Archives

Q&A with India Donaldson and Lily Collias

Posted on by

The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Good One.

It’s such a beautiful film. Did you always want to set it in the Hudson Valley?
India Donaldson: I actually wrote it for California. Growing up, I spent most of my time camping and hiking in the Sierras. I live in LA now, but I had been living in New York for 12 years. And before that, I was at college in upstate New York, and I realized that all of my collaborators—everyone that I could lean on to help me make a low budget film—lived in New York. I spent a lot of time in this area and kind of reimagined it for the Hudson Valley, mostly because of the people.

Their closeness adds a layer of betrayal

That area is really welcoming.
ID: Oh yeah. A park ranger at a state park is how we found this woman that let us use her 300-acre property for the majority of our shoot. Everyone was so generous. As we scouted, we tried to share the story of how we were making the film. Various larger productions had been through before us, like Severance. Those productions have more resources than us, so we had to explain, hey, our crew is fifteen people, we are not going to touch anything. The film commission there was also very helpful. 

Lily, how did you prepare to shoot in the elements?
Lily Collias: I knew I would be dealing with an environment that was entirely foreign to me. I never thought about camping growing up. I had tried to mentally prepare myself for the unawareness that I was about to experience. I was going embark on this journey not knowing but pretending to know!

How did you cast Lily? The role of Sam is so important, and her performance is tremendous.
ID: We’d been trying to cast Sam for months. And we were having a really hard time. My younger sister was, at the time, an eighteen-year-old senior in high school. Almost as a joke, I asked her, do you know any actors? Like, help me out here! And that was how I found Lily. I still can’t believe that’s our story.

LC: We grabbed a coffee, and then afterwards, you asked me to do two sides. One of them was the confrontation with my dad towards the end, and the other one was the vegetarian scene, which was really fun.

ID: I’d been sourcing auditions in different ways. You know, through friends of friends, and occasionally sending tapes to Taylor [Williams], our casting director, to ask, what do you think of this person? And I sent her Lily’s tape with zero context, not telling her the story, and she called me immediately. No joke, she was like, we can stop looking. It really blew us both away. She had seen many, many audition tapes. It was so exciting to finally have that feeling, to follow that instinct.

What do you think she saw in those tapes?
ID: Oh, a lot of things. Taylor’s husband is a wonderful actor, and I remember Taylor told me that she showed the tape to Danny, her husband, and he’s in his fifties, and he was like, damn, I’ll never be that good. But I think Lily has an incredible confidence for someone so young. She was so grounded, so present, so subtle. She was the character. It’s almost mysterious when you see a performance that doesn’t feel like a performance. It seemed effortless. And Lily has an incredibly expressive face where you can just hear what she’s thinking.

Yeah, there are so many shots of your face, Lily, holding the frame for like ten seconds. Did you ever overthink it?
LC: No, I had a lot of trust in India throughout the whole process. She’s very intuitive and knew exactly what to say and what needed to be said. It was very much understood. Even reading the script, I was like, okay, there’s not much dialogue for Sam. What do these moments of silence mean to her? And India said, this is about you, and even though you’re not talking, there are still things going on in your mind. That was fun to play around with because I got to mess with the dialogue that’s happening between the men. Sometimes when you’re with someone for an extended period, you tune out. And then there are moments, between a dad and a daughter, where you can tune out for so long and still be listening, like a snap. You hear one thing and you’re like, yeah, I’m back. I’m going to say something.

Sam’s a fairly internal character. How did you prepare to get inside her head?
LC: I had fun doing little activities like writing diary entries. That wasn’t on set. I wasn’t reading or listening to anything. Once I memorized my lines, I was able to have fun with these moments of creating more of her life… before the now. It was a helpful tool for me to get to know her because she’s so internal. I felt like her diary would be so interesting, and it was fun to play around with what that would look like. I didn’t try to take it too seriously. It was just a tool to get to know Sam better.

Sam’s queerness is an interesting element, because it’s not really highlighted but it’s an important part of this story. Can you talk about the choice to leave that in the background?
ID: For me, I love it when I see queerness on screen, and it’s not a huge part of the story, it’s just an aspect of the character’s experience. I think there’s a line in the movie where Danny McCartney’s character references her queerness, telling her father, you’re lucky she likes girls. As if her queerness will protect her from bad experiences with men. I was also interested in how her queerness is yet another area where she and her father’s shared experience don’t overlap. He can be as accepting and warm as he wants to be, because I think he is those things, but to really listen to her and connect with her is a whole other thing. It’s another layer of disconnect. I actually don’t think Lily and I talked about that aspect of the character much at all. I provided these clues in the script for Lily to then take and do what she wanted to do. I wanted to give her the space to find her way into the character, and in her collaboration with James [Le Gros], who plays her father. Lily would ask really good questions throughout the process, mining for information and ideas.

