The Big Picture - The Five Most Important Movies at Sundance | The Big Picture

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

We have returned from Sundance and we have seen the movies. Some of them, at least. Sean and Amanda break down the Sundance movie archetypes and share their favorites from the festival (1:02). Then, they discuss what's been purchased in the market, and how streaming services are trying to improve their track record of Sundance acquisitions. They also explore the festival's biggest disaster (35:25). Finally, Sean is joined by writer-director Eliza Hittman to talk about her terrific third feature, 'Never Rarely Sometimes Always,' which premiered in Park City last week (54:09). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Eliza Hittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to The Big Picture, brought to you by AT&T, reminding you that when it comes to wireless networks, just OK is not OK. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the best movies we've seen at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. I'm Amanda Dobbins. one of the absolute best films I saw at Sundance this year. Her film is an intimate portrait of a young woman and her cousin making a journey from small-town Pennsylvania to New York City to get an abortion. The movie opens in March from Focus Features, so please stick around for that conversation. But first, here's our conversation from Park City about the five different types of Sundance movies you meet. Amanda, we're going to play a little game today.

Usually, we could just get on the show and just read a list of movies and say, I like this or I didn't like it. Stay tuned. Nine months later, you'll get a chance to see it. We're not going to do that. You may recall back in September, we made a little game up to have a little bit more fun with the movie Judy, which is a kind of a dull film, if we're being honest. At this point, yes, we're allowed to say it.

We can say it. And the game we made up is essentially the five biopics you meet in heaven. So we tried to find the five different kinds of stories that are told in the biopic format. I thought that was pretty fun. I think it's useful to play a game like that at Sundance because there are a lot of films at Sundance. Not all of them are great. In fact, some of them aren't very great. But when one is good, it can be a kind of transformative experience. And they usually come in a particular kind of package. Now, when you think of a Sundance movie, what do you think of?

I think of a quiet, often heartwarming family or character-driven dramas with maybe a little bit of quirkiness added to them. That is definitely at least one of the categories we'll be talking about here on this episode. Also documentaries. That's the other one. Lots and lots of documentaries. So should we dive right in? Okay, let's dive right in. I feel like the first and the most classical example of the Sundance movie is exactly what you're describing. It's essentially the family drama. Sometimes lighthearted, sometimes deathly serious. As we go through each of these, we'll talk about some previous examples of films that have played at Sundance that fit this rubric.

So when you think of this movie, a more severe example of it might be Winter's Bone or Fruit Veil Station or Affliction. A more lighthearted example might be Big Night. A genre-fied example might be like Take Shelter. So these movies, I think, are the most derided of the Sundance archetype. That's true. I was trying not to be dismissive when I was describing off the top of my head. But as soon as you say Sundance movie, there is just a – as soon as you're categorizing things and you're being unfair to the things, which I guess we're going to be unfair to every single movie we talk about to an extent. This is a podcast and we need buckets. We need segments.

We need to push the conversation. What I'm trying to say is I wasn't totally trying to be dismissive of the family drama. There are good ones. There are bad ones. That's a fact. You and I had the good fortune, I think this year to see one of the best movies at the festival and one that falls pretty squarely into this framework. So the movie is called Minari. We just got out of our screening of Minari. What was your takeaway from this film? This is a story about a Korean-American family who immigrates to Arkansas in the 80s. And there is a little kid in this movie

that just absolutely ripped my heart out. And all the performances did, and I thought that it's the best case version of this because it's um definitely moves you but it's also funny as you said right before we started recording it's you know beautifully shot well written it it is smart and not too treacly if that makes any sense it does it's it's an a24 movie it's written and directed by a man named Lee Isaac Chung. And he has an interesting gracefulness with what appears to be his own story. I actually don't know anything about where the story comes from. But when we were discussing it earlier, we identified that there

is an incredible level of specificity in the story, in the setting in Arkansas, in a family trying to create a new life for themselves in a new state, in a new country, trying to figure out how to stay married, trying to figure out how to be good parents, trying to figure out how to be good children, how to be good grandchildren. It's a very complex portrait of a family living in close quarters, not totally sure if they're going to be able to go forward with their lives

in the way that they wanted to. And all of that stuff, I still think kind of does a disservice to the movie because that just sounds like Sundance hokum. And I think the movie is a little bit more special than that now are we experiencing the festival high on a movie perhaps it's possible but as I was watching it and I think the kind of you'll probably see a lot of comparisons to the farewell about this movie as the year goes on and not just because it's from an Asian filmmaker but because it's a particularly a story about three generations and how three

generations interact with each other. And some of the confusion that happens when one culture collides with another culture in a place that they don't fully understand. In The Farewell, it's obviously Lulu Wang's main character visiting China to see her grandmother. This film is a Korean American family moving into a rural place. The thing I liked about it the most is that it doesn't ply the usual tricks that you would think a movie like this about a non-white family moving into the South in the 80s might incorporate. You know, it's a little bit more subtle and sophisticated.

When I heard the word Reagan early on in the film, I got a little nervous. Sure. And there is a lot of thoughtfulness about the socioeconomic aspect of the story, but it's not, there are no burning crosses in this movie. There is no, you know, vindictive vitriolic language about the family. It is really just the family story, which I was kind of relieved about, honestly. Yes, it's really insular and it explores the relationships between all of the members of the family, pretty specifically and individually.

And that's enough. That kind of fills up the movie. Yeah. So since we've never been here before, I kind of wanted to talk about a movie like this with you because I think this movie might fit into another category, another sort of bucket that we've created here. But I've never been able to witness in real time the life cycle of a film that may be in the consciousness for the next 12 months and to be

on the ground floor when that thing happens. Did you have that sense when you were watching this or did it just feel like, well, I've been seeing a lot of movies this week and I'm doing my best to take stock of all of them? I think it was the latter with the recognition that I thought this was a very good film and one of the best films that I've seen this week. I'm trying to protect against festival buzz. I don't know. Do you feel like you need to start some festival buzz right here? I don't think I'm capable of such a thing.

I need to know my own power, which is minimal. Nor do I. And I think I have never been to Sundance either, and I'm treating it more as what you said. It's interesting to watch it happen. And I'll be curious to see how other people respond to it and what it is like to watch it in the screening room whenever people get to see it or, you know, in a movie theater or at home. I don't have a sense totally of how those things translate yet. Yeah, I don't either I mean it's the sort of film that you know on its face it stars Steven Yeun who obviously had great success in a actually not

utterly dissimilar story in Burning in 2018 there are some kind of thematic and visual references that kind of match they'd be an interesting double feature I just don't know I mean a lot of the cast is very unknown Han Ye-ri plays his his wife Steven Yeun's wife who you know they're

the sort of the lead couple in the family. And Will Patton plays a man named Paul, who is a, I don't know, sort of a local aide, a spiritual man who works with the family. He's giving what I would describe as a very Sundance-y performance. He's a Sundance-y character. He is a Sundance-y character. Maybe ripped from real life hard to say but this movie is like sort of very quiet

and subtle and Paul is not the most subtle figure in the world I don't think Paul will be competing for any awards but Steven Yeun I don't know he's really

he's turned himself into quite a great leading actor I will say I've already mentioned the kid this is an all-time great kid performance and we were talking about, after seeing the movie, how do you get a six-year-old to do what this six-year-old does? And I don't have the answers to that.

