IF you’ve ever been to the Angelika, you’re familiar with indie-film staples: movie stars trying their hardest to look unbeautiful, little or no soundtrack, grainy film stock, intentionally distorted camera angles and loads of awkward, “meaningful” silences.
Director Steven Soderbergh dispensed with indie artifice for his new movie, “Bubble.” He simply went to West Virginia, hired a cast of nonactors and told them to make up their own dialogue.
The result? An inarguably realistic portrait of life in an economically depressed factory town – combined with a third-act murder mystery.
Set to be released simultaneously in theaters, on DVD and on cable this Friday, “Bubble” kicks off a series of six experimental films by Soderbergh, some of which will feature nonactors in leading roles – and none of which will look as polished as his earlier films such as “Traffic” or “Ocean’s Eleven.”
Debbie Doebereiner, the star of “Bubble,” was the manager of a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Parkersburg, W. Va., when a casting director pulled up to the drive-through window and asked her to try out. She thought it was a prank.
“She said I looked like a character in this movie they were making,” Doebereiner recalls. “And I was looking around outside, because I’m thinking one of my friends is playing a joke on me. Why would Steven Soderbergh come here to make a movie?
“After we were done talking, I called my mom and told her about it. And she said, ‘That was on the news! It’s true!'”
So Doebereiner got the afternoon off work and headed to the Parkersburg Arts Center, where Soderbergh’s team was holding interviews. The director loved her tape and cast her shortly thereafter as Martha, a middle-aged worker at a doll factory whose best friend, a younger co-worker named Kyle, gets involved with the new girl, Rose.
Misty Dawn Wilkins, the hairstylist and single mom who plays Rose, says her plodding date with the nearly mute Kyle didn’t require much acting.
“That’s just how he is!” Wilkins says. “Maybe not around his friends, people he’s known for a long time, but he’s very shy.”
In lieu of a script, Soderbergh gave his cast basic plot points to touch on.
Other than that, it was up to the stars to improvise their lines.
Consequently, there’s a fair amount of overlap between real and reel life.
To prepare, “we would sit around and tell stories about things we did when we were younger,” Wilkins says. “I worked in a nursing home for five years, and I told a story about that, and Steven was like, ‘You gotta talk about this.'”
But unlike Martha, a single woman who lives with her elderly father, Doebereiner is married. And her husband didn’t believe she was in a real movie, she says, until the red-carpet premiere in Parkersburg.
“It was just like a Hollywood premiere! I thought nothing could top the four weeks of shooting, but I thought it was the most wonderful night of my life,” says Doebereiner, who adds that Soderbergh and his team made an excellent impression on the locals.
“I was kind of scared because I was like, uh-oh, Hollywood snobs – but we all had so much fun,” she says. “We had a pool night, and a bowling party. It was like a family.”
sara.stewart@nypost.com
