A Family Affair: Tiny Furniture's Lena Dunham Issue #44

The young writer-director-actress, featured in our fall 2010 issue, talks about Spanx, winning SXSW, and what it's like to direct your mom in this exclusive bonus Q&A.

By April Hayes
Published: August 15th, 2010 | 12:00am

When Lena Dunham took the stage this March at SXSW to accept the Narrative Feature prize for her film Tiny Furniture, people took note. Not only did Dunham write, direct, and star in the film, she did it by the tender age of 23. It was made for less than the price of a used car, and her co-stars were her mother, sister, and closest friends.

Tiny Furniture is far from the mopey, navel-gazing mumblecore movie du jour. It’s a frank, witty, and carefully crafted comedy that has garnered Dunham comparisons to early Woody Allen, and has singled her out as one of the most promising writer-slash-self-deprecators since Tina Fey.

In Tiny Furniture, Dunham plays Aura, a college grad set adrift after moving back in with her parents in NYC. She acts with refreshing humility, participating in decidedly unsexy nudity and allowing her real-life family members to hurl low blows at her weight, hygiene, lifestyle, and post-breakup whining.

In between touring George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, traveling the international film festival circuit and workshopping her new screenplay at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab in Utah, Lena Dunham talks to Venus Zine about how to be a badass triple-threat in Hollywood while still living in your parents’ house.

Venus Zine: Hi.

Lena Dunham: Oh, I’m so sorry! I’m just getting ready to jump in a car to head to the L.A. Film Festival premiere of Tiny Furniture! I’m trying to find my tights and putting on Spanx in front of my guy friend who’s here, and it’s just awful! I’m gonna be done in like, half a second. Ok! I’m good now.

VZ: Multi-tasking seems like something you’ve gotten pretty good at! Did you always want to write, direct, and act all at once?

LD: I always wrote poems and plays. I had this idea that I was going to be a playwright and a poet, but it quickly became apparent that the whole culture of theatre people just wasn’t for me. But I’d always been a movie buff. So I made a short film, Dealing, when I was a sophomore in college, not thinking it was a professional move, just to sort of see if it was something I could do, and it really stuck.

I got into the Slamdance Film Festival with that film, and realized this was something I wanted to do, like, all the time. But it was so funny, because I showed it to my dad, and he was like, “This isn’t good, you shouldn’t show it to anybody.” (laughs) He’s incredibly supportive, but our entire family was in that film, and I think he was nervous about that kind of exposure.

VZ: Right. Both your mother and sister star in Tiny Furniture, but your father isn’t. Was that his choice?

LD: He’s just not interested in acting, and he’s kind of protective of his own image, which I completely understand. He’s not a ham like my mom, my sister, and me.

VZ: Sure—I mean, your mom is sporting some Spanx in one scene in the movie. You can’t get more supportive than that!

LD: I know! Can you believe it? That’s a truly beautiful gift she gave me, being in that movie. It seems like it’s actually something that gave her pleasure, too. Well, maybe not that scene…

VZ: You usually work with friends and family, so you know their strengths and what they can bring to a role. Have you ever had to really direct a family member?

LD: I write with actors in mind, and I write things that I feel like they can do. I think the best thing you can do as a director is cast people you trust. I’m not a bossy person. For me, it’s not about shaping a performance, it’s about giving people things to do I think they’ll flourish at.

Having my mom and sister in the film was probably the biggest gamble I’ve ever taken, because I’d never really seen them do something like that before, I just felt like they could. I was actually hyper critical of them throughout the process. More than I should have been, probably.

See the story on Dunham in our fall 2010 issue, on newsstands now through November 1, 2010. You can also order copies here.