00:00This is Tim Wastbrook from FesTrackOnStreetTV.
00:29I'm here at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
00:33Humans are illogical.
00:34Yes.
00:34I mean, we do stupid things, but we do very things that sort of defy logic
00:39in pursuit of something that we think is an altruistic goal.
00:42Yes, in extreme situations, you know, we do.
00:46We do irrational things at times because it seems rational in the moment to us.
00:50And I think that's what was so important to me in this is
00:54I really did not want anyone in this family to feel like the villain,
01:00because I don't think there is a villain in this movie.
01:03You know, it's just like they're all in a very difficult situation and honestly trying their best.
01:24I didn't know how bad it was.
01:25You just kept saying he was doing fine.
01:27There were just like moments where she was just like,
01:30I feel like I've kind of come to terms with this part of it now.
01:35And yet in the script, I'm then taking a back step and like almost repeating a beat.
01:41And I had originally been like, oh, let's play that out in the foyer here.
01:46And you were like, but there's so much space.
01:49Why wouldn't I just run away?
01:51Nobody says those kind of things.
01:53It's not going to go into every excruciating detail.
01:57The weight loss, the vomit.
01:58You should have told me.
01:59You knew he was sick.
02:01And you just didn't want to deal with it.
02:03No, you didn't want to deal with it.
02:04He wanted to die in peace without the chemo.
02:07But you forced him into treatment, even though the doctor said it wasn't going to save him.
02:10Well, here's the thing.
02:11For that scene, we were planning to shoot it a little further out.
02:15And this one was like, what if we were in a tighter area so I couldn't escape?
02:21And I'm like, oh, you mean like the hallway four feet that way?
02:25And she's like, yeah.
02:25And I was like, yes, let's read.
02:27Let's move this over here.
02:29And I talked to our DP and we're like, oh, yeah, this works much better.
02:33Let's do that.
02:34As a crew, everybody had to be in a tiny, like claustrophobic, like on top of each other.
02:39But it worked.
02:43Yeah.
02:43So I think these questions always usually lead to really interesting developments and
02:49make the film stronger.
02:50But it didn't matter.
02:51What he wanted and it didn't matter what I wanted, because the only thing that ever matters
02:56is what you want.
03:12I feel like for the film itself, we try we come in this much more from Megan's perspective,
03:17because she is learning about her mother's plans in a way that we, the audience, are.
03:23And so she's a really wonderful vehicle for us to kind of experience that through.
03:29But at the same time, I think it is very important to show Barbara's perspective and make sure that
03:37we, the audience, believe why she's doing these things.
03:40And so that's why there are these moments that we do get glimpses into, you know,
03:46her memories of things, the way she saw, perceived their family and everything.
03:50Because we all have different perceptions of reality.
03:53Our shared memories are all different.
03:56One of my favorite books is The Farway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit.
04:19And it's the closest thing she has to a memoir.
04:23And it's about her mother.
04:25She does not have a good relationship with her mother, and her mother gets dementia.
04:28And then her mother starts treating her very differently.
04:31And it's because she starts forgetting the stories she's told herself about who she is.
04:36And all of a sudden, the relationship like blossoms.
04:40It's a gorgeous book.
04:53This is Megan.
05:04Yeah, this movie reminded me very much of that book.
05:07And it's one of the reasons I connected so much to the script is that like, you know,
05:12I go to therapy.
05:13I talk in therapy a lot about like, this thing and we like create a narrative about what happened.
05:20Like, understand, understand in order to end.
05:24And because all of our lives are stories, right?
05:27And like, we live in these stories in order to move through life and be like,
05:31Whoa, wow.
05:32And I will react to that because of the story that I tell myself over here.
05:36You know, but that also has to do with memory.
05:38Yeah, yeah.
05:39And that's what this keys into a lot.
05:41Yeah, totally.
05:42And we can change art.
05:44We can rewrite.
05:45I mean, every time we retell a story, we write the memory.
05:47We write these memories in order to support the narrative we're telling ourselves about
05:51who we are.
05:52And this movie is like such a great depiction of that, I think.
05:57And Barbara is like, on a journey with her memory.
06:02Oh, my God.
06:17Yeah.
