PHIL HAY: Hello. I'm Phil Hay.
MATT MANFREDI: I'm Matt Manfredi.
HAY: And we are the writers and producers of Destroyer.
And thank you for listening to this commentary.
MANFREDI: Yeah.
HAY: Karyn is doing a commentary next door
on this Blu-ray, or whatever medium you have.
So, I think one of the things that is so great about Karyn, our director,
is that she wanted us, as the writers,
to get to do our own commentary alongside.
So that's what you're gonna get.
So here, you're hearing the first music from Teddy Shapiro,
our composer who is also one of our oldest friends...
and has done all of Karyn's movies.
And we have kind of an interesting process with Teddy,
where he's one of the first people to read the script,
and he starts writing music before the...
before we're even in pre-production.
So, throughout production, we actually have music to play
for the actors, to play for the department heads,
and it really helps to set the tone from the very beginning.
MANFREDI: This is one of the first scenes we kind of conceived of
when we were talking about this movie
because of this circular structure of it.
I assume if you're...
listening to this, you've watched the movie first,
'cause this would be weird otherwise.
(traffic passing)
So it was a balance of...
'Cause right here, technically, she's near death,
but on first viewing, you just think she's drunk,
and so it was just striking a balance of how...
how messed up she looked or walked or was, you know...
HAY: It was something that we had to really think a lot about with Karyn
and with Nicole about how credible...
She had to be credible in both understandings of the story
and the first time you see it that she's...
This is just a morning that's actually not an atypical morning for her,
but then you realize by the end, this is the last day of her life,
which to some degree, explains how...
how beaten down she is.
But...
also this character is... is always...
kind of a very rough... in a very rough place.
In fact, the only line of description
we gave in the script for how she looks is that she looks pretty rough.
FEMALE OFFICER: .38, dropped at the scene.
Maybe a ghost gun. No serial, no prints...
HAY: And also came to us really early about
needing to make sure that the gun was
"A," something very recognizable for us, so for the end,
when you get revealed the circularity of the timeline,
you would know what it was.
And I think it was sometime in pre-production
that we realized that the red tape on the handle
was gonna be something really important.
MANFREDI: Yeah.
MALE OFFICER: We're waiting on tech.
All right, guys. Start bringing everybody down now...
HAY: And we see the tattoo,
which was another thing that we thought...
It was kind of...
It's very synchronous, the way we made this movie with all the departments,
starting with Matt and I and Karyn, who are a family unit.
Basically, Karyn and I are married.
Matt and I have been friends and writing partners for now decades.
- MANFREDI: Common law. - HAY: Yeah, right?
And we... And so...
that also extends to pre-production
and extends to a lot of the departments where...
So the design of that tattoo was important,
because it had to be simple enough
to read very quickly
and to be able to be read later,
when you see it on the back of Erin Bell's neck.
MANFREDI: And if you're a Morse code aficionado,
you'll know that that's "S."
- The three dots is "S." - HAY: That's right.
I would hope everyone listening to this is a sincere
- Morse code aficionado. - MANFREDI: A hobbyist, at least.
HAY: Yeah, that's right.
And it's similarly the skateboarder
was something that took on a lot of significance for us,
because it started as an idea of...
how one could make sure there was enough detail
for everyone to know that that was exactly the same day
that we were going back to.
And also we had to write that...
Very specifically, we wrote the title card in where it was,
because we realized we needed a legitimate...
break between...
So as to not be cheating. So it is to start the movie.
If you see it the second time as you guys are, hopefully,
you realize this is the actual beginning of the movie.
This is the actual first event that happens in this story...
- MANFREDI: Present day. - HAY: ...her receiving this bill from...
from Silas.
In this bit here was also shot very early in the schedule.
This is of one of the first things from one of our first days, and...
this particular bit was just...
I mean, there's... You'll hear us hundreds of times in this commentary,
talking about how incredible Nicole Kidman is
and how incredible her performance is, but...
There was something very quickly that locked in about Erin for her
and that we were able to witness,
kind of right away, and...
it was a complete level of immersion.
And I don't think Nicole calls it method acting, but it really is.
You know, she's keeping all of her energy in this very tough,
rough, kind of, potent place.
It was, actually... It's very...
It was invigorating and amazing to be around.
MAN: Hungry, little mutt.
MANFREDI: It's a lot of driving in this movie
and a lot of it is written into the script.
But I was even...
It was exciting to see Karyn put
kind of even more driving in the movie.
And it's... Because it's, "A"...
I think it contributes to, like, the feeling of it being an odyssey.
And also, you know, it's LA.
It's such a part of anyone's journey here.
HAY: And I mean, for us, this was always, and for Karyn, such an LA movie.
I mean, it's so importantly about, for us, about LA and about...
And we wanted to portray our reality of Los Angeles and, as Matt said,
that kind of... the sprawling nature of it, which is fascinating.
MANFREDI: This is the first scene we shot.
And we were pretty excited to have Toby Huss there
on day one who is so good and such a vet.
So this was like...
This is like, first take, day one, probably.
HAY: Yeah. Yeah, and that shot...
I want to mention the shot of the, kind of, other agent
sitting on the other table, kind of, looking at her disdainfully.
There's all these little bits that we talked about with Karyn
and that Karyn wanted to put in about.
