewarding roles. It also seems like the process of becoming these characters is a big driver of empathy for you. Would you say that acting helps facilitate that empathetic connection? When I look at scripts I’m always like, ‘What do I have to offer, what can I learn from this?’ If I can learn something from it, then I believe other people will too. That’s how I approach it. If it seems really simple, at the end of the day, it’s about expanding the level of empathy that I have for the world2. I love acting. It’s all good and fun, but it’s for a purpose. If it’s not for a purpose, then what would I be doing?

1Harrison was born in New Orleans, Louisianai

iIris giganticaerulea, the Louisiana Iris, is the state wildflower of the Bayou State.

2Beardless irises usually (though, alas, not always!) offer the tremendous benefit of being strong of constitution, resilient and, most notably, free of the scourge of rot! Plus, these beardless irises, the Louisiana irises in particular, are beautiful to behold, with a natural grace and charm that has to a large degree disappeared from the excessively hybridized bearded irises. Dillard, Tom. “The History of the Louisiana Iris.”

216 217 Lucy Tcherniak1 PRADA blouse, bodysuit, PRADA coat, socks, shoes, skirt, belt, and headband. and headband. Writer and director Lucy Tcherniak does not shy away from difficult subject matter. Where fires have burned and bombs have popped, Tcherniak finds a way to make stories bloom from the rubble. She first gained attention with her short film Lay Me Down (2014) and has gone on to direct the critically acclaimed series The End of the F***ing World (2017) and Wanderlust (2018) for television.

When conducting interviews to humanize your characters, how do you go about the process of getting subjects to open up to you? I think going into research interviews with an open mind and trying not to have any preconceived ideas or judgements is key. The most important thing is to put someone at ease and really listen to them. I guess it’s kind of similar to how I like to work with actors and crew on set. For me, the most successful creative collaborations are when egos are left behind and everybody’s heard.

One of the most talked-about episodes of Netflix’s Wanderlust was the fifth episode, which you directed, where Joy visits her therapist Angela. The two share the screen for the majority of the episode, almost the length of a real-life therapy session. How did you keep the energy throughout such an intense and intimate scene? What was the filming process like? That episode was like nothing else I’d ever shot before. Thankfully, I had Nick Payne’s brilliant writing and the incredibly talented Toni Collette and Sophie Okonedo on my side. It’s such a long, complex and emotionally draining scene. I worked closely with Toni and Sophie during prep to find natural divisions between emotional beats, but during the shoot we often found it was working better for them to keep going longer than planned. We were sometimes doing 15 or even 20 minute takes2! I had to balance this unconventional shooting approach with the very particular way I wanted to use the camera, gradually zeroing in on Toni’s character Joy, as her therapist does the same.

Can you tell us anything about the upcoming feature you’re working on? Only that it was one of those rare scripts that leapt off the page for me as soon as I read it. It’s a truly wild and compelling story and I’m very excited to be telling it, all the more so because Julianne Moore will be playing the lead. I’ve forever been such a fan of hers, so I’m feeling incredibly lucky to be working with her on my first feature.

1Tcherniak was born in Londoni, England.

i.Chamaenerion angustifolium, the Rosebay Willowherb, is the county flower of London.

2The Rosebay Willowherb only takes a few months to colonize an ecosystem after catastrophic events like wildfire, bombing, or heavy logging. The plant is often utilized for its ability to recycle the nutrients left in the ground soil soon after a fire.

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Brad Oberhofer1

Brad is the lead singer of the band Oberhofer. If you didn’t manipulate someone into loving a terrible mind-numbing catch them a few years ago crooning in the desert winds at medication through well-strategized background music, or Coachella, surely you’ve heard their pop/surf rock rhythms you could motivate someone to fight for better education, or soundtracked in shows like Gossip Girl, Teen Wolf, and BoJack to advocate for something you find to be morally just. This Horseman. On top of the band’s success, Oberhofer, the man, is both my favorite aspect and the most difficult aspect of composed the T.V. show Alone Together (2018) and recorded a composing for film, TV, and commercials. soundtrack for the film Table 19 (2017). Your morals as an individual directly affect the stance the music in your score takes, whether it be in support of Your band Oberhofer has had so many songs featured on a protagonist or to empathize with a villain. I take this T.V. shows, commercials, and in film. Why do you think responsibility seriously. the band’s sound has paired so well as a soundtrack to the screen? Which scene did you most enjoy scoring for Alone Together? I have a terrible short term memory. Usually I can only finish And recording for Table 19? working on a song if its melody makes its way thoroughly In Alone Together, there’s a hilarious scene in which Ester asks into my subconscious and is stuck in my head until I finish it. to drive Dean’s car, he responds with “Do you know how to That may explain its commercial usage, maybe it gets stuck in drive a seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission?” and they race other people’s heads too. to find Benji. It was fun to see such macho music placed to such a funny scene. What is your favorite aspect of composing scores for film In Table 19, my favorite scene to work on was the ending, and television? What’s the most difficult part? where I covered “Melt With You” while Craig Robinson, Music directly manipulates the emotional subconscious, I Lisa Kudrow, Stephen Merchant, Anna Kendrick, Wyatt would argue more overtly than most other artistic mediums2. Russell, and Tony Revolori were all dancing together after the Composers take on a lot of moral responsibility; you could wedding. The whole cast was incredible to be around.

