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“This is Part of Where Our Title Came From — the Amount That Women are Censored”: Annapurna Sriram On Her SXSW-Premiering Fucktoys
Fucktoys While sitting on a raft in the middle of a Southern swamp, AP (Annapurna Sriram) learns that her recent string of bad luck, missing tooth included, is caused by a curse. A psychic (played by New Orleans-based rapper Big Freedia) reveals that the only way for AP to free herself from the spiritual bind is to sacrifice an innocent lamb in an ancient ritual. The needed ceremony will cost AP $1,000, which she promises to raise in just a few days.
This sets the plot of Fucktoys in motion, which finds AP traversing her pastel yet putrid birthplace of Trashtown for fast cash and further answers. A sex worker by trade, AP enlists the help of friends and tricks, including a nonbinary punk heartthrob (Sadie Scott), unhinged mullett-sporting Australian (Brandon Flynn) and sexy potential big spender (Francois Arnaud). As writer-director Sriram’s feature debut, the choice to shoot on 16mm is audacious, but cinematographer Cory Fraiman-Lott’s expert eye combined with Sriram’s impressively extensive pre-production prep result in visuals that are as striking and spunky as her central protagonist.
I sat down with Sriram over Zoom to discuss her SXSW-premiering Fucktoys, covering her origins as a struggling New York theater actor, her decision to shoot on 16mm and the rampant double standards she’s encountered as a woman of color.
Filmmaker: You’ve had quite a few acting credits, but this is, I believe, your first project as writer/director as well as star. Take me through the project’s inception and how you adapted to juggling all these different hats.
Sriram: I don’t think that my intention as an artist was to wear as many hats as I did. Independent film forces you into so many roles. I was a theater kid, a dancer, and I went to performing arts high school in Nashville. My goal in life was to be an actor. I lived in New York for 10 years, auditioning for stuff I didn’t like, getting jobs on projects I didn’t think were that good, but you need to work to build your cred.
A little more than eight years ago, I was starting to feel very disgruntled as an actor and limited by the opportunities that were available to me. I’m mixed race, so this was also peak Homeland — very “let’s get a brown girl in a headscarf or as a doctor character.” It felt very paint-by-numbers in terms of racial stereotypes. I was starting to feel that no one was going to create the job I want as an artist unless I created it myself. I had a bit of an obsession with psychics — I had a breakup caused by one, who told me to dump my boyfriend because he was making me sick and I wouldn’t have the career that I was supposed to have. As a millennial dealing with no work and anxiety, having someone be like, “Yes, you are on the right path,” was great.
That was sort of the genesis of the premise of the movie. I wrote this script and went to an acting conservatory. One of my professors, who’s a director and a dramaturg, worked with me on it for a few years. At the time I had no idea how to get into the film industry — I was just an actor on indie things. About two and a half years after I wrote the script, Francois, who’s an actor in my film, was on this short with me, read it, and then at the wrap party told the producer of the short, “Tim, you should make her movie.” Tim [Petryni], Francois and I met for tacos, and I basically just like info dumped on them all the ideas I had for the movie. I was like, “We have to find a director.” Tim was like, “I think you’re the director.” I then had to embrace this idea of just doing it myself.
Initially, we had no money. The plan was to just shoot a different scene every weekend on a camcorder. Then, right before COVID, we were able to raise our first very small tranche of money. I just poured myself into my own DIY film school, where I read about cameras, lenses, shots. I tried to just watch movies and give myself all the education I could to fill in the blind spots of what I didn’t know. But being an actor is also understanding what everyone else does on set.
Filmmaker: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sense that the character of AP might mine from your own personal experiences to some degree. How did this character evolve over time?
Sriram: Yeah, I feel like the character personally feels very dated to the time I was writing it, which was in my twenties. I was living this intense life, you could say, where I had a lot of different experiences going on, between dating, work and hustling in the New York struggling actor world. I have this aspect of myself where, when I’m in a really extreme or absurd situation, part of me zooms out and thinks, “This would be an amazing scene in a movie.” If someone said something insane to me, I would immediately write it on my phone and think, “Someone’s going say that in my movie.” So, a lot of the dialogue, especially the one-liners in the strip club, were real things that men have said. Men are too embarrassing [laughs]. But I was focusing on all the different characters, being able to touch on all these different vignettes, and I was really cognizant of how much of myself was going into it. It wasn’t until we were actually filming that I suddenly was like, “I think I’m too old for this part!” I’ve sort of aged out of [AP’s] desperate naivete. But when I wrote it, I was feeling very desperate, very heartbroken — kind of innocent. That’s gone now, but I think that [AP] approaches everything with hope for the best. I think women are so conditioned to roll with the punches, even if we have discomfort. It’s almost like we have to compartmentalize and deal with it later. I think that neuroticism is what I had the most fun capturing.
Filmmaker: Getting into the rest of the cast, how did some of these players get involved?