And they're just sort of...
We had written in the script that there were...
that the agents that did notice her seemed kind of disdainful toward her
and whether that was something she was imagining
or whether that was something that was...
or that whether her... that's her perception
or that's actually what they're doing.
But it was really, I thought, nice to...
for Karyn to choose this one person
and see, again, just...
the quiet difference of being a woman in these situations
and the kind of... that look of judgement that can mean so many different things.
All right.
MANFREDI: It was kind of a big relief watching this scene filmed,
because, you know, you've written it, you've casted it.
We've got a very specific look for Nicole,
and it's a very intense character.
And, you know, obviously, we trust everyone's talent.
We know how incredible everyone is,
but it's like you still are kind of worried,
like, "Is this gonna come together?"
And once she shot that scene,
I was like, "I think we're... I think we're gonna be okay."
HAY: Yeah. The first day is always... doesn't matter how much you prepared.
It's always a... You're always gonna be really anxious about it.
We can still keep it between us.
I'm sorry.
HAY: This was another example of a scene where we...
Or I guess this is the first example since the beginning of this commentary,
but there are several scenes in the movie where...
and this is true, I think, of every movie we've ever written...
you end up realizing how much or how little you need
in terms of information, per se.
And so this was a scene where there was a little bit more detail about...
where the gang members were... what they, you know...
what their last known, kind of... his last idea of where they were.
And it just, we realized... You start to realize
that you don't need as much, and, in fact, don't want as much.
I think a theme with Nicole was that...
she's inspired by less of, in terms of information about the past,
that there's really pungent, like, specific moments
and specific details that she felt helped her.
Bar, Hemet...
HAY: And I love that Toby has his character.
It's really... He legitimately is trying to get her to the Bible study.
That's, I mean...
He does think that's where she belongs.
Why were you always at Tappy's?
Bartender gave me a break on drinks. Where'd you go to school?
Centennial High.
HAY: And Sebastian Stan, who's really wonderful.
MANFREDI: Immediately after this scene,
he went back to make up and shaved off his hair.
HAY: That's right. This was his only scene in this particular look.
But it's amazing, again, when you work with actors
that are at this level...
And Karyn's talent for casting is so clear,
because she just knew Sebastian and Nicole would be right together,
and this character of Chris is so important.
And, in fact, in my own mind... You know, we've written the script.
We've lived with it for years. I knew he was important.
But once we started seeing what was happening between her and Sebastian,
he became even more important in my mind,
or I sort of understood how important he was to the movie.
And the fact that they showed up and had chemistry right away was just...
That's also one of those moments where you're like,
"Okay, great. I'm so glad because you don't... because there was no time
- for rehearsal." - MANFREDI: There's no time, yeah.
HAY: So, fortunately, it was there.
♪ And I'm fading away ♪
MANFREDI: This scene is another one when we were conceiving of the structure,
the kind of, you know, she's doing one thing.
You think she's doing one thing but she's actually doing another.
So you think she's looking for evidence,
but she's actually getting the murder weapon here.
(country music playing)
So, we had these scenes... this one in mind.
We had the beginning and the ending in mind
and a couple more that kind of support this structure.
Turn that shit down so we can talk.
MANFREDI: So these were one of the few scenes we had before we...
like, right when we started.
HAY: There's sort of the, like, stations
of the cross of an investigation and that...
she's both going through the stages of an investigation,
which we see later are also the same things
as planning a crime,
and then going through the gang members eventually.
So, it is kind of inherent in the structure of this sort of, like...
It's this journey through a lot of people.
No, no, no. You ain't got no way of knowing that.
MANFREDI: I love that he has a kid,
that Toby is into his Bible study.
Not Toby... Gil.
- I mean, those are the... - HAY: Toby might be into his Bible study.
I never asked him.
I can't tell you that. I got good credibility with all my clients.
MANFREDI: But it's those kind of details that we try to add
to kind of humanize everybody and give them little quirks, and...
HAY: Yeah, we wanted to be that I think every minor character
we're hoping has some little grain of sand
that makes you notice who they are
and that they have their own lives and they have their own stories.
And this very specific guy, Taz, who,
you know, is really into country music and really into his kid
and into selling guns as well as...
MANFREDI: Just weird stuff that might seem incongruous,
but actually just gives you a little...
HAY: It's congruous to us, so...
BELL: Call me with some names.
ANTONIO (on radio): Hey, partner. It's Antonio.
HAY: And now you're hearing Shamier Anderson
who plays Antonio, her partner.
And this was an actual, kind of a big, an important,
I think excision from... in the edit.
So there was a scene...
a scene that would be coming up
where you kind of meet him and her and kind of establish
who they are and their relationship to one another.
And she asks him, basically to stay out of what she's doing.
And it was a really... I really like the scene,
and they did... beautifully performed.
But that was a pretty significant scene in the beginning of the movie
that we started to realize that...
both the movie didn't have room for it,
and also it was... it was more powerful to have Antonio
as this guy that's out there, that she's avoiding,
it said more about where she was,
that she was actually not communicating with him.
So that was something we kind of discovered.
And I always love, of course...
This moment between them is one of my favorites.
And I, like Chris, I too, like Dire Straits.
