ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Interviews

1on1 – Talking about our divisions with The Reunited States folks.

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I recently had the opportunity to talk via Zoom with The Reunited States director Ben Rekhi,  and two of the film’s subjects, David and Erin Leaverton, who took a year to travel the US and talk with people about our divisions. For more on the film, see the Screenfish review or visit the film’s website to view the trailer. The film is now available an VOD.

Ben, where did you start in putting this film together and gathering the people for the different perspectives you wanted to get?

Ben Rekhi: I started this film about two and a half years ago, when I saw Susan Bro giving a talk. I was really struck by the fact that she was on the front lines of division and had lost a child to the violence, but she was able to come out the other side and talk about the need for conversation to avoid further violence. It really struck me that this was someone who had a voice of reason in a time when everyone was shouting at each other. She also had the moral authority to do that because she had suffered so publicly this loss. So, I approached her and I said “I don’t know how or when, but I want to be a part of helping to tell your story, because I think it can really help other people at this time. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s happening in politics and you have this clarity to articulate it from the heart.” She, after a few conversations, allowed me to follow her with the camera and start filming. That was the beginning of the film.

The second piece of that was meeting Mark Gerzon, the author of the book The Reunited States of America. I’d come up with the title thinking it was pretty original, but when I Googled it I realized someone already had that title and written a book about it, but it was also on the same topic. Mark had been studying polarization for thirty years and had this wisdom that was relevant for those of us who only woke up to it over the last several years. I met him and he introduced me to the other three storylines. I said I want to follow someone on election day in the midterms, and he said Greg Orman. I wanted to understand what young people can do about division, he told me about Steven Olikara. He called me out of the blue one day and said, “In all my years of doing this work, I’ve never come across anything as extraordinary as this family, the Leavertons, that are in an RV right now crisscrossing the country trying to find out what’s dividing us.” So I called them and as soon as I heard them speak, I was struck by their wisdom and clarity about what they had discovered. And especially being from a more conservative background and being willing to travel outside of their bubble and outside their comfort zone, in black community, in native reservations, in border towns. It really captured the human side of division because of these face-to-face encounters. To hear them really let people’s stories in and have a heart connection, it’s really emotional. It’s not easy. You’re hearing some tragic stories, that helps transform how you see. Not just as individuals but entire communities of people.

The film wants to show optimism about the possibility of overcoming the divisions the country is facing. How did that optimism hold up for each of you as the Jan 6 assault on the Capitol took place?

Erin Leaverton: That was a hard day. I think for anybody who desires to see our country divided, even if it didn’t diminish your optimism, it’s grieving to see these things with your eyes and to behold what we’re willing to do to one another.

David Leaverton: For me it was a very predictable outcome of the path we’ve been on for a long time. This is a path that’s pretty natural when you begin to dehumanize, when you begin to otherize, us versus them, good versus evil. These are some of the natural things that are going to happen. It didn’t diminish my hope in our future from the stand point of “is all hope lost because people stormed the capital?” No, but I believe it shows me the importance of the work of peacemaking, of bridge building, because people’s lives are being lost in this struggle.

BR: I was pretty surprised and shocked. I think that people expected violence to breakout around the election and when the results came—at voting stations, maybe in the streets. So there was kind of a collective sigh of relief when that didn’t happen. Like “Oh my God, our democratic institutional held up. People didn’t result to violence.” So when it happened at the beginning of the year, especially on the steps of the Capitol, attempting to kill Congressmen, I never would have seen that coming. It was a turning point that has made things harder in this field because, even for myself, I’ve been really trying to build bridges and this is going to make it harder, but have I also been missing blind spots about how deep this goes? So it’s forced me to do a lot of self-reflection. The distinction that has been helpful for me is that this was a small group of people—not small but several thousand, compared to several tens of millions—that would condone this, while most people would not. That distinction is important, but it’s harder to make that distinction for a lot of people. Right now, it’s kind of been a point of no return for a lot of people that you cannot get along with the lies. You’re an idiot if you think you can. In that regard we are in uncharted territory. But personally, it has not shaken my optimism this as we move forward. It shows the depth and the long game that it’s going to take to do that.

On a more positive side, did you see the Jeep commercial with Bruce Springsteen in the Superbowl?

BR:  What a coincidence! What luck! It’s the right place, right time. You can’t buy that kind of messaging.

DL: I can’t believe they used the words “The ReUnited States of America”. Of all the things that they could have put on there. It’s just wild. Who doesn’t like Bruce Springsteen? That’s pretty awesome. It was a great commercial. What I felt was that there’s a market for healing. There is a market for…

EL:  … common ground, finding a place where you can meet.

DL: That was encouraging to me that this isn’t kind of a splinter group of us weirdos talking about this stuff. These are kind of major iconic American brands that see the importance of this conversation.

David and Erin, a good part of the film is your journey, not just physically, but ideologically. How would you characterize that personal journey?

DL: I was blind, but now I see.

EL: I would say I was blind, but now I am starting to see.

DL: That’s probably more accurate.

EL: And that doesn’t mean I was a Republican and now I’m almost a Democrat. There seems to be a lot of confusion around like a political conversion taking place by leaving your bubble and traveling all fifty states. We abandoned our identities as Republicans because we found out that no one can be summed up in a political ideology. Humans are too beautiful and too complex and too infinitely valuable to be summed up in such overly simplistic term. So that’s what we mean by we’re no longer Republicans, is that we now are beginning to see we’ve come into a deeper understanding of the beauty of our fellow human beings.

How much resistance did you run into trying to find people to talk together?

DL: About the only resistance we really found was from our fellow conservatives. That was really surprising to us. We rarely found, I think I can count them on one hand, resistance from people who were kind of outside of my tribe. When we tried to connect with people of our own tribe, or our former tribe, whatever you want to call it, did we find that kind of level of resistance.  I think there something that when you kind of step out against the team, it’s something really sensitive, because so many of us have identified in this country by our political affiliations. And if you come from us and step outside of that, boy, it’s kind of like the unforgiveable sin.

EL: We were upsetting the apple cart of our upbringing, and it made it very hard to stick your toe back in and say, “Can we talk? We have some questions.” We had a lot of resistance there. It was really interesting and surprising at the time.

What do you see as the foundation for the division we face?

DL: That was so much of our focus, I think. We started this journey thinking that the problem in America was that we were politically divided. That was really our hypotheses, that if we can just go to different parts of the country and host a dinner for a few Republicans and a few Democrats we could kind of see each other as human, important, and realize our differences aren’t really that big of a deal, and by the time dessert hit we would kind of heal that divide. What we realized was kind of our political divisions were a symptom of something a whole lot deeper. So for us, along this journey, was constantly asking this question: how did we get this way? Going deeper and deeper. What’s causing this? What’s causing that? And it led us back before the founding of the country. It led us into the understanding of the rise of Christendom and colonization and it got into our story of whose land do we stand upon today and how was that land acquired? I think when you build something on land that was gained often through the shedding of innocent blood, whatever house you build upon that foundation is going to have a tough time making it. So for me, our solution isn’t to fix the brokenness of the last two or three presidencies when we’ve gotten divided, but I really think if we want to heal this land, we need to go into the very foundations of the building blocks of the United States of America and really look at those. “How did we come to be the good, the bad, and the ugly?” through a process of acknowledgement and truth, through a process of justice and conciliation. I think there’s a journey to healing. It’s not an easy and it’s not a short one.

BR: I would echo that, that the foundations of the country were built on genocide of native peoples and slavery. So, there’s kind of a fundamental split between what the ideals of our founding fathers and documents were, and the contradiction of what was actually happening. On the political differences, it seems over the last forty years that we’ve seen a steady rapid polarization increasing. A lot of that has to do with the end of the cold war and the loss of a common enemy that we used to have. This kind of superpower that was our existential threat untied us together, and once we lost that external enemy, we turned to our enemies inside. Then on our same side our policy and democracy reform has been slow to keep up with the changes. So a lot of political leaders are incentivized to move to the extremes to win elections and win primaries. There’s sort of a coupling of all these things that has created the atmosphere that we’re in now. The question is there is emergency crisis management—how do we put out the house that’s on fire?—while we also think of longer-term solutions.

What are the next steps you will be taking personally, or that you hope to see happen in a more general sense?

BR: We’re really hopeful that the film can be a small part of the conversation of turning things around, and saying we all have a role to play in this. We’re all either part of the problem or part of the solution of the problem of division. We think it’s so easy—and I was like this—it’s easy to say those other people on the other side, they’re the ones being unreasonable. But we end up throwing a lot of gas on the fire—in social media, in our friend groups—by not taking any ownership of our own side of the street. The narrative needs to shift to one of what can I be doing differently? How can I heal my personal relationships, my family relationships, people I’ve fallen out of favor with? So there’s this moment now where it feels like there’s a ground swell of awareness after the Capitol attack and with a new administration, like them or not, for a sense of unity, and trying to set that tone in words and in actions, people might debate that. But there’s a realization that this isn’t working. So all the solutions should be on the table because there are a lot of people digging in their heels and saying “until we agree on the facts we can’t move forward”. Or “Until they take the blame, we can’t move forward”. That is going to continue to make it even worse. There’s 300 million people in this country. How do we each take responsibility because as citizens it’s not just the rights that we have, we have responsibilities, because freedom isn’t free. We have to actually take action where we are with what we have right now. That’s something we have a choice over.

EL: I agree. I think we’re at a crossroads in many ways, in which we each individually have a choice to make. That choice, I think, collectively speaking, will determine where we go from here as a nation. There’s so much anger and animosity. I recently heard someone say, “It’s easier to be angry than it is to be hurt.” I think we have to decide to be courageous enough to feel the pain of the moment and engage in that pain in order to move into the actual choice of do we want to be united states? Is that what we want as a nation? We’re at a watershed moment, I think, where we get to decide. I don’t think a President can say we’re united, and poof it magically appears. We all have work to do in our hearts and our minds and with our words. This is like Kindergarten 101. Do you want to be kind? Or do you want to be mean? In some sense we’re actually complicating something that’s actually simple. It’s what do you want? We have to decide that as a nation. It’s not about are we all going to agree on the facts. We’ve never agreed on the facts. That’s never been part of our ethos. Disagreement is kind of woven into the fabric of who we are as a nation. We’ve forgotten how to do that with love and honor. If we don’t find our way back to that place, I think we’re on a very dangerous path moving forward. We all have a decision to make.

