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On a cloudy day in Los Angeles, the stars and director of Picnic at Hanging Rock gather at the city\u2019s landmark Greystone Mansion for another kind of picnic, held to talk about the new Amazon<\/a> miniseries. With its creepy backstory<\/a> and haunted<\/a> history, the mansion is a fitting setting for discussing an eerie premise. Picnic at Hanging Rock tells a story about supernatural happenings surrounding another spooky building, Appleyard College, a turn-of-the-century Australian girls school near which three students and a governess disappear on Valentine\u2019s Day, 1900. <\/p>\n Lily Sullivan and Lola Bessis, who play Miranda Reid and Mademoiselle Dianne de Poitiers, respectively, along with director and showrunner Larysa Kondracki, are in attendance. Despite the fact that Picnic at Hanging Rock puts women in charge both in front of and behind the camera, Kondracki doesn\u2019t want that to define the show. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is [annoying], when you\u2019re sitting in a meeting and they\u2019re like, \u2018You are a woman, right?\u2019\u201d she tells the Daily Dot, sarcastically referring to \u201cLady-Directors.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to their time on-set, everyone beams, so there\u2019s at least something to Kondracki\u2019s blanket \u201cno dickheads policy,\u201d where everyone brought as little ego and as much enthusiasm as possible to the project. <\/p>\n \u201cThe dumbest thing a director can do is think they know everything. Surround yourself by the best people, and ask their opinions,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n \u201cThis project for me was just next-level in a way of child-like, guerrilla style\u2026 there is no right or wrong, there is no big machine\u2026 With Larysa Kondracki and [actress Natalie Dormer] setting the post, to go, \u2018This is the playground, if you come up with a brilliant, wacky idea, here\u2019s your bottle of wine,\u2019\u201d recalls Sullivan. Indeed, Kondracki had made it her mission to give a bottle of wine to anyone who could come up with an idea weird enough to impress her. <\/p>\n Bessis definitely noticed this, especially in comparison to the industry in her native country. (Bessis is French, Sullivan is Australian, and Kondracki was born in Canada.) <\/p>\n \u201cAmazon and Netflix are getting to France, and they\u2019re getting bigger there, but right now we just have big TV networks, and they\u2019re doing commercial things, and the quality is not always there,\u201d Bessis says.<\/p>\n The quality was there on Picnic at Hanging Rock, but it was a sheer effort that forced it to the surface. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the budget of Game of Thrones or anything like that, so it\u2019s like, how do you create this sense of otherness with other parts of the medium?\u201d Kondracki notes.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tLily Rolnick\/Amazon Studios<\/a>\n\t\t <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The show pulls off this otherness well, as it happens, using set and production design, costumes, and music to create a sense of dread. \u201cIt\u2019s such a feast for the eyeballs\u2026 \u2018Stylized\u2019 means making it feel high-fashiony, weird, it\u2019s like there\u2019s something a bit ugly about it, in a truthful way,\u201d Sullivan says. \u201cTo make [Picnic at Hanging Rock] feel modern and to make it feel contemporary, it was a dream not to be doing the stuffy period stuff where we\u2019re trying to replicate the era. We were just replicating the suppressions and the themes which still ricochet into now.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to watch Picnic at Hanging Rock and not pick up on those themes in 2018. The show is rife with commentary about the dangers of ingrained sexism and the effects of sexual repression on a structural level. \u201cTo me, there are unfortunately a lot of similarities,\u201d says Bessis. \u201cWe are not wearing corsets anymore but the idea is the same\u2026 I think it\u2019s unconscious as a woman, when you grow up, that society puts a lot of pressure on you\u2026 brush your hair, put the pretty dress on, whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n Sullivan agrees: \u201cVictorian values are still kind of relevant to places we are ignorant to\u2026 The timing is quite perfect, and we want to be a part of that.\u201d <\/p>\n The evidence of this shift is clear when you look at the 1975 movie that Joan Lindsay\u2019s novel, was originally adapted into. The film, from director Peter Weir, is a classic of Australian cinema, but also very much a product of its time. <\/p>\n \u201cThis show deals with real issues that we really are all going through, while the movie was a fantasy,\u201d argues Bessis. \u201cShe [Laryssa] didn\u2019t want to touch the movie because it\u2019s so iconic\u2026 The movie is an hour-and-a-half long and the show is six hours, so there is time to develop all the characters and all the subplots, and the book has a lot of subtext as well.\u201d <\/p>\n Sullivan notes that the Amazon version works because they didn\u2019t \u201ctouch Peter Weir\u2019s incredible piece of \u201870s cinema,\u201d and instead \u201cran with the weird, wacky, provocative nature of Joan Lindsay\u2019s novel\u201d by building a dark, psychological thriller on it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not only about women empowerment. It deals with racism, homosexuality, gender,\u201d Bessis says. \u201cPeter Weir did a great job, but [the \u201870s film] also kind of feels like a male gaze on women.\u201d<\/p>\n For the modern adaptation, Sullivan says the emphasis was on sensuality and not sexuality.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt, shooting it, empowered,\u201d Sullivan says. \u201cEven when there is nudity, or there is a sensual scene between two women kissing, there was something about it where it was like, \u2018Oh this is what it feels like not to feel sexualized.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Kondracki just hopes people find the show.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tYouTube\/Prime Video<\/a>\n\t\t <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s just so much television out there now,\u201d she admits, though she\u2019s confident that Picnic at Hanging Rock will find a way to stand out, adding, for instance, that, \u201cSome of the episodes are almost 50 percent silent.\u201d <\/p>\n Looking at her resume, it\u2019s understandable why Kondracki would be attracted to a miniseries like Picnic at Hanging Rock. Her TV credits, which include stints on Legion, Better Call Saul, and The Americans, are comprised of what you might call \u201cgenre\u201d shows, which also subvert or play with the tropes of their respective genres. Here, it was Kondracki\u2019s turn to create something that defied expectations.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Picnic, this can be a mashup of genres too,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s what is so attractive, just from a filmmaking point of view. You read these scripts and you\u2019re just like, \u2018This is a bit of everything.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n The post How ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ became subversive, guerrilla TV<\/a> appeared first on The Daily Dot<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Picnic](\"https:\/\/www.dailydot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/download-2-768x512.jpeg\")
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