00:00This is Tim Wastbrook from FesTrackOnStreetTV.
00:29I'm here at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
00:59I read it and was like, well, this is, I know exactly who these people are.
01:03And I know, I understand this relationship.
01:06And so, and also it's dealing with something like losing your parent
01:10and taking care of a parent who is sick, which is a horrible thing to be doing.
01:17A beautiful gesture, but like something that's very difficult to do.
01:20And so like being in that space and imagining that,
01:23and then imagine that person dying,
01:24and then imagining your mother wanting to bring them back to life.
01:27It's like a very real thing, very grounded thing.
01:30Yeah.
01:30I mean, I'm like, right, this is where it goes.
01:35But because it's grounded in that family drama, that stuff becomes easy.
01:41Okay.
01:41You know, if the beginning part of the movie was not believable,
01:45you'd be like, why am I in this circle?
01:47What the hell?
01:48You're treating me like a child that was getting in the way.
01:50Oh, fine.
01:51It's my fault that you left.
01:52Is that what you're saying?
01:53Fine, then it is my fault.
01:54No, it is your fault!
01:56That you stayed away so long.
01:57You should have come back sooner.
01:59You should have come back when he was coherent enough to recognize you.
02:02I didn't know how bad it was.
02:03You just kept saying he was doing fine.
02:05I mean, the interesting thing is when we were taking this script around
02:08to producers and financiers and everything,
02:12the note we kept getting, because it's a horror film,
02:14I was like, well, you got to get to the horror stuff faster.
02:17So why don't you just speed it up?
02:19And, you know, just trim all the mother-daughter stuff,
02:21and have all that stuff wrap up by the first act.
02:24Just get into the horror!
02:25Horrible note.
02:26I know, and I kept getting that.
02:28I was like, I don't know.
02:29That's the way to go.
02:30And I actually tried a draft that way.
02:35It really did not work.
02:37Because the thing is, if you don't have that slow build at the beginning,
02:43you don't care about the characters.
02:45And if you don't care about the mother and daughter and their relationship,
02:49and you don't ground the film in reality,
02:51the rest of it becomes completely meaningless.
02:54And it's just, you know, it's random.
02:58It's just for shock value.
03:00Nobody says those kind of things!
03:03I'm not going to go into every excruciating detail.
03:05The weight loss, the vomit!
03:07You should have told me!
03:08You knew he was sick!
03:10And you just didn't want to deal with it.
03:11No, you didn't want to deal with it!
03:13He wanted to die in peace without the chemo.
03:15But you forced him into treatment,
03:17even though the doctor said it wasn't going to save him!
03:18But that's the thing with this story.
03:20It's like, if you get into it too quickly, you jump the shark.
03:23And there's nowhere to go, you know?
03:26And so you have to really kind of give these little pieces bit by bit
03:32so that it feels grounded in reality,
03:36so that it really makes an emotional impact
03:38and is scary when you get to that end bit.
03:41And to your earlier point,
03:44it doesn't feel like I'm having to do too much crazy imagining stuff
03:49because every piece of information has been...
03:52Like, every scene, there's a new piece of information
03:55that she has to deal with.
03:56And then the next scene, it's like, wait, now I have to do what?
03:58And then, oh, it's now we have to contend with this.
04:01And so because each scene is so economical in that way,
04:05like, by the time you get to the circle, it's just like,
04:08okay, now we're...
04:11What? It worked?
04:12But it didn't matter what he wanted.
04:14And it didn't matter what I wanted
04:15because the only thing that ever f***ing matters is what you want!
04:23Go! Go!
04:34Well, the beauty of it is I've got the legend Kate Burton to play with.
04:38And because we both come from theatre,
04:40where we're both very much like,
04:42let's just play and see what this is.
04:44We're both very interested, and you were too,
04:46in the scene study of it.
04:48And what is this person doing to this person at this...
04:52What is this line doing to her?
04:54And what is this line doing to her?
04:56And like, how are we going to...
04:57It could be a theatre play.
04:58I mean, no doubt, but okay.
05:00No, that's...
05:00There is an element to it.
05:02Yeah, yeah.
05:03And that's what attracted me to this,
05:04is that like, there's these long oners,
05:08where it's the scene,
05:10these beautiful scenes between a mother and daughter.
05:13And like, I love a two...
05:15I've been wanting to do a two-hander forever.
05:17And to get to do it with Kate Burton, are you kidding me?
05:21Hello.
05:37I feel like so much of that we got to play with
05:40in the rehearsal process,
05:41which was really wonderful,
05:43because that's where we got to kind of tweak the script
05:46to make it fit more,
05:47and see what things were getting bumped on early,
05:50so that we had time to adjust.
05:51But you had rehearsals.
05:52Yes, a lot of independent.
05:54Yeah, you don't get the time,
05:55but it saves time to have those rehearsals,
05:58because then you're not doing it on set,
06:00and trying to be like,
06:01wait, why is this not working?
06:02We love rehearsal.
06:04Love rehearsal.
06:05Not everybody does.
06:06Do you?
06:07Rehearsal is my favorite thing.
06:10It's my favorite thing.
06:11I like...
06:12Because this is...
06:14We're just trying to...
06:16Like, in theatre, we get a month of it,
06:19and we get to see all the different ways
06:21in which something can play.
06:23And I love to see all the different avenues of something,
06:27and then once the camera's rolling,
06:28you're just like, let's fly.
06:31Thank you for coming, Ivan.
06:33I hope you didn't have any trouble finding the place.
06:50This is Megan.
06:53Does it take away from the instinct of it sometimes,
06:55because you've rehearsed it so much,
06:56or does it open it up?
06:58I think for me, it opens it up.
06:59For some people, it doesn't.
07:00For some people, they're not interested.
07:02But I will say, Kate has...
07:05I really learned a lot from Kate on this,
07:08and I mean, of course.
07:10But she had a really hard job.
07:14I have the job of being on the receiving end of all of it.
07:17She had a job of having to justify all of this behavior.
07:23And she asked questions.
07:26She asked a lot of questions in the rehearsal process.
07:29And she was honest.
07:31She was like, I have a question about this.
07:35She was wondering how it sat in her body,
07:37and she was honest about where things were sitting in her body.
07:40And that was a beautiful thing,
07:41because it meant that we could all get behind Barbara's point of view.
07:48I think it's very important in this movie
07:50to get behind Megan's point of view,
07:51as much as it is to get behind Barbara's.
Comments