The Spirit of the Story: 1on1 with Casey Affleck (OUR FRIEND)

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It’s fair to say that Casey Affleck understands that the soul of a story can say more than the sum of its parts.

Known for strong performances in such films as A Ghost Story, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Manchester By The Sea (for which he won Best Actor at the Academy Awards), Affleck frequently adds an emotional depth to his characters that helps their fictional stories feel authentic. However, with his latest film Our Friend, star Affleck had the opportunity to explore the real-life journey of writer Matthew Teague, a man whose life is turned upside-down due to a family tragedy. As thrilled as he was to work with the rest of the team behind the film, he recalls that he was also very excited about the soul of the story itself.

“Two things really appealed to me about this project,” he begins. “One was the people who were involved. I liked Gabriela [Cowperthwaite] as a director. I didn’t know Jason [Segel] or Dakota [Johnson] but I was interested in working with them and it turned out to be great. The other was just the spirit of the story, which has to do with sort of selflessness and being of service to others, showing up for people in our lives, even when it’s hardest. Somebody said that a great friend is somebody who shows up when you need them, even when being there is the last place in a world that they want to be. This is a story about me and Dakota, our family finding ourselves in a crisis and Jason Segal’s character showing up in just that way.”

After his wife, Nicole (Dakota Johnson) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Matthew Teague (Casey Affleck) struggles to balance meeting her needs and raising their daughters. Seeking to help, close friend to the family Dane (Jason Segal) offers to move in for a short stay to help Matthew get back on his feet. However, as time marches forward, the lines between friendship and family begin to blur as Dane’s temporary gesture extends into an indefinite living arrangement at great personal cost. 

Though the trio had never worked together before, the chemistry between Affleck, Johnson and Segel is something to behold. In virtually every scene, each of the film’s leads feels emotionally present, creating something truly special onscreen. 

“I had gotten close to working with Jason once on movie but [we] didn’t end up doing it,” Affleck recalls. “I really think he’s a great, great big talent and a sweet guy. Dakota has been sort of on my radar for a while because she’d been just doing really interesting choices that seemed unpredictable. She’ll be in 50 Shades of Gray, Peanut Butter Falcon and Suspiria. She’ll be popping up in places and just seemed like there’s an interesting person there.”

Often times, bringing an actual person to life onscreen can create an added pressure to ensure that you represent their life story and mannerisms authentically. Asked if there’s anything in particular that he wanted people to know about Matthew Teague, Affleck felt that his most important job was not to try to ‘impersonate’ him but instead to honour the power of his story onscreen.

“I don’t really have an agenda about what people know about Matt Teague,” says Affleck. “Matt’s a writer and a nice guy and he brought this story to the public. He wrote an article, brought that article to a screenwriter and he shepherded the whole project all the way through. I was there to just to play a role as an actor. I told Matt on the very first day that I met him that he should not expect to see the movie and feel like he was looking in a mirror or something. It would be different than he remembered. The events in the movie might some way not be exactly like he remembered, but we would all try very hard to make sure that the spirit of the story was communicated. So, I want people not necessarily to know something about Matt, but to know something about what this story says about all of us.” 

Furthermore, in any biographical project, Affleck also understands that the person onscreen is never a full realization of their actual character. 

“In the telling of a story, people are changed,” he explains. “You’re not doing an impersonation. You’re not trying to say this is exactly as someone else is. I believe that the person you see onscreen is a combination of the imagination of the writer, the director, the actor, and the editor, et cetera.” 

In an interesting way, the fact that the film is based on friendship seems almost countercultural. At a time when the term ‘friend’ is most often associated with Facebook connections, Our Friend highlights the meaning of the word in all its fullness. Even so, instead of changing his views on the expression, Affleck’s experience on the film has reinforced what he already believed a friend should be.

“I don’t think that it has new meaning for me,” he explains. “I think that being a part of this movie was a way to contribute to something that expressed what I already felt about friendship. So, it’s more that I got to bring something that I was already sort of carrying to the movie and share that. I think it’s a funny sounding word ‘friend’ but it’s such a beautiful idea. I’d love to have a longer conversation about how and why human beings form relationships and what purpose they serve and how we can serve that purpose. That’s interesting to me and I really do feel like I love the spirit of what this movie is, especially around that topic.” 

Having become increasingly selective in his projects over the course of his career, Affleck found a healthy spirit within this story that was hard to resist. With its emphasis on healing after suffering, he feels that Our Friend is particularly special in the way that it offers a sense of hope to the audience.

“I used to think that, after [working on] a movie, I would walk away and just leave it behind completely,” Affleck points out. “Sometimes it feels like that, but I think that when you put a lot of yourself into a movie, sometimes the movie puts a lot back in you. For that reason, I’ve become a lot more careful about the kinds of projects that I choose to be a part of. When I was younger, almost out of necessity, I just took whatever. Whoever would hire me, I would take that job because that’s how I made a living. It is still how I make my living and I have to work, but I try to be as careful as I can about the spirit of the movie and the spirit of the part. Something like this, I feel like I can live with. I liked the message of this. Even though that the movie is will break your heart, it will also it’ll repair your heart too and sort of fill you back up. I think then when people watch the movie, that’s the experience that they have. They leave feeling sort of emptied and refilled and I’m okay with that.” 

Our Friend is available on VOD on Friday, January 22, 2021.

To hear our conversation with Casey Affleck, click here.

Good News: 1on1 with Paul Greengrass (News of the World)

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I recently had the chance to take part via Zoom in a roundtable interview with Paul Greengrass to discuss his film News of the World. The film tells the story of Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an itinerant newsreader, who is tasked with returning Johanna, a young girl raised by the Kiowa, to her relatives. For more on the film see our review.

The first question dealt with the Western genre and which conventions were interesting to him.

I grew up with westerns as a boy. They played on television nonstop when I was a kid in the UK. I never ever thought I’d get to make one because they don’t make them very often and it never really occurred to me, to be honest to try. Three or four years ago I got involved in a Netflix project called Five Came Back. That was the story of the five great Hollywood directors who went to World War II from being glittering Hollywood successes and came back after their experiences in combat changed people. If you’ve not seen it, it’s very superb, I must say. I didn’t make it. They got five directors working today—Spielberg did Wyler, Coppola did Huston, I think. I did John Ford because I studied John Ford as a young man and I revered his films. So, I spent a very interesting month three or four years ago rewatching all his films. So, he was very much in my mind.

Then it’s strange how serendipitous film making is. A few years later they sent me the novel and I read it and I thought “This is really interesting because it’s The Searchers in reverse.” This is the John Ford story but turned the other way around. Instead of being the hero’s search for the girl out in the wilderness, the hero finds the girl and is going to take her home. I remember seeing that in the novel straightaway and thinking that sort of connected to John Ford. So, in my boyhood love of westerns, I thought, “I’m going to do it.”

The genre is a quintessential American genre, of course. But it’s much more than that really. It’s mythic. What is a western? A western is a kind of intimate drama, generally about identity. Who are we? Who do we want to be? Who do we fear we’ve become? Who do we wish we could be? Various questions of identity played out against a vast, unforgiving desolate landscape. That’s a western in my book. At a time when America was becoming America. That’s what I tried to do. I tried in my way to make it feel contemporary, feel as if it bore on today. It’s set in 1870. It was a time of great division in the shadow of the Civil War. I think many of the feelings of bitter division and need for healing resonate with us today.

Communication (reading the news, interpreting the news, the struggle the Captain and Johanna had communicating) is a key theme in the film. He was asked about the role of communication in the film.

I think obviously the most striking thing from the movie is this is a world before television, before radio, before social media, before movies, in a remote place where the only entertainment, probably of the year, is when the newsreader comes to town with a couple of newspapers and reads his snippets of news and stories. In that way, he’s trying in his way to heal people—to heal the wounds of his community. Because storytelling fundamentally is a healing act. It’s what I do, what I’ve always done in my life.

We’re a storytelling animal. We tell stories to each other in church, after church, around the hearth, around the kitchen table, in cafes and bars, out on street corners, in our movie houses, in our theaters, in our concert halls. That’s what we do. The stories that we tell reflect who we are and draw our audience together with us. Sometimes they can divide us, but essentially storytelling is an act of connection.

That’s why I love that character, because he’s engaged. What has he got? He’s got nothing; he’s lost everything. All he has is a small satchel and a couple of old newspapers. But he has that most precious healing power of storytelling. As he goes on, as he goes farther down the road with the little girl, you see the strength of his storytelling more and more. Of course, the communication, that at first he can’t have with that little girl, the communication grows through the film. People can transcend language, can transcend their past; people can transcend the pain of the past, the pain of division. In the end we can heal. We just have to find the road to belonging, the road to where we think we ought to be. That’s why I made the film. 

Because I’m a parent. I’ve got three daughters. I’ve got two sons too. But my daughters were very much on my mind as I made this film. I wanted to make a family film, I suppose. I’ve dealt with, in some of my films, tough subjects. And I’ve done some straight entertainment. I wanted to make a family film that you could bring your children to, and it would feel like a healing story.

Referring to his earlier comments about the western’s themes being in conversation with today, how does he see the film being relevant to the things we’re seeing in the headlines today?

I want to preface it by saying you should never start a film—you should never try to tell a story by having in the back of your mind, “I’m going to tell this story so that you think x or you think y.” If you do that, you’re not telling a story, you’re lecturing people, you know? You have to start by which character do I really love, or characters that I want to spend time with? Which characters am I really interested in their destinies and what they want and where they need to get to? What story is really going to entertain me? What can I do to make this film an experience that will reward anyone who gives you the privilege of spending two hours of their time? That’s how you have to start if you want to tell a story and engage with people. In many ways that really what brought me to the film.

