KARYN KUSAMA: Hi, I'm Karyn Kusama, and thanks so much
for listening to the commentary of Destroyer.
These opening images are actually light leaks.
We essentially decided to shoot the opening of the film
in the most lo-fi way possible,
which was to take the lens off of the camera
and just allow light to leak in if we covered it with our hands.
And so what it helped create is the sense of orange light
entering a black frame, almost mimicking the sense of sunlight...
behind your eyelids,
because we didn't really have the opportunity to...
to actually create what that might look like,
but this is our evocation of it.
My cinematographer, Julie Kirkwood, and myself really wanted something
this, kind of, evocative and spontaneous feeling,
and so we just decided to go with
the most basic and simple approach possible.
FEMALE DISPATCHER: 11-Charlie-Lima-7, possible 187.
Request Homicide.
KUSAMA: We also wanted to start...
I wanted to start the film with music that...
set us into the instrumentation of the score
which is going to build and evolve over the course of the film.
And so when we first introduced Erin Bell,
I think it was nice to sort of have this...
(traffic passing)
...snaky, mysterious strings sound setup.
This was one of those shots, as I'm watching Nicole Kidman
walk away from the camera,
that really helped me understand the character.
Her walk, her size,
the sense of a kind of broken cowboy...
approaching the modern world.
And this particular location, the LA river,
was a particularly potent spot, I think,
to introduce these ideas,
nature coming up against concrete
and the sounds of traffic and the sounds of trains
and electrical towers,
and all of that felt really like LA to me.
BELL: I got it.
KUSAMA: This location was particularly interesting
because every time we would scout it, there'd be a new amazing-looking bird
that would land down on one of those rocks in the river.
A heron, a crane.
We'd see turtles, we'd see carp,
We'd see so many interesting animals
living truly alongside the trash.
And not to mention people there who were bathing
and washing their clothes in the river, so...
it felt like a great place to start the film
because it has so much life to it,
despite incredibly challenging circumstances.
MALE OFFICER: We're waiting on tech.
KUSAMA: This is one of the opening images of the film, obviously, that is meant
to pique the audience's interest and create a question
about that stained bill, about this tattoo on the back of this murder victim's neck.
And I think we're meant to feel...
Nicole's... Erin Bell's agitation,
the sense of weight on her, burden on her.
This is also a shot that is one of the first that introduces
these pink flares that Julie Kirkwood and I were hoping to...
thread through the film.
As I was prepping the film, a color scheme that kept coming up for me,
even though I resisted it, was adding pink into this concrete landscape.
And so we started working with lenses that would allow for those kind of flares,
and it ends up being a really consistent visual motif
throughout the film.
I loved working with Julie Kirkwood,
and one of the things I loved was her framing.
She has an incredibly sophisticated sense of framing.
And so all of that stuff under the bridge to me has
a really nice, clean feel...
You getting your mail here now?
KUSAMA: ...with that kind of use of the frame.
BELL: Spend a lot of time here, yeah.
KUSAMA: I love seeing Erin Bell (laughs)
as this disgruntled, somewhat disrespected,
somewhat misunderstood character at her job,
which clearly occupies a lot of her time.
And in this moment, when she's receiving this stained bill,
it was really nice to be seeing her through multiple surfaces.
So we used a lot of glass, we used this wire,
kind of fencing material,
to just create a sense of her entrapment, a sense of...
forces closing in on her visually...
alongside music that is taking on a kind of operatic quality.
And I think that was something that Teddy Shapiro, the composer,
and I talked about a lot, was this idea of
the grandness of one person's life,
the grandness of one person's journey,
and the potential for tragedy in one mistake.
A lot of the locations that we looked at downtown
to find this precinct for Erin Bell were much older precincts,
and so they had things like the mural that was made out of tile,
they had a more of a '60s, '70s feel.
And of course we're very close to, in LA, an area called Skid Row,
so it gave the film...
I want to say, an authenticity that we were looking for.
That tattoo that we just looked at, or the remnant of it,
took a long time for us to perfect and...
it was the kind of detail within the script
that needed to be there and needed to be both
present and subtle.
And I think that's a demand of the whole film actually
when I think about it, that we need to understand all the strains
particularly on second viewing,
but at the very least, we need to note a presence
or note a question or an issue being raised.
Silas is back.
KUSAMA: This was actually our first day of shooting,
this scene with Gil Lawson and Erin Bell.
I hadn't worked with Nicole yet,
and this was our first day together on set.
I had worked many times with Toby Huss
on a TV show called Halt and Catch Fire
and as well as on my last film, The Invitation,
so I felt really comfortable with him,
and I felt like that was a nice way to introduce some of my acting clan
to Nicole.
Also in the film is Scoot McNairy, and I've worked with him many times
through Halt and Catch Fire as well, so I was excited to put Nicole
and Scoot together.
...and then I need you to forget you ever did it.
KUSAMA: What's nice to me about this scene,
and about her performance particularly,
is the intensity...
the obsession that's already starting to come through...
and it helped me on that first day to see how quickly Nicole
immersed herself into this role.
You know, she's such a different person than Nicole herself,
and so it was gratifying
to see right away that she was tapped into a frequency that was...
very special, very unique particularly in movies.
I feel like I see and deal with women
who aren't so far from this woman.
Driven, regretful,
obsessed, intense, lonely, isolated.
All of these things define Erin Bell,
and I feel a tremendous amount of sympathy and empathy with her.
And so the overall hope of the film, as we were making it, was that
we would study her, a camera would study her
and study her journey to track down...
eventually the leader, we learn, of this crime gang
but that the visual strategy is that
we're hanging on her face quite a bit and giving the audience access to her.
A moment like that is coming up right now.
And this became the strategy
into the flashbacks largely.
It was her face...
MAN: Where did we meet?
KUSAMA: ...combined with an off-screen line
that then segued right into the past.
The idea was that the past and the present aren't that...
different from each other for Erin Bell,
that it's a continuum that she lives
in this sort of purgatorial netherworld
between past and present,
and memory has entrapped her to some degree
and regret and guilt and shame.
And so...
my hope was that even the look of the flashbacks
wasn't too markedly different,
perhaps a bit warmer given some of the locations,
perhaps including a little bit different color palette,
but for the most part, living in the same world
as the rest of the film.
Working with Sebastian Stan who plays Chris
was just one of those lovely revelatory experiences
where I felt like I got to see an actor
show me something I hadn't seen of him before.
("The Man's Too Strong" playing)
KUSAMA: It was such a pleasure.
♪ Now they say I am a war criminal ♪
I always knew that I wanted to use Dire Straits somehow
in the film given that it's referenced in the script,
and there were a bunch of different songs we continued to try throughout the cut
but this was the one that really...
stuck with us.
The title is "The Man's Too Strong."
And when you hear the words, you realize that it's almost
a portrait of Erin Bell's interior world.
(country music playing)
Turn that shit down so we can talk.
KUSAMA: It was really interesting to shoot this scene.
This actor actually comes from a wrestling family.
He is distantly related to Dwayne Johnson,
and a lot of his family are wrestlers.
And so Joseph Fatu came in,
and I wanted somebody who felt Polynesian
and he was such a natural.
He had such an incredible...
You ain't got no way of knowin' that.
looseness, spontaneity.
And even Nicole just, I think, felt
like he helped create a window
into the world of the film,
because he just wasn't a character you see very often in movies.
...review all your records and see.
Now you know I don't got no records. Why you fuckin' with me?
KUSAMA: One of the favorite lines in the movie is,
"Well, that's like," you know, "fucking circular." (laughs)
And what I love about that line is that it relates back
to the overall picture of the script,
the mission of the script, which was to explore circularity,
explore time,
and explore our assumptions
about the linear progression of things...
You are fuckin' up right now.
...which is a big part of the movie.
It's toggling between past and present, and it's demanding that
the audience do quite a bit of work actually to stay...
present in her head space,
which isn't always moving chronologically forward.
So this idea of circularity...
is something that we keep returning to in the film
structurally and visually.
CHRIS: All right, kiss me.
KUSAMA: So we enter into another flashback here,
and it's the first indication that there'll be some kind of romantic intrigue
between the two characters,
and this is something about the film that I really appreciate...
that it's operating within...
...certain traditions in movies...
romance, danger, crime, investigation...
that audiences just feel safe with.
And so a scene like this to me
that establishes that there's some chemistry between these two characters
and opens up that question between them,
could they ever be in a relationship,
that's the kind of scene that just gives, in my opinion, pure movie pleasure.
