2016 Sundance Trading Card Series: #5. Craig Shilowich (Christine)

Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2015 discoveries”.
Craig Shilowich: That new Carly Rae Jepsen album (Emotion), Florida. Woolite (the product).

Lavallee: You’ve worn the producer hat since 2008’s Frozen River — and this is your first foray into screenwriting. What facet of Christine Chubbuck’s story convinced you that this should be made into a feature film?
Shilowich: I saw a lot myself in her.

Lavallee: Seeing that it was used for John Carpenter’s classic 1983 film, how did you folks settle on the title?
Shilowich: It was the only title that ever made any sense. For all of the themes the movie engages with, in the end it’s a movie about a woman. A woman named Christine. It never bothered me that John Carpenter had already used the title. If anything, I liked the echo it represents. Both are movies about people undone by obsession. Both are tonal blends of funny and scary. Both movies have strange internal logics guiding their actions, a cheery blankness that thinly masks a seething menace underneath. I’d love to see a double screening of the two!