I hope to discover them at some point. But I will say, really good kid performance goes a long way. It's true. And people really love to see a cute kid up on the screen ripping hearts out. Yeah, he's like a charm vector and an empathy machine. Every time he's on screen, you're like a charm vector and an empathy machine. You know, every time he's on screen, you're like, I really just feel for that kid. Also, we didn't attend this party, but apparently he was here at Sundance walking the carpets in a cowboy outfit. Yes, big, big Park City energy from seven-year-old Alan Kim. We look forward

to more things from him in the future. Should we go to the next kind of category? Yes. Okay. So I've described this as the adult-oriented comedy. Now, I think that also sounds a little bit dirty. Like not scatologically or sexually dirty. Right. But just sort of like corny. I'm not sure that adult-oriented and comedy is something that you want going together. Like I said, as soon as we're applying larger categories to these things, it invokes branding, it invokes marketing, it invokes all of the things that aren't a work of art.

So I think that's why we feel the way we feel. But also, this is how the world works, and it's definitely how podcasts work. So keep going. So I would say some of the movies that fall into this category are among our favorite movies. So Four Weddings and a Funeral played Sundance many years ago. Sean, have you seen Four Weddings and a Funeral? I've seen 38 minutes of it. What is...

Why do you do this to me? What is it with you? Well, I just... It's just the film that I started and haven't finished. When you ask me to watch movies, I watch the whole movie. Well... This is some Chris Ryan, I watched The Irishman on like three consecutive nights nonsense. Think of it like this.

Life is one big screening. Okay. And we're in a continuous stream of viewership. I'm very happy with you. One day, I'll get to the conclusion of Four Weddings and a Funeral. I wasn't going to post the picture of you tweeting on the shuttle earlier, but now I'm going to. That is a threat. I want people to note that for the record.

Another example of this is significantly different from Four Weddings and a Funeral movie like In Bruges, which, you know, well before Martin McDonough was being cancelled for Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, he was writing really nasty, hilarious assassin comedies. I hope he gets back to this style very soon because I love that movie very much. The next two, though, I think are more closely associated with a

kind of treacly Sundance story. Now, these movies are both huge hits and are kind of emblematic of something. And I will admit, when I saw them for the first time, I was like, I like this movie a lot. The 2000s were wild. Different time. Very different time. The two movies I'm talking about are 500 Days of Summer, which you may recall is the Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt rom-com. Rom-com? Eh. I kind of reject it, but it's like a new rom-com.

We're reinventing the genre, but that's not how I wanted it to be reinvented. Continue. The other is Garden State, which was made by Florence Pugh's paramour, Zach Braff. Do you think Florence Pugh has seen Garden State? I suspect she has, yeah. I suspect Zach screens it frequently for his new partners. I want more for Florence Pugh. You know what? Who am I? Who am I to know? I want whatever Florence Pugh wants. As I want more for Florence Pugh. You know what?

Who am I? Who am I to know? I want whatever Florence Pugh wants. As do I. For Florence Pugh. I hope it's me. Garden State, I actually remember liking and responding to the movie at the time, although I will admit I was probably 19. I know.

I was just thinking. We were teenagers in 2004 with some weird stuff being marketed to us. And the truth is that movies like this, Four Weddings and a Funeral, these are commercial, even mass market movies. They're movies that connect to a lot of people. And these movies were big hits. And Sundance needs hits, too. It doesn't just need special, intimate, beautiful works of art. It's much better if it has those things. But it also is, you know, this is a, I don't know,

it's a collection of business people making investments as well as a collection of artists showing what's inside of them. Yeah, there are as many, what are we calling them? Activations, all the pop-ups of all the various sponsors and people who are interested in your Sundance, as there are screening rooms. There are actually more, way more. Honestly, the festival needs these things to survive.

So, you know, the business aspect of this stuff is a function of it too. The comedies themselves, I think, a comedy is hard, as we know. I think it's kind of getting harder in the movie business. There's a film that we haven't seen, though the very sweet producers of this film stopped us on the street today to talk to us, which was very nice of them um but they produced a movie called palm springs along with the lonely island that apparently is beloved and it sounds like was just sold for a vast sum of money sometimes that goes great for movies at sundance sometimes it goes not not so great we wish them well to me the example that we've seen i think of this kind of

thing was downhill yes which I thought was pretty interesting actually um we mentioned it on our anticipated uh conversation this is a remake of Ruben Ostlund's Force Majeure starring Julie Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell you had an interesting note about this movie when we walked out of it which I think is a bit of an Amanda-ism yeah I was just gonna say we're going straight to the therapy. This is so rude. It was not as vicious as I, Amanda Dobbins, would have wanted, which is an incredible statement.

And what is it about the viciousness? How does that make you feel? Alive. It's fine. Everyone listens to this podcast knows that about me, okay? I just thought it was very special. Because in theory, you know, for those of you who are not familiar with the story of this movie, we did mention it on the previous show. It's about a family that goes to Austria for a skiing trip and the family is sitting

and eating outside and it seems like an avalanche is coming and the father sort of sits up and quickly runs away and basically leaves his family behind. And that leads to a series of emotional paroxysms in the relationship between the man and the woman and there's some friends who enter the picture and the relationship to the children. It's in theory a very funny movie and sometimes it is very funny.

For me, the art of social awkwardness is very important. And it really does achieve that. It nails that really, really well. If you are a fan of, say, Curb Your Enthusiasm or Veep, which I absolutely am, you will definitely enjoy this movie. And I think also, you know, JLD and Will Ferrell, those are two people you just want to be with. And I thought that they were great. And I actually wish that there were more movies that had this, that this kind of container that we're using, the kind of like adult oriented comedy. It'd be nice if there were more movies of that kind

that those two actors got to play around in a little bit more because the movie has slapstick and it has the kind of wordplay that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is kind of best known for, but there's something else tonally that neither of these characters really get to do. Julia Louis-Dreyfus really gets to act in this movie in a serious way and not in an Armando Iannucci or David Mandel verbal spew. She performs. There's big emotional set pieces. And I was happy for that. I was happy that it

wasn't just a complete remake of that acid burn feeling in Austlin's movie. Yes. I agree with all of that. And I do think to the extent this is exactly the type of drama and story and acting that just goes to TV now. Yes. And I enjoyed seeing it in a feature format, not just because they just had beautiful shots of all the chairlifts and gondolas in Austria, which is, I believe, where it was set. Yes. I really felt a spiritual connection to this movie there as transfixed by the gondolas as i am i think we should should we call you lady

chairlift from now on no okay i'm gonna i'm gonna try to remember that one i just they there's something about it that is just i i want to be a part of it but i don't want to ski down the hill anyway it it was fun to get to see julia lou Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell level up. Yes. Yes. In this way. I agree. It's funny. The movie is coming out in less than a month. It's coming out, I think, on Valentine's Day. And it doesn't really feel like a Valentine's Day movie to me. It feels like a November movie to me. It's set in the winter. It's set on the slopes.

By the way, beautifully shot. Looks really great. Movies also like this with scripts like this don't usually look this good the production values are very high and they seem to have captured the essence of austria in a way that i've not seen before so that was fun except maybe in force for sure um but i did like this movie i'll be interested to see if audiences respond to it at all it's um it is the first release under the searchlight banner yes did you notice the new logo it It was very noticeable, actually. It was very noticeable. So let's go to our next category. Okay.

I've dubbed this the provocation. And one of the things that I was always attracted to about Sundance as it was being mythologized in John Pearson's book, Spike, Mike, Slackers, and Dykes, one of the great kind of movie travelogues, diaristic portraits of the industry where a lot of these people made their careers were the movies that were really intense and I don't know, indecent in a way. And they got you feeling something and they got negative reactions and they got moral reactions. And I think that this festival is actually historically really good

at this. So some previous examples of this include Reservoir Dogs, of course, which kind of launched Quentin Tarantino's career, Secretary, The Blair Witch Project, American Psycho, The Raid 2. There are dozens more. There are so many versions of this where you see a movie and it just has something in it that you've never seen, whether it be violence or sex or even just dialogue that gets you thinking about what a movie can be and provokes a response. This year, we've chosen Zola for this. Now, I would say that Zola actually turned out

to be not what I was expecting it to be. In what way? Well, we mentioned on the preview show that this is a story of the 154 tweet thread from a stripper who travels with a new friend to Florida to make some money. We mentioned also that neither of us had reread the thread. That's true. So I had completely forgotten what the story was. And I had completely forgotten that it does not have a traditional movie arc.

