- I think a big fear I had
before I directed my first movie
is that you're gonna show up to prep,
and someone's gonna hand you a camera and say, "Okay, go."
And you're gonna be like, "What?
But I don't know how to work this camera.
How can I be a director?"
And that's obviously not it at all.
Cut.
You guys are laughing really hard,
and you guys are playing guitar.
Hi, I'm Sofia Alvarez,
and today, we're gonna be talking about what it was like
to direct my first feature: "Along For The Ride."
This is "First Film."
(movie projector whirring)
(gentle music)
I had wanted to be a playwright
since the time I was a little kid.
Theater was always my first love.
And I sort of started out in New York
writing and directing,
and then realized sort of quickly
that it would be good to pick a lane
and focus my attention on writing for a little while,
and that's what I did.
(movie projector whirring)
My agent sent me "To All The Boys" and said,
"Read this book. Tell us what you think about it.
They're looking for a writer."
And I read it, and I immediately fell in love with it.
And I said, "I have to pitch for this."
I don't remember what I said on my pitch,
but it must've been good because I got the job.
- What?
- Yeah, what if we let people think
that we were actually together?
- Writing it was really very similar to writing a play
only in that I was kind of left my own devices
for the first little while.
And so I went to my writer's room in Brooklyn,
and after a few drafts,
they had said, "We're gonna make this."
And it was my first produced screenplay,
so I was thrilled.
- [Auden] Being with Peter was so easy
that sometimes I let myself pretend it wasn't fake.
- There are things you can do in a novel
because you have so much real estate
to get inside the minds of characters
and go into so much backstory
and give detail that for a novel
is really like beautiful and expanding,
but for a film can get in the way of the plot
that you want to drive the movie forward.
With "To All The Boys," I told myself,
"I'm gonna read the book,
and I'm gonna see what I think
are the most important parts of the story,
and those parts of the story that stay with me
are what I'm gonna use as the basis for my adaptation."
- You're practically begging
to get back together with Jen on the bleachers.
- Oh, so you're spying on me now?
- And I also think when you're adapting a book,
especially a beloved book, the audiences will go with you
if you change certain plot details.
The audience will not go with you if you change the tone,
or if you change the characters,
or if there are these things that they love
about the book for a reason,
and then suddenly they think,
"This is not the book that I fell in love with.
This has a different character
or this has a different energy."
- Are you gonna break my heart, Cubby?
- After they had a cut of the movie,
they sent it to me to give notes on it.
And that was the first time
I'd ever gone into the edit room for anything,
and it was really
where I saw how a movie is constructed in post.
And it was the first time I learned
that a movie is three things:
there's the movie you write,
the movie you film, and the movie you edit.
And the movie you edit is the one everyone ends up seeing.
The final script happens in the edit,
and seeing that happen in the edit room
and getting to play a small part in it
for the first "To All The Boys" movie
is what really sort of lit the fire under me
to start directing.
- [Auden] This is our story,
and we're still at the beginning.
- After the second "To All The Boys" came out,
whenever someone brought up a project
that they might like me to write, I said,
"I'll only write it if I can direct it."
From the time I read "Along For The Ride,"
I could just see the movie and see how I could do it.
(movie projector whirring)
At the end of the day, you're only as good as your team,
and they made me look very good.
- What was that?
- Dance break.
Happens every night at six.
- You can join in if you want. (laughs)
(crew laughs)
- Pre-production starts and all the heads of department
have a very tangible task,
and people ask me a lot of questions.
The biggest surprise about becoming
a director being in prep was that
your main job in prep is to know,
which is work I felt like I had already done
when I wrote the screenplay.
When I first started talking
about the look of "Along For The Ride"
with our DP, Luca Del Puppo, we just had a really
sort of organic way of working together
where we shot list this movie for three weeks,
and we really went over every scene meticulously.
And even though we'd come up
with this very specific shot list,
because we were aligned
on sort of the feeling of certain scenes,
if we got there
and we didn't feel like we were getting that,
we could be a little bit more on the fly and I trusted him.
And so I think that idea
that everyone was making the same movie
made my job so much easier.
I could just trust them
because I knew we were all on the same page.
(energetic music)
I think you really need to trust your team,
which I think and hope I did,
but you also really need to trust yourself.
After your stutters start, just prep to go again,
and then you can stop.
At the end of the day,
you are the one who has to sort of put it all together,
and so you better know why you're doing certain things.
And I remember talking to Robbie Beck, our head of props,
about what books Auden was reading in any of these scenes.
And I was like, "Oh, I know what books she's reading.
I will give you a list of what book I think she's reading
in every scene she's reading."
I have those answers to all those questions
because that's what you do as a playwright
is you're world building.
And so you know all of this stuff
about all of your characters
and what you want all of the locations to look like.
Everyone has a lane,
and when you're the writer, you have a lane as well.