Do you like Dire Straits, man?
I don't wanna put you on the spot.
MANFREDI: Don't put me on the spot.
HAY: Don't box me in the commentary.
MANFREDI: You might not like my answer.
True story. At one point, I auditioned to do this voice.
- I was a temp voice for that operator. - HAY: That's true.
MANFREDI: And I locked up and I just froze.
HAY: I don't think you showed Karyn your full potential.
And there's a missed opportunity.
Compassionate release.
HAY: But this gentleman who did it was...
MANFREDI: It just points out the idea of
hiring real actors for even the smallest role.
HAY: That's right, exactly.
MAN: The local scene is several loosely-connected gangs.
We think there's a hard center in there somewhere
that's moved into armed robbery.
We're placing our agent undercover with a local asset, sheriff's deputy.
This is her.
This girl?
She'll look right enough next to our guy.
HAY: Matt and I have been writing partners for 20 plus years
and so we sort of have, especially in a script like this,
we tend to take a really long time to get to the point of writing
and then we...
This is my cousin, Toby.
HAY: ...tends to happen faster once we reach that kind of critical mass.
And so we feel like...
Our CI will be making the introduction.
HAY: This story has been kind of living with us for 10 years
and kind of seeping into different parts of it.
And...
And I think it's always something ignites the story for us and for us,
that was the character of Erin and her relationship with her daughter.
(rock music playing)
MANFREDI: Then once we kind of were ready to go and ready to write,
we have an outline.
This is one of my favorite moments in the movie just to interrupt myself.
This look that Nicole gives...
to Sebastian here, or... Chris, it's just like she transforms herself
into someone very young after watching her.
It just... it's such a young kind of expression
and she... it's a totally different mannerism
than she had in her performance as... present day.
HAY: After... and second interrupt to say
that this Kyuss song was a really...
important thing for us to get,
and that...
We reached out to Josh Homme, who is obviously the...
impresario of the band
and asked if we could use a T-shirt that she's wearing.
And we describe the character
as, which we always did with Nicole, as a kind of a desert rat,
that she's this kind of desert creature from this specific scene.
And he said, if I'm quoting correctly,
"I would be offended if you used anything else."
So.
MANFREDI: This was one I was gonna say we split up.
We outline pretty extensively and then we just start writing the scenes,
taking shots of the scenes that speak to us
or give us a handle on the character.
And this was one of the first ones we took a shot at.
HAY: And this is an example of a scene for us where having humor in it
was really important.
I don't care about the fuckin' sugar. We're past that.
HAY: Because there's a lot of stuff going on in this scene and...
The thing that we fixated on was the owls
and that kind of gave us, in a way,
a guide post for...
for the character of Toby.
There's a lot of Toby's, there's a Toby character,
There's two Toby actors.
They released me because I'm just...
MANFREDI: My friend's mom collects owls.
So growing up, I would be staring at them
and really wondering how the collection comes together.
Do you go out and buy a lot of them?
Are people giving them to you all the time?
So then, 20 odd years later. (laughs)
Nicole has turned that owl around.
HAY: And we have a lot of...
This movie is shot completely on location
and everything is a real location, no stages at all.
I feel like, for example, this house
is just a very... really perfect place for this.
I mean, there's a lot of design that went into it.
There was a great kind of baseline with what the house was,
but then Kay Lee, the production designer, has done such a...
I think this is really evocative of a...
of a... both a lifestyle and a mood.
And I really loved the work that...
Anyway, this shot, for example I think is really beautiful.
MANFREDI: This is one of those scenes where, again, you're kind of...
This was kind of a big swing, obviously, for reasons that are coming.
And so it was...
It really, for us, is...
It's a little bit of a clue in some ways,
because it's this pretty transgressive moment
that a cop investigating a normal case,
obviously, would never do, and so it's a clue.
It's that something else is going on
that you're not exactly privy to yet.
The level of involve... Her level of involvement
and her commitment to do anything to...
get what she needs.
What do you want, Toby?
It was a closed set this day, again, for obvious reasons.
And when we finally saw kind of the dailies of it,
it was one of those great moments of the room,
the lighting, everything kind of looked exactly as you pictured in your head,
and it was one of those... or better.
And so it was testament to Julie's work and everyone's work.
HAY: Well, I think that it's important in scenes like this, like...
Karyn's take on this, and Nicole's take was very clear,
which was that this could not be... read exploitative in any way
and the point was that the, kind of...
One of the points was how...
you know, passionless it is.
But that also, it's really about this emotional connection,
a kind of unexpected and very sad emotional connection
that at least he has toward her.
And that's what is being kind of...
That's the core of what it all means.
And I think... I think that with,
especially with the characters who are
often very rough characters doing very rough things,
They are...
We're always trying to find kind of empathetic moments
and humanizing moments between them.
And...
I think Karyn's strategy was always to be as humane as possible,
but still be authentic to what is happening on the screen.
(Toby shudders)
And James Jordan, who plays Toby
is such a wonderful actor and he's...
Plays so many...
MANFREDI: That line always gets a laugh, I think, in screenings
where he's like "somewhere in..." He just says "somewhere,"
and I think it's just like it's a tension release from the odd...
HAY: Right, right, exactly.
I was gonna say James is so great.