And I'd also forgotten just how unusual janessa bravo's movie making style is and the tone of her style i forget what you said when we were talking about this the other night but you described it really well for kind of what she does it was like she's in total command of her thing or you had a very specific way of describing it oh that's nice i wish i could remember what it was but when you said it it clicked something into my mind she does have a very specific vision and tone. I guess I'm just going to repeat what you just said that I said. I think what worked for me about this movie was that it was both such a specific and often

like unusual or obvious is not the word, but very attention grab, like not aggressive. What's what I'm looking for? The style is front and center. The style is you're supposed to notice it it's very sensory overload at times yes a lot of a lot of sound cues a lot of the sound of a tweet being sent off the sound of something being liked a lot of visual like a a score by mika levy who is just absolutely my favorite composer in in movies right now that is like comes in for seven seconds and then vanishes and then comes back in in a completely different tonality and then vanishes. It's very unique in that way.

But so often films that have that kind of very vibrant, stylistic filmmaking kind of skimp on the story. Yeah. And they skimp on plot. And this is paired with that's a story. Things happen. And I think they are paired very well. And you always do understand what's going on. And there is forward momentum, which is exciting and I think helps you invest or kind of go along with some of the filmmaking choices.

Yeah. These movies tend to be really divisive. Actually, as I was watching it, I was thinking about Assassination Nation, which was a movie that Sam Levinson, who now I think is best known as the creator and showrunner of Euphoria, which I think is absolutely one of the best things on TV. And he made this movie before that, Assassination Nation, which kind of feels like Euphoria on training wheels, or maybe the opposite.

Maybe it's like Euphoria on steroids. And I didn't think that that film really worked that well. But it did a similar thing. It was that overload that we're talking about. It was very noisy. There were a lot of sound cues. There was a lot of music. The camera is moving all the time.

And just being able to make a lot of choices and do a lot of things doesn't mean that your movie is going to work well. It just means you've made a lot of choices. And this was an instance where – and it's been interesting to watch the fairly divisive reaction to the movie, because I don't think it scratches your traditional pleasure center in the way when you're watching it. I saw a lot of comparisons to Spring Breakers. I don't really see that like at all. I think it's like a little neon, I guess, in Florida, but otherwise they're very different films. One being made by a white guy, one being made by an African-American woman, which is super notable. I think that is, I mean, that's an extremely important distinction. But we did walk out of it and I, you know,

said that you could write a thesis on like the A24 Florida movies. Yeah, so give us the history. Which starts with Spring Breakers and then also goes to Moonlight and Florida Project and Waves and now Zola. And it's in dialogue with all of those, whether it wants to be or not, just because of that. Those are, what, five movies, five indie movies made about Florida in the span of a decade. Yes.

They're all sort of inspired by the Florida man Twitter handle. You remember that? Yes, I do. Would you ever live in Florida? No, no. Just a flat no. We also, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. We may have fans of the show in Florida.

Everyone should live where they can and what's good for them okay and i'm speaking only to my for myself but i grew up in georgia and florida's pretty close and we just never really went to florida and anyway so why i'm not sure i guess because my family lived north and not south and so we would go visit family or we'd go to the beach in georgia so you wouldn't drive to orlando for a weekend go visit family or we'd go to the beach in Georgia. So you wouldn't drive to Orlando for a weekend at Disney World? We did go to Disney World. That was fun. But... You just said you didn't go to Florida. Well, I like regularly.

Okay. I don't know. I don't think I would live there either. You know why? Why? Humidity. Can't do it. I do love humidity. I also really like citrus, but we have citrus in California. So... I'll tell you, Zola is sort of a humid movie now that I think about it. It feels like a movie in which everyone is sweating all the time. You wanted to mention

another movie that potentially fits into this bucket, but we don't want to give away too much about it. What is the movie? Yeah, there's very little that I can say about Promising Young Woman without spoiling it. And if you haven't watched the trailer for Promising Young Woman, don't. I haven't watched it either. I'm told that it spoils or at least tips you off to a lot of things. But it's written and directed by Emerald Fennell, as we discussed. And it is, I think I can say in the broadest sense, a revenge fantasy or a revenge movie starring Carey Mulligan. And it is... You're dancing now i well i don't want

to spoil anything i know i know i think you you could call put it under the me too umbrella though again i think it's one of those things where as soon as you say it it says really slimy and i think that that kind of but it is something that people will have a lot of reaction to and i think people already are having a lot of reaction to it. And I think there are things that really work about it and things that there will be conversations about. Yeah. I mean, one of the key distinctions of the provocation as a category is these are divisive movies. I've seen very divisive reactions to Promising Young Woman, just like Zola.

There'll probably be a couple of more. I'm looking forward to seeing The Nest later today, Sean Durkin's movie, which I've also seen has had some divisive reaction thus far. These are historically my favorite movies. I mean, this is why I am obsessed with movies. When it works, it works. Yes. I want to be drawn in. Reservoir Dogs is a life-changing experience in my life as a movie viewer. So I'm all for them. I wish there were more of them, candidly. Let's go to the next one. This is the issues-oriented documentary. This doesn't require much explanation. We know what these movies are. There are actually more of these than probably any other kind of movie at Sundance.

The thing is, it's hard to get people to see these movies, even in this documentary boom that we're experiencing where there are so many outlets, there are so many places to to put them there are so many documentaries that play festivals like this and significantly smaller festivals than this that are sincere that may be well made that are about something meaningful that people just never see because there's it's the market is complicated or it's a you know it doesn't make sense in one part of the world so it doesn't get to the entire part of the world you know in the past there have been some pretty profound and memorable versions of this. Last year, Leaving Neverland,

the two-part HBO series played here and I think kind of dropped like a bomb in a lot of ways and changed a lot of people's relationships to Michael Jackson. I was just talking with someone recently about The Celluloid Closet, which played here too, which is a story about Hollywood's history to gay identity and the lgbtq movement which is was kind of a kind of a barrier-breaking

documentary in the 90s and there's a lot of stuff now coming out about that um that that would make this an interesting rewatch and then i also wrote down grizzly man which maybe is not conventionally issues oriented though it is about conservation, animal rights, human rights. Werner Herzog, he is an issue that is important to me. This year, there were a couple of examples. You told us two episodes ago about your experience watching Crip Camp, which is definitely kind of right down the middle on this. And people seem to be responding really positively to that.

Somewhat more complicated is a movie that I saw called On the Record, which was directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, who have made many issues-oriented documentaries in their day, have, I think, shown a great many of them at Sundance. The movie has come under some controversy because Oprah Winfrey was a producer on the film. Her name was on the film up until, I don't know, three days before Sundance began when she decided to remove her name on the film. Her name was on the film up until, I don't know, three days before Sundance began

when she decided to remove her name from the film, reportedly under some pressure or after having conversations with people who were connected to it. It's essentially the story of one woman in particular named Drew Dixon

who worked with Russell Simmons at Def Jam in the 90s and who she claims assaulted her sexually. And then the film becomes kind of a broader picture of the music industry and women's role in the music industry through the last 25 years. It's definitely one of the most sort of sophisticated and careful portraits of that time,

which is a time that I'm personally very interested in. I've worked in rap journalism for a long time. Some of the figures in this movie I know personally. It's a very, very kind of, I don't want to say slick in a pejorative way. It's sort of like very sharply, cleanly made, but also very sensitive about the issues.