In Kidd, I loved the character of Kidd, because he exists, of course, before television or movies and all the rest of it. But how he approaches his world is how I think of storytelling, in my business. When he starts, he says “I want to take you away from your hard lives, just for an hour or two.” He’s going to tell a story and he’s going to entertain them; he’s going to tell them some local news, about things they really need to know. In this case about the meningitis epidemic. Interestingly, when I wrote that, that was well before the pandemic. Now you watch the film…. Of course, in 1870 meningitis and cholera were a daily threat in many many communities. Other than war, pestilence was the next thing.

So, it did become eerily more contemporary as we went along. But you don’t start like that. You start by saying “How can I tell this story in a way that people are going to want to go on that journey with those characters?” And then you have to ask yourself, “What do I want to feel?” I wanted to feel that they got to a healing place. And they do. They were characters who suffered much in their lives separately, and had perhaps not been able to face up to it. This journey is going to enable them individually to face up to what has happened to them and then enable them to move on in this odd family shape at the end, where they’re a family unit, oddly they have become that. I love that about the film. It’s about overcoming divisions, overcoming barriers of language, barriers of experience, and making a new start.

It was noted that Captain Kidd brought the news, Greenglass was asked to comment on the scene where Kidd is in a town where the town boss only wants his version of the news to be read.

Yeah, that’s quite contemporary isn’t it, that? Let me scroll back a little bit. The newsreader is such a great character. Of course, newsreaders, guys who wandered around from town to town reading the news, that really had a gospel root really. In my country, in the UK, those were the Methodist preachers, who emerged. They didn’t go into the churches, because they were non-conforming, but they gave their sermons out in the open air outside. Or course as they went around, from community to community, then later the same in America, they brought the Good News, that’s what they did. Slowly but surely, the Good News would become the news. They’d bring bits of local news, then federal news. So, it emerged with a sort of moral element to it. That’s to do with truth, isn’t it? Reverence for the truth has been deeply, deeply present.

I’m not American, but I’ve had a life long love affair with America. I first came to your great country when I was 18 years old. I love my country and I love America as much. Our countries in a way have a deep historical reverence for the truth. It’s an important concept, I think, in your affairs and ours. Of course, in times of bitter division, as we know in 1870, in the shadow of the Civil War, the concept of the truth was contested. That’s what happened, you know? One of the themes of the piece, I suppose, is Kidd having to confront that and standing up for the truth as he sees it. I think that is true of journalism today. It’s a noble trade, the trade of journalism. It’s vital to a democracy. It’s one of the ways we exchange opinions and express our disagreements. And ideas contend with each other in the public square of our newspapers and television screens. That’s called democracy. There has to be an underlying share idea of the truth. In times of strife, that gets tested. I think it was tested then, and I think it’s being tested right now in my country and in yours—and in many other countries, too, by the way.

He was asked about the spiritual journey he imagined for Captain Kidd, who felt the things that had happened to him were a judgment for things he had done during the Civil War.

I think that Kidd is a character who’s haunted. You learn as the piece goes along that he’s been reading the news for five years since the end of the war. You learn that fairly early on. You learn that he’s got a wife in San Antonio, and you’re not quite sure what the story is with that. His whole demeanor is haunted. He’s haunted and frozen and unable to connect with anybody. He’s just like the Ancient Mariner. He wanders from place to place, doing the best he can with the power of storytelling. But his soul is broken. That’s my reading of it. Slowly, through the burden, the responsibility of this little girl and going on this dangerous journey, slowly but surely, he’s healed; he comes to realize that he has to face his past. The full story is only revealed at the end when you realize that he feels that his wife’s death, the cause of his grief, was a judgment on everything that he had seen and done. I think that’s quite a common feeling people have as they get toward the end of their lives. You reflect upon what happened, and how things went, and you repent of the mistakes you made, and you hope to get to a better place. We all hope for redemption, don’t we? And that’s what Kidd hopes for. In a movie you can give it, maybe in a way in the real life you can’t. You can have a character find the grace that they’re desperately looking for. That’s what you find when he goes back for the little girl at the end.

Continuing on the idea of grief, and including the corporate grief of Texas under Reconstruction, how does one portray the idea of coming out of grief, especially looking at the world today?

The answer is that is what I was thinking about a lot before I started to make this film. You think about your own children, you think about the world they’re coming into as young adults, and you reflect on the divisions and bitterness in the world, and you want it to be better for them. But it’s going to be their journey, of course, to get there. They have to take their own journey, don’t they, to get to their destiny.

When I read this story, of the lonely newsreader, he meets this lost little girl, the kidnapped girl, and takes her back to her surviving family, it spoke to me like the journey itself was a journey out of division into healing, out of grief into grace, if I can use that expression, where you get the opportunity to have a new start, to turn the page, to grow again, to deal with the pain and the grief and look at it in the face and move on. I loved that about the story because I think Kidd feels very much as we are where we are today, all of us. Whatever we think about the world, that doesn’t matter. I think 99.9% of it, in your great country, mine, everywhere, wants better days to come—particularly in this pandemic. So, this film, with these two characters in the middle of Texas 150 years ago seems to me to take us on that journey.

News of the World is available on PVOD now.

Everything is Spiritual: 1on1 with Pete Docter and Dana Murray (SOUL)

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When you write about the afterlife, you’re definitely wading into dangerous waters.

Produced by Dana Murray and directed by Pete Docter, Soul tells the story of Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a middle-school band teacher who yearns for something more. Passionate about jazz music, Gardner wants to be on stage yet he feels stuck. After his sudden death, Joe meets 22 (Tina Fey), a soul who has yet to begin her life on Earth and seems unable to find her ‘spark’. Together, the two fight to help Joe reclaim his live while also helping 22 to discover why life is worth living in the first place. 

Known for writing some of Pixar’s ‘headiest’ work (pun intended) such as Inside Out, Up and Monsters Inc., Pete Docter is certainly no stranger to the obscure. However, even for Docter, Soul’s interest in the afterlife provides one of the more complex conceptions ever dealt with by the company.

As they began to develop their visual representation of the Great Beyond, Docter understandably found the task to be an incredible challenge for himself and his team.

 “The afterlife was especially like danger, danger, danger,” he remembers. “There’s a lot of pitfalls and things that we could have stuck our foot in by accident… I think one of the first things we did was talk to a lot of different religious consultants like pastors, theologians, rabbis [and] shaman. We tried to understand from every angle how people across time have understood the soul. What does it look like? Are there any clues to us in terms of the design that we can use? We actually ended up staying away from the afterlife. There’s of course, the sort of cliché of going towards the bright light that we did.” 

“There was an early script where I actually wrote in the voice of God. I was thinking [that] if we’re talking about ‘Why am I here? Why am I not getting what I want?’, then it’s sort of a Job-like story. And I thought it’d be fun to have never referred to him or her. In fact, I thought it was horribly clever that every line would be spoken by someone else. So, it would be a woman, a kid, all ethnicities and races. But that was one of the first things to cut and probably good because the characters—like us—have to figure things out themselves, as opposed to be told.”

Of course, any conversation surrounding the afterlife leads to discussions about the nature of faith. Despite its exploration of the hereafter, Docter feels that Soul’s system of belief echoes more of the classic philosophers than it does theologians.

“I feel like obviously, beyond Christianity, I think a major goal of any faith is to try to bring sense for people in their lives,” contends Docter. “The idea of how do I know what I’m supposed to do. Am I making the right decisions? All those things are complicated and it’s super helpful to have help along the way. I actually feel like it’s maybe more of a philosophical film than a theological one. Essentialism, the idea that I was born to do this, [is] straight out of Aristotle or Plato. Then, we get to counter with the humor of 22 is for nihilism, the sort of ultimate meaninglessness of it all.

“I think where we come to in the end is existentialism, like a Soren Kierkegaard kind of thing of, ‘Hey, it’s not just meant to be localized over here and then the rest of my life happens.’ All of life is spiritual. Everything you do contributes to who you are as a person and so, the overall meaning of your life. I still struggle with that daily but I feel like having the chance to work on this film was a great reminder daily of how I can be bringing my full self into everything, being more present and… really trying to be. It’s tough because you have to balance that with [the fact that] the movie has to get done. I can’t stand here and talk about philosophy all day but it has made me more grateful and appreciative and desiring [to] practice that. Because… it’s not a personality attribute. It’s not something you’re given. You have to exercise every day, at least in my case.”

“I think, to me, faith and fate are really interconnected,” adds producer Dana Murray. “This year, especially, you just have to [realize that] I’m not in charge. I have to go and trust that my faith and fate that it’ll all work out. That’s threaded into the film, but also just timely of when it’s coming out, trusting in that.” 

One of the most unique aspects of the film is its presentment of Black culture. As the first depiction of an African-American lead character within Pixar’s canon, Joe Gardner was an exciting prospect for the company. Understanding that any portrayal of race deserved to be handled with the utmost care and sensitivity, Murray ensured that as many voices as possible were consulted so that Soul could visually provide the most authentic representation possible.

“We took it on as a huge responsibility to portray Joe and the rest of the cast [as] truthful and authentic,” she explains. “I think that 22 walking in Joe’s shoes is really special because we got to go into these Black spaces, like the barbershop and the tailor shop with Joe’s mom. I think that Joe is going through something that’s very universal and something that I think all of us, if we haven’t felt in our life, probably will at some point. I think he’s a character that so many people can connect to. Culturally, we wanted to make the black community proud. So, we brought on a lot of help. We had a ton of consultants and a culture trust and [then, there’s] our co-director and writer Kemp Power. All these voices were such a huge part in making these characters who they were. It was very important to us to portray them in a truthful way.”

“In fact, we, I think our initial concern was about religion,” Docter responds. “The longer term and the bigger concern became more about race and representing culture because there are a lot of pitfalls and things that we didn’t even know [that] we didn’t know. So, [there was] long learning there [for us[.”

Having said this, Docter recognizes that it was never the original intent for Soul to specifically depict Black culture in its story-telling. Even so, once that came into view, he also believes that it created incredible opportunities for learning that made the film’s development a richer experience for everyone involved.