LC: Yeah, I don’t think we did talk about her queerness. It’s just a part of her life. Her parents are accepting, but they do find weird pockets to kind of make conversations that don’t need to be had about their child’s sexual preferences. And we see that in a couple of scenes that demonstrate how Sam is not being seen and heard. I think the aspect of disconnect is important, but her queerness is very subtle and it’s not a big part of the story. It’s just, Sam likes girls. Women are beautiful, no question.

You shot for only twelve days, is that right?
ID: Yes, although James always corrects me and says eleven because we lost a day to thunderstorms. But I did make use of all the time. Whenever we were losing time to weather, I would try to come up with something else to shoot.  On the thunderstorm day, we set up the tents on the porch of our Airbnb and shot some stuff in the interior of those tents, things that weren’t in the script, but that did make it into the movie. I don’t think that anyone can ever do everything according to plan in a film production, regardless of the script or how much time and money you have. So I tried to approach it like, let’s embrace this thing we didn’t plan and shoot some things we didn’t plan—let’s see what this exact time and place in this environment gives us along with all the specificity of that.

When did you shoot that campfire scene? It’s such a quiet but significant scene.
ID: The campfire was the last thing we shot. I learned this recently. One of the producers on the film, Diana Irvine, her father is a career first AD. And when Diana and I were first trying to figure out how much time we needed to make this movie, we asked her dad. He’s retired, but he was so sweet, he made us a schedule, and he put that scene last. I was talking to Eliza Hittman about it, and said she always schedules the hard emotional scenes late. So I asked Diana, did your dad do that on purpose? She was like, of course, he did everything on purpose. I didn’t understand the value of that before, but now I really do. Was that helpful to you, Lily?

LC: It was so helpful, because at that point, Danny and I had known each other, and we felt very comfortable rehearsing. It was so important for me to shoot that later in the process. I think it was really helpful.

ID: And the characters do know each other so well. He’s known her since she was a child, so it was important, as actors, to give them time to get to know each other.

LC: Their closeness adds a layer of betrayal. 

What was at like working with Danny and James?
LC: I feel like Danny kept to himself a lot on set and was just reading and rehearsing a lot. James would kind of talk smack with me all day long and we would just get into it! Which worked really well for our triangle dynamic in the movie too. In a funny way. Danny’s much more, I’d say, theatrically trained.

ID: Danny is an incredible theater actor and that’s the reason he was very loyal to the script. To the point where I need to be like, Danny, it’s okay!

LC: It was nice. It wasn’t every man for themselves.

It’s funny that James often takes these intense roles, because I’ve met him and he’s a super funny guy.
ID: I feel like we got so lucky that James agreed to do the movie, not just with his performance, but he helped us make the movie in every way. He knew exactly what he was signing up for, he knew the challenges that were ahead. He was always aware of what everyone was doing, and he always the first person in front of the camera saying, okay, let’s go! He was always helping us get there.  And with Lily, I observed a natural chemistry with James that I wanted to foster. 

LC: He such a mentor to me. It was incredible. He would talk to me about things I needed to understand about film and and how to go about things in a way that I needed to know, things you don’t get taught in acting school. It’s like how you go to high school and they don’t tell you how to do your taxes. I was like, wow, this is a whole other world, thank you! I needed to know this. The entire time he was such an wonderful role model.

ID: One thing that Lily told me that I loved and, correct me if I’m telling this wrong. In the scene where you confront your dad, you asked James before shooting, what HE would do, right? And he said, well, we’ll talk about this after the shoot.

LC: Yeah.

ID: Then we wrapped the movie.

LC: And then I was sitting down with James after the shoot, and I asked him again, so what would you do in that situation? And he said, I’m never going to judge any of my characters, and I don’t even want to think about that judgment. When he said that, it was so understandable. I have so much respect for that perspective.

Q&A with Rich Peppiatt, Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, and DJ Próvaí

Posted on by

The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Kneecap.

The tone that you set from the very beginning lets the audience know that they’re going to see something that’s serious, but you’re not going to weigh them down with it, and I appreciate that so much about this film.
Rich Peppiatt: Yeah, that was something that was important to us, to make sure it was entertaining. And there’s been so many films about Belfast which can stray sometimes into a turgidly serious tone. And we couldn’t really make a film about Kneecap that was going to be deadly serious, could we? Although maybe we’ll try, someday! “Kneecap: The Drama.” But also, I don’t think it could have been a straight comedy, you know. It is a weird film in the sense that people say it’s like a drama… or a “dramedy,” which is a horrible word… Is it a comedy, is it a black comedy? I think someone even called it a musical. Some people say it’s a documentary (I definitely don’t think it’s a documentary), but, you know, it doesn’t really sit anywhere perfectly.  But surely we can have films that don’t exactly fit into a box, can’t we?

it is one of the oldest languages in Europe, and it was driven nearly to extinction

Can you discuss the songs that were used in the film?
Móglaí Bap: Yeah, so, we don’t just confine ourselves to the Irish language, because that’s just not true to our reality. Like, I mean, English has such a big presence in Ireland. The language, even in the Gaeltacht regions, which is the Irish speaking regions around Ireland, they’ll drop in and out of Irish sometimes because, you know, English is on the TV, it’s on the radio. So, we don’t confine ourselves to one language, which is actually quite helpful when writing songs. Because if I run out of things to rhyme with, I can just get a whole new dictionary, um, to help me out. So, basically we talk about our experiences, just like, you know, youth culture of partying and stuff. I’m sure you’ve seen what I’m talking about in the film. 