It's interesting to watch this scene, getting all of this footage,
all of the footage driving out to Palm Springs,
all of these overpasses and windmills,
really took some doing.
Our budget was fairly aggressive,
so any second unit day was precious,
and we just managed to get some really beautiful footage
of driving out to the desert that could complement
all of this work here with Nicole as she was driving.
And here we are again into the past introducing Gil Lawson as a younger man
and seeing the origins of this mission.
This girl?
KUSAMA: I like the idea that we're seeing Erin Bell in various,
not disguises, but identities, you know, as a sheriff,
as a person working in law enforcement
in the previous bar scene,
now as her more scrappy desert rat self
which I actually think is,
on a character level, more aligned with who she's meant to be,
who she really identifies with.
Our CI will be making the introduction.
KUSAMA: And then eventually, of course, her present day self
who is so clearly broken by the past.
This was one of those scenes shooting in this desert diner that...
- (dog barking) - (rock music playing)
gave me a sense that the flashbacks were gonna work.
There was just a looseness between every one,
a spontaneity, even though they were saying every word
you know, word for word of the script.
They just made it all feel really real,
and so these more impressionistic scenes like this desert party
I hope could take on a kind of...
strange mythic quality, you know, like entering an underworld
or entering some kind of...
(rock music continues)
new...
new world that they have to now find
mirrors of themselves or find a way to fit in.
And I think the irony of both characters, Chris and Erin,
is that they do fit in.
And that's perhaps the biggest issue for them as characters,
the biggest conflict for them being undercover
is that they do fit in to this criminal underworld,
they feel more comfortable with it.
Toby, you have a visitor.
KUSAMA: This was a scene that...
It was very important to me that we work with a visual idea
that I had been thinking a lot about, which was pattern on pattern on pattern.
And so if you look at the...
Jesus, you look old.
KUSAMA: ...visual backdrop of this location,
we just packed on various kinds of pattern.
I think I wanted Erin Bell to feel a little bit lost
in the patterns, if that were possible.
I don't care about the fuckin' sugar. We're past that.
KUSAMA: I also think it looks real and a bit old fashioned
or stuck in time, and I think that's always interesting
to see with a modern context.
I'm incredible.
KUSAMA: This actor, James Jordan, was just such a gem.
He makes every line have the possibility for humor
even when it's extremely grim,
and he's just such a lovely, lovely guy to work with.
I think he and Nicole had a really special kinship
as actors who are so open to try all kinds of things.
They experiment, they take risks, they aren't afraid to go too far.
I love those kinds of actors that are never afraid of being foolish.
That to me is the sign of a great, great actor.
I love the lighting of this scene.
I love the...
the tension of it and the sense that we're really now meeting...
the present-day remains of this gang,
and the lightness is gone,
the wildness, the recklessness is pretty much gone,
and now we're just seeing people who are broken.
We're not quite sure why at this point in the film,
but there's a quality that time has done a number
on all of these characters.
And everyone keeps commenting on it to each other essentially...
(long inhale)
that no one looks recognizable anymore.
I can't give you Silas.
KUSAMA: That's really interesting to me.
I think this movie offered me the opportunity
to tell what I would consider an epic story
of an incredibly rich, complicated main character
and then introduce a world around her that was just as complicated
and rich and recognizable, I hope.
I think a part of what I like about this movie so much
and what I loved about the script from the beginning was the sense
that this felt like the real world.
And there was a smallness to characters that,
while often we hope for something different out of our movie characters,
I think there can be something bracing and thrilling
about watching characters be as small sometimes as we as humans can be.
And that has to happen sometimes in movies.
This is a moment that makes the case. (chuckles)
This is an uncomfortable scene.
Everyone going into it knew that it would be,
but I felt like it was crucial that it not have
a sense of exploitation but actually a sense of deep tragedy
that here is a man...
who laments the fact that the last person
who might ever touch him in his short life will be his mother, and...
Open your shirt.
KUSAMA: ...and he's just desperate for some kind of connection.
She's just desperate to get information.
And so the transactional quality of this scene,
the lack of...
(breathing heavily)
KUSAMA: I wanna say victimhood in any way,
makes it very interesting to me.
And it was very interesting to shoot.
The characters...
Spit on it.
KUSAMA: ...have such a lack of apology
and don't engender a huge amount of sympathy
which I think is interesting.
But the actors, every take, really just...
committed to the grimness, the bleakness,
the emotional desert of this scene
and then gave, I think, these interesting emotional shades to the scene.
You know, to see James Jordan
practically shed a tear and to see the disturbance
in Erin's eyes.
- He's somewhere in the city. - Somewhere!
KUSAMA: I thought it was really moving actually to be shooting this scene.
He's at this little iglesia on the east side.
KUSAMA: It's funny, when I watch this scene now and I look
at the design of it, it really does remind me
of the movies that inspired us as we were working.
Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, the writers, and I
loved to talk about Klute or...
Serpico or Dog Day Afternoon or The Parallax View,
and these movies of the '70s just have very rich palettes, I think,
and also of course were all shot on film, and so film takes on its own kind of...
mysterious patina,
and I think I was really hoping to evoke some of that in this film
despite the fact that we shot with the Alexa.
We did decide to do that,
but I think it was important that it feel like film.
This little grace note of the owl...
is one of those moments that I appreciate so much in the script
that just has a sense of...
CHRIS: Hey, Toby.
KUSAMA: ...the details.
Phil and Matt are really, really good at finding
the details of a world
and giving me the space then
to amplify those details or explore them further.
And so with a very spare style, a very lean style,
they never overwrite or overdo it.
They just set the stage.
And so this was the kind of scene, this upcoming scene,
that we're watching right now of the flashback
that just, it helps set the stage for what was psychologically at stake.
We're watching a bunch of people who are bonded, who are...
also probably drunk or wasted somehow
a lot of the time with, I would think, the exception of Silas,
who we're looking at right now, and...
That's a tree.
KUSAMA: ...that's the control he can have over all of these people,
a sense of just terrifying sobriety.
And meanwhile, everyone around him is getting lost and enjoying themselves
until he decides to shake things up when he feels threatened or he feels small,
which I'm gonna guess is a lot of the time.
Toby Kebbell, who plays Silas, did such a beautiful job of...
Hey, Arturo.
KUSAMA: ...being the...
uncharitable version of Silas,
the truly sort of reptilian version of Silas.
He wasn't looking to romanticize him
or make him a mastermind genius.
He knew that for Silas to actually crawl into Erin Bell's psyche,
he had to have...
SILAS: Right?
Well, come on.
KUSAMA: ...a humanness that is very unremarkable,
which I think actually is a mirror back to Erin.
Something I kept saying to Nicole as we were shooting
was, each character that you, as Erin, meet
across LA and back into the past
serves as a mirror back to you,
and that includes your daughter, that includes the character of Silas,
and that includes the character of Petra,
who we meet more substantially later.
Everyone is a version of who you could be,
who you are, who you were.
And so Silas and Nicole, Silas and Erin,
have this...
(inhale)
thread between them of hunger
of the desire for power, the desire to overpower, overwhelm,
the desire to control.
And so, as much as Erin's repelled by Silas,
she's also identifying to some degree with him
or aligned somehow with him psychologically.
And this is a scene in which he exhibits
his control over people, and we really see...
how terrifying it is because it's really about...
just psychological warfare.
It's not really a blatant threat.
It's just taking a person's vulnerability and digging into that vulnerability,
which is exactly what he does here with Arturo.
This was one of those scenes that we had almost a whole day to shoot.
It's quite long. It's about six minutes or maybe even a little longer,
and it was important that we get it right,
it was important that we have...
a sense of the space and a sense of everybody's relationship to one another
and a sense of access to all of the characters,
particularly Chris and Erin...
as the tone of it escalates
and as the suspense and danger of it escalates.
So it's one of these scenes that I hope looks
like we just understand how it all came together
but on a technical level was actually pretty tough to execute
in the time that we had,
and I'm so happy that I was working with actors
who were just so good that...
this kind of challenge wasn't daunting ultimately
because everybody just stepped up, everybody did great work,
and everybody gave me so much to choose from
and so much to work with
that I could have designed the scene to be Toby's scene.
I could have designed the scene to be Silas' scene entirely
or Chris' scene entirely, and so...
or even Petra's.
So that kind of level of actor
that I was privileged enough to work with
really made it possible, I think, for me to work with that aggressive schedule.