“We didn’t set out to make the first African-American character,” Docter recalls. “It was really out of the decision that this guy who kind of reflects the artist’s journey should be a jazz musician and one of our consultants said, ‘Oh, jazz, you could more accurately call black improvisational music. It grew out of the African-American culture.‘ And we thought, it’s only right then to have our main character reflect that. As soon as we made that decision, I don’t think I knew how little I didn’t know. There was a lot that we needed help with. And [co-director] Kemp Powers, as Dana mentioned, was formative in bringing a lot of those details. But we also had extensive cultural consultants as well. People talking just about the black experience. People talking about music. We got to meet and work with Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones, [who are] these living legends, which was just fascinating and mind blowing. It was a huge responsibility that we knew that we wanted to portray this life of this man as accurately as we could, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because the movie gets better when you talk about those things in an accurate, specific way. Strangely, I think it becomes more universal the more specific it is. So, we had a lot of the benefit of a lot of really great people that helped us. It was a great learning experience.” 

Speaking of 2020, because the film features characters in ‘holding patterns’ with their lives, there’s also an aspect of Soul that connects with the current pandemic. Although the film went into production years ago, Docter also feels like the story resonates in new ways in light of today’s circumstances.

“I think it sort of turned out that way,” reflects Docter. “We started at five years ago and the world was a different place, but a lot of the things that we were investigating, like basically why are we waking up in the morning? What are we doing with our time? Those, I think, are things that we’re maybe asking ourselves more now than we do in normal times. Maybe that’s not always good. I think there’s some value to asking those questions. That was our hope really from the get-go… It’s not like we ever hoped to answer the question of what is life all about. That’s ridiculous to think that you could but, at the very least, we hoped that we would incite some good conversations and make people say, ‘Okay, we got to go get some coffee and talk about this’. (Or, now sit on zoom, I guess, and talk about it.)”

In addition, another fascinating theme embedded within the film is it’s conversation surrounding what it means to know one’s calling. Unlike other Disney projects that encourage you to ‘follow your dreams’, Soul takes a more grounded approach to the idea. In fact, Docter’s script even suggests that over-emphasizing the importance of our ‘dreams’ may be limiting to our ‘spark’.

“That was one of the great joys that came with [it],” he beams. “I think there is, oftentimes, a narrative [of] ‘find what you love, do it, and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ That’ll lead to happiness and fulfillment. Well, no, it doesn’t work like that. There are times of intense joy and fulfillment, but it’s not the answer to everything. So, it was really exciting as a storyteller because I think everybody believes so strongly in that narrative that, when we don’t give Joe the happiness and fulfillment that he was expecting, it’s kind of shocking to people. I don’t know that we really ever pulled this off but the hope was that the word ‘spark’ would be reversed in a way. At the beginning, Joe assumes, like hopefully the audience, that [his] spark is the thing you love and your passion, like music or a science, or whatever those specific things [are]. But, in the end, spark really means life. You know that your job is not to just do this one thing, but your job is to live in all the complexity and nuance that that entails. So, I hope that came across, but that was the intention.”

Since 1995’s release of Toy Story, Pixar has continuously offered though-provoking projects that excite the minds of people the world over. Asked what it is that he finds so stirring about these films, Docter highlights the unexpected impact that these stories have on the audience.

“I guess it’s just wanting to reflect reality or my experience of it,” Docter explains. “When I started in animation, it was all about the joy that I got out of it. Now, I realize that one of the great joys of it is the ability for Dana and I and the rest of our crew to connect with people we will never meet in parts of the world that we will never go. Through the work that we do, we have this amazing ability to connect people. I think animation has a wonderful ability (and I guess, filmmaking and storytelling in general) to allow the viewers to step into somebody else’s shoes and experience life from a perspective that they have not been in themselves. So, those are the most important things for me is just representing the world as it sort of seems to me and that I’m struggling with in hopes that you will see yourself in there as well.”

“Sometimes we don’t even know [the impact it will have],” echoes Murray. “I remember, after Inside Out, getting letters and stories from people like psychologists who are working with traumatized children. The only way these children could express themselves is by using the dolls or stuffies, like the characters of all the emotions. That was kind of like crazy to hear because you just you don’t know how these are going to impact people until afterwards. While you’re making them, you’re so focused and busy doing it that it’s not until later sometimes that you can take it in.” 

Despite the film’s difficult topics such as the afterlife, Murray explains that she has been thrilled with the types of questions that Soul inspires within her own young children.

“We both have kids. Mine are younger, Pete’s are kind of young adults now,” Murray points out. “So, my kids just saw the film and I think the conversations that I hope are happening are happening. I think the things that they really connect [with] are discovering this great before, because it’s really interesting. We all like to kind of think about where we came from and where we got our personalities. So, that’s been a huge topic. Then, also the things like their spark. They’re trying to figure out what are the things that I really love doing? What am I interested in? They’ve [also] really leaned into the music, which is really cool, [especially] the jazz music and the Trent and Atticus score. But they’re not asking about the midlife crisis. So, we’re definitely having the conversations that I hoped we would be having. I think kids are really smart and they ask big questions so there’s a lot in there for them.” 

“It’s something that we talked about. Dana and I worried about it but I think that, in a way, doing Inside Out was a kind of boot camp for this movie,” Docter continues. “That was pretty abstract. What we found was, if you make it visual, then everybody gets it. If it’s about words, you’re going to miss some people. But visually and through action, ‘this character wants this but this is in the way’. Now, I can understand everything. That’s takes a long time to do but we have an amazing group of very talented people who assisted us and actually just did all the work. They didn’t assist us or anything. They did the work.” 

With his ability to make even the murkiest of concepts accessible to children and adults, Docter argues that he never begins with any particular audience in mind when he starts to write.

“Kurt Vonnegut said, ‘Pick somebody and write for them.’ That’s not been my experience,” he states. “I guess, at the beginning, I was writing more just for myself. ‘Ooh, what’s fun? What do I want to play with?’ Then, along the way, Dana will say something about her kids [and I decide that] we need to write for her kids. So, it’s almost like building up layers as we go. I want something just selfishly that is going to excite me and connect with other folks that I talk with. But then I’m also knowledgeable that my kids and Dana’s kids and all these different people are going to see it. So, it’s not really a simple answer I guess, but it is almost like switching the channel a couple of times as we go, sometimes even daily, to make sure we’ve got something there for everybody.”

Soul is currently streaming on Disney+.

To hear our conversation with writer/director Pete Docter and producer Dana Murray, click here.

John Dower Pursues the Mystery of D.B. Cooper

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This undated artist’ sketch shows the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper from recollections of the passengers and crew of a Northwest Airlines jet he hijacked between Portland and Seattle on Thanksgiving eve in 1971.

When Kenny Daglish made the transition from Celtic in Scotland to Liverpool in the English Premier League, John Dower’s Scottish father found his European football allegiance transitioning, too. Over the years, the Dower family avidly followed their team, attending the miracle win in Istanbul in 2005 and now enjoying the latest spoils of success under manager Jurgen Klopp, who has led them to Champions League and Premier League titles. But don’t confuse John Dower’s fandom with partiality as the unblinking eyes of a documentarian.

“I’d just love to tell the story of the man who I’m deeply in love with, Jurgen Klopp, who has done extraordinary things in a short amount of time,” he shared via ZOOM from England. “But directors are coldhearted assassins, and I put aside my love when it comes to filming. It would be great to hang out with the guys, but I’m not signing on for a film where the director doesn’t have the final cut. Besides, the best sports dramas are the ones where you don’t really see the sports. The film can’t replicate the drama of the game.”

Dower has done sports stories before, like his documentary Thrilla in Manila, but his latest looks into the legend surrounding D.B. Cooper. While other films had been made trying to investigate what really happened on November 24, 1971, Dower’s look at the hijacker who jumped out of a Boeing 727 with two hundred thousand dollars in ransom money investigates those who believe they know what really happened – because they know the real Cooper.

“We’re not trying to solve it,” explains Dower. “The FBI have tried unsuccessfully for fifty years so how is a guy from South London? If you’re at a pub telling the story, ‘It’s stormy night, it’s Thanksgiving Eve, a guy in a suit and sunglasses gets on a plane.’ It’s not dramatic enough because it’s one of the most passive hijackings ever!”

“He’s so polite, he might as well have been English.”

Dower knows that it would have been easy to mock or satirize the different individuals he interviewed for the film, each who is sure they knew the real D.B. Cooper. Of course they can’t all be right, but their passion for what they believe is captured, fairly, on camera by a documentarian who is more than willing to tell their stories.

“I respect their belief in their stories,” says the director. “Now, I’m not equating myself to him, but when [Steven] Spielberg was making Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he said, ‘I don’t necessarily believe in UFOS but I believe in the people who believe in them. They’re not just the village crazies.’ They’re pouring their lives into why they believe this. As we got deeper, other suspects popped up, like a guy in Long Island who wanted several thousand dollars to tell us it was the guy from Catch Me If You Can. Once you ask for money, you’re instantly dismissed because you’re in it for something else.”

Nancy Abraham told Dower that as people walk up and down passing other people on the street, cheek to jowl, that each has story after story inside of them. It’s those stories that Dower has sought in pursuit of the Mystery of D.B. Cooper, but he’s clear that it’s still a mystery, and it’s not up to him to solve it.

“You’re kind of relieved they lost the cigarette butts,” Dower admits, referring to the lack of DNA evidence. “With the Internet, there’s not a lot of mystery left in the world. That’s the beauty, the purity of Cooper’s uncertain story. You can be part of completing the story.”

Dower believes that any belief system, any perceived story of an individual, has an element of craziness because it’s their story and not rooted in things that the rest of us would call realistic. But he says that the people he interviewed have “D.B. Cooper shaped holes” in their lives, and that as he listened to them, they convinced him. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good story,” he admits.

Jaws was the first story that caught his attention like that, at twelve or thirteen, in the theater with his father. It was the first time Dower realized that a movie was made with care and thought, and one scene captured his attention in a way that he can still recount it forty-five years later.

“It’s that moment when they open the town back up and they’re all on the beach. They’re apprehensive, and they do a crash zoom in on Roy Schneider’s face. But then everyone comes rushing out of the water, and one kid is bloody eaten! Then they go crashing into the mother’s face. She’s not the woman you’d expect, not a soccer mom, but someone you could clearly tell was a slightly older woman, a bit spinsterly. This boy was her world and there was no one else. That’s when I realized casting was important, and the storytelling was amazing.”