And and then obviously talking about the importance of being Irish in territory that is under British occupation still, and the fact that the language is one of the oldest languages in Europe, and it was driven nearly to extinction after 800 years of like brutalization. So it’s just it’s a miracle that the language survived, and we talk about that in our music… basically talk about the language, and partying and stuff, and we try not to be too serious, even though we’re talking about serious subjects. We think it’s important to sprinkle comedy throughout. People are sick of being fucking preached to all the time. So yes, we have a lot of serious things to say, but we do it comically .

I wonder if you could also speak about how you decided what would be in the Irish language, what would be English, what would be captioned, and what wouldn’t?
DJ Provai: Whenever the three of us are speaking, it’s always in Irish. And then whenever someone else who doesn’t speak Irish comes into the conversation, comes into the scene, then that’s when it switches. So I don’t know if people notice that when it’s happening. 

Mo Chara: Yeah, I mean, we wanted the film to be realistic in that way. We didn’t want to do a film in Belfast entirely in Irish that is, you know, about the Irish language. Because I’d say 99 percent of shops or bars you walk into, the people behind the bar won’t speak much Irish, if any Irish at all. So we didn’t want to do the whole film in Irish because it wouldn’t be realistic. So, wherever it was realistic for it to be in Irish, it was in Irish.

MB: And I think there’s a very interesting technique in the film (and I had to reach for this) is that there’s this constant power dynamic with the language. For instance, there’s the scene with me and Fassbender, and I’m speaking Irish to him, but he refuses to speak Irish to me, and that’s him trying to have a jab at me, or to get one over me. And then you’ve got, uh, when Fassbender’s talking to his on-screen wife: He speaks Irish to her, and she refuses to speak Irish to him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in any movie, where language is… kind of weaponized on like such a small level, on a personal level. 

RP: I also think in the interrogation scene, which is one of my favorite scenes, language is such an important part of the dynamic. There’s a three-way power struggle, where [DJ Próvaí] is sort of in the middle of it. Whose side is he going to be? But the language is kind of the battleground, you know, because they’re able to talk to each other and exclude one person from the conversation. In that way, they’re able to weaponize the language. You know, I just remember that scene being something that was really fun to write, because you realize that the minute one person of a threesome can’t speak the language, you can have a lot of comedic fun with who understands what, and when.

Two of the things that resonated with me were the references to the American Civil Rights Movement, and to American hip hop music. Many audiences would probably not have made those connections on their own, to Irish culture.
MC: I don’t think a lot of people know that in 1969, the way it worked for voting in the north (where we’re from), is that you were able to vote based on how much property you owned. So all of the unionist and loyalist Protestant communities owned maybe four or five houses that they would rent out, so they had four or five votes per person, whereas the Catholic communities didn’t have enough money to own their own property… so basically they couldn’t vote. And that was obviously done that on purpose; that was by no means a mistake. So the republican catholic community saw what was happening in America with the black civil rights marches, and took a lot of inspiration from that and then started the civil rights marches in 1969, was it? 

DJP: 1969 in Derry— they were out doing the peaceful civil rights marches and they were beaten off the streets, bloodied, and then someone caught it on camera and it got cast worldwide and people saw what was happening then, and more people around Ireland were like, “right, they’re not giving us a fair shake here.” And they went out in droves and, yeah… Because of that then, we got one person, one vote.

MB: I think American politics has been a big inspiration for Irish politics for a long time. You had Frederick Douglass, of course, who came and did a tour, a lecture tour of Ireland. And also the Black Panthers were a massive inspiration to Ireland. For example, when Bernadette Devlin McAliskey got the key to the city of New York, she went and gave it to the Black Panther Party in ’69.

And also, of course, Angela Davis. She came to Belfast one time to the school that we went to, the Irish Secondary School. Because when the school was started, the first Irish secondary school only started in 1991, and the British government refused to give it any funding. So it was all community funded. By the people, by the parents. And Angela Davis came to visit the school one time. You’ve got the rest of the story…

MC: Yeah, there’s a funny story just of how Angela Davis came to see the school because she had heard about, you know, that it was grassroots and community level, and she came in and it was after the school had closed—  and there was just a couple of kids sitting around and she was like, what’s this? And they had to say, “oh… detention.” So Angela Davis got these three kids out of detention! It was a great story. I mean, I don’t think the principal’s gonna stand up to Angela Davis. So, she freed the three students.

