#nyff56

Her Smell has five acts, which Perry sorted into public / private / public / private / public scenes as we follow Becky Something’s destructive path and meet her family and band members along the way. “It’s a movie about identity… Do you act the same when there’s no-one looking?” At every opportunity, the crew chose to repeat shots from earlier scenes, going so far as to have an iPad on set displaying earlier frames, so that they could get a later shot looking as close as possible to earlier shots, “to make it feel like we’ve been here before.”

Alex Ross Perry and Elisabeth Moss on the NYFF56 red carpet. Photo: Philip May.

Though the film’s lead character, Becky Something, is her own particular beast, Perry drew on many legendary rock stars to create her. Most of all Axl Rose, because “he’s somebody that everybody seemed to have a story about”. Her Smell introduces Becky Something mid-career, mid-addictions. She sees visions, makes wildly illogical pronouncements, keeps a shaman on the payroll, and rules her band with a narcissist’s myopic cruelty.

“Jesus, it’s fucking hard,” Elisabeth Moss remembers thinking during filming, specifically when it came to making her character’s Riot Grrl act authentic. Her own musical background is in jazz and blues, with “minimal” exposure to punk. Along with her supporting cast—Agyness Deyn, Dylan Gelula, Ashley Benson, Cara Delevingne, Gayle Rankin and Amber Heard—Moss studied and shadowed other musicians. “We only had to learn enough to look like we knew what we were doing.”

Moss told the NYFF audience that her process was “very instinctual; I don’t like to plan a lot… I just follow the script. If it’s a good script and a good writer I follow that map.” As well as the covers she sings (The Only Ones and, erm, Bryan Adams), Moss performed songs written for her screen band by Alicia Bognanno of Bully, and Anika Pyle.

Moss joked with Perry that “it was nice to finally do something serious”. Something tougher than “the loose improv comedy style of Handmaid’s Tale,” Perry cracked back.

Moss followed up with a quick insight into the future of her hit television series: “Season 3′s gonna be craaazy!” The audience went wild.