But there is this storm around it because of the Oprah issue. You and I can't claim to know really anything about what's going on behind the scenes or why those choices were made, but it's a movie that is, um, a lot of people are keeping a very close eye on because it involves a lot of significantly powerful people. I sat three rows away from Reed Hastings and Jeff Zucker, the leader of Netflix and the leader of CNN. So that's the kind of interest that the movie drummed up. And there was just an extraordinary response to the figures who appear in the film when they came out for a Q&A afterwards. You know, keep a close watch on this

because there's either going to be a ton of blowback and it's going to be a really complicated thing. Notably, Russell Simmons does not live in America anymore and cannot be extradited. So that's important to keep in mind. That's a choice he made in 2018. I can only imagine why. And on the other hand, maybe there are more revelations to come that will be meaningful to the film's future. We'll just have to wait and see. Shall we go to the final category? Yes.

This one's slightly more fun. This is the sneaky Oscar contender. Now, I was, you know, searching around at this when we were talking about Minari because I think Minari, if rolled out successfully, if they tell the story the right way

and if they have the right people acting as ambassadors for the movie could be an oscar movie i wouldn't be surprised at all it depends on what the slate is depends on how good eternals turns out to be you know and where the mcu is at okay okay um but it struck me you know in the past we've seen a lot of oscar movies usually the sort of slightly hipper than thou oscar movie contends here you know in the past whiplash premiered at sundance which was i believe the full scale execution of damien chazelle's short film which also i think premiered at sundance maybe that was itself by nevertheless the farewell of course last year the usual suspects getual Suspects, Get Out played at Sundance, Call Me By Your Name, Manchester by the Sea. There's a pretty incredible history,

even just in the last five years, of this festival still being a significant launch pad for Oscar contenders. So do you think that this is still a good place to open an Oscar movie, given what we know about the Oscars right now? And the timing. I mean, we just spent an entire episode kind of moaning about the timing of when to release a movie and the timing of this year in general. And if, you know, this is recency bias, but if you're just looking at 2019, then the later you release a movie, the better because it's on people's minds. Now, historically, that hasn't been the case. And I do think that 2019 is going to turn out to be an exception in a lot of ways for the Oscars. But you have to get your buzz and your campaign just right if you do it here. And that is also that you can launch something at Sundance and kind of beat the drum for six and nine months and really get in everybody's head is a bonus.

And there does seem to be that everyone, or not everyone, but those of us who are invested in the Oscars and also invested in the Oscars maybe doing something a bit differently from time to time are looking for these types of movies to have in the conversation. So you can find the audience. But it, you know, as everything else, you have to get it right. When do you think would be the right time to release Minari? Not that we know anything about distribution,

but let's just speculate. September. Okay. I believe, was The Farewell a July film? I think so. Maybe even June. June.

Yeah, that sounds right. And The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which also opened here last year, was opened in May, I believe. And those two films both had very, very strong energy coming out of the festival. Yes. Actually, I recall Bobby Wagner, our producer, saying that The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Honey Boy, I think, were the two movies that he saw that he was just totally knocked out by. Which kind of leads me to how I want to wrap up this conversation, which is how does this year stack up to last year? So last year, as I look down the list, pretty incredible Sundance year.

So The Souvenir, one of your absolute favorite movies of the year. We've talked about The Farewell a great number of times here. The Nightingale, which is a movie that frankly we did not give enough time to on this show. And I think had we been here at Sundance last year, that might've been different. It took a long time for the film to get released stateside, but that's Jennifer Kent's just truly haunting movie about a woman in Australia in, I believe, the 19th century. Clemency, another movie that, I mean, imagine that. That's a year ago that Clemency opened and Neon waited 11 months to open it wide wide and that may have worked against it in

some ways in the opposite way the 1917 worked for it well that's the thing is that a small movie you have to give it more time that's right but you can't go too early or people forget it that's why i picked september for minari that's right and i mean the last black man in san francisco also perhaps opened too early to be under consideration i could that's a movie that i could see getting like production design or score or something like that if it came out in November because it is very beautifully made and textured. Knocked Down the House, which when I saw it, I thought, well, this will be

in the best documentary race. And then Vanished, which maybe was too activist for it to be a contender. But I mean, that was just last year. Not to mention American Factory, which I haven't even written down, which also opened here and is primed to potentially win best picture or excuse me, best documentary. And also I believe One Child Nation, which I haven't even written down, which also opened here and is primed to potentially win Best Picture, or excuse me, Best Documentary. And also, I believe, One Child Nation, which did not receive a nomination, but was very much in the conversation.

Honey Boy, we mentioned. Apollo 11, which was the documentary hit of the year at the box office. Late Night, which was acquired for a grand sum of money, as was Britney Runs a Marathon. There were a lot of stories coming out of this Sundance Film Festival last year. a Marathon, there were a lot of stories coming out of this Sundance Film Festival last year. Do you feel like there are a lot of stories emerging now? It's only Monday. Yeah, it's early. And I feel I'm at the point, I have one day left and I feel like a failure because I haven't seen everything that, I haven't seen everything and I've been running around and I have seen a lot,

but it's hard to, I don't feel comfortable speaking in broad strokes without having seen everything. Yeah, I had a very sad exercise last night. So last night we recorded this live rewatchables. We were all hanging out afterwards and then everybody departs from the apartment where we're staying and sitting in bed alone, computer on my lap. With your spreadsheets. As is often the case. I'm looking at some spreadsheets, I'm looking at Letterboxd, I'm organizing, and I made a list of all the movies I'm not going to get a chance to see that I want to see. Now, I'm unhealthily invested in seeing

as many movies as I can, but there are 32 movies on the list. And I'm going to probably end up seeing somewhere between 24 and 28 movies on my trip. So that's a lot. So it seems actually ridiculous to try to say, well, this is a good year or a bad year. I mean, we may not know until October if it was a good year or a bad year, ultimately. Should we have just not come? No. It will, you know, we should like privately write down the list of the movies that we think are going to be a big deal. And then we can, you know, reveal them at the end of the year.

Oh, it's on capsule. Yeah. Because, you know, it is also, sure, I don't like to be wrong in public before I have to be. But also, I don't want to dampen anyone's chances. You know, I'm here for as many movies finding an audience as they possibly can. So, but let's just do it privately. So off mic, but on camera? No, sure. Whatever you want. What else is there to say about the Sundance Film Festival?

Did you have a good experience in your first one? I did. I learned a lot. And I think that I would know, I don't know. I don't know whether I would do any better next time in terms of picking the right movies and feeling like there is a kind of a FOMO or not a FOMO, but a, oh, should I have done this instead? Or is this the right place to be? I know everyone says that if you're not feeling it, you can just leave. But I couldn't bring myself to do that this year. I didn't walk out of anything. Yeah. And I don't intend to walk out of anything. I think that was primarily because I was like, then I'm just going to be stranded in a parking lot with lots of snow somewhere and I'm going to have to find my way back. So I might as well just finish this movie experience with everyone else. Yeah. That's one other thing I'd like to reflect on, which is I've just fallen back in love with

snow. You know, I've spent almost nine years in Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles. I don't ever see myself leaving Los Angeles, but just strolling down main street, flakes fallen, really an emotional experience. I loved it. I'll be honest. I've just been Googling pictures of palm trees and cacti. I'm at 75 degrees. I'm a wimp.

Fortunately for you, by the time we get back to LA, we'll be recording the second half of this podcast. So we'll see you in three days and right now. Amanda, we're back in Los Angeles. It's sunny. How are you feeling? I enjoyed my time in Park City, and I also have a newfound appreciation for my life here in Los Angeles, where it's 70 degrees and I can breathe. There's oxygen in the air, and I know where to buy vegetables, and I can take care of myself. It's not Sundance's fault. It's my fault.