Q&A with Colman Domingo and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin

Posted on by

The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Sing Sing.

Mr. Maclin, I’d love to start with you. Can you tell us how you first learned about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program?
Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin: One night, I was going into the yard, but it got closed down, so everybody got directed to the theater. And while I was in the theater, there was a play going on—One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I believe, with my brother Dino Johnson. I got to witness these brothers doing some creative work that I didn’t expect, because I know them from the yard. I’d seen them in the yard, I’d seen them in the gym, I’d seen them everywhere. But when I see them up on stage, the camaraderie that they had with each other was a beautiful thing to witness and I wanted to be a part of that. I actually had to wait a year because you have to have no infractions, no tier three tickets or anything like that. At the time I was still kind of rough around the edges, so I had to wait a year to get in. And once I did, I cherished the program.

It’s not about what these men have done. It’s about who they are going to become

How did the filmmakers gain your trust to tell this story?
CM: We first met at Brent Buell’s [writer] house over breakfast, and we just talked about everything. How we see the world. We didn’t really talk about the movie, about the play, not really like that. It was just getting to know one another. We had breakfast, we went to dinner, and we walked around my neighborhood together so that they could get a feel for who I was. We had other people that came to us wanting to do something with RTA from the outside, but they felt like they were trying to use us for the story. Or like they were just trying to help some poor prisoners so that they could get a good night’s sleep or something. We didn’t want that. We didn’t get that feeling with Greg Kwedar [director] and Clint Bentley [producer, writer]. We felt that they were genuine and they were true about what they wanted to do. And then when I met Colman, we started over Zoom. Believe it or not, we started rehearsals over Zoom. I seen a dedication and commitment in the brother because while rehearsing, he was in a car driving, and he would pull over in LA to go through lines with me. That type of commitment is commendable and that’s what I was looking for. I trusted him after that.

Mr. Domingo, you’re also an EP on the film. How did you go about getting this made?
Colman Domingo: I got involved with this through Clint and Greg. They had been wrestling with trying to make a film out of meeting with these guys and being involved in the program at Sing Sing. Being teaching artists, they wanted to tell these stories. Everybody had such an incredible story. They wanted to capture the work that this program was doing. And they went through this for six, seven years, and they kept getting stalled because they felt like they were making a bastardized version of what they experienced. Then they reached out to me to say they had an idea. I said, well, what’s this? Do you have a script? They said, no, we don’t have a script yet. I said, okay. Well, what’s this idea? And they said we’re going to send you an article from Esquire Magazine that talked about Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code and getting to know these guys. They also sent me some clips of some of the productions. It was so cool. I really felt like I got to know these guys. They also wanted me to meet Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin—they thought he’d be interesting to talk to, and that he could be a co-star. Then we all got together and started crafting this together. The filmmakers really wanted both me and Clarence—who is also an EP—to help shape this. It wasn’t just like we were artists for hire, but they wanted to know what made sense to both of us as human beings and men. I came in and brought everything I had. They wanted me as an actor, director, writer, and producer. I brought every skill that I had to help shape the room in whatever way we were in. I feel like we vibed off of each other and really helped each other out. Everybody had their own superpowers, you know what I mean? We gave it all to this film.  And I’ll use this word because I think it’s rare to use this word—I’ve done a lot of films, but I think this film was done truly with so much sincerity. That is the word from start to finish. Whatever you’re experiencing in this film, sincere heart went into it from the beginning, from our producers to every artist. When the producers talked to me, they said, hey, we have two ways to do it now that we have you attached. We can go out to studios, since you have relationships with a lot of them. Or, they said, we can do it in a different way. We can keep the budget low and build it in a very community-based model where everyone above and below the line shares in its profits. And we take care of everyone. Everyone’s paid the same rate. Everyone benefits, and everyone, especially my colleagues, absolutely own their stories. I think that’s rare, and it starts with Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley and Monique Walton, and it just trickled down. I wanted to be a part of that.

I read about that, and I thought it was remarkable. I’ve never heard of that in the industry, right? How does that influence the actors on set?
CD: I think it influences every single person—you feel like this is your film. You’re not an actor for hire, or a designer for hire, or a transpo. You’re like, this is my film. Let me take care of it. Let me do exactly what I need to do to get it done. There’s still a breakdown of the days you worked and that basically goes into the pie and the pie is divided in a certain way based on what you delivered to it. Everyone wins. How beautiful.

CM: Being that this is really my first film, I thought that everyone did it this way!

CD: Until I was like, no, it doesn’t usually happen like that!