(soft guitar music plays)
KUSAMA: We only had 33 days to shoot so, to me,
having actors who are just showing up prepared, thoughtful,
and ready to experiment
is the only way something like this can really work.
Fuck. Sorry.
KUSAMA: This was a scene that sadly lost a couple of cool elements
which included her trying to reach out
to a random guy at the bar and just make a connection,
and it was one of the rare times we see her
doing something like that,
but it was interesting to recognize how important it was
to keep her distilled as a character.
(rap music playing)
KUSAMA: It was harder, I think,
to allow for too many story threads around her.
And so, as we were cutting the film, we found we really needed
to make it primarily on an emotional level
about this relationship that we're seeing right now
between Erin Bell and her daughter Shelby.
And so what that meant was we introduced the daughter, Shelby,
a little bit earlier on a story level,
and we...
we basically stripped away a few relationships that
might have given her life a bit more dimension for the viewer
but then took us away from the central thrust of this relationship
between her and Shelby
and the encroachment and the danger of this character, Jay,
played by Beau Knapp.
And between Beau and then Jade Pettyjohn, who plays Shelby,
we just had this kind of lovely triangle
loaded triangle, between them emotionally.
The idea of the older guy, the 25-year-old guy
who is going out with a 16-year-old,
it's not uncommon, but it's also really unsavory.
And so it's one of those moments that allows the audience access
to Erin Bell.
You know, to see that she is actually
a parent who cares despite the ways she messes that up,
despite the fact that she shows up drunk to the bar
to hunt down her daughter and then drives home drunk
as she does in this scene,
and we learn, we get a second reminder that
her partner is wondering where she's been for the past couple of days
as she's been on this quest.
We see how her life so easily can fall apart,
and I think that that's how a lot of people live
but we just...
we just don't get to explore that as much in movies...
as I think I would like
and the fact that she's so on the edge of professional collapse,
or personal collapse...
doesn't feel so far away from how many of us
have found ourselves living,
and I sympathize with that.
People have responded in so many different ways to the character
and sometimes see her as difficult or intractable.
I just find her relatable personally,
which maybe says something about me, but I...
I like how she's had to find strength in the weirdest ways
and I identify with that, I think.
Where?
BELL: A bar.
KUSAMA: This is an interesting scene for me because it introduces the idea
that she might have once tried to have a functional relationship
and can't seem to pull it off.
Scoot McNairy, who plays Ethan, is
probably one of the few truly honorable characters in the film.
He's somebody that if it were his movie, I think we'd root for him.
And so it's interesting to see that
she could have gone down a path
of being partnered with a person like this,
and it hasn't worked.
And so on the one hand, this is just a conversation between exes
about the kid that they share,
but on the other hand I think, particularly on second viewing,
it's interesting to see that she did try
to forge a relationship with somebody...
within these 16, 17 years
since we've been having access to the flashbacks.
This was a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown.
I believe it's called the oldest Chinese restaurant in Chinatown,
and it has a sign, or a plaque, to tell us that outside,
and it had this great sickly yellow...
tile everywhere,
which I thought was kind of a nice contrast
to the punishing white sunlight
that marks so much of the lighting of the daytime exteriors,
and then the pink tables just felt like
back to that introduction of all the pink,
like a nice contrast to that sort of pale, pale yellow.
This is just one of those scenes that to me is both about her inability
to keep it together but also her power and her potency as a character.
A rage junkie, and shit.
KUSAMA: To watch her simmer in the presence of Jay and...
take his needling and needling and needling
and his little comments and attempt to be the better person,
attempt to rise above, attempt to be the grownup...
it's just interesting to me because I really...
identify with where this scene is headed, which is the explosion.
Would you stay the fuck outta this?
KUSAMA: I personally never go there or almost never go there,
but I love characters who do.
I feel like when you see a woman who just cannot contain her rage...
even if we have to watch the consequence
of her driving away someone she loves,
there is a kind of cinematic satisfaction in watching a character
who's a little bit out of control,
and I just think it's exciting to see that kind of person on screen
but particularly see this woman on screen and see Nicole playing this role.
There's something very different about Erin Bell
from anything else Nicole has done,
and she inhabited the secrecy
and the loneliness and the rage of the character so deeply
that it was...
spooky at times.
There were times when I would look at her on set,
she wouldn't be on her phone, she wouldn't be chatting with anyone,
she would just be sitting in her chair,
and it was like there was a force field around her
of Erin Bell,
and that's a incredible kind of magic
to be able to work with people who summon...
No.
KUSAMA: ...other energies, other narratives
into the room, you know?
We were all able to be in the presence of a great artist summoning that energy,
and I hope we were able to tell a better story
and make a better movie because of it.
You know, she's always...
Look, I'm sorry.
KUSAMA: ...she's always trying things as an actor.
And so, like in this scene for instance,
we talked a lot about the nature of performance
and that she's someone who lies
really effortlessly,
and we need to see how easy it is for her to slip into this narrative
of, you know, being a mom with a nanny that she's desperate to keep.
Particularly watching it the second time or multiple times, I find that lie
kind of funny, like, it's...
it's so incongruous to who Erin Bell actually is.
The idea of Erin with a nanny,
I don't know why, it just tickles me.
And so this whole scene of seeing her perform
an upstanding citizen is kind of interesting to me.
This is a moment where we introduce a transitional element that I liked using
which was a straight-ahead closeup
of a character looking directly into the camera.
And so we see Arturo as an older man here in this church,
but then we get somewhat heightened, expressive access
to who he was 17 years prior...
when he was playing
a cool kind of bad kid, I suppose,
and wearing the jewelry of that, I suppose, just the trappings of it.
This was a scene that was really difficult
to figure out how we were gonna pull off.
We had to have a sense of escalating height literally
because the way this scene resolves
is up high on a hill
that then eventually has a view that tells us
they've climbed quite a bit.
And so we found a spot in Echo Park
that actually did allow for the sense of stairwells...
BELL (breathlessly): I just wanna talk.
KUSAMA: ...and hills, and then we found an incredible location
that is actually an abandoned park
that miraculously had exactly what we were looking for
from the script, which was...
downtown LA in the background
and Dodger Stadium across from it,
so we get two different backgrounds for these characters.
And it was such a joy to work with a location manager
who would read the script and have the same sense...
of, I wanna say, almost obsession...
towards finding the same thing I wanted to find.
You know, new corners of Los Angeles that allowed for
just new access, I guess, to the city, a city we both really love.
Robert Foulkes, the location manager, just tirelessly drove around Los Angeles,
and sometimes I would be in the car with him,
looking for these spots
and when he found this little strip of parkland
high up on a hill, it really was a find
and, you know, it was one of those things where
I hope Phil and Matt felt vindicated
because they hadn't been here yet to know that it existed,
but they felt like it had to.
There had to be a spot, a spit of land,
where you could look out at the city and then also see Dodger Stadium.
As we were shooting, we happened to be entering
the post-season of Dodger's baseball,
and so we were actually able to film Dodger Stadium
filled with cars in a playoff game...
So when's it add up to even, huh?
KUSAMA: ...which is just not something that happens very often
that you can really use...
the timing of your shoot to your advantage like this.
I was super thankful because this was one of those important moments
where they look out at Dodger Stadium
and we've been hearing the sound of a game,
and now it all comes together as they stare out at the stadium
and hear the cheers from the crowd.
This was a very hard transition.
I meant for it to be kind of coming out of a hard sound transition
into a somewhat startling visual transition
of a kind of blue into sunlight.
MAN (over speaker): ...Detective Bell. We're in the back.
KUSAMA: And this whole sequence
is an example, I would say, of how productions need to think on their feet.
(weed trimmer whirring)
It was meant to be obviously one continuous scene,
yet we had to shoot it over two days
given its length and given the demands of it.
And so one of those days was pouring rain,
nonstop pouring rain,
and so we had to reconceive the whole scene
and bring it indoors, which is what we're doing here,
and pray that the rain wasn't so loud
that it would interfere with our eventual sound mix...
"Pleasure to meet you..."
KUSAMA: ...and move the action essentially through the house
and then back outside where we could achieve the rest of the scene
on our second day, which we were told was gonna be sunny,
and thank God it was.
If both had been rainy days, it would have such a different feel.
It's funny to even have to think about it but...
I call the FBI. We go through all the motions.
It ended up being...
it ended up kind of being the right thing, I think.
It's nice to see this...
What did Mike tell you about your elbow? Get it up!
KUSAMA: ...this beige interior that's meant to be tasteful and fancy
but ultimately just feels kind of depressing.
