David Lowery & Anne Hathaway
Hi, I’m David Lowry. And I’m Anne Hathaway. And this is the A24 podcast. And I’ve been doing a lot of podcasts lately and and wondering what it’s like to be in the moderator’s seat. And I realize now that I don’t like it. Is it does it feel different than being a director? I feel I can get away with just you.
You’ve experienced this on set when I just unleash a slew of words that don’t necessarily make sense but hopefully convey the emotion of what I’m trying to ask for and I feel like I can’t get away with that behind the microphone right now. Well, one of the things that I’ve experienced when um I’m I find that I’m in like my favorite kind of deep deep collaboration with a director is we we kind of get to a place where you don’t have to say anything.
you just I can feel when I’m acting how they feel about a take and then they’ll come out from behind the monitor and just kind of give me a look and I like raise my hand or or they’ll come over and you know put their head against my head and I feel like I’m downloaded and uh anyway all this is to say that doesn’t work in a podcast.
It doesn’t work in podcast. you and I just touch heads for half an hour and everyone’s like, “Well,” Yeah, it sounds like an experience. But I But I felt that um I felt that that was kind of our our thing on this one. I felt like you and Michaela connected over the power of the words, you both being writers.
And I felt that um you know given and we’ve talked about this given that mother Mary is an emotionally inarticulate person I actually found that it really hampered my ability to communicate while I was her and I felt like it kind of mother Mary is an expression of the part of you that sometimes finds it find it difficult to find your words.
So between the two of us we had no choice but to trust the wavelength completely. I I I require those wavelengths to help me through life. I wish I could speak the way Sam does. And in writing that part and then witnessing the way Michaela played it, I was living a fantasy life in which I could say exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment.
But you can write the things. I can write it. And if I was able to type this podcast out, it would be far more eloquent. I would have a lot of fun typing a podcast out with you. It would be a different format. Wouldn’t that be neat to just sit here and just type and the text could play out and again we’d be channeling an interesting wavelength that would be you know what is interesting is I have been going back through old drafts of the script I was looking for the very first one from 2019 I found when I started writing during co
and for some reason in this version it was because I was going to the Pharaoh Islands for a different project but I I was like what if Sam’s house is in the Pharaoh Islands I was very inspired by that landscape But I don’t know if it was because we were all wearing masks or it must have been, but I decided that in this iteration of the screenplay, Sam’s house had a vow of silence and no one was allowed to speak and she had custom index cards or custom stationery and no the only communication was through the written word. And so it was all the same
dialogue, but it had to flow differently because it was all, you know, taking the time to write it. The film also would have been 19 hours long. Oh, that’s why I stopped that version. That version that version made it all the way up to the dance scene. I do love that version in my head. Yes, in my head.
And I think I would like to see it in a museum. It’s It 100% was a museum piece. You see, and and actually I have to say that just reminded me of something that I just treasure about you. And it came up earlier in a different conversation I was having with somebody else about one of the reasons why you’re so much fun to work with is that you are so inspired by your surroundings and you have a certain type of joy in inspiration.
Whereas, you know, in other experiences I I’ve been in, people aren’t really allowed to make suggestions. Um, on this one, you were just down to play, you know, and I I was uh somebody was talking about like they had an idea for a practical shot where they didn’t want to walk and then five minutes later there was a there was an apple box with wheels on it and you just leaned into it.
And then I told the story about how we were, you know, trying, we had this like elaborate rig for the red fabric and it just wasn’t quite working and we thought we were going to have to, you know, use a computer and we worked out that there would be a ring attached to an undergar a hidden undergarment and that we would thread it through and it wound up working.
It worked perfectly. It was there were so many and but you went you went with it. I just remember you had just such a like I’ll give it a go. Yes. and let’s see where this leads us. And you weren’t, you know, bowed by the pressure of like the shooting schedule. You were just so driven by this beautiful uh honoring of the creative impulse.
I find you can’t do this on every movie, but this was a movie where I was always thinking any moment that we are in is the most important moment and we have to see it through to its fullest. And if someone comes with an idea, bolt of inspiration out of the blue, we need to honor that.
When you think about it from a production side, you know, you always pay for something, you know, like it’s like, okay, if we do this now, we’re going to have to figure it out tomorrow what we, you know, if we’re if we’re going to spend two days on the scene, whatever we were supposed to shoot tomorrow is going to have to change. But that’s okay.
We’ll figure that out tomorrow. That’s a tomorrow problem. Right now we are exploring together and trying to find this ephemeral thing that we’re after. And sometime that is, you know, how did they do things 100 years ago in silent films and other times it’s just trying to find the emotional voice of these moments that we were after.
Really trying to give those emotions the space they needed to really allow this movie in particular to manifest the way that it did was really important to me. I I’m actually curious because now I’m trying to imagine the Pharaoh Islands version. Did And also I remember I seem to remember a one draft Sam lived in a trailer and Mother Mary and Mother Mary um like broken through a window.