I read that during your research process, you weren’t interested in what these men that were incarcerated for, but how they were afterwards and how they are now and how the program impacted them.
CD: I’m somebody who does a lot of research for any role that I do. And I thought, okay, I need to meet people where they are. Do I need to know a lot about the prison industrial complex? Do I need to know all of that and have stats in my head and all that? No, I don’t. I didn’t need to know any of that. It’s about this RTA program. I knew the movie we were making was not a prison film, at all. I thought, oh, that’s just the container. It’s about human beings. It’s about the transformational power of art and the effect that it’s had on people. And possibility. Which makes it a bit broader, it’s about all of us instead of this limited view of a prison movie. That’s the movie we were making.

And I wanted to meet people. I’m not somebody who, especially when it comes to real people, I’m not that person who sits down with John “Divine G” and interrogates him and asks him to tell me everything about his childhood and his trauma. I didn’t do any of that. What I did do is have dinner with him, and we had a conversation. We talked and got to know each other. He told me that he went to the High School for Performing Arts and he wanted to be a dancer and DJ. I asked him about the dancing, and he said, yeah, I wanted to do Jazz and Ballet. I wouldn’t have imagined that! And he said, yeah, I’d take the train back and people would want to beat me up anytime I was doing that, so I stopped. But when he talked about dance, he lit up. Knowing that, I wanted to see how I could incorporate it. That’s where that pirouette comes in. When I’m waiting while this knucklehead [Clarence] goes in and steals my role. He goes and takes Hamlet from me! So that’s how the pirouette comes in. Because I downloaded information that I thought could be useful. It’s just getting a bit more of a person’s soul and knowing who he is today. That’s what the film is about—the process these men are in. It’s not about what these men have done. It’s about who they are going to become.

I’d love to hear about the process of combining real people, playing versions of themselves, along with professional actors.
CD:  That was Greg Kwedar’s stroke of genius. He thought, well, there are folks who’ve gone through this program and they’re actors, right? Why shouldn’t they play themselves, a version of themselves? They’re playing aspects of themselves.

CM: My character is a culmination of a lot of the experiences that I’ve witnessed and the behaviors that I’ve seen. And a bit of me as well. But it’s a lot of experiences that I witnessed. I did almost eighteen years in prison, so I saw a lot and I poured all of that into that one character. I think it was Brent that gave them the information. If you really want to know the story, you might want to talk to the men who lived it. And that was when Greg and Clint really got in contact with us and talked to us individually. They must have figured out there was no one that could play the Divine Eye but the Divine Eye!  

CD: You know, I agree! I don’t know an actor that could play the role that you played. The process was pretty organic in that way, too. They had auditions. They auditioned all these guys who went through the RTA program and cast them based on whatever qualities that Greg and Clint were building with this. And they wanted me to help anchor this as an actor who does film as well. Every day was like molding clay. We would always have a private rehearsal, to talk things through the scene. He did it in a very collaborative way. We all have an opinion on what makes sense or doesn’t make sense. Let’s stage it there. There was one scene we agreed to throw out because it didn’t make sense anymore. Then they wanted a scene of us guys just all bonding together. I said, oh, well we were doing that when were doing break dance outside. You got some cardboard? So that’s how that scene came about. We rethought the whole scene. I’m a playwright as well, and I get obsessed about lines, and thinking words can do everything, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it’s something physical. Sometimes you’ve got to capture something organic in the moment and build something that can only last in that moment. Which is what we think the essence of this whole film is—theater. You had to be there that night or you’re going to miss it. That’s why it feels that kinetic and organic because sometimes it happened only on that one take. And that’s the take they used.

From what I understand, you shot in a decommissioned prison. It was a real space. How does that influence the performances?
CD: It makes it even more real. The fact that we shot at a decommissioned prison that was just decommissioned two weeks before we got there helps you feel the reality of that space… the way the air flows or doesn’t flow, how tiny the cells are, just everything about it. You’re like, oh, this is a house of corrections, but this is not a place for human beings. This isn’t human. And it’s perpetuating a system that’s going to keep going. It didn’t feel like a place where you can do the work and be on the path to being better. The moment we were done with a take, I would go outside. I was always outside. I couldn’t be in that environment. The air felt different. I always had to get somebody to take me back and forth to my literal holding cell. I couldn’t tell where I was because it’s designed that way. For  me, it’s intentional. You think about all the things that it does to the psyche. How it’s wearing and tearing on you. How it’s breaking you down instead of helping you do the work to rethink.

CM: For me, there was a lot of apprehension. Especially the scene where I’m in a cell by myself and I reach for the script—I’m actually in a cell that was right downstairs from a cell I actually was in, when I was in this prison. And it was that way for all of us because everybody, every one of us came through this prison. It was a reception prison, downstairs. You get everything you need and then you get sent to whatever prison you’re going to stay at. So all of us had been in this prison before. Sometimes you could catch us in the corner, just talking, because we had to decompress ourselves. We had a psychologist on set as well, in case there were any anxieties that we needed to talk about. I don’t even know who that person was but I may have talked to them! Because I talked to everybody on set. I was interested in the cameraman’s work, I was interested in Ruta’s [Kiskyte] work, the continuity. I’m interested in everything, in front of the camera and behind. But we found more peace just dealing with it on our own and talking to ourselves because there are some things only we understand. That’s how we got each other through it.