And there's something just so sublime about Bradley Whitford having
so much fun playing such a creep.
He's so good at just committing
to the logic of a person who sees everything as a food chain
and imagines his whole life as just trying to get to the top
and move past those minnows and move past...
She's a pretty girl...
KUSAMA: ...all of the life forms that he feels don't deserve to ascend.
And it's a brutal logic, but he actually has moments
where he says stuff that sounds somewhat reasonable
or might even make some sense.
And so that's what I thought was interesting about this character.
He is unlikable but then also kind of funny.
He enjoys being villainous.
He enjoys being the heavy.
And then when it all comes down to it, he's just as afraid
and vulnerable as everyone.
So filming this was kind of a joy
to be working, again with another actor
who just shows up, is so prepared,
and is so dialed in to who this character is.
I think that you are down here...
KUSAMA: I think Nicole and Bradley
might have worked together years and years ago,
but they just had so much fun while they were working.
I did some Googling, Detective Bell.
KUSAMA: And I think that Nicole was sort of genuinely startling to Bradley.
I think he, you know, when she showed up,
he was like, "Oh, wow, okay."
Big transition from...
You know, big transformation from the Nicole that,
you know, he had seen in the makeup trailer hours before, so...
They had a really interesting, testy chemistry, I thought,
which I loved to be in the presence of.
Big fuckin' houses on cliffs...
KUSAMA: This scene is to me the first of
a few where we really see...
...your life since Palm Springs a success?
KUSAMA: ...we see Erin going through the trial, the physical trial,
that marks a large part of the spine of the movie,
and I've talked about it with Phil and Matt,
this idea that she...
Super Chicken's sidekick...
KUSAMA: ...she's a character who gets kicked and keeps...
and keeps getting up,
and this is the first of one of those scenes
where we see her face terrible adversity
and then...
You're barking up the wrong tree...
KUSAMA: ...get up again.
And I have to say there's something about that in her
that I really relate to as well, just on a character level
on a kind of the myth level.
The thing we're looking for from great characters
is that extraordinary moment
where the fight comes back to her.
And in some ways, it's because she's been so beaten down
that the fight is so present.
DIFRANCO: How did you think this was going to go?
KUSAMA: It's hard not for me to relate to her in that regard.
DIFRANCO: ...ask a few questions with that hang dog look...
KUSAMA: It's hard I guess, it's unpleasant to watch this character
be so abused, and yet there is something really powerful
about that look in her eyes right now
where it looks like she could still go at him.
When we found that moment, as we were cutting,
it just felt so thrilling because it says so much about her as a character.
You know, she doesn't ever just give up.
It's almost like it's not in her DNA to do it,
she doesn't know how, and so...
This is a moment that is one of two scenes in which the character
looks in the mirror and takes stock
and probably doesn't love what she's seeing,
doesn't love what's looking back at her...
and there's an enraged quality to her response, but...
We later see a scene in the past
where she gives herself a hard look in the mirror,
and I do think that's a bit of...
a narrative metaphor for the whole movie
what does it mean, what are the consequences
of looking deeply at yourself?
- All right. - (grunts)
KUSAMA: I am told by people that this scene is satisfying
for them on a bunch of levels,
and I do think there's something about watching...
watching a woman take something back for herself
that is thrilling and pleasurable
and probably also a little bit uncomfortable.
But I love that about this scene.
(grunts forcibly)
I think violence has a price in this film.
I think there's blood, there's scars, there's damage,
and yet as moviegoers, I think we are drawn to this idea
of a kind of cinematic lashing out,
and this is one of those moments
where we see the character lash out
and for some of us, it's really satisfying.
It's really satisfying to see, like, to me how her hands are somewhat shaking
with the gun in her hand because she's so adrenalized
and so nervous and yet so in command of her rage,
and that's a scary thing to be in the presence of.
...it goes right to the FBI. You got it?
This scene turned out really well, I felt, like, in terms of...
It's always Petra.
...communicating how strange this character is,
how unpredictable,
how hair trigger she is,
and her danger, I think, becomes more apparent in this scene.
It's sort of like balance shifts a little bit here,
and we understand that...
while her co-workers may not appreciate her,
there is something formidable about her.
Coming up is a scene here where we shot it
in perhaps a more conventional way
than it was on the page.
It had always been clear on the page
that this scene needed to take on this dream-like logic,
and we were on a real location out in the desert.
Weirdly, it couldn't have been louder out there.
It was so strange the way we would hear traffic and motorcycles,
and it was just really odd.
Trains deep, deep in the background were very present and loud.
And so we suddenly felt kind of hobbled by some of this footage
not having the surreality that we were hoping for.
And as Plummy Tucker, my editor, and I were grappling with this scene,
Plummy suggested the idea of...
Why?
KUSAMA: ...playing with...
an interior voiceover and sync sound
so that we can feel the dream-like voice
that might be in Erin Bell's head
and watch her character in what appears
to be real time and space speaking to her.
I think it's a pretty effective method.
Once we found it
and once we distilled it to what we wanted it to be,
the hope was that we don't quite know if that scene is even happening
or if it actually happened
but that Erin believes it's happened.
This was a scene I get asked about all the time,
did I want the ant to be walking through the frame?
And the answer is yes, we had an ant wrangler.
There were literally two people sitting off to the side of that shot
trying to coax that ant, that difficult ant
over to their side of the room,
but she was being a diva, I suppose.
But I just wanted an ant 'cause I thought it was interesting to see
a person who feels so small and insignificant waking up
to a creature even smaller,
and one could argue, the same significance.
We were just hanging out at this club, and out of nowhere...
KUSAMA: This is a scene that we shot in a real hospital in Burbank,
and it's just meant to be...
the real life ratcheting up
of a teenager's...
I wanna say, the perilousness of a teenager's...
life when they're at this age,
when they're 16, they're running a little fast with a fast crowd,
and...
What was the club?
KUSAMA: ...suddenly Erin has to confront the possibility
that her daughter is living
a little bit out of her element
and is looking to get into bigger trouble than she's already in.
Where do you think this ends up, Shelby? Hmm?
KUSAMA: This was a moment that in the script
I just loved on paper...
Nobody is fucking accountable!
KUSAMA: ...and I just love it now.
The irrationality of Erin Bell screaming out
"No one is fucking accountable,"
which in the world of the film is true,
but the irony particularly on second viewing
is watching it and understanding that she's really speaking
to herself,
and it helped me
just clarify what I think is,
or just gave us a little bit of a nudge toward
what I think is the real...
ANTONIO: Hey, partner!
KUSAMA: ...thematic concern of the film,
which is, what does it mean to be morally accountable,
what does it mean to be personally responsible to yourself
and to the mistakes you've made, the choices you've made.
...a special agent calling me from the FBI...
KUSAMA: We see one of those choices right now
in that she's been avoiding her partner
and now she finds Antonio waiting for her
wondering where she's been all this time.
And one gets the sense that she's a little bit out of control,
but she's still senior to him
and can barely get away with saying just leave me alone
while I'm on this quest on my own
but that his patience is extremely limited
to give her much more rope.
In a funny way, he is the one that ends up
with some of the most crucial information of the film,
and I loved the idea of, in this shot, kind of leaving him in a maze,
because he doesn't know it yet, but he needs to find his way out of that maze
to understand the consequences of her choices
later in the film.
We shot this part
actually in Griffith Park
at the merry-go-round as it was scripted,
and this is the introduction of the present-day Petra,
played so wonderfully by Tatiana Maslany.
And this again is meant to...
(inaudible laughter)
be a bit of a study of
what time can do to us
depending on the choices we make and the lives we lead,
because this woman that we're looking at who's talking to herself
and lashing out at strangers
and feeling
a sense of being put upon completely irrationally
is quite a bit different than the reckless cowboy girl
that we see in the back of a truck kissing a rifle.
And so...
And yet, of course, they're inevitably linked.
And so this is the beginning of a sequence
that I think makes up what I would call
sort of one of the biggest set pieces of the film
where she starts to follow Petra...
and hopes that she can get more information
about the remains of this gang and eventually Silas.
As we were cutting the film, I would say
this was one of the bigger challenges,
was managing the sense of quest and odyssey across LA...
with just the real experience of watching a movie.
Like, how much basically can the audience tolerate
before they lose interest or lose engagement
but how do we maintain that connection
to this idea that when she drives somewhere it takes some time
because this is Los Angeles, and nothing is two minutes away.
So it was an interesting challenge throughout the film
to balance those things.
