the girlfriend experience
-
“Five Years Have Gone By and You Still Haven’t Made a Second Feature”: Anja Marqaurdt on The Girlfriend Experience, Season Three
At the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014, the German-born Anja Marquardt’s debut feature, She’s Lost Control, premiered to positive notices and went on to a healthy festival life. A fictional account of a graduate student (Brooke Bloom) doubling as a professional sex surrogate for men struggling with physical intimacy, the film represented a unique new voice on the independent film scene, ultimately netting Marquardt Film Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. Several years removed from that film’s theatrical run, Marquardt has now taken on a project with similar themes but a much more […]
by Erik Luers on May 25, 2021 -
The Next Day: Writer/Director Amy Seimetz and Actress Kate Sheil on the Eerie, Darkly Comic Anxiety Dream of She Dies Tomorrow
“It’s so great that you own a house,” biologist Jane (Jane Adams) says to sister Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) by phone early in Amy Seimetz’s trippy drama of psychological contagion, She Dies Tomorrow. “This is the best thing you could have done.” Amy has only just moved in, boxes are everywhere, but a new L.A. mortgage hasn’t quelled whatever demons have pushed her to a tremulous and despairing state—Jane can hear it in her voice. “I’ll come over,” Jane says. “Don’t do anything you might regret. Go for a walk. Or why don’t you try watching a movie?” “A movie’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2020 -
Seeking Arrangements: Lodge Kerrigan, Amy Seimetz and Steven Soderbergh on The Girlfriend Experience
Shot in New York City during the 2008 financial crisis, Steven Soderbergh’s feature The Girlfriend Experience was a cool movie about a hot topic. Ostensibly about a “new” kind of prostitution, where escorts would simulate the casual intimacy of a real relationship, it starred real-life porn star Sasha Grey even as it contained virtually no sex. But what began as a look at how the Internet enabled a new kind of solo entrepreneur sex worker — “As we were making the film, I didn’t consider [prostitution] as a metaphor for anything,“ Soderbergh said then — wound up a trenchantly austere […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2016 -
Lodge Kerrigan, Amy Seimetz to Direct Starz Series Based on Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience
Independent filmmakers Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz will write and direct a Starz cable series, The Girlfriend Experience, based on Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film. The two also executive produce along with Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman. In Soderbergh’s feature, Sasha Grey starred as a high-priced escort providing a “GFE” — emotional intimacy along with sex. The new series will consist of 13 half-hour scripted episodes. Soderbergh and Kerrigan have worked together before, with the former producing the latter’s Keane. And Seimetz, director of Sun Don’t Shine, was one of four filmmakers cited by Soderbergh at his 2013 San Francisco Film Society […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 23, 2014
