Five Questions with Carmen Angelica
What do comedy and horror have in common? A lot! Michael Melamedoff sits down with director Carmen Angelica to discuss how improv informs her work at The Daily Show, how comedy and horror are rooted in tension-building and tackling thought-provoking subjects, and how a bed created the A-HA moment that directing was her calling.
This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
MICHAEL MELAMEDOFF: So Carmen, I am super excited to be talking with you today. You are a super accomplished and award winning director across a multitude of mediums – short films, television, commercials, music videos. Right now, you and I are collaborating on a really exciting new feature. But before we get into all of that, the first thing I’m really curious about: I think everybody who directs has a kind of lightning bolt, A-HA moment when they decide, “This is the thing I want to do and love to do.” Whether that’s dipping a toe into the process for the first time, or falling in love with a particular movie and then wanting to author movies yourself. Was there a eureka moment for you and if so, what was it?
CARMEN ANGELICA: I feel like it came a little later in my education. I went to NYU for film, and I think that A-HA moment specifically hit when I was in my sophomore year. It was this TV multi-cam class, and I did such a cool project where my teacher gave us a script that was just lines. No action in the script. No motivation behind the language. You as the director were meant to build out this world – this moment – and what was happening in the scene just based off of this very loose, interpretable dialogue.
So I was setting up the room, and I set it up very differently than my fellow students because I knew it was a comedy – very different from my fellow students who were interpreting it as drama. At one point I wanted the bed to be at a certain location in the room because I wanted the character to angrily storm off, but step on the bed and then step off the bed – so the bed needed to be in the way. And my teacher sent another student over to say to me, “You shouldn’t put the bed there, you should put it in this corner of the room.” And in that moment – before this I was known as really quiet and kind of passive growing up – but in that moment, I feel like this part of me kicked in. I said to the student, “No, I need the bed here for the scene to work.” And they went back to the teacher, and then came back and said, “The teacher really thinks you need to move the bed.” So I said, “Tell her I’m the director.” So I did the scene as it was, I filmed it, it came out well – it was an exercise, so it came out well – and I felt so confident working with the actors and I felt confident in my choices. I was like, “You know even if it’s wrong I’m learning, so it’s OK. Just make these bold choices.” Afterwards my teacher – who I’m so grateful to – said, “You know, I didn’t agree with your choice in the beginning but now that I got to see it in action I’m so glad you stuck to your guns.” That was the moment where I was like, “Oh, I can follow the vision that I have and I can stick to my guns.” I tapped into a new part of me that I feel like brought out a confidence and a decisiveness that I’ve carried with me and grown into with my directing.
So that was a moment where I really was like, “Oh this is not only what I wanna do and can get good at, but this is like a part of me that needs to come out more.”
MELAMEDOFF: You and I recently shot something together, and we’re in the edit right now, and one of the things that I’ve been really impressed by is – to your point – you do have an incredibly strong sense of what you want. That’s not a surprise to me. But you’re also very generous about hearing notes and allowing for your collaborators to also step into the process. How do you find that balance between both advocating for your vision and leaving space for other ideas?
ANGELICA: I think because I don’t think I’m perfect [laughs] and I believe that other people are experts in their field. I think if you want something to be really good, you need to be willing to put your ego aside and hear out what other people’s input is. If we get too close to the project and we can’t see the forest for the trees, it hurts the project. I think it’s one of few areas of my life where I know very confidently what my gut is telling me and what my ego is telling me. In other parts of my life I’m not always amazing at following my gut, I’m not gonna lie! But in these situations, it’s pretty clear when there’s a really solid reason for my vision and why we’re going this way, and then there’s other times when I’m like, “Wow Carmen, that is good” [they both laugh] even if I didn’t come up with it! Even if I don’t necessarily want to agree with it!
If it makes the project better, at the end of the day it’s worth it. It’s also wonderful to see somebody else be so invested in your project and love your project so much that they also wanna make it better. I think of that as a gift more than somebody impeding on my vision. I do think if you let people showcase their best skills in the piece with you, the piece overall is gonna be stronger because everybody’s showcasing their best.
MELAMEDOFF: You’re not just an NYU [New York University] alum, you’re a UCB [Upright Citizen’s Brigade] alum as well. Did you start your training at UCB before you started your film summer intensive? And are there ever parts of the two educations and backgrounds that bleed into each other for you?