And he's... he's a...
He plays such... He tends to play very scary characters.
And again, it was important to make sure not only did this guy seem...
frightening at times,
but that also kind of seemed weak, and not...
And there's a pathos, a patheticness, actually,
And...
that his, again, James brings such a sensitivity,
but also, genuine kind of power, as well.
Have a nice month.
Then the turning around of the owl I think is a really important moment.
Because again, the point of this whole scene is how much she is...
in control of everything, that that's the point,
is that we wrote in the script
that kind of a blackness comes over her when she decides what she's going to do,
and that's kind of the point.
You haven't even moved anywhere, though.
I'll fuckin' arm wrestle any of these guys. I will.
TOBY: I know it's in here.
And this scene was one that moved up quite a bit.
Not quite a bit.
- Maybe a couple scenes? - MANFREDI: Yeah.
HAY: In the cut.
New soldiers.
HAY: It felt like we were craving to understand
this gang and to understand kind of the level of sickness of Silas.
And so we figured out that it had to...
More accurately Karyn and Plummy, the editor,
figured out that it would be more effective
to kind of get it right now.
MANFREDI: Also at that this point, you've only heard Arturo's name spoken.
And although you can hear that he is somewhere in LA,
I don't think it registers the same way as seeing...
There's a shot of him in present day that used to proceed this scene.
So there is still some kind of, like...
There's a lot of tension with the upcoming kind of Russian roulette.
HAY: It's an interesting kind of writing and perception of film issue,
because it's true, you hear this guy's name
and so technically, you know that he does not die in this scene.
If you pick that up, and yet when we screen it,
it does play with a tremendous amount of anxiety from the audience
as to what's gonna happen.
But maybe it's not about what's gonna happen.
Maybe it's the unveiling of just how sick this situation is.
MANFREDI: Yeah.
SILAS: Right? Well, come on.
Fuck that, Arturo.
You don't have to do that.
This really doesn't concern you, Chris.
MANFREDI: This is one of those times where we also didn't have...
This is... There's so... So much of this scene, I think,
is about the looks that our people are shooting each other across the space
and deciding what they're gonna do or not do.
And there's so many different things to cover,
and I don't... I think it was... We had, like an afternoon.
We didn't even have a full day for this scene and it was...
It was miraculous to me that it... came out as great as it did.
We were... I mean, Karyn and her crew are so organized and focused.
HAY: It was...
And interesting, this was one of scenes
that was most kind of...
most covered conventionally, like a lot of times,
Karyn's... When we're moving so fast that she's really got to determine
what it's gonna be from the beginning in terms of how she covers it.
In this case, we had so many choices,
but it seemed to come together really quickly.
And like this shot, this perspective on Silas, I think,
is kind of so important because Toby Kebbell brings so much.
He does bring so much charisma, and I think this is our one chance,
in a way, to see the hold he has over these people.
MANFREDI: This is probably one of the last scenes we wrote
in terms of it came in pretty late because as we were kind of...
Like I said, we write out of order
and then we kind of swap scenes back and forth and cobble it together.
And when we were kind of putting it all together
and looking at the thing as a whole,
we realized we needed to know more about Silas' kind of hold
on the gang and his pull on Erin.
And so this is what we came up with, and so it kind of...
This was almost like the equivalent of, like an insert in some ways.
(gun clatters)
HAY: I think that it's interesting in terms of the way that we like to write.
We always write...
We always outline very carefully,
and then we... and very kind of comprehensively.
And then Matt and I start writing scenes separately
that eventually will come together into the draft.
And it allows us to kind of figure out what the central...
Some of the... what... in the beginning to us are
the central scenes, are the scenes that tell us
what the tone of the movie are, what the feel of the movie are.
And some of those with this movie are the upcoming kind of bank heist,
centerpiece of the movie and...
the scene with DiFranco,
the lawyer played by Bradley Whitford, and then sometimes, the scenes...
This to me now, is one of the most important scenes in the movie.
And that kind of, as Matt said, came along a little bit later.
It wasn't as clear to us. We knew it was gonna be important,
but wasn't quite as clear in the writing process how important...
MANFREDI: So much is established, like with the looks between
each individual kind of line of looks.
Chris and Erin, Chris and Silas,
Silas and Erin. I could go on. I could do all the connections.
HAY: I would like you to list them all exhaustively, if possible.
MANFREDI: This was... used to be a longer scene
where she tries to connect with a guy at a bar.
And it's one of those instances where the scene was great.
I love this scene, but it just... we're on...
We realized that, when we first watched the cut,
that we're just on a journey, like, we need... she is kind of...
There's a thrust to what she's doing
and we don't want to get off that.
And also Nicole gives so much in just looks
and the... being alone with her in the car tells you so much.
So we just... we had to lose that, sadly.
HAY: Yeah. And we also realized in a way that,
like, the almost mythological part of her,
was so important and that immediately,
Nicole was projecting so much power and so much damage and so much...
All these kind of dimensions to her character.
So much sadness, so much rage, that in a way...
the normalcy,
the moments that we pointed out is like, wanted to...
We wanted to find her kind of normalcy.
Sometimes those worked against
what was the kind of iconic gravity
that she was bringing and that the story needed, actually,
that this is a story that really is surrounding
and from this character.
