She has agreed to be part of the jury for the short series competition at CanneSeries. Comedian and columnist Marina Rollman is leaving the stage to devote herself to writing screenplays. On the Croisette, she evokes for 20 minutes its links with the world of television fiction.
What does it mean to you to be a member of the jury?
I find it very complicated, the more I work in art and in audiovisual in particular, the more I realize that it’s an accident and a crazy alignment of planets to succeed in doing something. There are very honest and very hard-working people who screw things up. And I’ve always had a bit of a complex about the idea of passing judgment. It’s never bad, there’s never any bullshit when there are X dozens of people working on a project for several years. Despite everything, here is my prism: we see almost only pilots here, broadcasters and distributors expect a pilot to catch on. It is therefore one of my reading grids, and I also believe for my colleagues on the jury. It has to deliver on that promise, and that’s an objective test. I’m waiting to discover arenas and refreshing tones, which we haven’t already seen 150 times. I’m super happy to be here, because the job I’ve been trying to do for years is scriptwriting. And since I didn’t go to film school, it’s super inspiring! I see a concentrate of lots of very different stories from lots of countries. I come out of there and I want to write!
This is the short series competition, what are the particular difficulties underlying this format?
When we put the label of short formats, we think of pellets like at the time of Bref. It’s actually more of the 26-minute sitcom format, we usually go to 52 minutes when it comes to drama. There, the challenge is to manage not to be anecdotal while remaining breathless. As we cannot make madmen with very long shots, the question is to know how we still bring the notion of contemplation, of cinematographic beauty while being in this format inherited from soaps, constrained by advertising breaks. Creating mini-acts in this format, I think that’s the complicated challenge: balancing while keeping people’s attention, while having something substantive and ambitions for images and mood.
You wrote and directed an episode of the anthology miniseries “6 x confin.é.es”, what do you remember from this experience?
It was the second short film I wrote and directed. I dream of doing this! I write a lot, not badly for others, to learn the trade, and also a little for myself. The first thing I hope to be able to do, rather than going straight to feature films, would be to make the series, more of a short format. But it’s a dream, it’s what I’m desperately trying to sell right now and would like to achieve. The writing I come from, that of the stage and the chronicle, is easier to embody in a series where there is an arena and where you can shine the spotlight on bits of stories and then in make a large fresco, rather than on a film, where there, nothing is structurally forgiving. This is really the format that interests me at the moment.
From Jerry Seinfeld to Agnès Hurstel, why do you think the links between stand-up and series are so strong?
I don’t have the absolute sociological analysis, but, for me, despite the fact that being a comedian is a very fine job, it’s a great job of solitude. Embarking on the adventure of a group, a team, and also artistic compromise, in the sense that you will have to deal with lots of other talents, I think that at some point it becomes a need when you is found a bit alone on tour and on stage. I also believe that the somewhat psychosociological pen of stand-uppers who want to capture an era is better embodied in a series than in a film.
What is your relationship as a viewer to the series?
I’ve watched a lot, a little less in a little over a year. I’m coming out of a tour where I worked a lot in the evenings, and I want to catch up on the evenings. So I watch a little less. I’m a little ashamed, but at home it feels like committing to a film is like a lease contract and that you’ll never be able to hold on for the long term… But episodes in episodes, we can spend three hours in front of a series. I try to twist that a bit by going to the movies a lot. But at home, it’s as if we looked differently and thought that it was better to get into a series.
What series are you currently watching?
The series that I really am is Succession. The series is a brilliant form and that brings out voices and formal proposals that you can’t always do in film. There are crossovers of characters, ways of telling stories, even hints of story types that I find super exciting.
In your short films “Gratitude” or “Gina”, you chronicle women who are well in all respects and who go crazy…
Completely ! It’s really my axis, we can talk to each other again in fifty years, in my opinion, it will remain! We can say that there is a family tropism, we are all crazy at home. (laughs) It’s super fun to show dirty, guilty, vengeful, murderous, sexual women… I’m not saying that it’s never been done, nor that I’m revolutionizing the thing, but from my little point view, for now, that’s what excites me!
Do you feel that female characters are more interesting in the series?
Insofar as we need to go and explore domesticity, small, somewhat cruel power relations, somewhat perverse things that are lodged in everyday life, I have the impression that the series is a better vehicle than the film epic. Even if it’s great to have heroines in a film, the series allows you to scratch a little in everyday life and the crushing little mechanics. Indeed, there is something between women and series that matches well.
Is “Enlighted” by Mike White one of your cult series?
I still haven’t seen it! I know it’s a reference. But, it’s true, I’ve circled around this subject so much. I tried to write a lot of stuff around personal development and the music industry. wellness in women. Gwyneth Paltrow is really a figure that inspires me phew! She pisses me off, but I find her fascinating. It’s really going to take that mate. The hysteria of one who has found inner peace, when not at all, it’s great!
What is your cult series?
The series that completely changed my view of what it was possible to do was High Maintenance, a somewhat anthological HBO series that becomes serialized at one point on a weed seller who takes us into somewhat parallel worlds. It was a 26-minute proposal with a cinematic ambition, something very contemplative while being hyperrealistic and naturalistic, and very funny at times. They pulled off something with a crazy movie touch in the series!