Tiny Furniture, Oversized Potential

Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke in Tiny Furniture.

Recently, in the small college town of Oberlin, Ohio, 24-year-old Lena Dunham, a 2008 Oberlin grad, walked to the front of the Apollo Theatre to introduce her award-winning movie, Tiny Furniture. The audience consisted mostly of old friends, current students and former professors. Small in stature and wearing a little black dress that showed off her Ferdinand the Bull tattoo, she told the crowd that of all the places Tiny Furniture has played over the past year – it has taken awards at nine film festivals so far, including the Jury Award at South by Southwest – the Apollo Theatre, in her mind, was the most significant.  

In independent film circles, Tiny Furniture (and Dunham, the film’s writer, director and lead actress) is generating lots of buzz. It’s an honest, witty and affectionately told story about a young woman named Aura (played by Dunham) and her fumbling efforts to find meaning in her life after college graduation.  

Aura moves back home to New York to live with her mother and younger sister, played by her real life mother and younger sister (Laurie Simmons and Grace Dunham, respectively), and experiences a sort of quarter-life crisis. The title comes from the artworks that Aura’s mother creates by photographing miniature pieces of furniture. Despite its familiar premise (think The Graduate meets Freaks and Geeks), the film, which was shot for a mere $25,000, feels fresh, authentic and edgy. 

The day after the Apollo screening, Dunham met us in the lobby of the Oberlin Inn and discussed the experience of directing her mother in Tiny Furniture, her propensity for wardrobe crises and what it’s like to develop a television pilot with her hero, Judd Apatow.

OhioAuthority: So, two years ago, you moved back to New York after graduating from Oberlin. What is it like to be back in Ohio now, promoting a hit film? 

Lena Dunham: I was so psyched about coming back to Oberlin. Honestly, I made a list of all the Oberlin food that I wanted to eat… I feel like I have been gone for 20 years. I’m so full of nostalgia. Maybe the closer you are to college, the more that’s the case ... The Apollo was a place I had seen so many movies I love, and movies I don’t love – it was such an important movie-going experience for me, the Apollo, that showing the movie there was unbelievable.  

OA: Have you always wanted to make films? 

LD: I always wanted to write and that turned into making movies. I wrote poems and plays and that’s kind of what I came into Oberlin doing, and then I just realized that I liked the permanency [of film]. I would say filmmaking encompasses everything I have ever been into – art, fashion, human interaction, writing and photography. All the things I love and find compelling, and all the social modes I love, kind of come together in one job that I didn’t even know could be a job. 

OA: How did the idea for Tiny Furniture come about, and how did you decide to work with your real life mother and sister?  

LD: The decision came about, really, because I knew that I wanted to tell this story, and I had this idea that my mom and my sister were so compelling to me, that why would I want to watch actors play them, when I am playing myself, or a version of myself? I wrote the script with them in mind and probably didn’t really ask, so much as told them, that they were doing it. And then we shot for a month and they were so generous with their time and their energy. I think I may have been a little bit of a trickster. I think I made it sound as though it was going to be a little more casual and effortless. I don’t think my mom predicted doing 19 takes and spending eight hours in her bed, doing the same thing over and over again ... But it was amazing. They were so unbelievably good about it. I feel like I got these total gem gift performances from them.  

OA: Tell me about that moment at South by Southwest when you found out Tiny Furniture won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative. What was going through your mind? 

LD: It was really one of those crazy, heart-beat-out-of-chest moments. It’s so cheesy to say it, but you’re just excited to be there, and then you hope something like that will happen, but you don’t think it will happen… But that kind of audience reaction and that kind of validation…is a lovely feeling. It was such an honor. And I was totally nervous and totally hadn’t worn something that I liked at all… I remember at first getting up there and being like, ‘Why am I wearing this shirt?’ So, of course it had to be interrupted by an outfit crisis.