Are you drunk?
How old are you? Huh?
23? 24?
The fuck do you care?
HAY: And obviously, this relationship is a very...
important one in the movie, like that...
In terms of the writing, her relationship with her daughter
was kind of what made us understand why we had to do this movie
and what was different about it for us.
MANFREDI: This scene moved a little bit.
The scenes with the daughter and the scenes with Ethan, her ex,
were a bit of a challenge in terms of writing.
And because in some, like, technically, it's...
In some ways, it's a time out from the investigation in that...
which has a thrust that you don't want to interrupt, but the same...
I mean, she is kind of like, asking for help in terms of creating time
for herself to just be on this investigation, but...
they are these little detours that are...
ultimately on her mind and so important.
But narratively, they're kind of hard to slot in at times...
HAY: You realize eventually what their importance is,
why they need to be.
But in the terms of the kind of apparent investigation
that was always our challenge to make sure that
they're emotionally motivated as she goes along.
And this is another interesting kind of structural thing that
came up... later.
Realizing that we could use a Dodgers game as sort of a...
organizing principle of what's gonna happen in the next few scenes,
that she's listening to the pre-game of this Dodgers game.
Then she's... later that night, they're in the middle of the game,
and then she ends up overlooking Chavez Ravine, Dodgers Stadium,
another way that we could kind of structurally knit
together things when they were going back and forth in time,
and to try to create a day.
How'd you know I was here?
BELL: Ethan.
HAY: I want to go back, really, for a second to the scene in the bar
where something that a few people have mentioned to us
that I'm really glad they did was the importance of the fact
that when she pulls her badge,
nobody cares, that's a sign of...
That's not the normal thing that happens in a cop movie.
And that sort of...
I think both reflects on where she's at,
but also on a kind of real lawlessness of this world
that we're trying to portray that there isn't this sort of magic power
that that badge has.
At least not for her.
I don't have a lot of time for her fuckin' issues right now.
Okay.
And again, with Scoot McNairy, who's playing Ethan, and so wonderful,
we wrote at Nicole's request, we wrote very pretty extensive backstory
for her that was just for her, just for Karyn and her to read.
No one else has read it, that really, in pretty extensive detail,
talks about every step of her life and how she ended up here.
And we did the same for Ethan, actually and their relationship.
And that was really helpful, I think, for the two of them.
They actually spoke on the phone,
I think a couple times before we started shooting, and they again instantly,
just like with Sebastian Stan, they had a real connection,
and a real... You could feel that relationship right away.
And so that was an interesting tool for us
to be able to use these kind of written back stories.
Again, it's all in the background. None of it was meant or was in the movie.
Because, as I said, Nicole's very specific about,
like finding, in a later scene we'll point out one line
that tells her everything she needs to know about how she grew up
and didn't need to be kind of exhaustively explored
in text in the movie.
It's just so wrong.
This relationship is so wrong.
No, come on.
MANFREDI: This was one of my favorite scenes to watch.
The front half is pretty quiet, and it's just watching Nicole kind of probe
and try little things all within, like, you want to use every take,
but it kind of teaches you about the script a little bit.
When her daughter asks if she's drunk
and she did five different reactions
that kind of went through all the different ways
you could react to your daughter saying that to you and it just,
you learn about... you learn about the script...
when someone like her is doing it.
HAY: It's true. It was something that we kind of observed while we were
making this movie is that, if you're a writer
and you have the opportunity as we do, which is not,
completely common, to be always there, to be on set every day,
to be intimately involved in every part of pre-production and post.
It's an opportunity to evolve with the movie,
and you do learn about your own script,
and you do learn about your own characters, and I think
there were times when there was such a synergy between who we hoped
Erin would be and who Nicole portrayed.
And there are all kinds of surprises along the way, as well.
But they all felt very... it felt very connected
always, the whole... that there's no separation between the script
and the character in the story,
and the direction and the cinematography that we all strove for
this unity and the unity really is around this character...
And I think that's kind of a rare thing to have a movie where,
you know, this is her story completely,
and this is about this world really spins around Erin,
and you have to have, obviously, a performance of the gravity
that Nicole gives here, to... for that to work.
And so, and here is a scene that I always have loved,
where you see what a good liar Erin is and that she's...
I'm sorry.
We've learned after a while...
I remember saying to Nicole once on set, kind of realizing it
that though Nicole, although Erin is very beaten down by the world
and very disregarded by her colleagues
and very... has this kind of...
feral, kind of kicked-animal energy sometimes,
she's very good at getting people to say yes to her.
And ultimately, that's the tragedy of her,
is getting someone to say yes to her has destroyed her life, actually.
And so this is kind of, in a way, whenever we approach these scenes of her
needing to get something from someone, we tried to...
I don't know if we tried to do it
or if we just realized that she was going to use different tools that she had.
And we wanted to make sure that each person she interacted with,
she had a different way of getting what she needed from them
and that she was actually quite good at that.
MANFREDI: This is an interesting one, because...
as you'll see,
she's about to chase Arturo.
Spoiler alert if this is your first time watching.
So she chases him up the hill.
And she doesn't tackle him,
she doesn't beat him, she doesn't threaten him with a gun.
And yet, she gets what she wants out of him.