(thunder rumbles)
This is one of those frames that was kind of an ode to Gordon Willis
a DP that Julie Kirkwood and I are both pretty obsessed by
and just the hardcore silhouette...
(psychedelic rock song plays)
KUSAMA: ...it spoke to who Erin really was in the present day,
this living mystery.
And I loved the idea that it opened us up
into the past and into this moment
that becomes a real tipping point for Erin in the flashbacks
in which she overhears Silas and Petra 17 years ago
planning something.
It sounds like there's a lot of money at stake,
and there's even a mention of Petra's dad's friend,
which I believe we've always thought was Dennis DiFranco
who we've just seen in the scene with Bradley Whitford.
So this is an opportunity to sort of start putting pieces
of the puzzle together.
And also see that Chris is doing his job almost too well.
You know, he's using now,
he's having a little too much fun,
and yet there's something momentous between him and Erin right now.
There is a sense that something is going on.
And I loved this daylight hanging-out quality.
Like, I thought there was something really even more depressing to me
about nighttime,
the idea of a bunch of people just hanging out and doing drugs
and listening to music, and it's just eternal sunshine
that just seems, there's a different kind of...
darkness to that, I suppose.
And this is a moment where we reveal that they are now...
in some shape or form a couple,
and it was an interesting experience when we were cutting it
because I think there were a lot of people who...
who expressed the desire for more information,
but the point is is that we...
we need to have the question hanging in the air about how much
of this relationship is real, how much of it can...
how much of it is a function of being undercover,
all of that kind of stuff, and so it was something we played with
how much of it we would really see or explain.
And now we're back into the present day...
pursuit of Petra.
And the way this scene was constructed was that
it was always meant to be...
a bit from Erin's perspective
in that she's just following them.
She doesn't have a sense of what's on the other side.
This is where we, on a score level, we introduced this
guitar blast that I think kind of helped
ratchet up the sense of tension or surprise
alongside these sort of more momentous chords
that we've been playing with throughout the score
and building on.
And of course also building on this idea of no matter where you're going
you're still sitting in traffic at certain points
as you're driving through LA.
And this was an actual old bank close to the airport,
and it became the ideal setting for us to be...
for us to be shooting this sequence
It's meant to have, I think,
the sense of truly not knowing what's gonna happen next,
and what I loved about it on the page was that
the thing I hadn't anticipated was the idea
that she was following Petra and would kind of hit the jackpot
quite as deeply as she does here.
When these guys jump out of the van
and she realizes that what she's watching
is a bank robbery in progress
and that it's being spearheaded by Silas,
the person she's been hunting for,
it has that kind of dream-like quality...
211 in progress.
you know, a kind of almost surreality to it...
At least six armed suspects.
...and I loved what the music was doing here
to sort of give us a sense of, like,
the butterflies in the stomach almost for Erin.
And this is one of my favorite moments of the movie coming up right now
where she just starts charging away from her car
and then remembers she has another weapon in the trunk.
Like that there was this sense of her...
mania to get this guy,
that she forgets she could be arming herself a little more effectively.
And this, by the way, is like what an LA cop has in back of their trunk.
It's not remarkable.
So just seeing her go back
and then suddenly come out with this weapon,
it's both bracing on a movie level but also kind of terrifying
to think this is how real life works.
I loved this building because it had such great shapes with these arches
and had a really nice interior lobby here.
And what I liked about this whole scene was that I felt like it gave us
the opportunity to just see something in a way that felt real.
It just felt authentic. It didn't feel...
too heightened. It felt chaotic and...
PETRA: Don't look at me!
KUSAMA: It just felt sort of like this is maybe
how messed up and frantic
this would feel if you were really in this situation.
And I would say that was a big mission of the script,
was to evoke real life...
and evoke something...
(shouting continues)
KUSAMA: ...bigger and more almost mythological.
And this is an example where the music helps
with that latter instinct, you know.
It's sort of raising...
raising the stakes of this scene to something closer to myth...
and then lines like this upcoming one,
"This is a fucking gunfight," which just helps us understand
the bluntness of this woman's quest.
- (people screaming) - (gunman shouting)
KUSAMA: What was really interesting when we shot this scene
over the course of more than a few days
was just how fast everything happens, you know.
No one can move in slow motion.
(guns firing)
KUSAMA: It's frantic. There's something kind of just almost,
it's moving too fast to really recognize how awful it is,
and so it made me think a lot about war films
and just how in these moments there's a sense
of just trying to get out and survive.
And we were really lucky to be in a space here where we were shooting
that just had some height, that had a really amazing ceiling,
that had a lot of wood which created some nice warmth.
We looked at a lot of locations that were just way too small,
and so we finally found something that just had drama to it
and heft...
and created enough distance between characters
that you could sort of see people really having...
to put themselves in danger just to get to the exit.
This was a hard sequence to shoot,
possibly one of our most challenging.
A lot of people on the crew including, at times, our camera operators,
also Nicole, had the flu.
So everybody was going down while we were shooting this particular scene
and then for Nicole to get sick was just like, "Oh, my God,
how are we gonna do this?"
Miraculously, we pulled it off.
I think every single setup ends up in this sequence.
Like, nothing went to waste.
But it was...
It really felt like we had, you know, a boot on our neck
while we were shooting.
It was, like, not a relaxed week of shooting at all.
It actually added a bit to the intensity of the scene
or to the feverish quality
of Erin Bell and all the other characters.
There was a sense of just having to move at a very fast clip
and work at a really high level
that I think actually benefited the sequence.
OFFICER (on police radio): Witnesses at location advised
three to four suspects left bank, headed east, automatic weapons.
KUSAMA: We were really lucky, because something that I knew
Phil and Matt really took seriously was the idea
that all of these off-screen voices that come through the police dispatch radio
and all of the banter
around just living in law enforcement
be real and sound real,
and we had some really great background voice artists
who came in and just made everything feel urgent
and scary and real...
(hip-hop music playing)
and it was just another moment for me as a director
being moved by how much every single person brings
to making a movie
and how those voices added so much texture
and so much authenticity
and how much I appreciate them.
- (grunts) - Take him!
KUSAMA: This scene was really hard to shoot as well.
We often had Nicole and Tatiana
fighting here...
(both grunting)
and it was important that we see their faces at certain points
and really understand the degree to which
they are hurting each other.
And so this is the fight
that essentially kills Erin Bell.
It's just one step too far, and she can't survive it in the end,
and so it was important that it take on
a brutality that it might fly by
but again on second viewing, you have to watch it and say,
I understand the severity
of what's happened to this character especially.
Move.
This throwaway line is one of my favorites
and everyone's reaction to it, "I'm a cop,"
and everyone's terrified reaction of that line.
And this was a scene that had this kind of strange magic...
Fucked my teeth...
KUSAMA: ...between these two actors,
you know, so much intensity between them,
a sense of history between them.
And then a wildness, a complete unpredictability.
And the idea that sirens are closing in
and she just throws this woman in the trunk
and then this woman starts laughing hysterically
was one of the destabilizing elements
of the script that just felt so exciting.
Like this is a world upside down,
and Erin is just in the middle of all of it.
LAPD!
KUSAMA: Here's another example for me of Nicole's brilliance
in that she just...
She just performs aggrieved
and then slips out of it in an instant.
And the idea that...
she's just gotten, as a character, too used to lying,
that perhaps it's blurred for her truth.
Truth and the lie, she can't tell the difference anymore.
And so a big part of the film is her kind of coming to the truth,
as difficult as that ends up being for her,
as risky as it is for her.
This was one of these scenes that again we had to depend
on really great second unit days
capturing this drive and the sense of odyssey
across all of LA, from the airport to the East Side.
Which as many of us who live in LA know can sometimes be...
a challenging trial.
But I loved the mystery of this shot,
of her in the rear view and the side view mirror
and just the sense of, what is this woman doing?
Where is she coming from? Why does she have a witness in the trunk of her car?
None of it makes sense, and so...
to me again, this is just another piece of the puzzle
being laid out into what becomes an ever-expanding puzzle,
and that was something I loved about the script from the beginning,
the sense that we think we know what the mystery is
and then we haven't even gotten, really sort of to scratching the surface.
This is a scene that came late in our schedule
and was probably the last scene of the present-day material.
And it really required
that Tatiana and Nicole express
this effortless history between them,
what you might even say like a curdled friendship...
but then also understand that they're genuine adversaries
seeing as how Petra is chained to this table,
you know, handcuffed to this side table here.
And so it's a complicated scene.
