GALO: You grew up in Washington State.

EZ: My parents are immigrants. We moved back and forth to Corsica to try to make it as farmers and when my parents split up we moved around a lot, from small town to small town, trying to figure out how to fit in the landscape.

GALO: It sounds a little like being an army brat.

EZ: My father was a political refugee and my mother was a concentration camp victim. It was a strange mélange, but the landscape will always figure in, it allowed me to dream and imagine. It was an amazing landscape where I went to high school in the Pacific Northwest; it was my way of entry in the world.

GALO: So with your family background, it must have inspired you to look for a place that would feel like home?

EZ: Yes, but I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that way, given how I grew up, if I’ll ever feel that I’m at home.

GALO: You think that fits in your creative work?

EZ: It absolutely does.

GALO: Do you have any other projects currently in the works?

EZ: I literally do, on paper. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do but I have two — one I set in Corsica, I’ve been trying to shape into a story. It’s a risky narrative in a way but much less dark, so in a way it mitigates the rest.

GALO: Do you see yourself continuing to develop scripts and involve yourself as a director, wearing these two hats?

EZ: That’s how I was trained and how I fully express myself. I signed onto a big project once with a big producer in Hollywood. It would have been great to get paid wonderfully… [laughter]. But I couldn’t continue. It wasn’t material I could invest in to go the whole nine yards. I wouldn’t close the door in terms of adaptation. I just know myself with a full-length feature, it would be a story I would create. There are so many books that I have a special relationship with.

GALO: And what about the funding involved with a project?

EZ: It’s a difficult question to answer…finding the magic way to bring the funds together. Anyone who’s had a film made is immensely fortunate. Some people are never that comfortable with the amount of money it takes to get something made. It’s a big challenge to wrap my head around that. So it’s okay, if it’s a film that can have a social good or speak to people on some level. I don’t think I’ll ever just make…

GALO: A light comedy?

EZ: I would like to be able to do that that. They can serve a great purpose. Maybe when I’m 80…[laughter].

GALO: Exactly, after you’ve made all the serious, meaningful, profound ones.

EZ: I have to speak to that question of funding [gesturing toward the Olympus representative]. Olympus Pictures provided a resounding “yes” — they finance and produce their own films. They’d seen Evergreen. There was a band of producers on that film and they went out and found a collection of investors that were passionate about it.

GALO: How were you able to gather the creative crew together for Bottled Up?

EZ: I have a pretty decent relationship with filmmakers in New York and Olympus had some, so it was great to put that together.

GALO: Terrific. Are you interested in continuing to make documentaries? You made the one on Bill Clinton…

EZ: I’m interested in documentaries, but mostly interested in narrative.

GALO: How did the one on Clinton come together?

EZ: A friend of mine was working at Radical Media. The Clinton Foundation is the second biggest philanthropic organization in the country — maybe the world — in terms of what they do financially. They’d approached Radical Media — nobody knew about them — and they wanted to introduce themselves to the world, very low budget. And I was asked to come in. From the outset, it was about filming some of his causes — some of them are incredibly juicy — he’s revived small businesses in Harlem and I got to interview some of the owners. He started some gentrification there. It’s incredibly interesting stuff and then all his work in Africa — Doctors Without Borders — as well as helping to guide some Bill Gates projects.

GALO: And Clinton himself?

EZ: The project got bigger. I ended up conducting several interviews with people closest to him and then Clinton himself, so it was gratifying. It’s still in heavy rotation, for instance, when he was introduced in the last Denver convention for Barack Obama; it was my interview that was up there. You know, when you do film, you find yourself doing things you’re not really qualified to do, but you just do them. I did one with Eric Clapton, who I admired very much, on his Reptile album. For a while I was doing that kind of work. People just make the assumption you can do this thing.

GALO: With Bottled Up, you first put these people together, you have the words on paper, but there’s a certain type of chemistry you’re after and it’s so challenging.

EZ: It’s always challenging. That Clinton moment will always stand out for me as the most daunting moment. After days of being vetted by the Secret Service, he sits down with me, with those steely blue eyes just staring at me…like not giving you a moment. You have to bring it and what do you bring? And it was only 20 minutes into the interview when he decided I’d done my homework and that I knew what I was talking about, when a switch went on in his head and he was going to reveal how passionate he was about the subject. I’m thinking I’m not a political pundit, who am I doing this thing? No one has ever been more daunting.

GALO: I wouldn’t think that after that you would have too much to fear anymore, whether looking for funding for a film or facing an interview for whatever publication.

EZ: This isn’t over yet – [laughter) — let’s see how I do.

GALO: Well, I’m happy to hear you have something else brewing. In this film you can feel the real care that was taken, the intimacy you had to get with these actors. That’s something that doesn’t come naturally to every director. You can be proud of that. It’s been a pleasure.

EZ: Thank you, Sandra.

“Bottled Up” opened on April 19 at The Tribeca Film Festival, and had its final public screening on Tuesday, April 23, 2013.

Featured image: Film director Enid Zentelis. Photo Credit: Tribeca Film Festival.

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