Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with PVT Chat’s Peter Vack

Lead actor Peter Vack spoke with Pop Culturalist about his latest film PVT Chat, how collaborating with writer-director Ben Hozie helped him get into character, and what excites him about independent filmmaking.

PC: Tell us about PVT Chat and your character in the film.
Peter: PVT Chat is the story of Jack and Scarlet. Jack is an internet gambler and a cam girl patron. His favorite cam girl is a dominatrix named Scarlet, with whom he becomes increasingly infatuated. One day, he sees her on the street in New York, which strikes him as odd, because she’s been telling him that she lives in San Francisco. Then, we learn that Scarlet is living in New York and that she’s helping to support her boyfriend, who is a playwright and a theater producer.

Jack is a lonely man who has alienated himself from society with a very robust online life, where he makes money gambling and has pseudo relationships with women on cam sites, but is, underneath it all, a romantic guy and character who, even though he’s going about finding romance in the wrong way, it’s what he’s desperate for. He sprouts and adheres to very nihilistic philosophy and rhetoric, but I think it’s a cover for an actual, childish, and naïve optimism that things will work out for him and that true love is possible.

PC: You’ve said in previous interviews that the collaboration between you and Ben Hozie [director] was pivotal in bringing the different layers to your character to life. What was that process like? How did he help bring that performance out of you?
Peter: That’s true. It was really savvy of Ben and a conscious move on his part to look for places where Jack could shed his cynicism and reveal his excitement, naiveté, and boyish qualities. There were moments on set when it was comfortable for me to play something a little darker, a little more cynical or detached, but Ben saw me doing that in the wrong places. He was always very energetically, and almost ruthlessly, pushing me to the other direction, which was so smart. I’m so grateful to him for doing that, because it is in the moments where we see the goofiness and boyishness—where he isn’t a hundred percent who he says he is—when we see his true self.

I often think one of the freakiest things in our ironic, poisoned society is exuberance, and I think that humans have such a beautiful, sweet capacity for exuberance, but it’s very rare to see it, or to allow yourself to go there. Ben really did highlight any place where I could play against the dark and actually be extremely sweet and upbeat. Some people are going to hate this character no matter what, but it seems like the people that have seen it and relate to him or find him at least hard to fully dismiss, they’re doing so because of our effort to reveal something about him that’s actually pure, naïve, and hopefully, in direct contrast to everything he says and does.

PC: Similar to Ben, you’re also an actor/writer/producer/director. How has your work behind the scenes made you a stronger actor and vice versa?
Peter: Sometimes it makes me harder to direct because I have opinions that maybe no one wants to hear. Ben, I’m sure, would concur, as would other directors I’ve worked with, [laughs] but we usually love each other in the end. Making films teaches me as an actor how little of it is in my control. It’s a liberating realization because some actors who are purely actors want to control their performance too much. That can look like a lot of different things. It can be a rigidity about a certain line. It can be rigidity about a certain emotional posture that they believe is right. It can be an unwillingness to actually fail in takes.

Often, I have found as a filmmaker that my favorite stuff to watch other actors do for me in films is to do something wrong or go off script or lose their footing as an actor. When you lose your footing as an actor, you’re often revealing yourself more as a human. Some actors, even ones that are very good, you’d be surprised at how many are unwilling to do that. Even if their work is very good, salable, and commercial, in my opinion, that’s the quality I want—it’s the human response.

Conceptually, I understood that before making my own films, but having seen it firsthand as a filmmaker, and seeing how much more exciting that was as an actor, I’m often trying to let go so much that I’m able to f-ck up and let something unexpected happen to me and control as little as possible, knowing that this performance is not in my hands. It’s to a certain extent, but it’s mostly in the hands of whatever spiritual force guides people, and then in the editing room. Give them human moments, and the editing will be fun. If you are always sticking to the way you rehearsed it at home, they’ll make the movie, but they might not find anything that thrills them.

PC: You’ve worked on projects of all sizes. What is it about independent filmmaking that excites you?
Peter: That’s a good question. I love acting, for the record. Even though I do a lot of things. I love independent filmmaking because it reminds me more of the most essential qualities of acting, which is, there’s no real possibility for a huge financial gain. One out of every hundred thousand indies is a Blair Witch Project, but if you’re trying to make a Blair Witch, you’ll never do it; it just won’t happen.

Every TV show is hoping to make millions of dollars and has millions of dollars already injected into it. It’s fun—it’s exciting to be on a luxury yacht where you get to dance on perfectly waxed floors, but it’s slightly less exhilarating when you are fighting against the current with your team of people, in your small little sailboat, and it’s dangerous. It feels like it could fall apart at any moment. When it doesn’t, it’s even more exciting, because when you’re working on TV, you know if some horrible disaster happens, you’ll come back in a month. The money is comforting, but it subtracts the elements of adventure, excitement, and danger you feel on an indie shoot.

PC: PVT Chat has made its way around a few festivals and it’s out now. It’s being incredibly well received. What do you think is resonating most with audiences?
Peter: Right now, it’s really important for people to see a relationship play out online because so many people who maybe never would have had that happen to them, who aren’t even necessarily online people, are having to do that because of the pandemic. I think people are seeing themselves more in these characters now than they ever would. Also, Julia Fox is someone who rightfully has so many people interested in her. Anything she does, people are interested in. The setting, which seemed sort of niche at the time, is now almost mainstream. I think people are like, “Oh, wow. This exists? Let’s watch it.”

PC: In addition to PVT Chat, you have a couple of other projects in the work. Are there any that you can chat about at this time?
Peter: I’m about to finish an indie that’s a reverse gender Rosemary’s Baby. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s going to be cool. We’re going back to shoot a couple more days. Then, I’m working on another film that I wrote and hope to shoot in the spring, which is very different from PVT Chat, but it also deals with social media, online performance, and spectatorship, but in a more allegorical sci-fi comedy way.

To keep up with Peter, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. PVT Chat is out now in select theater and On Demand.