Dower was drawn into the world of documentaries by films like Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, the story of the trial and conviction of Randall Dale Adams for the murder of police officer Robert Wood, and Nick Brunfield’s Tracking Down Maggie, an access-free documentary that tried and failed to gain access to then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The action turned from watching documentaries to making them at the turn of the century, just as he came across Chris Smith’s American Movie, a documentary about the struggle of Mark Borchadt to get his horror film made.”I still watch it once a year, it’s so wonderful. They make a film about a guy in Wisconsin who is trying to make a horror film with his mate. It’s horrible and he just won’t give up. Documentaries are allowed to have moments that are funny, moments of levity.”

That’s why the strangeness of the various stories about D.B. Cooper’s potential next chapter appeal to him. They are a little off the wall, not as serious in sensibility to viewers, but no less true to the people who believe them. Still, don’t assume that this is a farce, because Dower knows there’s more at stake here, even if it’s hidden behind a wink and a grin. The film is asking questions about ideals that everyone takes for granted.

“It’s about belief, about memory, the stories we tell ourselves,” admits the director. “We all do it. Why are these people any different? I’d so love if one of them was the accurate story behind D.B. Cooper.”
It’s all still a mystery though – and that’s what makes it a story worth Dower telling. Even today, discussing money that washed ashore, mentioned briefly in the movie but not fully unpacked, reveals another mystery. “The fact that the money washed ashore, that element gives it another gear because the FBI showed the money couldn’t have been there that long. They did tests on the elastic bands, and there’s no way it could be there in that status. The money had only been there a year, not nine. Where did that money come from?”

“It’s almost as bonkers as him jumping out of the plane.”

Maybe that will be Dower’s next investigation, presenting the stories as he finds them. But like a good story, the audience is left to fill in the blanks and consider their own interpretations, based on their own beliefs, their own memories, and what they tell themselves.

The Mystery of D.B. Cooper premieres on November 26 on HBO.

The Ugly, Beautiful Gift of Cancer: 1on1 with Dauzat St. Marie

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In a moment, one phone call can change everything.

That’s exactly what happened to singer Heather St. Marie and her husband Matt Dauzat of pop duo Dauzat St. Marie. While on the biggest tour of their career, St. Marie’s world changed forever when she found out that she had breast cancer, immediately turning their lives upside down. Terrified and traumatized by the results, the two had to put their tour—and their lives—on pause to begin an entirely new battle. 

Amazingly, after a lengthy battle, St. Marie is thrilled to be cancer-free and the duo have found a new purpose with the ‘In It Together’ campaign, a drive to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Filled with a renewed sense of hope, the two are excited about the opportunity to help women who are facing the same struggle that they experienced themselves. As a survivor herself, St. Marie knows that she will never forget the day that things began to change.

“It was crazy because we were at the highest of the high,” St. Marie starts. “We were out on tour with Pat Benatar, who’s an icon for any female singer, and Rick Springfield. It was just amazing and we were on top of the world. Then, that happens. I felt that lump. I think that when you’re on tour, you learn how to kind of compartmentalize. I just kept telling myself that it’s going to be nothing… But, there’s always that little voice saying, ‘what if it’s not?’ So, I wasn’t going to sit on it. I called my doctor the very next morning and I said… I need to get in and see you. I wasn’t sure what to think but it escalated very quickly and within 48 hours, it’s like, yes, you have cancer.” 

“Immediately, you go from the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. I had to hear this news on the phone because my doctor went out of the country while we were waiting on lab results… and wasn’t back for a month. That’s a long time to wait to not know. Everything flashes before your eyes, and I just kept thinking, I’m not ready to go… You learn how to just focus on what’s right in front of you and just one foot in front of the other. I think that’s kind of what we just did. It was like, deep breath and this is the new battle. It’s not touring anymore. We’re just going to jump… from tour battle to cancer battle. We just switched gears and everything in our whole lives changed at that point.” 

Though St. Marie may have been the one suffering physically, there is no question that both she and Dauzat were ‘in it together’. For him, the experience may have seemed like it was from the outside yet he was very much committed to helping anywhere he could.

“It’s the same fight. On tour, I’m the booking, often the driver, tour manager, and everything else,” he explains. “So, I just kind of fell into the caregiver role and was just there to support, with lots of driving to appointments and just whatever needed doing. It’s not a whole lot of thinking that is involved. You just have to fall into the role and do it. One foot in front of the other. You can’t hardly think too many plays down the road. You kind of have to focus on the battle of the day, which is very unlike what we usually do. We typically have our next few moves kind of thought out and maybe even in play. With the cancer thing, it almost seemed like the doctors would only really want to kind of give you enough for you to be able to digest and accomplish now, not really telling you exactly what’s coming after that. They just kind of seemed to keep us focused on the battle of the day. Tomorrow is another day, which kind of made it easier in a way because there’s a lot of stuff we don’t need to know. Let’s just focus on what we can do today.”

When they finally got the news that she was cancer-free, you might expect that both Dauzat and St. Marie would be ecstatic with joy. However, after a grueling process, St. Marie points out that their initial reaction was quite the opposite.

“It’s funny. You would think that, when the doctor says you’re cancer-free, you should be celebrating,” she reflects. “Instead, it was almost like this small depression kicked in. I think [it was] a day or two later that we really talked about it. For the last year and a half, we’ve had this battle. Every day, you get up and you’re fighting cancer. Then, one day, you wake up and you have no battle and you have no purpose. You’re almost adrift, you know? So, while you should be celebrating because it’s a huge accomplishment to beat cancer, all of a sudden, the fights gone out of you and the rug’s pulled out from under you. I bring this up because that’s why we decided [that] we need a new purpose. So, we’re going to take this song and we’re going to turn it into something to help others who are going to go through what we just gone through. That’s kind of how the whole campaign was born.” 

Despite the heavy emotional burden they were already experiencing, the two still felt that they should open up about their journey to their fans. Not knowing what to expect, they found that they were overwhelmed with the outpouring of support that they received.

“We thought about it for a long time. A lot of people said you probably don’t want to do that. It’s enough work as it is, right?,” St. Marie states. “Giving updates to family members and close friends and now, all of a sudden, you’ve got everyone to kind of give updates to and respond to. But again, we just felt in our hearts that we had to do it. It was humbling to see all the love that came back from all over the world. All these years that Matt and I have toured and worked online promoting and just keeping these connections with people that we don’t really like calling fans. They’re really more like friends. All of that just came back 10x. It was really beautiful! It did absolutely help me on those dark, hard days to keep going, because I knew that there were people that cared. People wanted to see the good outcome and so it gave me a reason to fight.” 

“That’s kind of what we’re here talking about today with the In It Together Campaign,” Dauzat continues. “We decided to use our platform for good and helping others. We decided to share our cancer battle with our fans because we have really strong relationships with [them] and the responsible thing to do was to share what we’re going through in hopes that it might help others. We started getting these messages from women saying, ‘Hey, you know, your story inspired me to go out and get a mammogram that I’ve been putting off for however long!’ Then some others were further reporting that, ‘Hey, your story inspired me to go get a mammogram. And I found out that I have early stage breast cancer.’ So now there’s your light bulb moment, right. Now, if we spread this awareness, we can help save lives because the ugly statistic is one in every eight women with breast cancer. So, if we can get the word out to eight women and they all go get their mammograms, we can save the one early detection.” 
With a new sense of purpose in their hearts, the In It Together Campaign was soon born. Spearheaded by their incredible new single In It Together, the goal of the campaign is not only to raise funds for the American Cancer Society but also to raise awareness of cancer’s widespread effects. As the video began to come together, St. Marie says the experience ended up being far more special than she could have imagined.

“We knew we wanted to help people and we knew that the song had a lot of potential,” she beams. “We hit up some good friends of ours who were a dynamic filmmaking duo, Sebastian Paquet and Allie Roberto and told them what we had in mind and brainstormed and they ran with it. They get us. We all just started hitting people up and we got this beautiful crew of mostly women and then we had the male actor who was in it. Everyone was there for a reason. Everyone had been touched by cancer somehow and it was just beautiful. When we got the video back, I cried. It was even more beautiful than I had in my mind and more impactful. It was just fantastic. So, we said the world needs to see this as much as we can hit and reach. We thought, how can we make the biggest impact?” 

“The first thing that came to mind is the American Cancer Society. They’re over a hundred years old and they’ve actually grown to be global,” she continues. “They’re a great organization. So, we reached out to them just on a whim, they got back immediately and we developed a team there. Some of the people were concerned [that] if I donate to a corporation, is it actually going help these people? When we started talking, you hear their passion. They have one of these guys whose head of communications on the west coast and he’s on the phone sometimes late at night, talking to people who’ve just gotten a cancer diagnosis because there’s a 24-hour hotline. These people care that much. They’re not just sitting in a corporate office, signing papers and doing their little thing. They are actually on the front lines helping so I felt good about the fact that we were going to join forces with them and they care as much as we do. 

Since both the song and the campaign are incredibly personal for the duo, there were several aspects of their story that St. Marie felt would be important to the development of the video as well. 

“For me, mostly, it was not just my story but the story of the caregiver,” she recalls. “Those opening scenes are actually very much how it happened. Unfortunately, I had to find out on the phone. Matt came in the room and when he saw my face, we both almost just crumbled. That hits me every time I see it because the actors portrayed it, you can see it. That’s just how we felt. That was very important because the caregivers sometimes get overlooked. I think that their role is a lot harder even than for the patient, because they’re the ones dealing with the fallout. They’re the ones having to deal with the reality of cooking and cleaning and taking care of them and all these things. It’s exhausting and draining, so that was really important.”

“The second thing that was really important to me was that, when the girls come in and surround me, it’s symbolizes what I felt. I said early on having breast cancer is like joining this club that you never knew existed and you never wanted to be in, but if you have to be in it, it’s beautiful… When you join this cancer club, it’s a beautiful thing that happens because it hits us. Strangers on the street, when I’m out would you say, I’m going to pray for you or just I hope you’re going to be okay. It’s a terrible, ugly, beautiful gift that you’ve been given and I wanted to portray that in the video.” 

Embedded within the lyrics of In It Together is the somewhat surprising suggestion that the highs and the lows are not only intertwined but also necessary. According to Dauzat, this idea stems from their belief that the worst moments of life allow them to experience a deeper sense of appreciation for the better times.