Q&A with Kevin Costner, Luke Wilson, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone and Ella Hunt

Posted on by

The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1.

What draws you back to these Western stories? What is it like when you develop a project over the course of many years, as you’ve done here?
Kevin Costner: I think it’s the idea that this world we’re showing is not a part of Disneyland: it was part of our history. It was 200, 300 years of struggle. We can get across the country now in a plane—have a meal, watch a movie, take a nap, secure our seatbelt for landing. This was… it was so different back then. The struggle was so great. And it’s an opportunity to explore the literature of how women had to exist with men who drug them out there often without them wanting to be there.

Why are we out here? Why? It was the big question. It was just the promise of America that if you could go, if you were resourceful enough, if you were tough enough, if you just… if your dream was big enough, that you were going to realize them no matter what. And you could hold on to it: it would be yours. It just never dealt with the other side of the coin, which is where people have been for thousands of years, and the collision, the cataclysmic thing that happened when two cultures met.

It was an unfair fight. They didn’t stand a chance. But for 200 years, they did… Before sheer numbers would overwhelm them. Technology would overwhelm them. They fought for their way of life. And there’s a big difference about their anger versus ours. They weren’t fighting for a flag. They were fighting for their neighbor that slept next to them, for their religion, for their children. We were fighting for something that somebody promised us in Chicago that this was land and we could… you could have a home here.

Let the story be the star

The character of Ellen Harvey feels like one we really haven’t seen before. Jena, can you talk about your approach to her?
Jena Malone: Well, a script is sort of this beautiful DNA for a character, you know, and you’re sort of getting to work and sweating and breathing and building it into existence.

And it’s a really lovely gift of an opportunity, when a script has not only authentic, interesting characters, but also truth and lyricism. Things that lift. We don’t know all of the stories of the women that lived in these times, but we also maybe have inherited some of their trauma, you know? Like there might actually be parts of them still living today inside of us, you know, right here with us in this room, you know?

And so I felt very connected to her, and I wanted to step into and dive into her as deeply as I could, and Kevin allowed that. Because it felt like a… a healing space. You know, and I’ve done a few period pieces, and this felt different to me. It felt like I was accessing a true thing that happened. I don’t mean that my character was a real person; I don’t know, I don’t think she was. But it felt like a really healing experience, for me.

Sam, when we meet your character, it’s a beautiful sequence because you’re on horseback and you’re trying to reason. You’re trying so hard… but you’re coming up against the realities of being a lieutenant.
Sam Worthington: That’s right. I think every character on the front is trying to forge their own way and believe in their own path. I think that’s what this script’s creating, these characters that hope they can find somewhere to settle. Whether they’re in the military, or in the wagon train, or they’re one of the hunters, or one of the indigenous. But I think that even the indigenous to some extent are trying to find a bit of peace themselves.

They don’t know who these strangers are, you know, to use strange words. But it’s, I think, out of that search for hope they’re always going to hit these obstacles. The catalyst for drama is conflict. The great thing about the script that Kevin offered us was that this idea that it kind of elevated, it wasn’t just a fight that we’ve seen a million times before in westerns or in films where it’s straight one on one.

His script does a beautiful job of showing how the arguments can go around each other, like they’re dancers, that’s what these scenes were. It’s kind of interesting to play these scenes in a 2024 context, because there’s an… I wouldn’t say old fashioned, and I don’t mean that with any disrespect, but there is a romantic quality to when you’re doing these scenes. The scene of Kevin going up the hill, that’s essentially a romantic scene between these two killers, and we know what’s coming, and we’re just waiting for that button, but it’s a dance between these two men. And that whole script was built like that. I think that’s what I found very unique about it. There’s a poetry to it that I haven’t seen ever put on screen, and least of all in a Western.

The characters in this film feel seem as though they’re still trying to figure out what, exactly, their responsibilities are. Van Weyden, for instance, is almost a reluctant leader.
Luke Wilson: Yeah, I mean, one of the original things that Kevin told me when he hired me was that he didn’t want it to be a black hat and a white hat western. He didn’t want there to be clean lines between who was good and bad, and that’s something I kept in mind. Another thing Kevin told me at the beginning was that the town of Horizon is a lie… and I just thought that was such a cool idea, that this town that everybody’s banking on doesn’t actually exist.

I mean, it reminded me kind of elements of Chinatown: like, there is no Chinatown for J.J. Gittes. It’s just this kind of idea. In the scene where I get introduced, I’m talking about a young kid who has given a horse too much water, and how he can make the horse sick, doing that. It’s just interesting things like that, that you might take for granted. And also going back to what Sam was talking about, how Kevin would add in small things, like he added in a thing about “he’s just helping my daughter into the back of a wagon.”