It was Sam’s house had burned down and she was living while it was being rebuilt, she was living in a trailer outside and yes, Sam and and Mother Mary climbed in through the through the window. So, I was wondering about that because, you know, I’ve just spoken about how you’re you’re driven by this honoring of the creative spirit.
You’ve written countless drafts of this uh from 2019 onward. Do you ever stop and think I’m asking too much of the audience? Like, does that impact your your north star or or your vision for the movie? Or do you is it just you? Is it you know what, this isn’t quite what I want to say? It’s me almost always it’s me.
It’s how can I achieve clarity? How can I find and I mean it goes to the audience as well because I’m thinking about how I would how I would receive this movie if I were sitting in the dark. If I were not the one writing it, if I were an audience member, how would these things that I’m conceiving of arrive in my periphery? How would I take them in? How would I see it? Yeah.
And as roundabout as I may be in getting to the point, I always want to make sure that I’m clear and lucid and that if someone is willing to see the answer right in front of them that it is available to them. We are never trying to hide the ball with this film or with any of my films. We are always trying to express something. Maybe succinctly isn’t quite the word.
Um but it’s true in spirit. in spiritual that hasn’t been my experience with the word but no but no no but to but I love what you said about cl clarity keeps coming up and um to and I think to express something undeniable. Yeah. You know and that’s that’s one of the things that scared me the most once I kind of charted my course for how I was going to play this character was I knew I was making a choice that not everybody would understand. Mhm.
Um, and that was to play Mother Mary as so broken she didn’t have any fight left in her. And I thought, I can’t I can’t believe I’m I know this is technically wrong. Like, this is a wrong film choice to make. Like, this is a two-hander. I’ve got to I’ve got to have more bounce, more fight, more spit, more vinegar, more all these things.
But it felt like such a betrayal of where the characters actually at. And it was so it was so scary to trust that the audience was going to have to wait over an hour into the movie before they understood what was really going on with her and that what they have seen will actually drop to another level and it will be earned.
But it was really hard believing that the audience would grace her um what they needed to grace her. And I just knew that I would be asking the audience to watch Mother Mary kind of just get annihilated by Sam for the first 45 minutes of the movie. And thank goodness for Michaela Cole who made it so entertaining. It’s entertaining that that that that is actually is a pleasure watching a pop star get uh humiliated like that.
I think I’m a big believer that in the idea that all of the implicit elements of the movie are there from frame one. And so even if the audience doesn’t know the actual events that led to Mother Mary’s state when we meet her, there is a sense of well there’s I think a great deal of empathy for her because because we’ve seen we’ve seen where she came from and we see where she is when she gets to Sam’s house.
And in the ellipsus between those two moments, we are invited to wonder what may have happened. Yeah. And I, as an audience member, naturally approach that with great empathy, like how could this have happened? And I think that you were so you were so I loved I remember watching you walk up the stairs in the barn the first time and realize like I realized how that was going to play once we understood why what happened.
But also just seeing that by itself was heartbreaking. just seeing this person that we again I’m projecting on set right now but like when I’m there watching that happen knowing that we’ll have 20 minutes earlier seen you on stage an utter rock star I naturally gravitate towards yes questions but also a tremendous amount of just sorrow that she has found herself in this place and curiosity comes second curiosity about what that actually was is secondary to the empathy I I think that what I’m connecting to is is just the the fear of not making the easy choice that would
have sort of let some of the tension for the audience and said like this is familiar like yes you’re watching um you’re watching two people these two women engage in gamesmanship but that would have felt like a betrayal of the screenplay to me because you didn’t write a game. Mother Mary is not playing a game.
She’s fighting for her life and she’s past the point of of mounting any kind of defense or offense. She’s just kind of like she’s just so storm tossed, you know, and and so I guess I guess what I’m getting at is I had such faith in your artistry and like your vision and that you were going to bring the whole thing home that I was able to take that leap.
That felt very scary for me to to not like I said to not make the choice that I know would have put a lot of people or I imagine a lot of audience members at ease. We weren’t making like a series of like little moments. We were making a whole film. Yeah. I remember writing the writing the screenplay and realizing like I could end the film at a certain point and that would yield a movie that would be very enjoyable in which we could engage in that ratat banter that the potential is there for that. But I wanted to push further and I
wanted the movie to dig deeper and and as a result the potential for that is it’s always there but that’s not what the movie is about. And the great joy of this movie was that we were a we knew that we were heading towards something deeper. And every time that it felt like it might veer in that direction, we could enjoy it when it did.
There’s some moments in the movie where I just am in just utter heaven watching you and Michaela go back and forth when the rhythm picks up. But that’s not this movie. That’s not it’s inclusive of that, but it’s going so much further than that. And it was I remember the moment very clearly when I was writing it and just thinking like I’m writing what could be the ending of the movie right now.