Yes, yes. We're not mountain people. We're desert people. We like the dryness and we're happy to be back here. There's nothing dry about the Sundance market. We're going to talk a little bit about what's taken shape at Sundance since we left, which is some money was spent. I think when we first got there, there were very few films being sold and a few have. Now, the reason to talk about this is manifold, I believe, because last year there were a couple of films that were purchased like Late Night and Britney Runs a Marathon, two films that Amazon spent a great deal of money on. Those movies did not really perform that well at the box office, but we were told they had great success on the streaming service.

So there was a lot of anticipation going in this year. What will the studios do? What will the streamers do? How will they spend their money? We mentioned this briefly on Monday when we spoke, but Palm Springs was the big buy of the festival. We ran into those producers of Palm Springs literally moments before this was announced.

Congratulations to them. Shout out to those guys. They were very nice to us, and now I'm understanding why. No, I'm just kidding. They were lovely, and you guys deserve it. Yes. Or, you know, I haven't seen the movie, but I'm happy for you. I believe the purchase price on their film was $17.5 million and 69 cents, which was a grace note added to the end of the purchase price to make this the all-time highest selling Sundance sale ever. And who knows if this is smart? It's impossible for us to speculate

on whether this is the right move or the wrong move. I did hear a couple of people when I was still in Park City say, the reason that Hulu and Neon purchased this movie is not just because it seems like it would be appealing

to people who like rom-coms, but Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a Hulu property. And there is a built-in fan base of Andy Samberg people at Hulu. And so if you watch an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, maybe they can throw you immediately to Palm Springs. Seems kind of savvy. It does. And it's kind of, and it's building up those audiences and that learned behavior, which is I think how Netflix and certainly how Netflix has succeeded and everyone

else is trying to establish their own version of that. Yeah. And we've seen also with Neon, I mean, the last time they made a big splashy acquisition, it was Parasite at the Cannes Film Festival and that worked out pretty well for them. You know, Parasite crossed $30 million at the box office this weekend. It's absolutely crazy how well that's doing. Another big one that we saw, which is unusual from the rest of the stuff we're going to talk about here is a movie called The Night House, which Chris Ryan talked about on our episode earlier this week, which is a horror movie by David Bruckner, who made The Ritual,

which you can watch on Netflix right now. And this movie was purchased for $12 million. It's a horror movie, sort of a horror thriller starring Rebecca Hall, which, you know, I haven't seen Palm Springs or The Night House. And the list of movies that I didn't see that I wanted to see is longer than I wanted to be. It's so frustrating. I feel like such a failure. It is frustrating. But nevertheless, both of these movies got pretty strong reviews out of the festival. I wouldn't say overwhelmingly positive critical reviews, but strong reviews. And Sony is just making a bet on a horror lane. And, you know, in some respects, it makes sense, I think, to develop your movies in-house and have total control of them and how to roll them out.

But sometimes you see something and you're like, this is going to fit neatly into a hole that we have, say, in September when the world needs a horror movie. So that one's pretty down the middle. The next two are the most interesting to me. So Herself, which is a Felita Lloyd movie, she's best known for the Mamma Mia films, has directed this small drama set in Ireland, and Amazon has bought it. Now, this movie doesn't look or sound anything like Late Night or Britney Runs a Marathon, so Amazon has slightly shifted course

here. What did you make of this pickup? Well, I did not see herself again. I just am the worst Sundance attendee of all time, apparently. But I did overhear people discussing it in one of the many lines that I waited in at the Sundance Film Festival, which were very well organized. Thank you to all the volunteers. Yes, thank you to all the volunteers. Shout out to those people. They're the best. Yeah. And I thought it was notable who was discussing herself. And I don't mean to stereotype, but they were slightly elder or older people who you see a lot of at Sundance. It seems like there's a very strong kind of retirement or transitioning into retirement, living your best life Sundance strategy. And I think those people

had the best time of anyone that I saw. And these individuals had seen herself and were very excited about it and were telling their friends about it. And that was notable to me. Yeah, it definitely feels like more of a Sony Pictures Classics kind of purchase where they've targeted a demo. They have a demo to fill on their service. Not unlike the Nighthouse going for Sony or Palm Springs going for Neon and Hulu. These these are very strategic for in terms of like looking at what demographic they need to fill buckets. And there's some, there was some talk that it would be an awards contender later this year. We'll have to see about herself. As far as awards contenders, I would be shocked if the move, the next purchase did not contend for an award.

It's called Boys State. It was picked up earlier in the week by A24 through their Apple distribution plan. I'm not totally sure how that's going to take shape. We talked on our Most Anticipated Movies podcast about Sofia Coppola's upcoming On the Rocks, which is also through this same situation. So I guess this movie is going to be released theatrically by A24, and then will appear somewhere along the lines

on Apple TV+. This is a documentary directed by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain, partners in filmmaking. They made The Overnighters, among other documentaries. They're very talented. It's probably the best movie I saw at Sundance. Yeah, I'm really mad I missed it. I saw it late in the game. It was fascinating.

It is your classical documentary thing where it's just like there is a cultural happening in this country that I had no awareness of. And it goes right inside of it. And you spend essentially a summer or a couple of weeks, at least with these young men in Texas, who thanks to the American Legion kind of come together to form essentially the American political system. It's like a, it's a, it's a student UN sort of diorama example of how the Republican and Democratic party, essentially in this movie dubbed the Federalists and the Nationalists, organize, elect chairpeople, and then elect governors. And it is a scarily accurate microcosm of American politics. And so smartly told, I would recommend this movie to every living person in this country. It is so, so good.

And, you know, in typical A24 fashion, like, they just scooped up the best movie. Like, this was the best movie that I saw. And I'll be very interested to see. I think it will probably be in that sort of competition. We talked a little bit earlier in this conversation on Monday about what Oscars stuff looks like and whether it's even silly to overstate. Will this movie contend for something at this time? And what of pressure that like burden it puts on a movie. Set aside the whatever prognostication I can't help but share. This is a very special movie. Especially for documentaries. I don't think it's preliminary. Yeah. I mean, look at just look at the slate this year. So many of

those movies, movies like Honeyland got their start at Sundance last year. And what you need, especially for documentaries, because they're less likely to penetrate the popular consciousness is long-term narrative. And so, you know, the narrative starts here for movies like that, for movies like Dick Johnson is Dead, for a handful of things that we saw that were really strong on the doc front. Not everything was good though. No. Oh boy. I'm, you know, I'm usually reluctant to absolutely destroy a movie on this podcast yeah we'll do it for do little or cats these like big budget productions in which people are taking themselves too seriously about something very dumb serious films in which artists try to tell

like a great story and work really hard and fail i you know i think it's notable to say that something doesn't work, but I hate to intellectually destroy it. That being said, we saw a movie on Monday night that was just a profound failure.

Yeah. It was a real disappointment in all senses of the word. And on paper, it's something that you and I are really, really interested in. I had it on my most anticipated and there was kind of word that maybe that was unwise and maybe I should temper my expectations, but I don't really care because again, it just

checked pretty much every box. Yeah. And there are some times when a movie like the one that we are still teasing for some reason um isn't quote unquote good but you can still get a great amount of enjoyment from it because of the raw parts because of the actors because of the script because of the way it's shot in the case of the last thing he wanted um nothing works i i guess maybe anne hathaway's lead performance is admirable if not necessarily effective but you know we mentioned this is Dee Rees' third film. She's had a lot of success at Sundance in the past. This is her second film with Netflix. This is an adaptation of a Joan Didion novel. It also stars Ben Affleck and Willem Dafoe.

