by Dino Ladki

Created on: December 02, 2009   Last Updated: December 03, 2009

Steven Shainberg is the avant garde filmmaker behind the films "Secretary" and "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus." The former a kinky indie that turned hitherto unknown actress Maggie Gyllenhaal into a full-fledged movie star and the latter a kinky indie that cast a movie star (Nicole Kidman) as an imaginary version of the groundbreaking photographer Diane Arbus. Here, on the eve of the release of "Fur," he discusses acting, filmmaking, Angelina Jolie, Prince and the source of artistic talent with casting director DL.

DL: Back in the beginning when you were doing short films at AFI you were able to land some pretty great actors: Jennifer Jason Lee and JT Walsh, how did that happen so early on?

Steven Shainberg: I was living with Jennifer for about 5 years and JT was a friend of mine.

DL: Do you still have a relationship with Jennifer?

SS: No we do not. After we split we were done.

DL: You also made short films with Angelina Jolie early on. The Mr. Viril Series.

SS: She was in a couple of them. I can't remember which ones. There were about 8....but the other girls were, um, not of her.....not of that caliber.

DL: So, she was completely not famous

SS: No, she was a total unknown.

DL: How did that come about?

SS: Well a friend of mine named Mark Gordon (who is a fabulous DP, who ended up shooting my first feature) called me and said " I'm going to shoot some things just for my reel, just with some great looking girls, and I've got this friend who runs a modeling agency, and he's gonna help me cast them. And I said "well, what do you mean you're going to shoot something for your reel?" [He said} "You know, I'm just going to light them to show that I can light these girls." And I said "give me a week, give me 10 days, so I can write something for you, that that we could make. You've got these girls, you've got a stage, you've got the film, you've got the cameras, man why don't you do something more interesting? So I wrote these little films. I actually wrote a lot of them, maybe like 20, that were all like 2 to 3 minutes and each of them had a fabulous looking girl! And so, we hooked up with Mark's buddy and we just had a big casting call and we picked the girls we liked, and Angie happened to be one of them. She was unbelievable!

DL: Well, Right! That was my next thing. When she walked in the room, were you like [mouth drops]

SS: Um, hehe, well you- you're like; we're going with this girl! And we actually put her in 2 of them.

DL: I saw them on YouTube

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