It was a scene that wasn’t written, and we just kind of popped it off. Just these little elements that help, you know, of course they help me as an actor, but I also think they help an audience kind of get a sense of who somebody is. And, yeah, in terms of being the captain of the wagon train, I say to Ella’s character that it’s not a job I wanted, and I feel sick and burdened that, you know, I was elected to this job. You know, I didn’t run for it like I’m running for office. I got voted in by the other pioneers to take this job.

Ella Hunt: I think I was really drawn to playing this woman who on the face of it is a little bit unpalatable and difficult to like. When we meet her, she seems like such a product of her upbringing and so at odds with the West. She’s in this incredible yellow gown that Lisa Lovaas, our amazing costume designer, has constructed, that she ends up wearing it for the entirety of basically both movies. But, yeah, I was really drawn to that, although on the face of it she is forthright and protective of her husband even though he doesn’t understand the rules of the wagon train, and even though she’s also a woman who has probably been convinced by her thoroughly naive husband to travel west.

She has no idea about the journey they face. And at the end of the day, she just wants to wash it all off, and she can’t wash off the struggle of this journey. And we have this scene that ends kind of tragically with her bathing, but Kevin and I talked a lot about the beauty of the scene too, and the power of seeing this kind of prolonged moment of her allowing herself the time to try to wash off the place that she’s in. And she can’t, but it’s this beautiful moment until it’s ruined by the reality of the journey west and what the west is for people. That’s the truth of these movies and that’s just like scratching the surface of Juliet’s journey. It’s kind of all downhill from there.

How did you select your Director of Photography? It seems like a real challenge, given the scope of the project, and the scope of what is actually shown on screen.
KC: I’m really glad you asked that question for a couple of reasons. And I want the cast to hear this too, because maybe it’s never been articulated. It took me 106 days to shoot Dances with Wolves. And about 113 for Wyatt Earp. I shot Horizon in 52 days. Arguably as big as both of those movies. And so, how did I pick? I picked a DP who had enough confidence in themselves not to be put off when I said, “you’re not going to be able to wait for the light. We’re going to depend on our story.” So in a way, some of their art was going to be sacrificed. Meaning, even though he could do what the other guys do if he had the time, we just didn’t have that same time. I said, “we’re going to depend on our story, Jimmy.” [J. Michael Muro]. And he was my steadicam guy in Field of Dreams. And he was a steadicam guy in Dances with Wolves.

And I gave him his first DP job in Open Range. So, I needed a person who loved his art, but was willing to protect the story just as much. So he sacrificed something as a DP. But his imagery stood out. It didn’t become so precious. I said, we’re gonna film this and I’m gonna take you to beautiful locations.

Let the story be the star. I will give you as much as I can. But he didn’t have nearly the tools that you’ll see a lot of DPs have. He was out there and he was inventive.

Q&A with Annie Baker, Julianne Nicholson, and Zoe Ziegler

Posted on by

The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Janet Planet.

Annie, I know your work primarily as a playwright, and I was surprised to learn that you’ve been thinking about making movies for a very long time. Why did you decide to set this story on screen and not on stage?
Annie Baker: It’s never like an intellectual decision. For me it’s very instinct-driven. What is a play and what is a movie? I think I could come up with a lot of reasons. For one thing, getting this performance from somebody [Zoe Ziegler] that was ten when we shot this movie… I don’t know if any ten-year-old on the planet— even this genius ten-year-old—could do that every night for eight weeks. But that’s not why it’s not a play. It’s just a movie.

Julianne Nicholson: I think part of it is just visually this particular place that Annie chose, and an understanding of this place. You cannot create that. You have to be in the place.

AB: Absolutely. There’s nothing I like less than nature on stage being made to look realistic. That’s not to say there aren’t ways of representing nature on stage. It can be interesting and kind of abstract, but that’s not the same as pretending something’s real and alive. Anything on stage is wonderfully dead. Julianne’s right. One of the first things I knew was that this movie was about this place. I knew we had to shoot it in the place. Julianne and I are both from that place. That was baked in from the beginning.

every relationship has its own really particular set of rules

Was it challenging to try to get into the mind of an 11-year-old while you were writing?
AB: I don’t think I was trying to get into her mind. Part of the originating impulse was a movie about the intellectual and spiritual development of someone that age over the course of the summer. In some ways, the movie is her brain changing over a summer. Writing for this character was actually one of the things that made me want to do it. I was trying to capture a feeling that I’ve had. I’ve spent a lot of time with kids, taking care of kids, I’ve had a lot of kids in my life, and there’s a feeling I got from them that I felt like I hadn’t seen captured on screen before, especially for girls. I felt like movies about girls were often about trauma or puberty or burgeoning sexuality. Those are all are great topics, but I wanted this to be about a young girl and her mind and her mind in relationship to her mother.