“I think, without great lows, how can we truly appreciate great highs? It’s all about perspective, right?,” Dauzat believes. “So, it’s a necessary thing. We always really appreciate the lows. We appreciate the tough times that we’ve gone through because when we experienced the good times, we really fully can embrace it. We feel that we’ve earned that because we’ve gone through things. I think people need to embrace the lows and understand that, when you’re given lows, there are a lot of great lessons that you can take out of those moments. You can use those to create your new highs or to enhance the new highs that are coming later.” 

“In modern society, we’re living longer and we’re so detached from death as opposed to people in the 1800s, when it was really a part of life, you know?,” echoes St. Marie. “So, I think that might be why people are afraid of challenges because it brings up emotions and the fact that we’re all mortal. No one wants to look at that these days, but, like Matt said, those are the things that make us multi-dimensional. Those are the things that make us complex and more interesting and stronger. If you’ve never been challenged, you’re kind of weak because you don’t know what it’s like to go through that. I feel that, for me, I’ve always been compassionate, but I don’t think I even had the capability of being as compassionate and empathetic as I am now that I’ve gone through this. Even just appreciating the little things, like we would draw to radiation early every morning across Los Angeles, South of Santa Monica. We got to see so many amazing things. There was a butterfly migration, Millions of butterflies are migrating from Mexico up north. I wouldn’t have seen that if I hadn’t been going to my radiology appointment. So, with cancer, it’s like somebody cleaned the window with Windex and, all of a sudden, everything becomes crystal clear. It’s the little things that we can appreciate and you don’t get that unless you’re going through some suffering and some difficult times.“

With the campaign now in full swing, the duo are thrilled to get the word out to as many people as possible. Asked how people can participate, St. Marie declares that there are a number of different ways that the public can donate financially or simply show their support on social media.

Says St. Marie, “You can donate immediately. If you text DSMBand to 20222, that’s going to be a $25 immediate donation that’s also tax deductible. It goes directly to the American Cancer Society. If you guys are fortunate enough that you’ve survived this crazy year and you have a little bit more, you can do more on our site (dsm.band). There will be a way that you can donate with a credit card for extra large donations or, if it’s a company that wants to donate, you can donate with a cheque and all that information is going to be on the landing page.” 

“If you’re looking for a holiday gift that keeps on giving, you can donate with your credit card and put it in honor of somebody or as a tribute to someone who’s passed away from cancer. We’re trying to make this inclusive to everybody. Now, if you guys don’t have any money, if you’re struggling really hard, we get it. All we ask is that you share the hashtag and the post. We’re going to blanket it. We’ve got a whole list of friends, family, celebrities that all on board with us to push this campaign out. So, when you see it, please share it. The hashtag is #inittogether. We’re going to be having it out there so that most people just go watch the video. It’s compelling. Honestly, everyone on this Earth is going to be touched by cancer or has been already… I’m a direct recipient of the good work that American Cancer Society is doing so you can feel good about this, if you get involved in our campaign,” 

For full audio of our conversation with Dauzat St. Marie, click here.

Interview with Ron Howard, director of Hillbilly Elegy

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I recently had an opportunity to join with some other writers in a roundtable interview with Ron Howard, director of Hillbilly Elegy, based on the memoir by J.D. Vance about growing up in Appalachia and the Rust Belt and eventually going to Yale Law School. The film deals mostly with his family life and the trials involved with his mother’s addiction and the role his grandmother had in his life. Here are some of the gleanings from the questions asked.

You’ve made a lot of films that deal with true stories and some documentaries as well. Is there something about those kinds of stories that appeal to you?

I think that maybe as I’ve gotten a little bit older I’ve found that there’s something very powerful in choosing a subject where you can witness something extraordinary—it happened. You present it to an audience not as fiction—not as something you wish could happen, but as something that has occurred. I think that in the relationship between the storyteller and the audience, there’s that understanding that in some ways allows a filmmaker to take even bigger risks with characters when it’s based on reality. I discovered that with the first movie that I took on that was based on real events. That was Apollo 13. I also found one other thing. When audiences know it’s based on a true story they tune in in a slightly different way. It’s kind of a different kind of exchange. It still meant to be exciting, exhilarating, emotional, dramatic, you know, and entertaining in those ways, but you kind of connect to audiences’ hearts and minds in a slightly different way. That appeals to me.

Now as a kid, I always liked history, and the first film I ever made that was a serious film was a documentary about the Depression that I made when I was in high school. So I’ve always been fascinated by true stories. I was just afraid to delve into them and it took all the way to 1995 and Apollo 13 for me to do that. You asked about documentaries, that’s something I’ve only had the nerve to try in the last six years or so, and I really, really enjoy it. I never want to give up scripted films and television shows, because I love working with actors and creating moments, but there’s something about capturing events and recounting them that’s a different kind of creative exercise and a slightly different kind of storytelling, but more alike than I guessed it would be. I’m able to use more of my experience on a documentary than I ever thought I could. I feel very grateful that through Imagine Entertainment and various relationships that I have this opportunity to work in different media.

HILLBILLY ELEGY (2020) Director Ron Howard and Glenn Close on the set of Hillbilly Elegy. Cr. Lacey Terrell/NETFLIX

This is a story about American mythology. What can we tell about ourselves in these characters regardless of where we come from?

Of course, that’s a very personal thing. It deals with different relationships and aspects of J.D.’s life and his family’s experience. There are multiple themes and story values. People are going to take from it what they will and evaluate it through their lens. That’s fair enough. When I read the book, I didn’t believe that there was a movie in the big sociopolitical overview. Which is interesting. I enjoyed reading what J.D. had to say and what he thought. But it was the family that intrigued me. What I felt I could relate to, of course, was some of the cultural specificity and understanding specific reasons behind the economic hardships that family faced and some of the cycles of abuse and addiction and whatnot, which is very powerful. But I really hope that people realize that I was looking not broadly at an entire generation or society. This is J.D. Vance’s family story. To the extent that it does reverberate in people’s lives, I think it goes far beyond Appalachia or the Rust Belt. I think what’s interesting about it is in addition to that cultural specificity, you do have the sort of universal shared sets of experiences. I was enthusiastic about the possibility of offering new perspectives on this kind of shared humanity. I hope it does resonate with people from all corners of the country.

When asked about where this film fits within the thread of his other works, Howard began pointing to the place of family in some of his films.

It’s my first family story that is based on real events. Well, Cinderella Man was arguably a family story as well. I care about characters. I care about dimensional characters. I’m not that interested in bad guys. I’m really interested in how people work together to try to achieve something. When you talk to J.D., he does not think of this as a pull yourself up by the bootstraps type story at all. He thinks of it more as a rescue story. He feels that he simply would not have been able to achieve any of these ambitions, any of these goals, without the important women in his life, especially Mamaw, and his sister Lindsey, and then later Usha, and even his mother Bev, despite all her difficulties, was able to be there for him at a couple of times and allow the right things to happen. I think that really interested me. That this is a story about people who could have difficult lives, packed with regret, some of which they own, some of which they feel the victims of, but at a particular moment, they may have the opportunity to make a huge difference in a life of somebody they care about, and change the course of a family.

HILLBILLY ELEGY: (L to R) Glenn Close (“Mamaw”), Amy Adams (“Bev”). Photo Cr. Lacey Terrell/NETFLIX © 2020

He continued in this theme when asked about the way the women in this story filled in for the absence of a father figure.

J.D. himself leaned very heavily on Papaw. In his mind his grandfather Papaw was a great guy. After he passed he began to recognize that Papaw had made some mistakes and some regrettable decisions along the way. It wasn’t until he was older that he began to realize that it was in fact the women in his life who had made the difference. When I asked him, “When we were beginning to adapt the book, what were the two most dangerous periods in your life? I have to narrow this story down. Where were you the most distressed?” He cited these two times: when he was 13 and 14, and then again when he was at Yale. I was surprised by the Yale answer. I thought it might have something to do with the Marine Corps, which was so important to him. He said “Well, the Marine Corps was important, but almost 100% positive—once you got out of boot camp. It was a great growth experience for me and an opportunity I’m grateful for. But it was Yale where it almost all came tumbling down.” I found that very surprising, but it was at Yale that he began to realize that there was so much he could lose. As a boy he felt bad. He really wasn’t happy. He knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t much see the future. He couldn’t see the forest for the trees. At that time he didn’t even realize he’d been rescued by his very heroic grandmother. Later he fully understood that. In a lot of ways that’s why he wanted to write the book.

What were the hardest parts of trying to adapt this book that has so many different levels to it?

I think you just said it: there were so many different levels. This is one of those things where it’s very trying to decide what you want to leave out. By the same token, what I liked about it, unlike other movies based on real events that I’ve done that were tremendously eventful—whether it was about race car drivers or Nobel Prize winning schizophrenic geniuses or going to the moon—this was about the turning point in our lives that to anybody else on the outside, you might not even notice it happening, but within your family it’s historic. It’s seismic. It’s trying to find those twists and those turns and those turning points in J.D.’s life that were really the ones that we needed to dramatize. So we started looking at these two crisis points. It’s tricky, because it’s nonstop struggle. You don’t get a lot of comfortable time in the movie recognizing the times of peace and harmony, which there were some. But this is about these two periods when he was most in jeopardy—emotionally and to some extent physically, and when his future was most in doubt. It was really filtering through his life not just the book but also all of the interviews and identifying something we could present within the framework of an entertaining, engrossing, suspenseful, emotional movie narrative so that people could sit and watch it and lose themselves in it in a way you hope they will.

Step Up to the Booth: 1on1 with Sue Kramer (BE DOPE. VOTE.)

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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s an election next week.

Even if you haven’t, director Sue Kramer certainly has.

With the 2020 Presidential election finally here, it is time once again to head to the polls and share your dream of what America truly values. However, despite the overwhelming need for people to get out and vote, many people choose not to do so (or worse, feel that their opinion doesn’t matter). Concerned that people may miss such an important opportunity, Kramer developed Be Dope. Vote., an online campaign devoted to encouraging people to use their political voice. Asked where she got the idea for Be Dope. Vote., Kramer begins by pointing out that the word ‘dope’ jumped out at her due to its ties to current social conversations.