ANGELICA: Technically, I did the summer program at NYU first. And then literally a year after, I started at UCB. I didn’t understand what improv was until I got to NYU, and I will say that yeah, a lot of my directing involves improv. Mainly because it was a literal physical training of seeing people working together and bringing their skills together on stage to make a little scene work and be fun. But it is also very much about team work and team effort, and I do love to let my actors improvise – if they’re comfortable with it, I love to let them find things in the moment. I think you can’t be too married to anything – including dialogue – and there are times when I’m like, “I think we need the dialogue as is,” but I like to give that opportunity.
Working at The Daily Show now, a lot of it is being very present in the moment, being very conscious of what’s happening – which is the listening of improv – and then being able to respond as quickly as possible. A lot of what I do at The Daily Show is man on the street or interviewing people, and then coming up with jokes or funny things to say based off of what they’ve told us and the information we’ve gained. We also have to be able to play with people who aren’t necessarily acting – make them feel comfortable, make them open up to us, and ideally allow them to have fun with us.
MELAMEDOFF: I’ve noticed not just in the work that you do for The Daily Show, but across the feature that we’re working on together now and your past work as a short film director, you often use your comedy to interrogate big, uncomfortable ideas or uncomfortable spaces. It’s a tenant of so much of the work that we do across both our branded and entertainment work at Cowboy Bear Ninja. So I’m curious, what do you think is the responsibility of people to challenge the status quo?
ANGELICA: I’m saying this as someone who is constantly terrified to do so – but I think it’s a big responsibility. I think comedy is sometimes the only way people can listen. I think if you can make somebody laugh with you, that means that they’re listening to you. If you can make somebody laugh at themselves even a little, that means they’re really listening to you. So I do think because comedy requires people to engage with you, it is important that we use it in ways to question and make an impact.
MELAMEDOFF: Yeah, there’s that idea of something being funny because it’s true. But one of the things that I wrestle with is this idea that it’s true because the listener connects the joke to their experience. At this moment where things feel so polarized, where are the spaces to make people laugh at something that’s funny but true while simultaneously reaching across the aisle with it? Especially if there is an opportunity to really change hearts and minds and not just appeal to the people that already agree with us through our comedy? I’m curious if you think about this at all – if it’s something that you ever engage with philosophically or directly through your work?
ANGELICA: I mean, I feel like I know how to do it on a micro level. I think sometimes doing it on a macro level is such a hard thing – making art in that way that appeals to everyone… I think I’ve definitely seen a few pieces where everybody’s on board. On a micro level, I use comedy more in the sense of communicating directly with those who I’m interacting with – my job a lot of the time is talking to people who don’t necessarily have the same viewpoint as me. I don’t know. I don’t know if there's one solution. I’m thinking about algorithms sadly! I don’t think there is one solution – because for me, comedy is math. I think reaching across the aisle and affecting so many people all at once… that’s a big math problem.
MELAMEDOFF: It is. It is a very big math problem. Presently, the thing that you and I are working on has a little bit of math to it, but it’s also a really exciting horror-comedy. Personally for me, it’s been really exciting to watch you stretch into the genre space, as somebody who just loves horror movies and has always loved horror movies. A lot of my A-HA moments as a filmmaker came from genre. Is this a space you’ve previously been drawn to? Is it a sandbox that you wanna continue to play in – the horror space?
ANGELICA: In college I minored in special effects makeup. So I would do special effects makeup as my job when I was coming up. And in a way, it helped me see the artwork that goes into horror films. Not just in the physical way of how you make a big old wound on somebody’s arm, but how the storytelling of horror films allows you to address so many things. Recently, I had a friend of mine say – and it kind of blew my mind – that comedy and horror are very, very, very similar because you are tapping into the surprise. Comedy you wanna surprise people so that they laugh, and horror you want to surprise people so that they’re scared. But it’s that same tension building, that same storytelling, and it can encapsulate so many different topics. So I’m really excited to get to play in that realm. Because I definitely feel like I know my instincts about how to build that tension, but I’d love to play with that more for sure.
MELAMEDOFF: So many of my favorite horror movies are satires at heart, too. Like the George A. Romero zombie films – DAWN OF THE DEAD in particular. And I do think there's a lot of shared DNA between those spaces [comedy and horror], and I do think it’s a really natural extension of the work you’re doing. And it’s exciting to see you do it with such aplomb. It’s been great chatting with you today, Carmen. Thank you for taking the time!
ANGELICA: Thank you for talking with me about such interesting questions. One of them I’m still like, “Did I answer it? I don’t know!”
[They laugh]
MELAMEDOFF: We can keep talking about it as we continue to be set together over the next two years.
ANGELICA: Sounds good.
MELAMEDOFF: Awesome. Thank you again Carmen!
ANGELICA: Thank you, Michael!
