I have already established that the Bottle Drama is a canvas for realism. I now want to talk about how my Bottle Drama, as a naturalistic film, opens itself up for hybridity and self-reflexitivity. In his essay chapter ‘A Plague of Frogs: Expressionism and Naturalism in the 1990’s’ Steven Dillon talks about naturalism as being the perfect canvas for a filmmaker to subvert audience expectations. At the beginning of the chapter he talks of Paul Thomas Anderson’s decision to have characters unexpectedly sing along with an Aimee Man song (non-diegetic) from Magnolias soundtrack towards the end of the film. This decision from Anderson has been questioned by critics due its refusal to abide by the naturalism he set up earlier in the film. Dillon later defends Anderson by stating “So if the scene does not make sense, it is because of our generic expectations. It must be that we are reading Magnolia as basically realistic, expecting the physical rules of our known world to obtain”. In reference to Anderson’s decision he then ironically states “surely the genre train has fallen off its tracks”. I believe one of the most significant affordances of films that are grounded in realism is that they provide an unsuspecting canvas for the filmmaker to puncture with either self-reflexitivity or metaphysical elements, which Anderson did twice in Magnolia (the second time being with a frog storm). In my film I explored this by having established Western Genre tropes seep into the realism. One of the main ways I did this was by having the outsider (Victor) infiltrate the established relationship (Jack and Sarah). Its a convention of the Western for the outsider to be a symbol of progress upsetting the traditional ways of the community. In my film I wanted to turn this convention on its head by writing Victor as a symbol of the past. Victor wore a tweed jacket, he spoke with a light old English accent and alluded to the past with lines such as: ‘How times have changed’ and ‘A woman never used to speak to a man like that’. Victor was the source of all conflict, however true to Western convention I had the relationship be restored at the end; stronger due to the challenge it overcome. Joel portrayed Victor in a stylised, theatrical fashion because I wanted the absurdity of the character to juxtapose with the realism that other elements in the film created. The overly theatrical piano chords that occurred at the end of each ‘act’ were another self-referential nod to the theatrical elements of Bottle, they served to remind the audience that they were watching a film. In a similar way to what Paul Thomas Anderson did with Magnolia these stylistic flourishes were jarring, yet interesting.