“I love the word ‘dope’. I’m a wordsmith and a screenwriter… I always get real connected to certain words. I love certain words and I also love the origins of certain words so I started looking up how ‘cool’ was this word that was used by jazz musicians, [who were] almost predominantly musicians of color. Then, [the word] got taken over by the Woodstock revolution and became gentrified within language. There’s this slang word that… became this word used by all. ‘Dope’ is very similar in that [the word] was used predominantly by people of color. Now, it’s become cool to use the word dope because being dope is also being woke. These are two things that are at the top of the agenda in terms of our lives right now in terms of the global stratosphere. So, I thought… what would be the phraseology to get people to vote? And I came up with Be Dope. Vote. and it just worked.”

With an emphasis on diversity, Kramer’s hope is that the Be Dope. Vote campaign will reach as broad an audience as possible.

“I specifically cast everyone from a nine-year-old to [former West Wing stars] Richard Schiff, who’s in his sixties [and Allison Janney],” she explains. “I cast men, women, children, teenagers, black, white, Asian to really represent the diverse culture that we live in. This video is a representation of faces and ages and gender [within] our global community and of our United States community where the vote is at stake right now. So, I am actually not just going after the youth vote. But the truth is this election has three groups of people that need to get out and vote. One of them, surprisingly is the white male. If 1% more voted democratic, then that could change the entire election automatically, which is shocking. I’m going after the 20 to 30 something because they did not come out in the last election and they need to come out in this election. So, I went after people who they love and also the black vote, which is important. So, Billy Porter, Miss J and ASAP Ferg being in the video and Brittany O’Grady (who’s biracial) and Ryan Destiny, who’s black, all of these faces of beautiful color are needed. Everyone’s needed to really speak to all the people that need to get out and vote.” 

As the election draws nearer, Kramer feels that the sense of urgency to get to the polling booths increases as well. While each federal election seems important, she also believes that people believe that voting in this year’s campaign may be more critical than others in recent years. 

“I think that people are appalled at what our country has become,” Kramer argues. “I think that we’ve never been more divided because of the current president. I do say ‘because of him’, even though I made a very bipartisan video that can be shared by anyone to go out and vote. You should use your voice, whatever it is, you should vote. But I think that people are fired up that they want change. I do think that there’s a lot of people on the president’s side that think possibly that he’s doing an okay job or might be thinking about a bigger picture of different beliefs. But I think that the tide needs to change and I think that people want to be part of this tidal wave… There’s a lot at stake here, so I’m willing to do anything it takes in terms of using my creative power to try to make an impactful, passionate plea to get people to vote.” 

Having been involved in political campaigns before, Kramer was initially unsure about stepping into the ring with this election. However, after reading a discouraging message online, she felt called to speak out about the importance of speaking your mind through the polling station.

“I hope Be Dope. Vote. has legs to last for decades and becomes a campaign that is used for every big election,” Kramer claims. “[I want to] put some type of creative spin on that helps ignite and fire up people to use their voices. The real reason I came up with this is because… after the Brianna Taylor ruling, I saw a tweet by a football player saying [that] he was throwing in the towel and that he wasn’t going to vote purposely. He’d just given up. Then, thousands of people responded saying the same thing: ‘I’m with you. I’m giving up. I’m not voting.’ That day was the day that I said I have to do something. I have to figure this out. I can’t let people throw in the towel, or I can at least do my best to try to convince them otherwise. So, I came up with Be Dope. Vote.” 

Because of the pandemic, Kramer viewed this as an opportunity to take a different approach with her celebrity guests. Rather than gathering together in physical space, Be Dope. Vote. is a refreshingly honest video that lets people be themselves over Zoom.

Says Kramer, “I brought in a friend and a colleague named Michael Rankin who has a show on LinkedIn called You Are Dope [where] he interviews people in this kind of Ed Sullivan radio style and he asks really wonderful questions and people are their authentic selves. Michael has a great new voice. And so that was a new fun factor.” 

“Then, I thought I’ve got to go all in with what we have, which is [that] we’re all talking on Zoom. We’re not doing hair and makeup like last time where my stars came in with agents and managers, hair and makeup and publicists. I [just wanted to] talk. So, we got on Zoom with all these wonderful people and it was just talking. I really pulled out these gems and Michael became the host and it was born. We put it together in basically a little over a week and then released it on Friday the ninth. I just hope that it has impact. That’s my biggest desire.” 

Since the Be Dope. Vote. campaign has launched in early October, Kramer has been overwhelmed by the support that it seems to have garnered from both celebrities and the general public. While success may be difficult to measure, she considers it a victory if anyone who sees their video changes their mind and gets to the polls as a result.

“I can’t quantify success,” Kramer points out. “I don’t have people calling me saying I saw your video and now I’m going to vote. But I can already call it a success by ASAP Ferg being one of the only rappers to come out. Snoop Dogg came out and said, we’ve got to vote. When these rappers come out and speak to their audiences, that makes a difference because they’re the voice of their people. So… if any of those people [in our video] hit their audience and somebody saw the video and thought, ‘Oh, I was thinking about not [voting] but, you know what? I’m going to do it.’ Then, it’s success. No matter who I hit around the country, it’s a success.”

“We’re trying everything that we can to just keep the fire going [and] spread the passion,” she continues. “I’m a filmmaker. I own an agency called Connecting Dots Guru, which is my branding agency seeing through a director’s eye and a screenwriter’s pen. I put my agency on hold for nine days and spent my own money on this to just get people to not throw in the towel. I’m not going after to be clear. I’m not going to change the minds of somebody who’s completely pro-Trump and was voting for Trump. Those people are still going to vote for Trump. I’m trying to change the complacent people who feel as if they’ve been too beaten down by COVID, isolation, Black Lives Matter, or by everything that’s gone on in this country over the past four years. But more importantly, over the past year and specifically after George Floyd, those people feel so beaten down that they just don’t have it in them. And I’m trying to say, come on, you can do this. You can do it.” 

With Be Dope. Vote., Kramer wants everyone to be reminded that each vote matters and allows people to have their say. While the political world is often frustrating, she also believes that that’s no excuse to simply abdicate one’s freedom of speech when the opportunity to express themselves is given.

“Hillary Clinton won the election in terms of votes, but lost the election on the electoral college,” she mourns. “Why? Because enough people didn’t get out and vote. And that is the reason, even though she won it in terms of the popular vote so that everyone was shocked. I, myself was shocked. Everyone I knew was looking at the CNN screens [and asking], how did this just happen? We cannot let that happen again. We cannot have regret that we did not get out. We cannot have a moment where we’re shocked that this happened, because if anyone thinks that they’re going to be shocked if Trump wins, then they better get out there. Get involved, bring a friend with a map and get out and vote because you don’t want to have regrets this time.” 

In addition, she contends that one has little right to complain about an outcome if they don’t participate in the process.

“Miss J says in my video that, ‘If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.’ So, we might not win this,” Kramer acknowledges. “I’m clearly on one side, but if you don’t get out there and try, you cannot complain. Everyone’s complaining and everyone’s tired. Rightfully so but you have to just pick your bootstraps up no matter how tired you are. No matter how much you wanted Bernie or Elizabeth Warren or anyone else to win the nomination, it doesn’t matter because that’s what happened with Hillary Clinton. All the millennials bowed out because they were upset that Bernie didn’t win. If they do that again, this time they will be ruining their entire future in terms of an endless amount of rights and an endless amount of ripples that, in my humble opinion, are catastrophic.“

To follow Be Dope. Vote., click here.

For full audio of our conversation with Sue Kramer, click here.

Bloody Battle for the Self: 1on1 with Brandon Cronenberg (POSSESSOR)

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Brandon Cronenberg is no stranger to a bloody mess.

As the director of Antiviral and son of one of the pioneers of body horror films, Cronenberg is more than comfortable wading through rivers of blood in order to investigate deeper ideas about the human experience. As visceral as it is mesmerizing, Cronenberg’s latest film, Possessor, is another violent exploration of mankind’s psychology that isn’t afraid to attack the senses. 

From a purely sensory perspective, the film’s violence—while graphic—looks great onscreen and a key part of that process is the cocktail used to depict the film’s blood. While Cronenberg isn’t sure what made up the mixture specifically, he appreciates the amazing work done by his visual effects team.

“The blood was spectacular and I can’t tell you too much about it because it was actually a secret recipe,” he beams. “I don’t know what it was. We had this fantastic effects artists, Dan Martin, and he’s responsible for so much of the wonderful practical trickery. He had some contacts who had this incredible formula for this very advanced kind of fake blood, which looks amazing. It actually coagulates like real blood and then washes off anything incredibly easily… I don’t even know if he knows what’s in it because it’s someone’s secret formula.”

More importantly, however, Possessor is yet another complex mindtrip from the young filmmaker that uses sci-fi elements to challenge our ideas about who we are. Written and directed by Cronenberg, Possessor follows Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), a corporate assassin who allows her consciousness downloaded into the minds of others so that can commit murders for the benefit of the company. Tasya has a special gift for her craft. However, with each host that she inhabits, Tasya becomes increasingly broken by her experiences, leading to violent memories and urges that she must suppress in her ‘real’ life. When she accepts a mission to kill the head of a major corporation (Sean Bean), her host Colin (Christopher Abbott) begins to fight back against his unknown mental assailant, causing Tasya to lose control and potentially remain trapped in a prison of his consciousness.

Using Tasya as a key example, Possessor highlights our struggle to know who we are in an age where the nature of identity is increasingly difficult to pin down. Though his characters slip in and out of the bodies of others, Cronenberg believes that, ultimately, our identity cannot be separated from our physical selves.

“I don’t really think there’s a difference between mind and body,” he explains. “I think it’s all the same. I think the mind is really a process of the brain and you can’t really disconnect the two. Even though in the film, it plays it a little bit like that through the science fiction because she’s, in a sense, inhabiting other people’s bodies remotely, that’s more of a metaphorical thing to discuss identity. In reality, I don’t think those can be really separated.”  

Cronenberg goes on to explain that he believes that most people are simply presenting themselves for the benefit of others, rather than honestly depicting their true self.