And I think part of it is, it's her persistence
and the kind of this shared guilt that they have,
that I think he kind of wakes up to.
HAY: Yeah, we realize that it's actually through connection
that even though she is a character who has such a hard time
connecting with people, it's through, actually, connection
that she advances a lot of times.
MANFREDI: I think that's why it was important, that this crew
in its conception,
then again, execution felt like a family,
because if these people meant nothing to each other,
then I think you'd end up with her beating up a lot of people
or threatening a lot of people and that's not,
that's not what it is.
There's such a...
Everyone is scarred by what happened...
and I think she uses that to her advantage.
(breathing heavily)
HAY: And also so important that they're not...
They're tired. They're not used to chasing
and being chased like this.
And it's, again, it's like we always talked with Karyn
about the need to define what kind of movie this was.
It's not, when there's action, it's not an action movie.
It has to try to cling a little bit closer to the real world.
And yeah, and that's just the idea
of chasing someone to the point of exhaustion,
just kind of saying something both about her relentlessness, but also about
it's not an act of dominance or something,
which would, a lot of times, you maybe see in a scene like this.
It's an act of persistence and kind of relentlessness.
He's back.
MANFREDI: This scene is also a triumph of our location manager, Robert Foulkes,
finding this.
We had this idea
that they would be surrounded by the city on one side
and Dodger Stadium on the other.
And we kind of said, "Could you find that?"
And it turns out that place exists.
Right off of Sunset.
It's up this little hill, and it's this tiny spit of land.
- It's a World War I Memorial... - HAY: Memorial.
MANFREDI: And it's just on this tiny hill
and right off of Chavez Ravine.
Come on, man. Give me something.
HAY: I always loved that little look that he gives her.
There's a lawyer...
DiFranco.
MANFREDI: One of the joys of screenwriting is getting to use
- the last names of your friends. - HAY: Right?
It's an underrated joy of screenwriting.
MANFREDI: And I grew up with a guy named DiFranco...
and after numerous attempts, we found a name,
first name that would clear.
Petra gets you Silas.
This is what you do now? Legal advice?
MANFREDI: This location is also kind of indicative of our approach to the movie...
in writing it and then making it.
Just finding...
LA is such a quirky city, it's got these unexpected pockets
that are of both, like, beauty and ugliness,
and kind of they're all mixed together.
And again, this is like the side of LA
that we can see and that we wanted to put on film,
like the stuff that you don't always see filmed.
HAY: It's funny because I've heard some people talk about it saying,
you know, it's a very kind of ugly, rough parts of LA
that we're showing, but I actually find most of them very beautiful,
like most of them have their character of, you know...
LA as a real city.
I mean, it's a city like any other,
but it's also a very distinctive place to be,
and we wanted to pull that forward.
MANFREDI: This is Malibu standing in for Palos Verdes.
(weed trimmer whirring)
HAY: And again as people from LA would probably tell you, if you're not from LA,
it's like our quest
to try to make this LA as specific as possible.
It's like you might immediately say Beverly Hills for this character,
but for an Angeleno, you know Palos Verdes is,
you know, that's where he ought to be.
MANFREDI: Yeah.
This is also one of the first scenes we wrote.
And for me, it was really clarifying in terms of Erin's character
because, as you'll see, Mr. DiFranco,
(chuckles) played by Bradley Whitford...
HAY: I like that you refer to him as "Mister" DiFranco.
MANFREDI: Well, he just referred to himself as that.
But he spent so much time talking at her.
And, you know, when we were writing,
I just kept thinking like, she's not saying anything,
and that was instructive.
HAY: It was instructive because it's how to, because she doesn't...
she's not like a chatterbox, you know?
She picks her spots.
She waits. She lets people hang themselves. She's watchful.
And so it's like finding her power in silence and finding her agency in that.
And so this scene, as opposed to writing it
with a certain person in mind or certain voice in mind,
this scene kind of clarified the voice, at least for me.
HAY: Yeah, and I think this is also an example, speaking from writing terms
where we thought about and talked about this scene a lot.
And Matt, if something was missing
or some kind of organizing principle that we were looking for,
and when we came, Matt came up with the idea of
he oughta have a son who's just working in this batting cage
and being horribly critiqued by a poor coach of a father.
I don't know if he's invested the time to coach him himself.
He's hired Mike to do so, but...
- MANFREDI: Our next movie's about Mike. - HAY: Yeah.
But that that was, for me at least,
that was the detail when Matt mentioned it that I said, "Oh."
And sometimes as a writer, that's like something
that creates this rhythm or this organizing principle
that's not directly what the thing is.
And then also, it really taught us about who DiFranco was
and his relationship with his son,
who is...
you know, also a victim of this guy's self-aggrandizement
and badness.
MANFREDI: Again, I think it's those little weird details or specifics
that kind of add life to it, at least for us.
I think you're playing out some little vendetta,
maybe coloring outside the lines a little.
Where's the next money drop?
I did some Googling.
HAY: And then the way he confronts her about her past as we feel like...
I think when we watch the movie...
this scene is always interesting because it really, for me, does...
I can feel people, when watching it...
linking up to the story and linking up to her past
and that this is a very important...
Well, that's a very important line.
It's interesting, like sometimes when he says,
"You know what successful people do, they get over shit."
