Fort Greene Filmmaker Sebastian Silva Discusses His Latest Project, “Nasty Baby”

Earlier this year, Sebastian Silva’s film “Nasty Baby” headed to Sundance Film Festival — one stop in its path to critical acclaim. Now that it has hit theaters, the Kristen Wiig-fronted movie is drawing lots of attention and Silva is conducting interviews explaining how shooting the film in his Fort Greene apartment influenced the movie and the script.

“To be honest, the confrontation between the sort of hipster-y neighbors and this borderline schizophrenic, homeless-slash-squatter figure, The Bishop, was taken from a man who was my neighbor in a gentrified area in Santiago, [Chile], that I lived in,” he told Slant Magazine. “He was always carrying a stick around and being aggressive, to women particularly, and if you didn’t give him money he would bitch at you.

“I’ve seen Bishops in Brooklyn, many times, just men in a place that doesn’t belong to them anymore, but they were there before any of these white or [gesturing to himself] Latino gentrifiers got there. And they’re stragglers now. There are so many homeless people that just have no place to go. They’re seen as a threat just because they’re not wearing fancy clothes or drinking cappuccino, but they’re just struggling to survive there.”

The movie is about a Brooklyn artist Freddy (Sebastian Silva) who is baby obsessed and who, along with his boyfriend, Mo, recruits best friend Polly (Kristen Wiig), to help them have a baby during a stressful period of launching a new art installation and harassment by The Bishop, a mentally ill neighborhood man.

If you see it in theaters, let us know what you think.