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Approximately four minutes after I walk intoJenny Slates Park City hotel suite, we are both weeping.
Im sorry youre feeling shitty!Jenny Slate:Its fine.
Theres always something to harvest from it, you know?
Thats how I feel this morning.
Honestly, same.Its like,What was I like as a 28-year-old when I came here?
Would I have weathered it better?
Or am I, like, a sad hag?[Laughs.]
What were you like here when you were 28?
Were you out partying more?I mean, Ive never been a crazy party gal.
I was more of a neutral pothead.
Like a pothead, but not a Ooh, Im so cool, I smoke weed pothead.
I just smoked weed constantly and didnt really think about it.
And I liked drinking with friends.
But I never had a debaucherous life.
Like, if I barf, its always good-natured.
Just a bubbly, happy drunk.
Im never a crying drunk.
But in the last couple of years, I feel like drinking has served more of a dark purpose.
Like,Oh, I wanna drink when Im stressed.
I wake up even after a couple drinks and have weird guilt thats attached to nothing.
And Im so aware of, in my 20s, really having kind of a chemical anxiety.
This is too real.Yeah, but its so right!
And then it went away for me.
I think I really stopped looking for outward validation, for people to fix me.
Which is so scary.
And it doesnt mean [the anxiety] doesnt come back in flashes.
And she and I have been through some major shit.
Those parts my being married, going through other relationships arent connected to this film.
And thats why this film is so important.
Because every time wed scout for this film, wed go to Arctic Norway.
Theres nobody there but me and my two dear friends, Rebecca and Michael Clark, our producer.
Which is pretty illuminating.
Because you think,When was the last time I saw myself as a courageous, bright person?
Okay, well now Im crying.Isnt that so major?
I feel that way, too.
Im moved by it, too.
Its so hard to make movies.
But I have a habit of getting way too real way too quickly.
Not into small talk.I cant do small talk.
I think about this woman Rebecca, whom I met in a fucking park.
Shes the most tender woman.
And she wrote this book that isnt like any other book youll read.
As much as I want everyone to see our movie, I really hope everyone reads the book.
Which is not something women are encouraged to do to leave, to go high up.
Thats something we celebrate men for.
Right, there are all these movies about men risking death in the wild.All those dudes hiking Everest?
And we congratulate him for those three words?[Laughs.]
I mean, theres no reason to compare Becky to dudes who climb mountains; theyre not the same.
I just feel so incredibly proud of this woman.
Becky is so precise, but she also is so openhearted.
She just knocks my socks off.
I want to be around her.
Being here at Sundance is so different than anything else weve done together.
I want people to see our movie because its offering a lot at once.
Its not a traditional narrative.
This is gonna sound … its just me experiencing the truth.
Our film is not about that.
Its a bunch of weirdos at the top of the planet doing a bunch of different things at once.
Id encourage people to take that in.
One of Beckys favorite words isvarious.
The wordvariousis soothing and also demands a lot from you.
If you want to know Becky, or me, you have to understand us both as demanding women.
We want to be sensitive, vulnerable, and collect small wooden animals.
And we want to demand that youre truthful with us.
And take you to task.
This film is about lonely people creating a space for themselves.
It sounds like what you were just talking about about how you learned to be lonely this year.Yeah.
The response even then was, Wow, this is a lot about loneliness.
But thats why I want to do comedy, and why I want to connect with people.
]But Im not gonna get rid of it.
So Ill find a way.
Where does this self-awareness come from?
Are you in therapy?Yeah, Im in therapy!Durrr!
But youre always a little bit like,This thing is going to kill me, eventually.
But Im also afraid of myself.
More than anything, I want to feel good about myself.
Im so furious at the times when I decide to you know what I do all the time?
I think a lot of women do.
Definitely, I do, too.When I do that, I look down on myself more.
I see myself as a kind of shit-eater.
Every time I apologize, I realize Im unconsciously entwined in the misogynist vine.
I want to reach my hand down my own throat and pull out the root.
I feel like Im choking on it.
It makes me feel pissed off.
Being at Sundance is so vulnerable.