That's always been in the script, but kind of while shooting it,
Karyn kind of said to us,
that's kind of a really critical line in the movie,
and we've heard other people say that too,
and you sort of realize that this character has unwittingly kind of
summed up a problem with the world for you.
You know, the idea that it's sort of true that very successful people
often do remorselessly move on
and they're not stuck in the past, and that helps them.
But that doesn't mean it's...
- MANFREDI: The cost. - HAY: Right.
...to play cops and robbers, and you lost big.
MANFREDI: My parents introduced me to Super Chicken...
so a nod to them.
The more you insist on doing it, the sadder and stupider you look.
You think it was your stupidity...
that got those people killed?
HAY: Again, you can see her just...
(grunts)
You know, the minute she explodes
is the minute that things go wrong for her, and it's consistently...
And again, it's interesting...
the brutality of how this scene plays out
and how she's treated and then how she turns it.
DIFRANCO: Has that ever happened?
It was really important to, again,
kind of try to...
This tells you something about the world of the movie.
You know, this tells you about, without taking it over the top,
which may be the vomiting.
(laughs) That's it right there.
But she's vomiting for a reason.
But you need to kind of honor the consequence
of what it is to be punched that way.
And I think that's kind of the point of all the violence in the movie,
is to not make it consequence free.
And in fact her fate that, you know, she dies at the end
is a kind of result of the accumulation of all these injuries.
And that's both metaphorically true and literally true.
And we needed and wanted to make a movie where it is about the consequences
that are often the things that are skipped in movies
that have action in them, you know?
DIFRANCO: Your elbow!
- HAY: Still screaming at his son. - MANFREDI: Mm-hmm.
- Look, he's got to get his elbow up. - HAY: Ever screaming.
He's just trying... Proper technique has to be honored.
MANFREDI: Yeah, that mistaken form is eventually gonna catch up with him.
This is one of those places where the violence and her
basically beating something out of DiFranco in a few seconds
kind of if she was gonna do it, this was the place to do it.
This guy means nothing to her. He's not part of this family.
So in terms of her toolbox,
this seemed to be the place where it made the most sense.
DIFRANCO: 'Cause I talked to Mike, and Mike said...
HAY: There's the Mike that we were talking about.
MANFREDI: Mike? You gotta listen to Mike.
(grunts)
HAY: And again, it's so interesting,
Bradley Whitford plays a character, comes in,
I think he worked for maybe two days,
and he has such a big impact
on the movie, on the feel of the movie.
And when you get great actors in every part,
which I really believe we did,
that that is... that's a real gift.
When's the next drop?
You think he's just gonna let those...
HAY: And there's something coming up that kind of...
Again, there's little moments that really seem sort of throwaway
or seem kind of tangential, but they really are important to us.
Like the idea when she walks away from this scene,
and what motivated her actually in Karyn's mind
to get out there and fight
is hearing this repeated brutality of this guy toward his kid
and that when she gets to the end and asks this line,
"Are you teaching him to be a piece of shit like you?"
And he says, "He's a good kid,"
that just added dimension to that relationship
that felt important.
You know, I think that there's some that would say,
you know, the scene is over before you say that, but to us,
that was really important in terms of...
MANFREDI: It's a little peek behind the curtain of what was motivating her.
- All this is about her daughter. - HAY: Yeah.
MANFREDI: Even though she might not realize it yet,
it's all about protecting her daughter.
HAY: And then this was the other opportunity we had
to kind of get under the skin of Silas and understand who he was.
And, you know, we always talked about him
as not, we never wanted him to be,
he's not supposed to be a kind of this mastermind,
this, like, criminal genius,
this formidable kind of mega criminal in any way.
He's kind of a...
He's a sociopath, and he's a horrible person.
But it's interesting to try to evoke
a kind of mythic status in her mind of Silas
and in what we kind of present
and then watch that get pulled apart a little bit,
because ultimately you know that he's a villain of the movie,
but her antagonist is herself,
and so it's about what he lures her into
and what doors he opens for her.
But what we always said, he has one thing he's really, really good at,
and that is seeing what your need is
or seeing what the lack that you feel about yourself is
and then walking through that door,
and that's sort of what he's doing in this scene.
MANFREDI: And this thing of... hearing the voice,
you know... sometimes his lips were moving,
sometimes he's not, sometimes it's voiceover...
was all Plummy and Karyn.
In the script, it was, you know, you just watch them speak.
But I think the idea what they did is made it much more dreamlike
and really kind of enhances this kind of personal journey that Nicole's on.
HAY: But also interesting, it puts it more in her literal space.
Like it becomes not a sort of memory,
and it becomes more of a projection and dream
that's literally happening when she's on that floor,
which is an interesting kind of re-contextualization of it.
Got into a fight.
You were in a fight?
HAY: And there's a line in this scene,
another one of those lines, that attains a lot of significance
by the end...
when she speaks about how nobody's accountable,
that she's screaming that at herself as well
you realize by the end of the movie.
...gets into it a little with this guy, and then his girlfriend comes up
and starts filming it, threatening all kinds of shit.
HAY: I always felt what was important about this scene
and what I feel when I watch it is that they are a family.
This feels like a family to me,
dealing with their...