1Oberhofer is a native of Tacoma, Washington.i

i. Rhododendron macrophyllum, the Coast Rhododendron, is the state flower of Washington State.

2The Coast Rhododendron is the showiest flowering shrub in the forests of western North America, with flower clusters that nearly rival in size and number those of its cultivated relatives. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

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Pippa Bianco1

Writer and director Pippa Bianco premiered her first feature-length film, Share, at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival after adapting it from her popular 2015 short by the same name. Bianco fearlessly tells stories she believes “have real moral concern,” stories full of questions she admits she doesn’t always have the answer to. On top of the success of Share, she’s also directed a documentary short on conceptual artist Barbara Kruger and debuted a film portrait of Kruger at LACMA in collaboration with Nicolas Jaar.

Among other prizes, your short film Share (2015) won Cinéfondation’s First Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. What were the biggest challenges in adapting it into a feature-length film for its Sundance Film Festival premiere? Honestly fatigue. For me, filmmaking requires a certain level of monogamy (I envy artists who don’t work that way) and falling in love with one idea, and staying in love with it as you both evolve over time takes work and reinvention and devotion. But to me, that’s the only way I can to get to the meat or the heart of what’s really good about an idea. It’s easy for me to fall in love with a new idea—every new idea feels perfect—it’s when you dig in that you find the flaws and hardships and challenges, and that’s the moment that it’s very tempting for me to want to give up or bail to another new seemingly easier thing2, but it’s actually those flaws that are the best part, if you sit with it.

Video leaks, cloud hacks, and revenge porn constantly circulate on the internet—anyone, like Mandy in Share, can have the most intimate aspects of their lives (consensual or not) broadcast to millions in an instant. How do you think this kind of vulnerability shapes our culture? You know, maybe I’m naive, but I’m not in a panic about privacy loss on a person-to-person level, because I don’t think it’s that new in certain ways. I think we need to legislate the parts that are new as fast as we can...but I think even those crimes are not that new and should have been given a better legal framework a long time ago. Basil Dearden’s Victim from 1961 is a beautiful exploration of how those kinds of crimes affected the queer community more than half a century ago.

What is it about Barbara Kruger that made her a particularly resonant subject for your documentary about her work, Picturing Barbara Kruger? To me so much of Barbara Kruger’s work is about looking, about being seen, about media-making and reference, and power structures and structures of meaning and reinvention—and to me it all feels in service of deconstructing the way we receive ideas so we can better observe ourselves and the way we behave (and then maybe do something about it). I think these are themes that I think about a lot, and I am deeply inspired by the ethics and humanism I find in her work.

1Bianco was born in New York, New Yorki.

iRosa L., the rose, “in any color or combination of colors common to it” was adopted as the state flower of New York in 1955.

2“The rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meaning that by now it hardly has any meaning left: Dante’s mystic rose, and go lovely rose, the Wars of the Roses, rose thou art sick, too many rings around Rosie, a rose by any other name, a rose is a rose is a rose, the Rosicrucians.” Umberto Eco, Reflections on the Name of the Rose,

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Jogia, 26, has migrated vast distances since his popular roles of Beck Oliver in the Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious and Danny Desai in the ABC drama Twisted. The actor, writer, and director now plays the leading role on the STARZ comedy series Now Apocalypse (2019) and will appear in the upcoming reboot of Shaft (2019), as well as Zombieland: Double Tap (2019).

Is it true that when you moved to Los Angeles2, you were given 6 months to land a role or you would’ve had to go back to school? I like timelines and due dates. I think without a deadline that you really respect, you can’t get anything done. If I had come out here and sort of didn’t know exactly that I had 6 months to get this done, I think I may have mingled around here for a few years and maybe tried it. I need the pressure of something forthcoming to really kick it into gear.

Alongside acting, you’re a director, a musician, and a poet, with a book of poems, Mixed Feelings, coming out later this year. What is the appeal of poetry for you in a world of moving images and digital communication? I’m glad that I direct and write and paint and do all the things that I do, because I don’t think I would feel nearly as fulfilled if I didn’t. As far as how appealing poetry is in a world of moving images and digital communication—pretty words and beautiful sentences will always be alluring. With all that use of words [on social media and texting] there is such a cheapness and impoverishment of pretty words and pretty language. I think the reason poetry is having a renaissance at the moment is because we are tired of boring words and people using words cheaply.

