Some Carrie Preston acolytes know her as single mom and serial marry-er Arlene Fowler on “True Blood.”
Others hope that every Sunday episode of “The Good Wife” includes an appearance by Elsbeth Tascioni, the delightfully nutty lawyer she portrays with a cunning grin.
But for those who only know the Macon-born Preston as a quirky on-screen presence — newsflash — she’s also a director.
Granted, it was in 2005 that her first directed feature, “29th & Gay,” hit the film festival circuit. But Preston is back behind the lens for “That’s What She Said,” a coarse female-driven comedy written by Kellie Overbey and starring Anne Heche and Marcia DeBonis (“Lipstick Jungle”).
The low-budget comedy follows the exploits of the raggedy, chain-smoking Dee Dee (Heche, in particular loopy form), her best friend, the lovelorn BeBe (DeBonis) and recent coffee shop recruit Clementine (Alia Shawkat), around New York.
It will screen at the Atlanta Film Festival at 7 p.m. Friday at Midtown Art Cinema and will be followed by a Q&A with Preston.
“I wanted it to be an answer to the ubiquitous bromance films. I kept noticing there wasn’t an alternative to that,” a pleasant Preston said recently of films such as “The Hangover” and the numerous Judd Apatow hits. Preston found time to chat during a production break on “True Blood,” filming in Los Angeles.
The film, completed for “well below $1 million,” said Preston, premiered at Sundance earlier this year and two weeks ago received a distribution deal from Phase 4, which will release “TWSS” to theaters and video-on-demand later this year.
Preston, 44, doesn’t appear in the movie — except for a fleeting cameo during the opening credits, which she jokingly calls her “Alfred Hitchcock” moment — saying that the two hats she was already wearing as director and producer were intense enough.
Though a cursory glance at the movie’s description will have many rolling their eyes and thinking, “Bridesmaids” bandwagon, the genesis of “TWSS” stretches back to the days when Melissa McCarthy was known only for playing a different Sookie on “Gilmore Girls.”
The relationship between Preston and scriptwriter — and frequent “Law & Order” player — Overbey included the occasional social run-in in New York and performing together in a 2003 play with Mia Farrow in New Haven, Conn. — a show that also starred DeBonis.
Overbey shared that she had started writing, which complemented Preston’s then-new directing aspirations, and shortly afterward, her script, at the time called “Girl Talk,” was produced off-off Broadway with DeBonis in the role she now inhabits in the movie.
“I said to Kelly, ‘Let’s make this into a film and let Marcia be everything in it that she is here.’ American filmmakers would not give Marcia that role — in Europe she would get the role — and I wanted to do that,” Preston said.
Through a series of well-placed connections, Heche became involved in the film.
In 2004, Overbey co-starred in the Broadway production “Twentieth Century” with Heche and Alec Baldwin, so Overbey leaned on her still-pal Baldwin to nudge Heche into reading the script.
“He called Anne and said, ‘Kelly wrote a script, you have to do it, it’s great,’ but he hadn’t even read it yet! But Anne, on that recommendation alone, read it,” Preston said.
Heche’s performance in “TWSS” is one that Preston calls “extraordinarily brave,” adding that, “working with her was like working with a passionate bolt of lightning.”
The film, though, doesn’t skimp on uncouth sexual references. But Preston is circumspect when asked if she thinks there is a limit to the raunch factor.
“I don’t think we should put a limit on storytelling,” she said. “Women have been having sex for a very long time. I don’t think we’ve come to the point where we’ve saturated the market at all. A lot of men who have watched the film have enjoyed it because they feel like they’re having a fly on the wall moment. They get a sense of what it was like trying to make it through one day as a woman.”
And as for the inevitable “Bridesmaids” comparisons?
“I’d like to say our film is the older, wiser, maybe edgier, sister to ‘Bridesmaids,’” Preston said.
Though Preston is currently bi-coastal — along with husband Michael Emerson (“Person of Interest,” “Lost”) — she hasn’t abandoned her Georgia roots. Her mother, father and stepmother live in Macon, along with other extended family, and she wears her Southern badge proudly.
“Even though I’ve been gone since I was 18, I always say I’m from Georgia, not New York or L.A. I’m proud of being a southerner,” Preston said. “I like that I’m from a place that has history and a lot of support and beauty and grace.”
Even if she likes a dose of crude on occasion.
About the Author