“Ultimately, I don’t really think we have a true self…,” he points out. “I think it’s all to a certain degree performance. Sometimes we’re performing for other people, sometimes we’re performing for ourselves. So definitely there is an interesting–and I would say common–experience of being in a particular situation or trying to accomplish something and not being able to see yourself in it somehow because it’s at odds with your identity, whether it’s imposter syndrome or it’s just that disconnect between our own self-image and how other people see us.”

One of the more fascinating aspects of Possessor is its willingness to engage the notion of personal responsibility. While characters commit acts of violence, they are certainly not of their own free will but they must still face the consequences. With this in mind, Cronenberg says that he believes the notion of culpability is far more complicated than we like to think.

“One of the things that I keep coming back to what I’m writing… is the process by which we construct a sense of unified self, despite the fact that that doesn’t really exist,” he contends. “I think a human being is a chorus of conflicting impulses and ideas and emotions. Some of those come from our own brains, some of them don’t. There’s a very interesting science being done examining, for instance, human microbiomes and how other microorganisms in our digestive tract or parasites can affect our personality and affect our behaviors. Of course, in a more figurative sense, there’s the question of maybe what you could call psychological infections, how we pick up ideas from other people and claim them for ourselves. That’s especially interesting and kind of terrifying right now, [especially] when you look at what’s happening on social media and, for instance, foreign states meddling in the US elections. We are, in a sense, hackable now because we’re so completely online, but I don’t think we really yet understand what human society is becoming because of that. A lot of people believe that they have certain ideas that they’ve generated themselves, but they’re actually being manipulated in fairly nuanced ways online.” 

As a result of his research, Cronenberg also discovered some fascinating studies into brain functions and how they drive our actions and responses.

“I did some research into the neuroscience behind brain control,” he continues. “One of the things that I found was a Spanish doctor named Jose Delgado [who] had done some experiments in the United States involving brain implants in animals and human beings. There is a scene in the film where a kind of documentary plays on the television. There’s this bull fight and the bull has been implanted with this receiver. That’s actually footage from one of his experiments… The spot in the brain that he put this wire was stimulating different areas of the brain electrically and, because of where that wire was, the subject was acting in response to the stimulation but then claiming those actions for themselves. So, for instance, every time the experimenter pressed the button, the subject would get up from his chair, walk in a circle and then sit back down again. But every time he did that, he would insist that he had done it of his own free will. He [thought that] he was just looking for shoes or that he had heard a noise somewhere and was going to investigate. So, I think there’s a very interesting process of the brain by which we, in a sense, determine after the fact whether an idea or an action was generated internally. I think has fascinating scientific and philosophical implications.“

Given Possessor’s narrative complexity, Cronenberg enjoys the fact that there are any number of readings to the film’s meaning. One such alternative view is that the film’s subtext is that Tasya’s violent nature suggests an inner tension as she attempts to balance her career and family. To Cronenberg, this aspect of her character speaks primarily about the disconnect between her more animal impulses and the expectations of her domestic life.

“To me, the career aspect of it is maybe a part of a broader struggle that we have again with how internally we see ourselves, but also, on a certain level, we’re all apes living these animal lives but in this strange civilization that we’ve built for ourselves. So, I think who we are internally is very chaotic and animal and then who we are as a result of civilized society is somehow very restrained. I feel like there’s often a disconnect between what’s expected of us and this kind of inner turmoil that we deal with. That’s certainly true in the professional sense… I wanted to comment to some degree on how all of us are dealing with that specific. In Tasya’s case, [it’s] a very pronounced disconnect because she has this sense of violence in her and these impulses which are still at odds with what’s expected of her in this civilized domestic setting. In many ways, that is more horrific to her than the violence.” 

Violence is key within Possessor, not only because of its graphic visuals but also because it becomes an external representation of the inner turmoil that Tasya’s character experiences throughout the film. 

“Her relationship with violence is very much at the heart of her character so the violence in the film is really very much narrative. I felt it had to be a visceral,” notes Cronenberg. “People had to feel on a sort of almost bodily level what she was experiencing emotionally and it also tracks what’s her psychology. So, sometimes you’re seeing it from a more observational perspective and then looking back on it and it’s this more sort of stylized, almost fetishistic thing, for her. I don’t want to go too far in analyzing the characters because… the narrative arc [was] designed to leave a little space for various interpretations from the audience… but certainly I was thinking of her in some sense like one of those drone pilots who experiences PTSD because of the violence that they’re engaged in even though they’re engaged in it remotely. Yet at the same time, there’s something in her character that’s very much drawn to it. I think it’s a bit of a question whether that’s something inherent to her or whether that’s something that’s being planted in her character by her mentor figure and by the corporation.” 

Possessor is now playing in theatres.

The Secret of Their Success: 1on1 with Sean Durkin (THE NEST)

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When does a house cease being a home?

This question lies at the heart of The Nest, a powerful and unflinching look at the emotional termites that can eat away at the foundations of a marriage. Written and directed by Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene), The Nest follows Rory (Jude Law) and Allison (Carrie Coon), married parents who enjoy a solid relationship built on intimacy and trust. Set in 1986, Rory and Allison live in a New York suburb and are the picture of middle-class success. However, when Rory receives an invitation to take a higher profile (and potentially higher paying) job back to his hometown of London, he convinces Allison that this will be best for them all. Renting an extravagant English country manor, everything starts out well for the family. However, as time marches on and debt piles up, Rory and Allison unspoken frustrations begin to bubble to the surface that threaten their entire relationship.

As he reflects on where his vision for the film came from, Durkin says that the idea stemmed from his own childhood move and his desire to explore the effect that that can have on a family.

“When I was a kid, I moved from England to New York,” he begins. “It was early nineties and it was a very, very stark change in atmosphere. The two places are so different, much more so than now. Now, it’s very seamless. So, I think I was reflecting on that time and that very sudden life change and wanted to explore a family making that move in that time. As I started to dig more into it, I decided to focus more on the marriage and explore a marriage that was really two characters, like a 50/50 movie. It’s not some big tragedy. It’s just trying to get into how a family stays together through this move. It really grew out of that.” 

Having experienced the move between from America to Europe himself, Durkin had much to draw on in terms of the vast distinctions between the two worlds. However, when looking at the cultures today, he believes that those lines are to difficult to identify and that the differences between them were far more prominent during the period in which the film is set.

“I don’t quite feel comfortable boiling [the differences] down,” Durkin reveals. “I think, especially with this, they were very different places at that time, and they’re much more similar today. I think that moment in time I chose to set [the film in] was the beginning of that. From that point on, they began to become more and more similar. There are still big differences, but there’s also a lot of similarities.” 

Set in the mid-1980s, The Nest also reveals the tensions between gender roles that existed during that era. Though his characters are both strong and confident, Durkin feels that the ultimate struggle of their motivations stems from the expectations that they have been handed by their respective cultures growing up.

“What I wanted to look at here was you have two people in a relationship that are both handed a set of values,” he asserts. “You get a glimpse of what their family’s values are. You get a glimpse of where they came from. You get a glimpse of the time period. These ideas are given to them by their families and the society they’ve grown up in. They’re chasing these dreams. Within that, there are dynamics that they are both handed. What I wanted us to do is explore those dynamics. For Rory, it was the sense of being a father and being the man of the house and having the most success possible [which] meant giving your family the best life you can and being as successful as you possibly can. For Alison, the values given to her are ‘stand by your man’. Both things sort of go against their truer nature of their characters so the film is about them battling themselves and each other to get to a more truthful place. All the things I just mentioned were really at their height in the mid-80s., It was a really transitional time for those expectations in marriage in general.”

Shot primarily inside the walls of a stunning Victorian manor, the proverbial ‘nest’ almost becomes a character unto itself within the film. Though awesome to behold, the building increasingly becomes less of a home and more of a prison as the characters are slowly swallowed by their surroundings. When searching for the right manor, Durkin and his team wanted to ensure that the environment exhibited the proper balance of daunting and inviting.

“We wanted to find a place that was overwhelmingly large, far beyond the wealthiest traders working in London… and somewhere that then has this atmosphere of [being] too big [and] scary.,” he explains. “[We wanted to] create and use genre elements without going into genre [where it’s] scary to live in this house and what’s haunting it is this ambition is this sense of unrest that’s within her and the family. So, it was really, it was really important to find the right blend and to not show up and it be a castle… It was really beautiful, but certainly more in that normal, trader commuter realm.”

“My production designer James Price, is just an expert at British architecture and understanding where those lines were and when a house was built. This house is 700 years old and the amazing thing about these places is that the people who live there, their families have been in there for 400 or 500 years. So, they actually know all about their ancestors and all of their family stories. It’s a very strange history involved, but you can really feel that history in these places. The atmosphere is thick.” 

With its emphasis on crushing one another for financial gain, The Nest is an exploration of the roots (and flaws) of our personal and professional dreams. Asked what he thinks the true nature of success may be, Durkin states that he believes those values are socially constructed and potentially misleading as well.

“Success is a construct of wherever you come from and what you’re given and what you think,” he argues. “It’s not really real. I think that’s what the film is trying to get at. The funny thing is that, when the movie starts, life in America is completely successful. That’s the joke, right? They’re living in this very cozy home. The kids are settled. What more do you want there? So, it’s about this dream, and I think everyone creates different dreams. Societies create different dreams and [I’m] just looking to ask the question of what really is success? Is it just stopping and eating breakfast with your family?” 

As relationship between Rory and Allison begins to freefall, Durkin reveals the pain that can be caused when our selfish ambitions take hold of our souls. Nevertheless, he also wants the film to offer a sense of hope to his audience by showcasing the ebs and flows that every marriage must endure.

“Life and success are cyclical, right?,” Durkin considers. “We all go through ups and downs, [be it] professionally, emotionally, family, [or] health. All of those things are in constant cycles and I think the thing that the characters in this movie are guilty of thinking that there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Life isn’t like that. The film itself operates in a cycle of family breakfast to family breakfast in a way, you know? I definitely hope that there’s hope in that. My intention is to make something about a family staying together and how they stay together.”

To hear audio of our conversation with director Sean Durkin, click here.

The Nest is now playing in theatres and is available to rent on VOD.