Jen and Sylvia Soska are two of the hottest names and brightest lights in cinema today, thanks to their brand new film, American Mary. I’ve made no bones about my love for this picture this week – you can read my review here. The Soska’s know their stuff – from horror to comic books and all things in between. As you can tell from our exclusive email below, they’re simply damn cool, and horror and pop culture geeks are lucky that these creative people are making a big name for themselves.

Andy Burns: Jen and Sylvia, you know from our tweets this weekend that I thought America Mary was a fantastic film. So, first of all, congrats! Could you tell me how the story came together?

Sylvia Soska: I’m so happy that you enjoyed it. When we wrote the script we were still trying to sell the first film, we were incredibly poor to the extent that we couldn’t afford food let alone bills, we were in the hospital for days on end with a loved one just watching the world that goes on there, venturing into the film industry with a naivety that was stripped away by meeting monsters, and we didn’t know if all our sacrifices would ever amount to anything. I was talking to a friend who said that I should focus on my other scripts, which at the time I had none, so I lied. I said that I had so many scripts that he should pick which one he wanted to read and listed off every idea that I knew Jen and I could write in two weeks. He picked the ‘one about the medical student’. With a self-imposed gun to our head we wrote the script which became a very therapeutic experience because all these uncontrollable instances in our life, now we had control and a distance to really examine them.

Jen Soska: Thank you so much! You’ve been so good to us and we want to sincerely thank you for spreading the word on the film. You’re just wonderful. The film itself is very much an analogy for our own ventures in the film industry. Growing up on the quest to be actresses and models, we’ve run into our fair share of sleaze, but the worst of it was what we experienced as filmmakers. The people that view women as sexual objects and somehow below men based on our age and gender are a sad actuality of this business and it’s often people who misrepresent as normal and respectable on the outside that are hiding their true intentions. It’s disgusting, but it is the reason there are stories about the sleazy Hollywood producers and young, naive film hopefuls, both men and women, should be very aware that this business is filled with people who want to take advantage of you.
Read the rest of this entry →