You play the lead role Ulysses in the STARZ series Now Apocalypse that takes a contemporary look at life and dating in Los Angeles. Does the world that the show portrays feel familiar to you? I think it’s sort of wild, it’s such an insane show with so many different elements. It’s a show that is very much to my taste in terms of its cinematic elements and editing. Gregg Araki has has been ahead of the curve about what young youth culture is about. He is an integral part of the energies and questions that were being asked in the ’90s that we’re living in now. He is such an integral part of discussions on gender fluidity and sexual fluidity and questions of the binary and labels and identities. The show really benefits from his well-informed look at [these topics].

1Jogia was born in Vancouver, British Columbia.i

i. Cornus nuttalli, The Pacific Dogwood, is the provincial flower of British Columbia, Canada. Avan Jogia1 2The native range of the Pacific Dogwood extends from southern British Columbia to southern California. Hansen’s Northwest Plant Database.

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Hair: Sheridan Ward Makeup: Kristin Hilton Manicurist: Merrick Fisher Photographed at Hubble Studio

Yalitza Aparicio1

Freshly nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the Alfonso Cuarón film Roma, Yalitza Aparicio has the world

watching her journey from educator in Oaxaca to an international movie star, fluttering with magnanimity and humbleness in a sky RARE DIGITAL. STILLS: PRODUCTION POST ANGELES. of Hollywood hawks.

What surprised you most about the filmmaking process once you were on set? Was Alfonso Cuarón a helpful guide through the process? Alfonso was a great teacher and he helped me at every moment during the shoot; he instilled confidence in me and he taught me about a capacity that I had within me, which I was unaware existed.

What was your favorite scene to film in Roma? What made it memorable? Was there a particularly difficult scene to film? My favorite was with Sofi (Daniela Demesa) when I am singing a lullaby to her and the song I sing is in Mixtec and that she, without knowing the song, learned it. The hardest scene was the beach scene.

You’ve said on the red carpet and in interviews that you’d like to start doing some training as an actor. What kind of roles would you be inspired to play in the future? I would like to play women from the real world.

What has it been like to go through such a life-changing experience so quickly? Do you feel you’ve adjusted to the attention, or is it still surprising? How have your family and friends responded? I am still surprised and I still get bashful when people recognize me2. My family is very happy for me, they always ask me to give the best of myself. And my friends congratulate me and really like seeing me on screen; they feel they are triumphing alongside of me.

You are the first Indigenous woman to be nominated in the best actress category for an Oscar. In the Times, you spoke about the potential nomination as something that would go beyond a personal achievement for you alone. What is the greater significance of the nomination? To break certain barriers despite the stereotypes. This nomination proves that dreams are within reach.

1Aparicio was born in Tlaxiacoi, Mexico.

iThe Mexican state of Oaxaca does not have an official flower, but the Lobelia laxiflora, the Sierra Madre lobelia or Mexican Cardinal Flower, blossoms brightly in the pine-oak above Tlaxiaco.

2 CHANEL LE VERNIS OPUS AT BEAUTY. PRODUCER: AMY GROUND. PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: THALITA MANGIN. LIGHTING DIRECTOR: RON DIGITAL LOEPP. TECH: DAMON LOBLE. CINEMATOGRAPHER: MONICA SOUND DESIGN: MAY. MEY CHEN. ILLUSTRATOR/

Lobelia laxiflora attracts constant attention from pollinators, particularly the Dusky Hummingbird (Cynanthus sordidus), the Beautiful Hummingbird (Calothorax pulcher), the Ruby-Throated COLLAGE ARTIST: ALICE ISAAC. ASSISTANT: JACOB KHAN. GRIPS: JOHN BRUNHOLD AND BRIAN ELECTRICIANS: BEVERLY. GARRETT LARA AND ERNIE ROSAS. PROP DESIGNER: JAMES LEAR. PROP ASSISTANT: WYNDAM GARNETT. LOCATION: HUBBLE STUDIO, LOS PHOTOGRAPHER: CARLOS SERRAO BEAUTY AT AND PHOTO. STYLIST: MUI-HAI CHU. HAIR: SHERIDAN WARD USING ORBIE CLOUTIER AT REMIX. MAKEUP: KRISTIN HILTON USING HOURGLASS COSMETICS THE AT WALL GROUP. MANICURIST: MERRICK FISHER USING Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), as well as butterflies like Orange-striped Eighty-eights (Diaethria pandama) and Banded Mapwings (Hypanartia dione).

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