Zoe, it’s such a wonderful performance. I read that you had never acted professionally before. You’re in almost every scene in the film!
Zoe Ziegler: That’s right.

That’s incredible. What made you want to try acting?
ZZ: One of the parents at our school—her daughter’s an actor—they sent it to my mom and said I would be perfect for it.

What would you say was your first impression of acting? Was it fun or scary or interesting?
ZZ: It was really fun. I liked memorizing the lines.

You also had the pleasure of acting beside Julianne Nicholson. Julianne, can you talk about Janet and what intrigued you about her as a character?
JN: The first thing to know is that I’m a really big fan of Annie’s work, so I was interested in anything that she was putting on the page. And I grew up in that area. When we met, I didn’t know that this was the story, or where it was going to take place. It just felt like such a gift to be able to read this thing that was so reminiscent of my childhood and so familiar. I had such a deep connection from the first page, and to dig into that with Annie was such a lucky thing for me.

The connection between Janet and her daughter Lacy is intense. I experienced such conflicting feelings about it while watching the film. I’m curious what you might have thought about their relationship?
JN: I feel like parenting in 2024 is very different than parenting was in 1991 and that’s something that Annie and I talked about a lot. Sometimes, I, Julianne, would have this sort of inclination to be nicer or more physical or warmer. But it was very important to establish this particular relationship. Not my relationship with Zoe, but this world that we were spinning. My mother and father split up when I was seven, and there was about a year where my mom and my younger sister and I were all very close. We got kicked out of the apartment that we were living in because the landlords didn’t want a single mom living in their apartment in 1977. We were a tight little threesome and we lived in this communal house in Newton and we had really interesting experiences. I’m intrigued by the relationship between a single mom and a daughter. I think it’s so interesting and beautiful and of course each one is different, but those lines are blurry. I think it’s really fascinating. And I believe there is some value in not helicopter parenting and not clearing the path for your kid, but letting them sort of try to figure stuff out on their own and fail on their own.

AB: Listening to you talk, I feel like we’re really accepting of the nuances and ambiguities of romantic relationships on screen. Like if you watch a romance, you’re willing to witness a lot of darkness, and redemption, and also sometimes nastiness. I feel like that’s its own genre. But with parent/child movies, there is this need to sort of come down on the idea that they’re either a good parent or they’re a bad parent. And the movie must have an ethical standpoint on the parenting because, like Julianne was saying, parenting is a culture unto itself now. To me, parenting is just a relationship. And there are things about it that are incredibly beautiful, and things that are kind of weird, but every relationship has its own particular set of rules. And that was part of what I wanted to do—to show that this is a relationship like no other and it has its own set of rules. That’s part of what we’re understanding over the course of the movie. There’s no parenting lesson to take away from it.  

I know it was a short shoot and you all didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time, but did you have any time to get know each other prior to the shoot?
JN: We met briefly in New York when we first did the scenes together. We also had a little time in Massachusetts, where I got in touch with Zoe’s lovely mom. When I’m working with younger actors, I like to start a relationship before we show up on set. So we texted a bit and Zoe really likes horses so I sent her a sweatshirt with a horse on it and I brought Uno—which I don’t think you had ever played, Zoe, and we obsessively played Uno together. We fast-tracked our relationship, which felt fun and easy. I also feel like something happens when the camera’s rolling between Janet and Lacy that you can’t predict or prepare for, and you’re really lucky when it happens.

I have a question about the writing process. The three-part structure is clear in the film, but I’m curious about how you flesh out your characters with a lot of little details. That scene of Zoe smearing her hair on the shower wall is so distinctive.
AB: The hair thing was really hard to pull off, by the way! Zoe was a champ. My first AD is like in the shower with her, passing her a clump of hair. First, we tried to have it in her hair, but it kept falling out. Do you remember this, Zoe?

ZZ: Yeah [laughs].

AB: Also, you had an allergic reaction to the St. Ives shampoo. But it had to be St. Ives! Laura Klein, our AD, was throwing clumps of Zoe’s own hair at Zoe. Zoe, you were amazing. It was one of those things, where you’re like, oh, we’ll get this done in five minutes. And we’ll get to spend two hours on this other thing. But then the clump happened. It felt like, we’re not gonna get it, we’re not gonna get it. And then we got it! Sorry, your question…

Do these character flourishes develop over time—are they fleshed out with numerous drafts or are they there from the beginning?
AB: I take a lot of notes before I start writing on every project. And a lot of the notes that I take are imagistic. You could call them character details, or you could just call them images—like when someone tucks their hand on the wall or something. Usually like 90 percent of them don’t even end up in the play or the movie. But in that process, I have gathered thousands of details. They don’t necessarily have a purpose in the story. I usually have a document with a million images and details and ideas, and then as I draft, I can pull from it. I think that’s usually how I work.

Posted in Q&A