I think probably in the original director's, like, first pass,
of the film when I had a lot,
I had done a lot less refining of the scenes,
this scene was a lot, lot longer
because it had so many interesting story threads going through it
and so many suggestions of relationships from the past
that couldn't end up in the finished film because it almost, like, brought up...
too many questions, too many new elements.
So in some ways, I think this is the most distilled version of the scene
that gets us to Petra and her relationship with Silas
and how that's become...
stale for both of them,
a bad habit, clearly, for both of them,
and something that Petra's willing to finally sacrifice
and say goodbye to in order to,
not necessarily save herself, but at least liberate herself from...
from Silas' grip.
It's really meant to be a scene that has
some internal emotional twists and turns.
I'm not gonna give you...
KUSAMA: And it was hard to shoot. They move around a lot.
They decided each to be incredibly adventurous as actors
and they handled the physicality of the scene differently
take to take.
So at a certain point, I needed to sort of choose a path
with the footage that I had.
And it's pretty fascinating to look at all the dailies of a scene like this
and really see that with these two actors particularly,
they are working at such a high level that they can make
one specific choice really work,
and they can make a completely different choice really work,
and that's just a joy to behold.
It's hard to cut, but it's a joy to behold
because it meant that
I was always just working with...
I wanna just say, genius in the room.
And the two of them I think didn't need very long
to size each other up as actors.
I think they both were pretty quickly hooked in
to how much skill and talent
and soulfulness the other was bringing to the table.
It was a real moving experience, in a way, to watch these two actors...
face off in the same room.
I'll see ya.
KUSAMA: There's something about this scene that reveals
how broken Petra is and how she is sort of like
the more extreme mirror to Erin Bell.
Think you're fuckin' better than me. You aren't shit.
KUSAMA: And there's the suggestion...
You wanted to be one of us.
KUSAMA: ...that Erin always wanted
what Petra and Silas and Toby and Arturo wanted,
which was just, plain and simple, money.
And we hear this and we don't quite...
But you wanted it, same as me.
KUSAMA: We don't necessarily quite know how it impacts the story.
And what I love about the script is that we're primed for this notion
about her... her... Erin's duplicity,
her ability to potentially be a criminal like they were in her heart.
And then we travel into this flashback
that reveals something quite momentous in the story,
which is that Silas finally...
lets Chris in on the plan,
and we find out that there's potentially seven to ten million dollars at stake,
and now Chris and Bell have to make a decision.
They have to figure out when to extract themselves...
from this job.
But what I think is so tantalizing about the character and the story
is that the thing we've always felt about Erin Bell
or suspected or wondered
becomes brutally clear here, I think,
and it's like the story gets pushed off a ledge in a great way...
What if we don't?
KUSAMA: ...when she asks this question,
what if we don't, what if we don't go by the letter of the law,
what if we participate in this crime
and just try to get away with it,
which is what criminals want to do.
They want to get away with their crimes.
And who among us has been, you know,
guilty of that? Probably many of us.
We just want to have a transgressive moment
and get away with it and walk away with no consequence,
but the fact is the movie is, I think, trying to uncover
the impossibility of that wish.
Because from this point forward, we're now watching Erin...
really grappling with how much suffering she has brought upon herself
with this disastrous decision.
And we understand that she even...
told Ethan the truth,
and he was even willing to accept something about her
despite this transgression.
But I think in the way that they are a couple
that she just can't bear the exposure,
and so she leaves him.
And in this moment, she is now saying I want you to have the money that I stole.
And I just think that's such...
I don't know when I've seen that scene in a movie
between a woman and a man,
particularly when it's the woman who's saying
"I want you take the money I stole."
I just think it's so loaded and so complicated
and different and unique.
You think that's easy for me to say?
KUSAMA: And this was one of those scenes where it was important
that we understand it's enough money
to make a dent but also...
the kind of amount of money that...
17 years later maybe...
you would really have to ask yourself,
"Why? Was that possibly worth it?"
And I think that's the question Erin is asking herself,
and I want the audience to be there right with her
asking this question about...
I gotta go.
KUSAMA: ...this grave mistake that she makes.
(car door closes)
(engine starts)
KUSAMA: This was one of those scenes where, like...
you need to feel that...
Ethan is ultimately a good guy,
ultimately a person who, while he needs the money too
and he admits it, if Shelby were to end up with him...
that would be a safe landing pad.
And I think there's something kind of lonely about this whole scene,
seeing how estranged they are and embittered they are
and that there could have been a different relationship there.
There could have been love and tenderness,
and I'm sure there were moments of it between them,
but it's now just all in the past,
and in some ways perhaps we're seeing Ethan move on
finally in that scene.
And this was one of these scenes that
we added, I would say, probably later.
Phil and Matt added that scene of her taking the pills
and us feeling the depth of her wounds starting to...
affect her physicality before we moved into this flashback.
And to me, there was something about this moment that is
a sort of centerpiece emotionally of the movie.
(toilet flushing)
KUSAMA: The momentousness of...
taking a pregnancy test
not knowing what to expect,
probably assuming that she is not pregnant...
but finding out that she's pregnant anyway
and the shock of it...
almost the sense that you've been hit by lightning.
I feel like so many women have gone through this moment
where they've discovered that they're pregnant
and whether they've wanted that or not,
it is such a big deal,
and it's just not treated in a very dimensional way
in movies, I would say.
We often see what it means to want to have a kid
and then become pregnant,
but there's something about the uncertainty here...
this look on her face, the sense of terror,
of joy, of regret...
but really terror.
It's like her life has been turned upside down in this scene,
and I just feel...
I'm just so glad we could have shot it and so glad that the script had a moment
where we see a character have to face this life-changing event.
And on a story level, what's really interesting
is we realize that it's Chris' baby,
not Ethan's, and that
I think adds yet another piece
of an ever-expanding puzzle to the world of this woman.
And on that tip, here we are in this scene where she is going to her storage unit
and finding that the money she stole is largely ruined
and that a dye pack unwittingly was in that bag
and went off late.
(grunting)
Fuck!
KUSAMA: This is a scene that...
we really wanted to thread a needle...
of giving enough information that the audience could come
to a reasonable conclusion about how it had happened
without over-explaining how it had happened.
It's interesting, it's a challenge to tell stories this way
because you run the risk of confusing people or losing people...
but at least you're sort of staying tethered
to an emotional state as opposed to just...
trying to explain something.
And so I struggle probably with what I could have done differently here
to tell this part of the story.
But ultimately I think what we see is that she takes the remaining money that's left,
and that leads us into this scene with Jay.
This was one of those shots where she's coming up over that bridge
that evoked all of those great Gordon Willis...
films shot by Gordon Willis, particularly The Parallax View or Klute
where there was just a really graphic framing of a character in space
and where the graphicness of the framing almost...
dwarfs a character,
and we see that there are sort of larger powers,
or larger forces, around a character.
I felt like that was really common in some of those '70s films
that I referenced earlier,
and we were definitely, Julie and I...
trying to evoke that in this film.
This was one of these outdoor locations.
Every single scene of the film is at a real location,
and so I would say some of the sound in this particular scene was like...
It was like an alien invasion might have been happening
in the background on a sound level.
We were just like, "Why is it so noisy?"
There was just no way to really filter it out.
And so it's an incredibly noisy film in the finished...
a noisy scene in the finished film.
But I think it gives it some life, let it just feel
a little bit rough...
and a little bit sort of exposed somehow
on a sound level.
I would probably ask for something different
if I could have had it,
but I just loved this particular location.
It was downtown, it was where a lot of, like,
lawyers and clerks were taking their lunch break,
and then there was like all these skateboarders,
and there were quite a few homeless people living in this particular area,
and so it just had the texture again of real life,
and all of that seemed worth it to me.
Fine. No one's worth...
KUSAMA: I really like this scene because Beau Knapp brings this...
strange vulnerability to this moment...
She's never gonna love you...
KUSAMA: ...and it's like he knows...
one or two things about Shelby, and he...
and one of those things is how deeply anguished she is about her mom,
and he attempts to use it against Bell here
but doesn't quite succeed.
And watching the film now, it's like to me this bridge shot
is kind of like the bridge into the last act of the movie.
And we watch now what becomes
an extended flashback sequence into the past...
where the plotting of the crime
in the past becomes much clearer,
a sense of the performance of what will be their story,
their narrative to the crime,
combined with the crime itself.
And on the page, it was a fairly complex...
and demanding sequence in that it was...
flashbacks within flashbacks essentially
or flash-forwards and flashbacks...
kind of all working together.