On paper, a very interesting film about sort of the contra negotiations and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the mid-1980s during the height of the Reagan administration. It's also about journalism. It's also about, you know, international affairs and arms dealing and things going wrong. And there's like a CIA element to it, sort of, I think. Is that correct? It is correct.

I mean, speaking of things going wrong, what do you think is wrong with this movie? Well, I have quite literally almost no idea what happened. Me neither. It was so confusing. It was so, so confusing. And we say that a lot. And then we have some grasp of what's going on. But it was very difficult to follow on a scene by scene basis in terms of plot, in terms of who's who, and how they relate to each other, certainly in terms of motivation. And also in terms of a larger idea of why you're watching this movie and what it's about beyond people going from plot A to plot B to plot C to plot D to plot Z, because there are that many. The larger ideas, it definitely is about politics and it is about larger issues, but I don't know what it's trying to say about those things. And

maybe the ultimate failure is that it's not really trying to say anything about them. Yeah, it has all these huge weighty themes. It has a story about the political intrigue in Central America and the complications when colonialist governments try to control the future of those countries. And it has a lot to say about being a female journalist. And it has a lot to say about cancer and survivors. And it has a lot to say about romance. Or at least it wants to say a lot about these things. It wants to or we want it to.

And I think the problem is that it often doesn't. I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to be the most superficial version of myself, but I will be. There is a, like a love scene, or it's like, I guess it's like a post-sex scene between Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck, which I got to be honest, in any situation,

that's what I'm rooting for in a movie is just to have some sort of you know I'm always wanting the the movie stars to get together two of my absolute favorites by the way that's when I turned to you and I was like why and if I'm questioning a post-movie sex scene between Ben Affleck and Anne Hathaway something's wrong yeah totally it's just all wrong like it isn't it is the movie's never sexy, but it's also not kind of grave enough to make the sort of unsexiness of it effective. And again, I appreciate what what the filmmakers were trying to do here. But it is it's so interesting when something just

like straight up doesn't work, you know, when you can hear the gears grinding as the movie is going, because there I saw plenty of movies at Sundance that were just fine. They were like your classic two and a half star, like modest drama that isn't trying to do too much and doesn't, you know, is okay. It has fine performances. It looks good. But ultimately, you walk away and you're like, I forgot about that movie 20 minutes later. This was something, this was just extraordinarily bad. And I almost don't know how to process it at this level, especially on Netflix when there's so many big factors involved. I have since done some research into the Didion novel, which I'd never read and which I tried to check out on the library app. But a lot of people are also apparently doing this.

It is apparently both entirely first person in the character's head, which you can somewhat tell from the leaning on the voiceover. And it is also kind of apparently absurd. And I don't think it's Joan Didion's best novel. And I think there are a lot of the kind of ridiculous coincidences and like plot machinations that perhaps are held together by the first person narration, but are still don't really hold together. So perhaps some of this was just doomed from the start in terms of adaptation. Yeah, you know, I think that South and West and Miami are two of her better books,

and I feel like they would have been maybe better fit. South and West is a nonfiction book, but you could see kind of incorporating some of the stories that appear in that book into this kind of a structure. Choosing, and also Didion's style is elliptical and opaque and kind of not fanciful, but like poetically exploratory and not narrative in a lot of ways. You know, like even her novels don't have like a driving force.

They played as it lays was adapted 50 years ago. And it was a famously weird adaptation because that book is similarly like taking place in one person's head, and it feels like it's covered in shadows the whole time. Like her style is just not super adaptable. Right. Because it not only is first person, but it is so located. I mean, she's the original blogger, basically. And, you know, and that's part of it, too, is that the Didion way of speaking and thinking is, listen, Joan Didion is a tremendous writer. And I'm like every other girl on Tumblr who worships her.

But it has been imitated and like kind of undermined by the however many years of people trying to do it that come after. And so even when they were doing like the actual voiceover from, I would assume, the Didion novel. It must be. I was like, this sounds ridiculous. It's so literalized. Yeah. And it's because I have been witness to so many people trying to do it and failing for so many years at this point that it almost felt like a parody.

That's the other thing is if you're going to do this in a way, you have to try to find a way to not necessarily modernize it, but amplify it in a new way because we're so overwhelmed by three generations of writers who are influenced by Didion that when you hear the dialogue or you hear the sort of internal monologue that she's giving at the beginning of the movie, you're just like,

oh, this is just like such overwrought hack writing, even though it's Didion's writing. And that's just kind of a fascinating result of trying to adapt a 35-year-old book from an author who's just kind of infected our consciousness so much. So this is a tough movie. I don't even really know what else to say about it. How many days do you think Ben Affleck spent on set? Oh, God.

Probably four and a half. I was going to say four. Yeah. Not a lot. Not a lot. Which is fine. Again, like, let's just make the Anne Hathaway-Ben Affleck movie where they're sort of like spies but enemies. And she's trying to get the story and he works for the government.

Like, if the movie was more located in that conflict and that romance, it might have worked better. Maybe that's a little bit too conventional, but I also think it would have just made the movie make more sense. Nevertheless. I did have a moment while watching it where I just thought that this was kind of like unintentional serenity. And that's just a real tough one-two for Anne Hathaway. What are we going to do for her? How are we going to save her?

She's having a tough time post-Oscar. I really like her and I want her to succeed. I do as well. I happened upon The Intern on television while at Sundance. And number one, that's just a fantastically funny Robert De Niro performance to revisit if you have some time on your hands. But she was great in it. And I think because those types of movies aren't, quote, serious and, you know, then she winds up being the wife in dark water for no reason still that i can think and i thought she was perfectly fine in that and we both enjoyed that movie but it's tough because this was clearly a swing of sorts right her her lineup of films post the intern has been kind of fascinating so she makes oceans eight

which i thought she was pretty funny in. She was certainly the scenes dealer in that movie. Yeah. And then Serenity, which is just a historical disaster. Just a really, really funny and dumb movie. The Hustle, which you've talked about on the show a couple of times. She was funny in it. Yeah. Dark Waters, which is a very throwaway part. And she, I think, works hard to make that part meaningful, but she's kind of too good for that role in a lot of ways. The Last Thing You Wanted, no thank you. And now the lineup of films that she has coming next, one is Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches, in which she plays the Grand High Witch.

Okay, I'm in on this. Me too. That sounds like really more where she should be. Now, who knows, Robert Zemeckis... Is this on a journey of his own? Yeah. You know, off of Welcome to Morrowind, I'm not really sure where she should be. Now, who knows? Robert Zemeckis. Is this on a journey of his own? Yeah. You know, off of Welcome to Morrowind, I'm not really sure what to expect there. I suspect there will be some insane CGI in this film.

But I like her as the sort of spiritual successor to Angelica Houston in The Witch's adaptation. And then the movie after that is Sesame Street. It's the Sesame Street movie. Okay. Which is coming out on January 14th, 2022. Okay. So it's Sesame Street and not a Muppet movie. It's Sesame Street.

Okay. I don't know. The only other person that's listed as potentially appearing in this film is Bo Burnham. Okay. So is Bo Burnham playing Big Bird? I don't know. He certainly has the height. I mean, it's directed by Jonathan Cressel,

who I think is probably best known for working on, like, Kroll Show in Portlandia and is essentially a TV comedy director. So, I wonder if that means this will be a slightly arch Sesame Street adaptation, especially if Bo is involved and Anne Hathaway coming off of her witches experience. It's weird that the things from Anne Hathaway that I'm most looking forward to are goofy and not serious, but she's a comedian. She is. She is a comedian. That is actually when she shines. Yes. Princess Diaries. And people don't take that seriously because you don't win an Oscar that way. But I think she'll be great on Sesame Street singing about the alphabet or whatever is going to happen. The last thing we wanted

is the last thing he wanted. But we do want Sesame Street. Amanda, thanks for going on the Sundance journey with me this year. I appreciate it. You're so welcome, Sean. Okay, guys, let's go to my conversation with Eliza Hittman. Delighted to be joined by Eliza Hittman. Eliza, thank you for coming to my apartment here at Sundance. I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. So, Eliza, I want to know specifically what your life was like immediately after Beach Rats came out. Did you feel like there was an elevated opportunity for you in terms of filmmaking? No, not so much. I was reading an article the other day that said, like, Eliza Hittman had carte blanche to do whatever she wanted.