But when you're the director,
you're just sort of in charge of the highway,
making sure none of the cars crash.
No one knows the movie better than you do.
You're the one who at the end of the day
needs to defend it and take care of it
and make sure it's what you want it to be.
- Tip? - Yeah.
It's where all the cool young people hang out.
It's super fun. You can't miss it.
- Okay, that was great, let's reset again,
and this time can you do the one where it's like,
"Oh, my poor stepdaughter
is having a terrible time already?"
- [Actress] Yes.
(movie projector whirring) (mellow music)
- The casting process was interesting
because there was another actress
who was supposed to play Auden
up until days before we were supposed to start shooting.
- You know what the penalty for lateness is
at a hot tub party?
- Tell me.
- I had remembered from our auditions
this actress, Emma Pasarow,
who had never been in a big movie
but gave a really incredible audition.
And when we lost our former actress,
I was just in my head,
I was like, "It has to be Emma Pasarow."
I knew that I really wanted to rehearse
with Auden and Eli before we started filming
to have a couple of days of real rehearsals.
And so it was very important to me
to get our Auden to North Carolina
before we started filming.
The following day, she did a callback with me
and the producers and our casting directors.
That night, she had a chemistry read with Bel.
We were gonna do the drive-in scene for the audition.
And so I was like, "Okay, Bel,
what was your favorite movie when you were this age?"
And he was like, "Oh, well, my favorite movie
was this movie called 'Spirit Horse.'"
And we were like, "What?"
And then I was like, "Okay, Bel,
tell Emma about 'Spirit Horse,'"
and he just started telling her
about his favorite movie from when he was a teenager.
- "Spirit Horse." I've never even heard of it.
Interesting. - Oh, it's a classic.
You have to watch it.
- It's a classic.
That's what I'll watch tonight: "Spirit Horse."
- Everyone was in unanimous agreement this is gonna work,
like this is Auden and Eli.
These are our two.
She got cast on Sunday morning,
she flew to North Carolina,
and had to quit her day job.
It was just one of those true Hollywood stories
like that you never think happens and happens.
- The new kid is supposed to bring the beans.
- It was all of our first movie.
It was my first movie that I was directing.
It's Bel's first movie, Emma's first movie.
And so we kind of immediately had this sort of comradery
that we were all in it together, all three of us,
and by the time we started, the three of us were just like,
"We got this and we really trust one another,"
and we're able to have a lot of fun together.
You want them to get back together.
Bel has more television and film experience
than Emma does because he's on "Saved By The Bell."
But Emma has more theater experience
because she went to Wesley
and graduated from the theater department
and has both acted in and directed plays.
And so they were both coming at it
from sort of a different angle,
but they were both so game.
- Enjoy tonight.
You earned it.
(movie projector whirring)
- Kevin Tent, who's a really phenomenal editor,
was our sort of editorial advisor,
and he gave me two pieces of advice
that he had gotten from Alexander Payne
because Alexander Payne is his longtime collaborator.
And he said, "Sit in your chair,
you need to reserve your energy.
So when there's nothing for you to do, sit in your chair."
And then he also said, "On your last take,
say to them 'Once more but faster,'
because in the edit,
you're always gonna wanna speed things up,
and if you have really slow takes
you're not gonna be able to."
And then something I got
from when Kate Bosworth came to set,
on her first day, Kate said,
"I always like to do at the end a fun one,
like one take that's for the actors as the last take.
Is that okay with you?"
And I said, "Oh, that sounds great."
And so much incredible stuff came from that fun one
that we started doing it with all of the actors,
not just with Kate, because it just always got them
out of their heads.
- Cool. - Thanks.
- Have fun.
- [Sofia] Cut.
- Thanks. - Promise?
- Sure. - Cross your heart.
- Okay. (Kate laughs)
- This is actually another piece of Kevin Tent advice,
he said to me before we started,
"You need to hear it the way you hear it in your head,
but you only need to hear it that way once.
So once you've got that, free yourself up a little bit."
Unintentionally, I always ended up doing five takes.
I felt like by the time I felt like we had it,
it was always five,
and the fifth one was usually the fun one
and I would say the third one was usually the fast one.
And I want you to give him a very awkward hug
where it's sort of like this.
You lose nothing and gain everything
by giving yourself variety in the edit.
(relaxing electro music)
I think every project has to be personal in some way
because if it's not, why do it?
For all of these movies, or really for any project I do,
the most important thing to me
is authenticity of the experience.
The feelings that I put into them had to be real
for them to feel real to audiences.
You would be lying if you were to say
that you were writing these teenage rom coms
and were never equating it back to your own teenage dating.
Everyone at that age has big feelings.
- How'd you know that?
- Will you let me make it up to you?
- People love romantic movies
because people love watching other people falling in love.
They're comforting in some ways,
and it's fun to go along for the ride. (laughs)