(phone ringing)
KUSAMA: It was a difficult sequence to put together.
I'm really thankful that we had so much music actually to work with...
...at the first, they were already...
KUSAMA: ...early on so that
we could start feeling this conspiratorial build
between these two characters
as well as see the crime build simultaneously.
And so this was a case where some of those early exploratory recording sessions
that I had done with Teddy Shapiro
right after he'd gotten a script.
And before I had even started officially prepping,
he was writing some of this music.
And so to have this stuff
that was a bit...
more fractured and snaky, it actually helped
pull this sequence together in the cutting room
a lot earlier than it would have been, I think,
if we didn't have that music.
That's another collaboration that I'm just so thankful to have.
I feel like Teddy and I, and Plummy and I,
and Phil and Matt and I have been able to work
as this unit on the past couple of films,
and it makes a fast cutting schedule...
remotely possible because we can be
in a pretty aligned creative space really early.
(engine starts)
KUSAMA: I loved this desert location.
This was a Masonic lodge
that we turned into a bank.
There's just something about the white-on-white vibe of it
that felt very desert,
and it had a kind of evocative blandness that I really appreciated.
Wait till it all quiets down, and then we quit.
KUSAMA: This is probably the most stylistically...
I would say, extreme departure that the film takes
in that once we see
the bank robbery itself,
it's told in a combination
of footage from surveillance cameras
and a heightened color photography
that is very different than the way the rest of the film has been shot.
It's sort of meant to feel like...
(long inhale)
...a memory or a combination of stuff you would piece together
from actual surveillance versus
one's memory of how it might have happened.
So, for instance, these shots,
which were all slo-mo,
are meant to have the expressive quality
of what Erin Bell might have imagined had happened
from piecing it together from the surveillance footage.
And I was hoping that we could sense this connection
between Chris and Bell, this sense of...
(inhales)
almost a kind of psychic bond between them...
but in the end, she's outside of the bank
and he's inside the bank...
and what happens from this point forward is,
you know, sort of the tragedy that marks Bell's life.
She's asked Chris to participate in this bank robbery,
he never expected to have to go into the bank.
That was exactly one of the mistakes,
one of the things going wrong that...
they could have deflected
or done something differently there,
but they chose not to.
And so when they all run out
and there's this moment of hopefulness on Bell's face
and a sense like, ah, she's gonna get away with it,
it all gets interrupted by this.
And from this point forward, it's sort of the...
I wanna say, the end of the life from that flashback Erin Bell
as we know her and the beginning
of what becomes Erin Bell in the present,
this toxifying in her
because she's gonna watch the one person she loves
ever perhaps in her life...
run back into that bank and most certainly to his death.
And she's not wrong to feel responsible.
TOBY: Why is he going back in?
KUSAMA: What was amazing to me about shooting this sequence was how much Nicole
committed to the terror of not being inside the bank
but that sense of waiting, the sense of dread.
- No fuckin' dye pack, huh? - FBI!
KUSAMA: And this might be probably the only time we really see something happen
that Erin doesn't have access to in the same way
with what would become the one exception which is this shot,
a surveillance scene that she surely would have seen after the fact.
That anticipation on her face.
When we were shooting it, she just did such a good job.
She made it seem so effortless...
TOBY: What the fuck? (breathing heavily)
KUSAMA: ...to be waiting for him to come out of this bank
and to recognize that it's not gonna happen...
TOBY: Fuckin' drive!
KUSAMA: ...and to sort of feel her life fall off a cliff like that.
- (sobs) -TOBY: Go!
KUSAMA: It was just really another moment where I just felt like
I'm really so blessed to be working with an actor who can...
just commit to a reality so effortlessly, you know.
It's interesting when you watch an actor make it look easy.
It can't be easy what she's done,
and what a lot of these actors have done throughout the film.
They just have given 110 percent,
and so it was just such a great experience to be working with people...
who invested so much of their hearts and minds into these characters.
This scene in particular where she takes a wrong turn
and crashes this van...
(engine accelerates)
KUSAMA: The willfulness of it is such an incredible example
of her character,
that she's literally gonna crash her van into a dumpster
to stop it.
(van door opens)
(grunts)
KUSAMA: And there's just an insanity to it that's so both insane and real.
I guess that's something I really appreciate about her.
(breathing heavily)
KUSAMA: This scene, when we were shooting it...
there was just this aliveness, this vibrancy to what Nicole was doing.
It was like she was just so electrified by this...
greed, the fact that she's, like, holding that duffel of money
like it's almost like a baby...
was just the kind of choice she would make that helped...
just helped bring us closer to the character.
I mean, she's doing something so transgressive here right now.
She knows that Chris is dead, or most likely is,
and then this whole moment where it's like her body starts shivering
and it's like she goes into shock,
and it all crashes down around her.
There was something about shooting this that was...
(crying)
KUSAMA: ...just incredibly moving because she...
(wailing)
KUSAMA: ...she wails in this way
that for everyone...
around this scene,
you know, for the whole crew,
there was something...
spine-tingling about it,
legitimately, like...
painfully truthful.
It was almost like it was too real what was happening
with this actor and this character,
and it was just a great example of how they often melded
before our very eyes,
because this is the mistake that haunts her for the rest of her life,
and I think Nicole did such a beautiful job
of illustrating how that happened, you know.
And I think it's a real gift for me
to watch a movie where I feel like somebody gets me closer
to the way we think, the way we behave,
the way we make decisions, and the way we take ownership of those decisions,
and so it was really...
gratifying to just watch an actor be able to...
draw that map for the audience.
Like, poking around, looking for a good memory from when I was a kid.
KUSAMA: This was, obviously... It's a huge scene in the film.
It's probably the emotional crux of the movie.
And we see this confrontation between Shelby and Erin...
that's just meant to feel like the first real conversation
they've probably had in...
ten years...
which is a long time to wait for getting something real from your parent,
and I hope that we feel at this point like we understand how...
how Erin has pushed this girl away...
probably because every time she looks at Shelby, she's seeing Chris.
I'm gonna go.
KUSAMA: There is something interesting about knowing that about her now,
understanding that Shelby's dad is Chris,
and it's the thing that keeps Chris alive for Erin
and the thing that reminds her of her own complicity
in his absence.
And so my hope is that this is a scene that...
kind of expands as you're watching it in meaning and in feeling...
I don't know, decent.
KUSAMA: ...and isn't entirely easy to read.
I like those kind of movies, I like those kind of scenes,
sometimes to my own peril, but I just like it when there's...
some...
some journey toward the meaning, you know,
some traveling to get to the meaning,
which is something that I love about this movie overall,
that it doesn't...
doesn't tell you what it's supposed to be about...
...you had come and got me from school early...
KUSAMA: ...and then just execute on that.
It actually offers up a lot of questions and a lot of mystery
and I hope starts to hone...
hone a journey for the audience
toward some of those conclusions,
but it's definitely not meant
to answer every question for the audience.
And this is a scene that to me is quite mysterious.
It has basic properties that are satisfying.
We wanna see Erin...
...you were so messed up.
KUSAMA: ...be tender with her child finally
and admit wrongdoing,
and the fact that she does it I think is really extraordinary...
but she also has to continue on her quest,
and there is something about watching Erin walk away from her daughter...
that's really painful in this scene.
SHELBY: It was dark...
and cold.
KUSAMA: I love the idea that Shelby is telling a story
in the same way that Erin has been trying to tell herself a story
of her memory of something.
And this idea that memory itself is kind of a story
that when we tell it aloud, we have to ask
was that even true, did that even happen,
as Shelby does,
did you take me out into the snow wearing sneakers
and did we get lost overnight while we were trying to camp...
and is that real, did that happen,
I think there's something...
so moving because what Shelby's really recounting
is that this is the good memory she carries with her.
Being protected...
by her mother but then also having to ask
why is her mother so reckless,
why did she put her in that situation to begin with.
SHELBY: Like a couple of animals.
KUSAMA: And when we see the evocation of this memory
at the end of the film,
I think it brings up those questions again, the why,
but I think that's sort of what the audience
is being asked to grapple with
and in some respects the movie I hope is saying
is something we have to answer together.
I'm not sure if the movie can answer it entirely and so...
This scene and the way it links up to the very end of the film
and to that last scene in the snow...
- ...your dad, was killed. - Ethan's my dad.
KUSAMA: ...is mysterious to me.
And as a side note, something I find so moving is that...
Shelby's always known that her dad was this guy she's never met, Chris,
who her mom used to work with.