And I was sort of like, huh, really? You know, after Beach Rats, I went out to LA for a week and I did the rounds. Water bottle tour? Yeah, and met people who had nice things to say. And that was kind of it. I dabbled a little bit with television. I did a couple episodes of High Maintenance. And I did a couple episodes of High Maintenance and I did a couple episodes of 13

Reasons Why and just, you know, wanted to make money to pay off student debt. No, I didn't say that. You know, explore other, you know, other avenues of directing. And, you know, then I knew, you know, when I finished 13 Reasons Why that it was just time to make a movie. Did you have this idea even before that time for this film, or did that come after you did all that TV work? No, I've had this idea for a long time, actually. I started thinking about this project in 2013. Actually, when I was editing my first feature, it felt like love.

I was reading the news, and I was really struck by a story that was about the death of Savita Halapanaver, who passed away in a hospital in Galway after having a septic miscarriage. And I kept asking myself, well, how far would this woman have had to travel to save her life? And was reading about how women travel to Ireland, from Ireland to London and back in one day. Wow. And I thought to myself, you know, there's a movie in there. Was it always an American story then, or did you consider making it?

No, I had a treatment initially for something that took place in Ireland. And it was about an au pair that came from Eastern Europe to Ireland and was working in the countryside. And something happened and she was pregnant and needed to find a way to London. And I thought about that story, but then I thought nobody would let me make a movie in Ireland. And I put it aside actually. And I did some research in the states and you know thought about what the equivalent narrative would be here and I realized how easy it would be to make the movie here because the same issues regarding access exist here and I did some research in 2013 and then I put the project aside and actually made Beach Rats instead but when I premiered Beach Rats and was at the Women's March and Donald Trump had just

been elected, I knew in my mind at that moment that I would return to this project. How'd you land on this small burg in Pennsylvania as kind of the launch point for the story? I think I was just doing some weekend trips with my partner who's an editor, and we like to kind of go out of town and explore. And we landed on a region of Pennsylvania that's just a couple hours from the city. And I think we were both struck by how quickly you can leave the city and travel back in time. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't really, in the film, I didn't really get to embed the story there maybe, but because we don't spend that much time in the film there, but I was really, you know, struck by this kind of coal mining region

of Pennsylvania that, you know, feels like Appalachia and how isolated it is. And, you know, these towns are built and they feel temporary. And because they were temporary mining towns, they're very cut off and there's no connectivity with those towns and the rest of the state. So I was sort of intrigued by that location. And I went around to local pregnancy centers and explored like oh if I

was a girl here where would I work and where would I spend time and you know where would I go if I was dealing with this situation it's interesting because the movie you know in the beginning it could be a period piece feels like any time during the last 30 years in a way and it's not until the characters leave their hometown and go to New York then things change a moment in the story where you know she opens up her computer and you're sort of like oh okay yeah yeah we're operating in 2020 yeah um how did you decide on sort of these two specific women as your as your characters like the idea of them being cousins and the relationship that they have which which is very subtly told, but obviously key to the story. I mean, I could have, you know, chosen other approaches.

I thought about it for a moment as like a mother-daughter story, you know, or a girl alone. And I decided it would have to be a friend. And partially, you know, it comes from my own experiences as like a teenager and even in my you know early 20s and just have vivid memories of taking kind of long quiet subway rides with you know a friend to Planned Parenthood on Blucher Street in Manhattan and just thinking that that felt like the most accurate choice you know that she would take a friend or a relative her own age, you know, above and beyond anyone else.

Yeah, there's an unspoken trust that I feel like is communicated really well in the story. Thank you. How, okay, so this is the most claustrophobic road trip movie I've ever seen. Did you look at other road trip movies or anything before you started working on this? I was thinking about stories about characters that come to New York. I think I'd probably rewatch Midnight Cowboy for a minute. You know what? Rewatch Midnight Cowboy. There weren't so many references that I had in mind um I think for me you know as a filmmaker I don't really love sitting at a computer I'd rather be out in the world and getting ideas and reacting

and so you know I really just took the bus from rural Pennsylvania to New York as if I was the character did you feel like you did you trace the steps essentially like did you go from place to place the geography of the story and you know on the bus this kid came on you know who was wearing a really light jacket in the middle of the winter and he had like really expensive headphones on and i was like oh what would happen if he talked to them yeah every every male figure in the movie is either the like an obstacle or like a figure of ominousness in some way you know can you help understand like what the thinking was behind positioning the father figure this this boy on the bus who they encounter what was your thinking with those characters? a bit relentless and, you know, the reality that men can be predators and, you know, it changes when, when, once you realize that, once you realize that, you know, as a, you know, a 12

year old or a 13 year old, it changes the way that you move through the world. And I wanted to capture that. Um, and I wasn't sure how the film would be embraced by men because it's so clear in what it says about the way women feel about men and young women feel about men. But it was important, a part of the story that I was telling. And I think for me, it was important that these girls are in a crisis and in a bubble and that men along the way are kind of trying to rupture their bond. Where did you find these two actresses? I'd never seen them before.

I don't know. Is this their first big? It's their first movie. It's their first film. They're both incredible in the movie. Thank you. It's a little bit of a long story, but I will tell you the short version.

In 2013, I was producing what I would call a performative documentary that my partner who edited the film Scott Cummings made. It's called Buffalo Juggalos. Oh, yes. Okay. I'm familiar with it. Okay. I'm surprised. And we were shooting. I'm not saying clown posse fans. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. familiar with it. Okay, I'm surprised. And we were shooting... This is about insane clown posse fans.

It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. It's not. It's not? It's more of a portraiture film. Okay. It's not really a documentary.

It's sort of a staged collaborative film made with a small group of juggalos on the fringes of Buffalo. Okay. And while we were kind of integrating into that world, I met Sydney Flanagan, who plays the lead role of Autumn in the film. And I don't know, she was just intriguing.

I don't think she remembers meeting me at this event. She was really young. She was 14. But she was at this debaucherous event in a backyard. And there was, you know, something intriguing about her. She was much younger than everyone there. And she felt in over her head. This was seven years ago.

I mean, how old must she have been? She was 14. Oh, wow. 13, 14. And her boyfriend at the time ended up being in the film that we were making. So she was on the periphery of this other film. And right when I met her, I reached out to her and said, oh, I have this movie in 2013. Would you be interested? And she didn't write back because she was grounded. And then when we started the casting process for this film, I went into it very open-minded.

