Marja Lewis Ryan serves as The Four-Faced Liar triple threat – writer, actress and producer. She shared with SheWired exclusively how the project began.
“Well, let’s track back seven years. I think it’s important to know that the four of us (that’s me, Emily Peck, Todd Kubrak and Daniel Carlisle) met on the first day of college and we are best friends (insert stringed instruments for sentimental flair here). We graduated in 2006 and moved out to LA together. We LIVED together. All of us! (And no one died).”
Ryan continued, “It was during that year that I adapted a one-act play that I had written in college into a full-length play. We work-shopped it around our dining room table and produced it in the spring of 2007. People liked it (which we didn’t see coming). So, we took them at their word and set out to make the feature based on the play. We shot a trailer to raise money. I lived on a farm in Kansas and wrote for three months. It took us nine months to fundraise and finalize the script.”
With the script being complete, it was time to hire the production team and talent. Ryan remembered, “In the summer of 2008, we hired actress Liz Osborn, director Jacob Chase, producer Samantha Housman and cinematographer Danny Grunes. We shot for 28 days over nine months – two chunks in New York to get the seasons and then one long shoot on sound stages for our interiors. It took us about six months to get through post and we premiered at Slamdance in January of this year.”
The festival lifestyle seems to be agreeing with Ryan, her crew and The Four-Faced Liar premise. “We’ve been on the festival circuit for nine months now and we’ve traveled all over the country. We won The HBO Audience Award at Outfest and, and, and…I won’t bore you with my journal entry. Let’s just say that it’s been an amazing ride.”
Wolfe Video bought the rights to distribute The Four-Faced Liar and is releasing it on VOD/DVD on November 9, 2010.
Director of The Four-Faced Liar Jacob Chase shared exclusively with SheWired, “As a heterosexual male, directing a film about a straight girl falling in love with a lesbian may seem like an odd fit at first glance. But that juxtaposition enabled me to tell a story about friendship and cheating and getting hurt without getting caught up in the gender or sexual orientation of the characters. I was able to just tell the story as what it is: a love story.”
Chase expanded on the thought. “My first exposure to The Four-Faced Liar was at a reading of the screenplay by the immensely talented actor/producers. It was a story that instantly grabbed me, made me laugh and broke my heart. In that order.”
So, what is the story about? Chase gives SheWired the scoop.
“The main through-line of the film is the two female characters falling in love; however, the fact that they were both female never entered the vocabulary of the script. It was just about these four characters and how their often-poor choices got them into trouble with one another emotionally and sexually. This casual handling of sexual orientation was one of the things I responded to in the material and made me want to fight to get the opportunity to direct the film.”
He describes, “While in pre-production and planning our storyboards and blocking, I was always conscious of keeping the film about two people falling in love and not about two girls falling in love. And to be honest, I was less interested in if the girl wanted another girl and more fascinated with her reasons for cheating on her boyfriend and the emotional connection she was lacking with him. It was really fun to explore the journey of someone falling for the person they’d least expect. The Four-Faced Liar has managed to be accessible to men and women of any sexual orientation because of its universal theme: you should be with the person that gets you.”
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