For the first decade or so of his filmmaking career, Aaron Katz was a Hollywood outsider. Then he moved from Portland, Oregon, to Los Angeles.
A couple of years later, he sat down to write Gemini, a neo-noir thriller about the current celebrity culture of bloggers, paparazzi, TMZ, and clickbait — observed from an insider’s perspective.
“I wanted to do something with people who were in the center of that industry, but the story we’re seeing is off to the side,” Katz said during the South by Southwest Film Festival. “It was something I observed from being around it — the way we interact now and the way we crave approval. The relationship between celebrities and fans can be difficult for both sides.”
Katz’s story tracks the relationship between Hollywood starlet Heather (Zoe Kravitz) and her personal assistant, Jill (Lola Kirke), who happened to be her biggest fan prior to assuming her more official role.
Jill sometimes becomes exasperated with Heather’s impulsive behavior, which tends to become tabloid fodder even as she’d rather retreat from the spotlight. As she struggles to keep things in order, Jill is thrown into the middle of an investigation from a suspicious detective (John Cho) after a violent crime renders her both a suspect and a key witness. Meanwhile, public speculation swirls online.
“Social media isn’t a big part of the movie, but it has a lot to do with why Heather is feeling like she does, and she’s let herself be defined by all the things that people project on her. She hasn’t figured out how to deal with that,” Katz said. “She’s been famous for quite some time, but it’s hard to find that equilibrium. Everyone feels good when they’re praised, and yet there’s something kind of poisonous to opening yourself up to all the ways people can think about you on the internet.”
It might seem cynical on the surface, but Katz (Land Ho) said the film and the characters are meant to reflect an affection for the city and its many layers.
“That power dynamic is very tricky,” he said. “The personal assistant knows more about Heather’s life than Heather does. She is the access point, and also serves in a parental role at times. Once I started writing those characters, I was interested in seeing where that relationship goes.”
Katz further developed the characters with the two actors prior to filming. Kirke (Mistress America) said she especially benefited from extra rehearsal time.
“Aaron and I did an exhaustive background story about who this person was — stuff that never really made it into the film,” Kirke said. “Jill has this really robust education and Heather has been famous since she was 17 years old. Maybe your education doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be a success, or that’s not how fame chooses people. But I don’t think Jill resents Heather for that.”
Although it’s set in the present day, Katz took some visual cues from gritty crime thrillers set in L.A. during the 1970s and 1980s. Think early Michael Mann, Curtis Hanson, or Paul Schrader.
“We wanted to evoke the experience of watching a thriller on VHS,” he said, “but we didn’t want to do it in an obvious way.”
