“Beeswax” director Andrew Bujalski getting a trim. Photo by Cheree Franco. Courtesy of The Cinema Guild.

Earlier this week I had the good pleasure of sitting down and chatting with director Andrew Bujalski about his new film, Beeswax. A very humble and quiet person, you’d never expect this kindly character to survive the rigors and torments of the filmmaking process. However, if you are familiar with his previous two films, Funny Ha Ha from 2002 and Mutual Appreciation from 2005, and especially in this new film which opens today, it would become immediately clear that this bespectacled, anxious young man is the perfect candidate to make movies that deal with such emotional introspection. In other words, it is the burden of filmmaking that creates his most evocative work.

I was immediately struck by how quickly our conversation would turn from discussing the characters in his films to talking about himself. It would seem that Bujalski and his creative work are woven together. Beeswax is a story of two twin sisters living in Austin, Texas, one of whom is the co-owner of a vintage clothing store. Jeannie, the wheel-chair bound (hardly bound is more like it) twin who runs the shop, learns early on that there is the possibility of a lawsuit coming from her business partner, Amanda, a close friend who has drifted away towards her fiancée.

Does this legal dispute come from something in real life? Something close to you?

It comes from fears that I have. What’s the nightmare version of a daydream? Knock wood, I’ve never been involved in a lawsuit like that. Every time I’ve ever signed a document, I get this terrible anxiety about it because if you look at the language of a contract, it’s not the way that human beings commuicate with one another. It’s written in this other language which is designed…You know, I just watched Nashville again recently and there’s a line where the Hal Phillip Walker trucker is driving around Nashville and he says “The Lord’s job is to do one of two things: to clarify and…” the only word that is coming to mind now is obfuscate. What’s the other word that means obfuscate? Anyway…

I keep hearing the the phrase “legal thriller” being applied to this film.

I’ll cop to responsibility on that. Read on…