Youre putting your film out there.
I primarily make my work for myself.Marcel the Shell, the book I just wrote, saved my life.
But to tell myself,Okay, Im standing in my inner world.
Its frightening in here.
Im holding a grenade.
This toss, this act of tossing into the future, is so that I can get out.
It was a way for me to see a darker time as something that had deep-toned blooms.
Like standing in the dark and realizing youre in a garden.
When is it out?Next November.
Whats it called?I cant say yet.
Every piece of work Im doing, I do with people I love.
Have you ever seen TruffautsSmall Change?
Yeah, in college.Its a lot of vignettes about kids in a town.
Stylistically, our film is nothing like Truffaut.
For me, I look at that and Im reminded of something incessant and insistent in me.
A light that wont go down.
That wont go out.
I see that and Im like, Ooh!
And its not because I was there.
I see all of these people that are trying to have a life in a random, undiscovered space.
And I want other people to see that.
Through social media, were like, Im this.
This is what I look like.
These are my friends.
This is what I look like when I laugh somebody caught me in a candid!
Im putting my hand over my face!
Were so used to packaging everything, making everything material.
This is a film about people who are in one moment.
Listening to this, I feel both sick and happy.I feel both super sick and super happy.
]Thats my duality.
Thats my state of mind.
Just two Jewish girls with altitude sickness.[Laughs.]Really!
I think youre catching me at a pretty typical moment that I have.
Im gonna find the light today.
Im going to assume everybody I meet is a real person.
Im just not gonna be sorry about the fact that Ive arrived here in a new day.
This second part is what Ive developed in my 30s.Why would we sit here and not talk?
But I do talk and I get scared.
Im aware of the internet.
Im on it, but I still interact with people as if we only have a town square.
I forget how far things will get.
Because thats what I want.
Obviously the internet is real and dictates whats up, and allows people to be seen.
But it used to be that you had to do some work!
There it is again.
I sound like an old lady.
But I really dont give a shit.
Im afraid were going to lose that.
I dont know what that is.
And I wont learn.
Maybe for my own safety I should learn?
You know, I just watchedthe Fyre Fest documentary.
This is a nightmare.
Its very bleak.It genuinely feels scary.
I wonder a little bit about who let those women go to that island.
It feels really unsafe to me.
If you’re able to smell shit here, youre not in paradise.
It doesnt matter how good you look in your high-waisted bikini.
Shes not having it.
I was so mad.
Sorry, I got us off topic.
No, this is great.
Im scrapping all of my questions.And I know Vulture is on the internet.
We kind of keep each other safe.
I just see such a disconnect.
And I know how easily something clicks into me to want to kindly people.
I just try and sort it out, and I havent really done it yet.
They dont need to know that much!
Ive gotten a lot better at not talking about my personal life, but talking about my feelings.
I just want to be a normal, live person.
Id rather constantly prove that to myself than be someone who doesnt speak.
Did that feel like overspeaking to you later?
From thinking about how other people are going to think about what I say.
Which is weird, because in conversation, Im constantly checking myself to verify I dont make people upset.
Because then, when people interview me, its like Im talking to a therapist.
Well, I feel like Im talking to a therapist.[Laughs.]
But I dont regret anything.
I should make a few decisions about how to do this.
But also at that time, I was a real live wire in a way that Im not now.
I feel like I gathered all my stuff.
I gathered myself to myself.
[My close friends] see a high volume of what upsets me in small ways.
I thinkThe Sunlit Nightwas like the A.D. [to my] B.C.
Making this movie, I stepped off that set and stepped into a completely new world.
While I was in Norway, I weirdly got addicted to cigarettes.
Which is not my style.
I came back, stopped smoking cigarettes completely, have maybe had two since July.
Completely stopped smoking weed.
And really started to live my life in a different way.
I am a way more contained person.
Im just not stressing the small stuff at all.
And I want the right things.
Thank you for this actual, cry-inducing therapy session.I actually cried.
You really made my day.
I guess I opened a valve.
Im not embarrassed of that.
Id say it went great.