But in the end, what she knows and what she experiences
and what she's asserted for herself is that Ethan is her father...
and that's so true for her.
And so to just see a kid tell the truth like that,
like, "I don't even know that guy, so don't call him my dad,"
I just feel like there's something so...
refreshing about it, you know.
She's not just a petulant teenager,
she's somebody who's made some decisions about the reality
she wants to keep close.
And it's to me a really interesting depiction of a 16-year-old girl.
And the look on her face as Erin is saying...
I'm the one who's bad, it's not you...
You can be better than me.
KUSAMA: ...the fact that a kid often is just waiting
all their life to hear that from somebody...
just even to be seen...
I don't know, this scene felt very elemental to me and, like...
almost had this kind of, like,
campfire magic to me
because this is like one of these basic stories that...
What's going on?
KUSAMA: I think...
actually has the quality of being...
what will become this incredibly memorable moment for Shelby,
like she'll never forget sitting in this diner with this woman
and that this was the last thing her mother said to her,
which is, I do love you.
You know, I think that's really powerful. Like, I hope,
I hope if any audience is willing to watch the movie a second time,
they understand the...
or they feel some of the gravity of this scene
and the hope, I hope, because there is hope in this scene
that finally Bell has given something to her daughter
that he daughter can carry with her, which is love, it's so simple.
(distant police sirens wailing)
KUSAMA: This moment when she walks across the street...
and the music starts to take a shift
towards something that's gonna build throughout the film
into the ending of the film which is...
a grander, more emotional...
more openly beautiful style of music.
Because we've seen Bell at least now be accountable
to her daughter, I think we've earned
this sense of musical flight
that is coming from Teddy's score.
It's probably one of the most...
complex scores I've ever had
the opportunity to work with from Teddy.
And it's...
God, it's just such a beauty.
I just am so...
I'm so thankful for what he did for this film.
And this whole scene takes on to me this kind of like
driving into Hades kind of quality,
and that's what we had hoped, that night would take on this, like,
velvet quality...
but also be a descent for the character.
And so...
I guess this is sort of like the final movement toward...
this descent for Erin.
And I've always wondered when people watch the movie for the first time,
when they catch up to what might be happening in it?
Like, for instance, as we're intercutting here between the past and the present,
are they recognizing that this is the same walk she's made
at the beginning of the film,
that we've seen this architecture before,
except we've seen it during the day, not at night.
Are we recognizing that?
Silas.
KUSAMA: I'm surprised to learn how many people don't connect it...
and don't even connect it right now
that she is confronting the object of her hunt throughout the film
and now Silas stands before her.
You getting your mail here now?
KUSAMA: And we are going back to scenes we've seen previously...
that might start to build for the audience...
But I see who you are.
KUSAMA: ...that the criminal we've been following in this film
hasn't been Silas, it's been Bell.
That she is...
essentially, you know, as Phil and Matt had always said,
a detective investigating herself, and now we see that
come full circle.
BELL: I have a body...
We see that the chronology of the film is not what we expected...
and that...
in so many respects, on an emotional level,
on a psychological level,
we felt like Erin Bell is the instigator
of all of her troubles,
but now we really see as she's sitting back
at this dead body...
we recognize that she is truly the...
What about if I know who did this?
KUSAMA: ...truly the criminal she's been hunting for.
I hope it feels complex.
I've never imagined that there was a sense of satisfaction ultimately
that she kills Silas.
My hope was always that it took on another kind of gravity,
a different kind of depth,
because we've been watching this character
hunt down and plot a murder as opposed to investigate one.
And there's something quite...
Where the fuck you been?
...radical to me about that idea,
not just on a structural level but on a moral level,
and I think the hope for me was that the audience
has to ask themselves questions,
just even about, like, the institutions of...
movies and linear storytelling
and all of the assumptions we make about heroes
and good guys and bad guys,
that they're often not that simple, they're not that black and white.
(inhales)
And so as we catch up to the meaning of the movie
in this moment when she is essentially giving information to Antonio
that will turn herself in
and kind of put the final pieces of the puzzle together for him...
Yeah?
KUSAMA: ...my hope is that the audience sees that,
while she is the criminal in question, she is also attempting
to come clean.
She is attempting to expose herself
which is the one thing we've never seen her do.
Some of that most fundamental exposure is the fact that she's dying
and has been dying throughout much of the film
and has known it and not done anything about it.
And there's something about that I think that's also quite startling
to recognize that...
in some ways the mistake that she made 17 years ago
and the guilt that she has suffered and the shame that she has lived with
has just been eating her alive...
and perhaps in the world of this movie, you know,
the thing worse than death is to have gotten away with it.
And so she ensures that she won't get away with it.
And that to me is incredibly meaningful.
I think we're in a time where we need to be watching people
take responsibility for their mistakes
and just say the words out loud,
"I made a mistake, and I'm sorry."
It's like... I think we live in this time when...
I just wanna spend one fuckin' day on the other side of that.
KUSAMA: ...it almost seems impossible to see people in power do that,
and I so desperately want that
that I kind of felt driven to make a movie like this
that goes to this length to investigate
what it would mean to just...
(long inhale)
be responsible to oneself
and be open and accountable to one's mistakes.
This moment here is so complex because...
this is the moment that she convinces a person she loves
to go through with this catastrophic choice.
And love is the driver and the reason
and, in her mind, the justification,
and sort of outside of that,
I think some of us in the audience can say that is so manipulative,
that is so unwittingly disastrous
that you're going to use love
to pull this guy in.
And so in some ways, you know, on a structural level,
the people among my tribe of film lovers
who are really into film noir,
they've pointed out that, you know, throughout the film,
she's occupied this space as both the detective and the femme fatale.
And so this is the moment that we really understand that she has ensnared...
ensnared someone in a plot
that will inevitably lead to their doom,
which is this, you know, very strong tradition
in film noir, almost a requirement.
But the fact that she occupies both spaces is really interesting to me.
It's a notion I hadn't considered before,
but I've thought about since some friends have brought it up.
And so I look at the film a little bit differently now
and I think about how part of what the movie is exploring
is this idea of occupying a lot of space,
a lot of different kinds of space,
that Erin is telling someone what she really wants and needs,
and we wanna see her do that as a character.
It's important to see her do that, but it's also in this case
this tragic mistake
that she finally asks for what she wants, and what she wants
is such a mistake.
And the fact is we see through the film
that she doesn't even get the thing she thought she was asking for,
and she loses everything...
Nice ass.
KUSAMA: ...in making this choice.
And so it's complicated. It's like this isn't...
this isn't like...
a classic or easy empowerment narrative.
This is a story about a woman
who's paid a very heavy price
for the decisions she's made,
but over the course of the film, we've watched her,
and we've communed with her.
We've, I hope, engaged with her.
We've debated with her in our minds as we've watched her.
And I hope we've gotten closer to her.
And to me, that's what I want from storytelling.
I don't necessarily want...
to see big, huge radical shifts of character.
I just want to see something real happen that feels...
like life refracted back to me
with some grace.
And I hope that that's what this film has been doing,
and I hope that that's what these last moments are doing,
is connecting the audience to...
who Erin is in her last moments.
And she shares that memory with Shelby
of trudging through the snow
and her jeans getting wet and her sneakers falling apart
and walking uphill with a kid on her back,
but there's this indomitable...
strength to this character...
that hurtles her forward,
that we have to...
even after all this, admire,
we have to grapple with.
You know, this woman exists.
She existed.
And so...
I guess I don't see this ending
as tragic so much as...
transformative.
We've seen all the stages that this character
can go through in these particular time periods.
We've seen how much...
complexity there is to her
and the fact that she does...
attempt to do the right thing certainly by her daughter...
and tell her partner who she really is
in this sort of unfolding murder mystery,
to me says that she's gotten one thing right,
and that's what I hope that last shot would evoke,
is the sense of...
watching somebody try something and fail
and try something and fail
and finally just maybe once get it right.
I've been asked about the title a lot,
and something I love about it is that it has a lot of meanings for me
and for all of us who created the film.
It refers to...
power, it refers to money, it refers to greed,
refers to memory.
And for me, it probably most evokes the specter of time
and the idea that time continues
no matter how long we do.
Time keeps marching forward,
and so there is a inexorable power...
to that.
But I hope that we, over the course of the film,
can see a lot of different destroyers in the movie
and come to our own conclusion about what we think the title means.
Thank you so much for listening to this commentary,
and I really appreciate it.
It's intense to talk about the film like this.
Thanks so much.
Subtitled by Point.360