[Exclusive] Documentary and Fiction Blur in 'Kate Plays Christine'

This article contains adult content that some readers may find disturbing. 

In 1974 television news reporter Christine Chubbuck committed suicide during a live television broadcast. Chubbuck spent her life battling depression and suicidal tendencies, but sadly one of the biggest takeaways from her death was a sort of “urban legend” that bloomed around footage of her final moments. And while stories have been told and biographies have been filmed, none attempt to deal with the subject in as nuanced a way as Kate Plays Christine. The documentary/fiction hybrid from director Robert Greene follows the emotional stresses of actor Kate Lyn Sheil (The Comedy, Listen Up Philip, Netflix’s House of Cards) as she prepares to play the role of Christine in an upcoming project. The film has been described as “teasing, testing and vexingly brilliant.” As it hits limited release in the U.S. this week, director Robert Greene and composer Keegan DeWitt talk the creation of the film, and The Creators Project today shares an exclusive premiere of the film's opening scene.

“The role is basically impossible,” Greene describes, of the challenge that faced Kate Lyn Sheil as they started the documentary. “And the film-within-the-film is nonexistent. So you’re watching her struggle for something that’s ultimately ambiguous and out of reach. She was more than a collaborator. From the beginning she knew the parameters of what we were working in, and as we discovered the film in a nonfiction way, she was discovering as well.”

The film also blends genres, “I took a fictional conceit, I kind of built a box that’s a concept, or a fictional concept, which is the film within a film idea. And then within that, it’s a documentary.”

For the soundtrack, Greene worked incredibly closely with Keegan DeWitt, the film’s composer. “On this film it was almost like we were co-composers in a way,” says DeWitt. “I would give him an idea that was way too busy or way too complicated and he would go in and almost deconstruct it and rebuild it. And as we were doing this I thought ‘This is great, this is exactly what this movie is, too.’ It’s almost like I’m creating a score and you’ll never hear the whole thing, it hits Robert and then he takes it and chops it up and creates an even more interesting thing from it all.” Sonically, the score blends the sun baked haze of 1970s Sarasota with “the more sonic, textural, ambient… idea of radio waves. The idea of that kind of noise that you’d see when you looked at old video footage from the 1970s.”

“You’re watching something and you’re unsure of why you’re watching it,” says Greene. “You’re unsure of the intention, who’s directing whom, why are we in the room, why is Kate doing something? And we take that churning questioning and we start the film with that so that you’re able to go deeper in a way that only this kind of form and filmmaking allow.”

Below, watch the unsettling opening scene from Kate Plays Christine, and catch it in its limited release this month.

Click here to learn more about Kate Plays Christine.

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