And it I don’t want to spoil it for people who haven’t seen it, but Michaela sort of turn I turned that into a monologue that Michaela gives and and realizing this is not the ending. This is the midpoint. I have a question because I’ I’ve spoken to you about how I I’ve felt transformed by this experience as a person, as a performer, um as a collaborator and an artist.
I’m sure you find yourself transformed by all the films that you make. And so I’m curious, how precisely has Mother Mary transformed you? I think I might be able to give a better answer to that after I’ve made one more movie and seen the ways in which it’s manifested, but it’s made me much more considerate. Really? Yeah.
I think that I mean I’ve always been I’ve liked to think of myself as an empathetic director. Yes. you’re a Texas gentleman and and and yet I I think there’s a point Well, let me think of how to say this. I’ve always hidden behind the camera. I like to be close to my cast. I like to be collaborating with them right up close, but I like the camera to also be very close.
So, we’re usually all together and I’m my comfort zone is behind the camera and I love picking out lenses. I love designing shots. I love blocking choreography. And with this movie, I wanted to share in the experience that you and Michaela were having and participate in that and and learn from that. And I don’t know what it was like from your perspective, but I always felt like whether it was a literal circle on the floor or a metaphorical one that we were still cocooned within, I always felt like I was participating in that exchange of energy
on set and feeling it and understanding your process, both of your processes, in a way that I’ve never have on any other film before. And that opened my eyes to I mean, it sounds almost silly to say this this many films in, but it opened my eyes to what it means to act and I really believe I will carry that forward on every movie I make and and the process with which I engage with with a cast and with our collaboration on the text will be incredibly transformed from the experience we had together on this film. I have always been someone
who I’m quick to discard dialogue and going into this movie I wanted to put a priority on the dialogue. It was written to be you know there’s a lot of dialogue in it and is there you know a decent amount and I so I knew I was going to be respecting the text more than I have in previous films from the get-go.
I always think about pre-production as the time where you embed within yourself all the answers that you’re going to need while you’re shooting movies. Yes, completely. Totally. You you just you just ingrain them all in yourself and you won’t remember them, but when you get to set, you will know what to do. Totally.
One of the things that I I try to explain to directors who don’t know me is that um I I interrogate everything in prep. Like everything, even lines that I absolutely love, I just ask every single question. I hold everything up to the light. I poke holes in everything. And I think it I know for a fact it’s freaked some of them out.
And I’ve had to say to them, I do this because I’m not going to ask a single question when we’re on set. Like when we’re on set, I want to be your first lieutenant. I want to execute your vision. I just want to hit the ground running and know exactly what we’re doing and why. We don’t have time for my questions then. So yeah.
So I agree with you about like finding the answers in in pre-production. It was I remember that as well. Oh, I remember like we went even though we knew we weren’t changing anything, we went through and talked about every single line. We had those incredible some lines more than once. Yes, exactly.
We had some we we did that classic thing that you read about um that I’ve never had the luxury of doing before, which is you tape out the set in an empty in an empty room and you have some standin props and we weren’t in the actual space, but we were in a strange photocopy of it and we were able to just investigate, right? That we were on that huge sound stage. Yeah.
Yeah. Which is where we ultimately shot a lot of the scenes from the movie that took place on a stage, but at that point it was completely empty and and we had a couple tables, a couple mannequins, but it was we were beginning to see the movie come to life in terms of how we might block it.
And we also, I think, spent a lot of time just sitting around on that set listening to music, which was a huge a huge part of the rehearsal process. Um, I don’t know about Michaela, I had a song that became my my touchstone song on this one. Did you I had like my Touchstone record. Mhm. Which was It came out while we were in prep and I just listened to it non-stop which was Kesher’s Gag Order.
Oo. Which was great. It was a she produced it with Rick Rubin and I was reading Rick Rubin’s book on creativity at the same time and that record really captured the spirit of that of that summer of that experience for me. Beautiful. My my go-to song was um the Apocalypse Song by St. Vincent. Oh, yes.
I I just that song will forever be fused with the with the barn for me. And um it became I don’t know, it just became this I learned it so well that I felt like I could see it dimensionally, like I could see the topography of it. And there would and there’s certain, you know, chord changes in it that every time I think about it, like it lift it would lift me up and drop me off someplace else.
and it wound up becoming like my dance partner, the the unseen dance partner in so many of the scenes. Um, speaking of dance partners, do you want to read uh the description? really I’ve been I mentioned that I was going back through old drafts of the script but those were all the old old ones and I was we’ve been talking so much about about the performances and in particular the choreography in the barn and I was just curious what how it was described in the screenplay that we locked in late April of 2023.