Sriram: When I first met Francois, I was like, “He’s so hot.” But he really loves indie films and good material. My acting teacher, the one who was helping me develop the script, told me to reach out to Brandon Flynn. We both went to the same acting conservatory at Rutgers. He’s aone of those actors who is insanely funny and transformative. I don’t want to give spoilers, but he was the one who was like, “I want to wear this rubber thing, I want to have a mullet and I want to do an Australian accent.” Sadie Scott I’d seen in a play at the New Group. I was originally going to cast this guy [in their part] that I was sort of dating who I just wanted to hook up with in a movie. Very deep! [laughs] Then we had a falling out, so when we were thinking about casting the role, I was like, “I’m just bored of male actors.” I didn’t change anything in the script, which I think is funny because the character is like, “I was in a men’s prison.” Sadie ended up auditioning and came out to me as non-binary. To me, this character transcends identity and exists as this pure baby lamb soul.
As someone who struggled to get opportunities, I really wanted to see all the other incredible talents that haven’t had that moment to be seen. I really wanted the actors to be the characters and not have celebrities play them. And from the beginning, I wanted really good New York theater actors.
This is a fun anecdote about sexism in the industry. Getting 45-to-65-year-old white men to audition for a first-time woman director’s film was very challenging. Our casting director was basically like, “All these men are passing, that’s really normal.” Why is that normal? So, Damian [Young] was someone that I’d worked with on a short in the past. He’s incredibly lovely. I just sent the script to him, and he was immediately like, “I’ve never gotten to play a sugar daddy!” He’s so perfectly tragic, human and loving. I really wanted all of the characters, even if they’re a little bit fucked up, to still have a lot empathy.
Big Freedia was our final hope and dream, because we were filming in Louisiana. My producer has an old friend who’s a manager of musicians. He was friends with Freedia’s manager. We shot the first unit of the film in January-February of 2022, so we were able to show him the footage. That was basically how we were able to convince Big Freedia to sit on a raft in a swamp in the heat. She was going to go to a release party with Beyonce the next day for Break My Soul.
Filmmaker: I’m not surprised that showing people excerpts of the film got them on board, because it looks great. What went into your decision to shoot on 16mm? What conversations did you have with your cinematographer Cory Fraiman-Lott pre and during production?
Sriram: I wanted to shoot on film from the beginning. I’m a snob — digital is ugly. I can’t look at it. I had this dream that the movie would feel like someone found it in a time capsule buried somewhere. When was this made? The ‘60s, the ‘80s? I wanted it to have this timeless, nostalgic, pre-millennium feel. Having that film texture be its own character was really important. I’d done a number of short films as an actor with my cinematographer, Cory. He worked with us as a small production so that we could shoot on film. It was his idea to shoot with the Hawk V-Lite anamorphics. I think only a few 16mm Hawk Anamorphic movies exist in America. We did a camera test and looked at the spherical lenses versus the Hawks, which are just gorgeous. I don’t know how else to explain it. He was like, “AP, it stretches you out.” I was like, “Oh, I’ll look thinner? Great! [laughs]. But yeah, the Hawks give you a wider depth of vision. In order to really create this dreamy other land—this liminal, pre-millennium America, late-stage capitalism world—the Hawks gave expansion to the shot.
During COVID, we were told not to shoot on film. I’m really stubborn, so I feel like the more that I’m told no, the more I’m like, “We’re doing it.” I went to an Airbnb during COVID with my cinematographer, my producer Tim, and then one of our EPs and his girlfriend. We shot listed the whole movie. Then we test shot the whole movie on a camcorder, taking pictures of every shot so that I had almost like a storyboard of the frames. We were able to do this rehearsal shoot, and that process was so helpful. When Cory and I went into a location it was really easy to figure out how we could adjust the shot to match or adjust for the blocking. I would do this process again because it’s like a low-stakes dress rehearsal.
Filmmaker: To have that much preparation must have also helped with keeping the cost down.
Sriram: Oh, yeah. As an actor, I’m a three-taker. The first is usually my best because it’s the most spontaneous. I sort of have a theory — if they’re not getting it by the third take, it’s not gonna happen. You have to either pivot the choice or figure out how to make do with what you have. Doing the Polanski, “let’s do a 100 million takes” thing doesn’t always yield better or different results. We have this pyramid we use. Let’s say there are six shots we want for the scene. If we’re running out of time, these are the four shots we would do. If we have to shoot this scene in one shot, what would it be? I want to make this hierarchy for every scene, because you’ve got limited time. How can I make sure I’ll at least get what I need? I definitely think it comes from imposter syndrome, fear and having so much time on your hands. I think, especially as a girl, I don’t ever want to be on set and not know the answer to something. I had these rules for myself: you don’t get to throw a tantrum, and you don’t get to be indecisive. It’s a difficult reality to accept, but as a woman, in order to have authority and gain respect from my crew and department heads, I have to know exactly what I want at every moment.
