- It was unlike anything I've ever experienced,
I've never straight up just asked somebody
to make me something.
- You are by far the most excruciating, difficult,
stubbornly, obnoxious woman I've ever met in my entire life.
I (beep) love you.
- I tend to approach things
from either a sort of philosophical standpoint
or you know...
and I like the room that filmmaking
and writing provides, the space for exploration.
- It is about a filmmaker
and his partner who have come home
from the premiere of his movie,
and he has made the critical error
of forgetting to thank her.
Chaos ensues until they decide to
turn off the light,
go to bed,
and we don't really know the fate of their relationship.
- I look at this film as sort of a Socratic dialogue
between these two characters,
where he's taking a position, Marie starts
to pull the threads out from underneath it.
She takes a position.
He pulls the threads out from underneath it,
and it sort of goes back and forth
but it doesn't carry an ideology beyond that.
It's just...it's about the discourse.
It's about the debate
and that's what makes it exciting
is that when you walk away from it,
there is no kind of easy answer to any of it.
Should they stay together?
Should they not?
What does, what does he really think of film?
What does she think of film?
Should he have thanked her?
Is it based on her?
I don't know the answer to any of these things
nor do...and I think people will
have their own interpretations
of it, and that's sort of what makes it beautiful and fun.
And I think that's particularly the kind of freedom
that I think Malcolm is talking about at the beginning.
A big part of it was, you know, to make a film safely
given the restrictions that COVID was placing upon us.
So, it became kind of an interesting challenge.
Can we tell a story in one location
with two actors, with sort of a skeleton crew,
and that, it was just sort of exciting
to take what felt like, you know, the limitations
and see if we can still tell something that was engaging
and emotional and cinematic.
- I'm very grateful for the creative relationship
and the closeness I have with Sam,
because he was like, "Yes!"
He finally came to me with this one,
which is kind of like...basically, essentially the log line
I gave you in the beginning,
which is what he told me.
And I said, "You know what?
I love this idea. Write it, Sam."
And so, off Sam goes on this, you know, this writing journey
and he would start writing.
He'd write, you know, maybe 10 pages at a time
and he'd call me, and we'd speak about it
for like three, four hours,
if not five, about literally any and everything:
Whether it was rants that I personally had,
conversations we've had before about things,
what I personally think the characters should say.
It was a lot of fun to, kind of, dig into these people
and then came this, you know,
he immediately knew as Malcolm was being written
that John David was really the only person in his brain
that he heard when he wrote the role of Malcolm.
And I was like, "Do you really think he would do it?"
You know?
So, I was anxiously waiting on the phone,
like, "Call me back, immediately! Tell me what he says."
And it's interesting because even John David, you know,
he's such a detail-oriented and thoughtful,
I think, kind of actor where he was already asking questions
that neither Sam or I had even thought about yet
'cause we were only like 10 pages deep at this point.
So, I was like, "Yo, I didn't even think about that."
He was like, "Yo, neither did I!"
Everybody was pulling their own weight,
and then some. But we were all really looking out
for each other.
I think that atmosphere of collaboration
and being able to be, I think, that invested in something,
I felt like I was in safe hands
because, at the end of the day, we are doing this together.