Yes. And so I’ve got it right here and I will just narrate it. Sam says, “Because I don’t want to break my streak.” Mother Mary says, “Of what?” Sam says, “Of not listening to your music.” Mother Mary pauses, thinking about how much she’s going to let that sting. How much she’s going to take the bait.
And then without a word, she closes her eyes, collects herself. She finds her starting position and she begins to dance. Her bare feet clap, then pound against the wooden floor as she goes through her paces. She kicks up dust from the floor. It shimmers in the air, giving volume to the light around her.
Without any music, the dance seems like work. The effort to move the way she’s moving, to lift off from the floor, to achieve that state of grace she’s reaching for. But she does achieve it. Those thundering footsteps, the heavy breaths, they transform her. Sam watches, at first beused. Then something else, transfixed. Mother Mary leaps up, but then she lands too hard, stumbling.
Her knee goes in a weird direction. Looks like it’s about to snap. She cries out in pain. Sam rises and said, “Well, that’s but Mother Mary holds up her hand. I’m not done yet.” She catches her breath, pops her knee back into place, and then rises and continues marking the choreography, slicing through the air like a knife one moment and a hammer the next.
Her skill and precision pulling the music out of the silence. She leaves the stage behind, advancing through the space, circling Sam as the p as the performance builds to a peak. And then she’s finished. That’s it. How do you feel that compares to what Danny and I came up with? I think that covers the first third of what you and Danny came up with.
And I love that. I love that we took what was on the page and used that as a jumping off point. And it’s so it’s so fun to go back and look at that and realize like, yes, that is a description of the scene in so many words of what happens. But the spirit that comes through that is hinted at in that text.
You and Danny really took that and and ran with it. And I don’t know. I mean, read, we read the script and knew that that was going to be a centerpiece, but anyone else, I don’t know if it would read that way. And yet, when you watch the movie, that is the heart of the film. I think this film has uh has many hearts. I feel like that to to play a character that struggles with words um that dance became so important to hinting at what was going on inside of her.
And one of the lines that you wrote um which is now in the the scream now in the final film as I can’t eat, I can’t heal. And I just remember thinking somebody who’s been kind of tortured by this feeling for years and is so decimated um who really can’t in a way trust her own mouth. Like there’s this she she can’t trust the words that come out of it. She’s afraid to speak.
She’s afraid of lying. She’s afraid of what the truth might be. She she’s just it’s so bottled up. only release she has is is this dance and dance was her first love. But now even but this spirit that’s come to claim her is also claiming that and that it’s this thing inside of her that takes over. And that became so much of the thrust of what Danny and I were working on was how Mother Mary can’t.
And that’s what part of the reason I think why everybody’s afraid of her singing her song and exposing her truth because it goes to this primal ugly brutal place that nobody associates her with that she knows she can’t do. Um that it’s not allowed that it would frighten people. It’s dangerous. Yeah. and it’s not her and people would reject it and be and she would alarm people and since that she’s kind of crafted her identity as a safe space for so many people that would be a violation and she can’t bear that thought. Um so in a way Sam’s the first
person who sees the dance and isn’t frightened by it. Um, and it was it was amazing getting to create it with Danny. All of those weeks and months in the in the dance studio to learn all of those movements to kind of first build an iconography and then tear it apart. Yeah. And to and it was truly I always thought of it as like watching the two of you build a vocabulary.
And when you think about in those terms, this is a movie especially in that first half where Sam gets a lot of monologues. Yeah. But that’s Mother Mary’s monologue. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then Mother Mary finally does get a monologue at the end and you realize that she is an absolutely bereft soul and that’s what you’re watching.
And she’s like I said, she’s she’s not there to play games. She’s not there to have fun. There’s no subtrafuge. No, she’s she she she the only thing she has is her is her weeping bleeding heart. I love weeping bleeding hearts. They make me feel they make me feel happy. They make me feel seen. One last thing I have to say because we are wrapping up.
Um I just have to give a shout out to the Nick Cave book, Faith, Hope, and Carnage, which became kind of a touchstone uh text for all of us on this on this film and informed I know it informed you. Is there anything you want to say about that book? That book has brought I’m not a particularly religious person, but has brought spirituality back into my life.
Wow. And and I don’t want to define that. I don’t I don’t want to put a name to it, but it did introduce me or reintroduced me to a concept that there is more to our universe than what we behold. And it’s something that I’ve read and reread, but it certainly played a huge part in in the digging deeper that this movie required of all of us.
When I was writing the script and reading that book, there was an inquiry at the core of that conversation that Nick Cave is having. And I wanted this movie to be possessive of that same spirit of inquiry. And it’s one that I will that I’m carrying with me as we as we walk out of the studio. It’s something that I I I will never shake.
So, I guess uh I guess ending by thanking Nick Cave is a pretty good way to That’s a great way to go. Great way to leave the studio.
