Michelle Uckotter

Michelle Uckotter’s directorial debut, Moviestar, convenes an absurd grouping of degenerate hippies and insufferable yuppies for your less-than-typical slasher film. Crawling over each other in a smoke-filled living room while The Carpenters play softly in the background, they end up in a violent and quaalude-induced showdown. The film was inspired by the Manson murders, the kind of sensationalistic killing spree that could “only happen in America,” as the Cincinnati-born artist puts it. Stills from the movie later became the basis of Uckotter’s new series of paintings, which opened last month at L.A. gallery Matthew Brown, who announced her representation last week. When Uckotter got back to New York, she joined the film’s co-writer Riley Mac on a call to talk about assembling a Reagan-era living room set and how a recent breast augmentation compelled her most recent burst of creativity.

–EMILY SANDSTROM