Filmmaker: Tell me more about creating the world of Trashtown. What were some aesthetic touchstones here? I certainly felt the influence of John Waters and grindhouse.
Sriram: Where did you grow up?
Filmmaker: New Jersey, a Trashtown in its own right!
Sriram: I love New Jersey! I’m from Tennessee. I feel like every state has their Trashtown, their abandoned factory that you explore as a kid; that old school diner that still has the old booths and the counter. Your friend’s house whose parents haven’t redecorated since the ‘70s, so they have the old carpet. I felt like Trashtown was made up of the Americana of my childhood, but also this kind of whimsical, yesteryear feeling and the places that as a teenager you’d sneak into. I also felt like if we have no budget, we can always use trash. Trash is free. We can just put a chair and a desk next to a dumpster. That’s where she sees the psychic. The world could become a theater. My producer Tim and I drove from Nashville down to Miami then all through Florida and back to scout locations and look at aesthetics: these pastel-colored buildings, railways, where industry meets overgrown, swampy Southern overbrush. I didn’t want it dusty like Mad Max, I wanted it to be sweaty and green.
Then someone read the script and they were like, “Your movie is The Fool’s journey of the tarot.” I’d actually avoided tarot out of fear and paranoia, but then I researched the major arcana. All the characters are represented as these different cards. Her moped is the chariot, she’s the fool, Big Freedia is the magician and Luna is the empress. Once I zeroed in on the tarot, it was a great touchstone when it came to color palette, iconography, even making decisions. Just using whatever’s on the card as the influence for little things like the cherubs and the doughnuts.
Filmmaker: Not to get too into the weeds of internet discourse, but I’d love to know if you have any thoughts on the general narrative of sex workers in film and pop culture, and is Fucktoys in overt dialogue with any of these projects in particular?
Sriram: I keep my cards kind of close to myself. We have a joke, which is: “Sean Baker makes Anora, but I think Anora would make Fucktoys.” There’s always going to be a disconnect between a perceived experience and a lived experience. I have a lot of friends in this world. There’s a trend in narratives around marginal groups—around gender, sexuality—where white people tell stories for different races or straight people tell stories about a different sexual identity or gender. When I wrote the script, it was eight years ago. It was before Anora, Zola, Hustlers. I love Crimes of Passion, Showgirls and Angel. I love the aesthetic of an ‘80s sex worker movie, even though they’re all made by men. I just think that when De Palma, Ken Russell or even Caveh Zahedi make a movie, they are also being really honest about their fetish. Whereas I think when it moves into this social justice land, there’s an inherent dishonesty about the fetish that’s at play. I myself have my own kinks and fetishes, and I hope that they’re honestly being depicted as well as my honest lived experiences navigating working with men transactionally. I think sex work is work. I think that it should be decriminalized.
But I also think that like all labor, it always depends on the client. If you’re a waiter, you might have a really shitty table or you might have a great table. The acts of the client do not mean anything about the labor of the provider. I don’t know if that answers your question, but I think it’s time for women to tell these stories. I think it’s time for women to have agency over the female gaze. I think it’s time for women to have autonomy over exploring their sexuality in whatever way that looks. When we were trying to make this film, we were told repeatedly, “You can’t get financing. It’s too crazy, too out there, there’s too much sexuality.” Yet we know that that’s a double standard because men can make these movies. They can have explicit nudity, explicit sex and it’s applauded as high art. How come when he tells my story it’s okay, but when I tell my story we don’t know if there’s going to be a return on investment? This is part of where our title came from — the amount that women are censored, the amount that our narratives are controlled. Same goes for queer people. It was really important that we were like, “No, we’re gonna make this story and this is gonna be our fucking title.” We’ve done screenings for cast and crew and would have screenings during our editing process. With my sex worker and women friends, there’s been this resounding feeling of, this is our Anora. We want to see a girl who is not a victim of her life or her circumstance but is choosing to do something out of her own agency and is interacting with archetypes of men. I think that the savior male figure is a tired trope, and I don’t think it’s gonna age well.
Filmmaker: Do you see more projects like this on the horizon for you?
Sriram: I have a couple more scripts that I’ve written. The next one I’m really excited about is actually very different. I want to make a black-and-white country music movie set in the ‘50s and ‘60s about an ex-con who’s illiterate. It’s kind of Down by Law, O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Coal Miner’s Daughter. Then I want to do a really fun, smutty ski movie. Like Hot Dog…The Movie. I feel like with Fucktoys, I’ve been so pent up by having very little platform or ability to express myself that I sort of overshared. There’s like a lot going on, which I love. I love cult movies, and I love that the cinema can be this explosion of everything. But that’s not my only favorite type of movie. I do have an idea for a Trashtown TV show that would be about the cleaning people. My character would be off at a goat monastery, but the cleaning people would be hosting a guerrilla-like revolution, against like the rich—Glasstown, as we’d call it, which is like Miami. It would be more directly about political action.