And we looked at 200-plus young women. Everyone from the talented actresses in Stranger Things to anyone that was recommended to us. I really was open and met with a lot of really exciting talent, but I felt like it wouldn't work for the film. And we did a non-casting process also where we, you know, went out into rural Pennsylvania and tried to street cast and that was sort of ineffective. And the whole time, you know, as we were getting closer to the beginning of prep i just kept saying oh no it's like this girl in sydney like sydney we're looking for this girl like sydney and i just i told my partner i was like you know what try sydney again write sydney on facebook and see

if she'll come and audition and i think part of the reason I was really intrigued by her is that she's a musician. And she, for the last however many years, had been posting music on her Facebook page. And there are little videos that she made alone in her bedroom at night. And she was performing mostly covers of other songs, a lot of punk, but they were really raw emotionally. And I thought that they captured something authentic about being a teenager. And they came from a genuine place and a place of anger and disillusionment. And I felt like that was our character. So she came down and I avoided as best I could putting her through a conventional audition because she's never acted before. So I, you know, told my producers and my

casting directors, oh no, we're not going to come in for a session. Like I'm going to go out into the world with her. And that's what we did. She arrived. It's the first time she'd been on a plane since she's four years old. She trusted us enough to come down. And we made like a video sketch with her. Just my DP and I, Helene Louvard, who was in town for a scout. We roamed around the city with her, staging moments from the film, just the three of us. And it was very much about feeling that she was comfortable with us and in our creative space. And immediately my cinematographer saw her and winked, this big happy smile because she knew that she would make an interesting performer in the film and just has very strong impulses about casting. And that's kind of the

story. I was lucky that my EP, Rose Garnett, trusted me with casting and that was something that was in my initial contract. So I had total approval of how the movie was cast. I was going to ask that because it seems like this is a bigger production than the last two films. It's a bigger production. I took a tremendous risk. And I'm very appreciative of my producers, Sarah Murphy and Adela Romansky for embracing it. I think that everybody was nervous. What else was different about a slightly elevated production for you? Was it easier? Was it harder? It was harder because Beach Rats I shot in one neighborhood in one corner of Brooklyn for 25 days. And this was only 27 days. And the geography and canvas was much more expansive. What's it like to shoot in New York right now? It's a very accurate representation

of what it's like to be stuck in a weird place at three o'clock in the morning in New York. Yeah, it was really hard to shoot in New York. And I think people don't, we weren't union people, SAG and everybody didn't realize we just didn't have the budget to close off streets. And they were very, very angry

that we weren't hiring SAG background and we're shooting people in the world and that's you know that's why you want to shoot a movie in new york yeah yeah you know um not to shut off streets what about the kind of research that goes into the other parts of the story like the the titular scene which i don't want to spoil for people who haven't seen it but it's really really powerful i did a lot of research um i think you know i can say my father is a cultural anthropologist okay and i grew up with him doing a lot of field work on a native american reservation in northern nevada and watched him document a language and a culture. And that is very much part of what excites me about filmmaking is doing a certain amount of fieldwork. And I can say I'm not somebody who is interested in numbers and facts. I'm interested in stories and hearing

from people and letting things resonate and make an emotional impression. And part of the research for the film I went and I talked to a lot of counselors at different clinics, you know, from Planned Parenthood. They were very generous, but I also needed an outside point of view and talked to people from a clinic in Queens called Choices. And while I was at Choices,

I met a really wonderful counselor named Kelly Chapman. And she said some really interesting things to me that helped shape how I approached the story. One thing she said to me was that the crisis is never the abortion. It's everything that's going on at home that you can't fix in the hour that you meet these women. And that was really profound, I thought. You know that the abortion is not the crisis. Yeah, I mean, various parts of the film have a documentary feel in many ways. But that scene in particular, and all of the counselor scenes, the one in Pennsylvania as well, too. I would say that scene is the most documentary-esque scene, even though it's totally scripted.

Yeah. Did you have it vetted at all by someone who would say, like, you did this right, you did this wrong? The counselor that I met is in the scene. Oh, really? Uh-huh. Oh. So Kelly ended up in the movie. Oh, amazing performance.

Yeah. Wow. I mean, you know, she's doing what she does and she's acting. Yeah. But even still, when you say like, just be yourself on camera, that's so hard for people to do so often. She was nervous. And when she was done, she was like, man, acting is really hard work.

I'm exhausted. I'm going home. That is so fascinating. Yeah. So that level of authenticity was important to me. And obviously we could have cast any number of incredible actresses in that role. One other thing about your writing process is, you know, there's not a lot of dialogue in the film. There's not a lot of dialogue in all your films in a lot of ways. And there's a,

they're quiet and they're thoughtful, but they move around a lot. And I'm kind of wondering like what it looks like on the page for you. Are you very specific about how you want everything to look because you're writing and directing? Yeah. I mean, I think that script looks a lot like the film. There are places where I end up throwing away dialogue. I think with this script, the challenge was, you know, that Autumn is, you know, in these private moments and private counseling sessions and private conversations with doctors. And I didn't want her to leave those offices and have to repeat everything that happened because I thought it would really deflate the drama and tension of the story. So I knew that I wasn't going to put anything. She was never going to discuss those, you know, moments with doctors.

I don't know. I don't, you know, I don't think I'm striving for some kind of conversational realism with the work that I make. You're not. I'm not. It's sparse. And I guess it has my own style to it. And I'm not trying to, you know, have a certain kind of casual, you know,

conversational realism, if that makes sense. No, it does. It's very pared down and minimal what people say. What are you thinking about, even though this movie is not out yet for the world to say what are you thinking about even though this movie is not out yet for the world to see are you thinking about what you want to be doing next will you do more tv work do you have another film in mind um i have another film in mind i don't know if i should put it out in the world yet but you can talk about in vague terms in vague terms terms um an emotional journey an emotional journey uh it's about death and survival um it's uh you know it's about an immigrant in new york city uh who is you know trying to save money

to bring her daughter over from uh a part Eastern Europe. And she works taking care of, you know, people at the end of their lives. And I don't know, it's something I've been thinking about for a long time, but I think it will be more formally adventurous than other things that I've made and not so straightforward in terms of a social realist piece. What do you see as success for this film? You keep a close watch on the reviews and the reception. Do you talk to people about how they feel about it? Well, this is the first time that I've had, you know, a distributor focus features involved, you know, on an early phase. And obviously, you know, they, you know, themselves in it. And, you know, I think that, you know, the reality is that one in four women in this country has had an abortion.

So, you know, I think for me, the film could reach a wide audience. There are not a lot of significant films about that subject. Mm-hmm. Especially about abortion access yes and when i was you know went out and the first time with this idea and started telling people i was interested in making it people were like oh that's a documentary and it's like you know the thinking at first was very binary about the subject was it hard to compel people to participate to raise the money to get focus involved um i think you know once you have a script it's a different you know it's a different story um i you know there's a lot of creative partners and you know production companies that

came together to help make the movie pastel and the bbc and Tango and Ritresa. And then there was a really wonderful executive at Focus named Rebecca Arzoian, and she's no longer there, but she randomly got the script from some agent at CAA. And within a couple hours had everyone at Focus read it and really galvanized the company around the project. Do you see the next project that you were describing being an even bigger production? I do because it takes place also in another country. Ah, okay. So it will be an international co-production.

Okay, that's very exciting. Eliza, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? I don't know if you've, you probably haven't seen anything here sundance catching up i haven't seen anything yet at sundance as soon as i'm done with press i will you know begin to start to see whatever i can whoever will give me a ticket um but i've been catching up from all the movies from the past year and um i think the last great thing i saw was atlantics Maddie Diop. Yeah. What was it about that that you connected to? I liked how, you know, that it began as this really subtle social realist piece that

then sort of, you know, evolved into something haunting and supernatural. Yeah, it was really great. Eliza, thanks for doing the show. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you to Eliza Hittman. And of course, thank you to Amanda Dobbins. Please stay tuned next week. Amanda and I will be back in a big way, three episodes ahead of the 91st Annual Academy Awards. On Monday, we're going to be talking about how the awards work,

and we're going to make the case for a movie we think should win Best Picture. On Wednesday, we'll be back with our pal Wesley Morris, giving out some alternative Oscars to the movies that we think deserve it. And then on Friday, we'll be making predictions. So please stick around to The Big Picture. See you then. The Big Picture was brought to you by AT&T, reminding you that when it comes to wireless networks, just okay is not okay.