Something about the weariness of,
and yet soberness of Ethan
is really critical here...
and the kind of formidable impatience of Bell.
- You fucking bitch. - Hey.
HAY: It's very... goes right to who they are.
This is the line I was speaking about:
Nobody is fucking accountable.
True, I'd say.
- MANFREDI: Not yet. - HAY: Yeah.
And I love ending, and Karyn really said it was important,
to end on the shot of Shelby and Ethan,
because they're the ones who're going to be left at the end of the story.
And Ethan is so important because there has to be a good place
for her daughter to be at the end of this.
If this story is about Bell ultimately giving her daughter enough to move on
and to feel like closure in their relationship,
then Ethan is also a big part of that.
And here we finally meet Antonio...
I needed a minute.
Okay, well, I got a special agent calling me from the FBI.
HAY: ...her partner who we were discussing earlier.
What's that about?
- Old friend? - Old friend. Okay.
Taz Furner's all hot saying that you took a bag of guns from him.
HAY: And I think having her confronted with,
there's a couple moments that I always feel when I'm watching it,
you know, as an audience member,
where I feel how important it is to acknowledge
that she's kind of off the rails here
and that people are giving her some rope,
but that she is...
she's on her own journey.
We don't know what that journey is yet, but she's on her own journey.
And, for example, I always feel a lot of satisfaction
when DiFranco says, "Where's your partner?"
You know, that he's asking a question
that hopefully the audience should be asking as well.
- (calliope playing) - (children clamoring)
HAY: And we're about to meet Petra, one of my favorite characters
and played by Tatiana Maslany who's really, again, amazing actor
who really when we first spoke to her about it, I remember saying,
you know, that she's sort of a Patty Hearstian character.
That's sort of one model,
that she really understood this idea of somebody who could...
have grown up wealthy and just really gone relentlessly off the rails
and never got back on them.
MANFREDI: But this is her first day of filming,
and you immediately see how much she gets the character
in the way she's just walking past people and can't deal.
HAY: This moment when we saw her do that.
I think that was literally
one of the first things she did as that character,
and we were like, that's exactly Petra,
the outrage at these joggers for being in her space.
- MANFREDI: They were in her way. - HAY: They were in her way.
(engine starts)
HAY: And again, I think that,
you know, we're in this part of the movie, like this kind of...
pursuit or this kind of tailing of her again was always important to us
because we always wanted to, is that fine balance of
you don't wanna have to connect every single dot,
but you also want to kind of create a sense of space
and not just cut right here because you could theoretically
and you could just know that she followed them here.
In this particular movie, I think we felt like you needed
to at least feel the distance a little bit,
feel the time a little bit.
MANFREDI: And also when she's in her car, that's when she has nothing else.
And they're kind of like she has to kind of deal with her own thoughts,
and so expanding those distances that she has to travel makes her kind of,
in some ways, like, detrimental to her.
(thunder rumbles)
HAY: I always liked this detail and Karyn came up with it to shoot this
in a rainstorm that, like, there's... there's a very Los Angeles thing
that there occasionally just a little cloud bank will come in
and really dump on you for about two hours
and then it's done, and it's very strange, you know.
I guess it's not that strange.
MANFREDI: A lot of places have rain.
(Hay laughs)
HAY: You don't think of Los Angeles with the rains.
MANFREDI: No.
HAY: And again, obviously, this is a really important moment in realizing...
You know, we see these, I wouldn't even call them flashbacks.
We see these sort of like past story bits as...
we're learning a little bit more about the depth
- of her corruption each time. - MANFREDI: Mm-hmm.
HAY: And so that was an important thing to keep in mind always
that each of them, sort of,
from this point on ends with a sort of reveal of the deepening of her...
kind of corruption and her kind of lure
toward doing what is wrong.
TOBY: I'll take care of the cocaine!
HAY: And it was really important in the writing phase as well
to spend a lot of time talking about
what would motivate us to go to the past,
and sometimes it was a very literal need storywise.
But most of the time, it was sort of finding the emotional place
she was in to go back in time.
MANFREDI: And with the exception of, like, the bank robbery sequence in the past,
that long sequence, the goal was to kind of, like,
see how little we could... how little we could say,
like, come into scenes as late as possible
to see just what is the most potent image
or little snippet that we can give you that informs things
without, you know, going full exposition.
HAY: 'Cause I think the idea was to make it so that it was you're in...
the way that, at least for me, memory works sometimes
is you have these islands of important happenings,
and they really kind of have a gravity that pulls everything to them.
And in this case, there's however many, five or six moments
that are critical in her kind of self-examination
and her self-incrimination that we finally learn about.
(engine starts)
HAY: And then this is the beginning of the sequence
that was really, you know, always such a centerpiece of it.
One of the very first things that we wrote.
And it kind of helped us understand that,
you know, we're doing an LA crime movie,
and that is the genre that we absolutely love.
And we knew that this gunfight was going to occur in this movie
and then how we are...
We wrote it very, very specifically, and Karyn was very sensitive toward,
like, really connected on the tone of it
and talking about how it has to feel more like
a war movie than an action movie.
It has to feel just very, very immediate and blunt and emotionally fragile.
MANFREDI: And the writing style for this particular sequence
kind of was very staccato and clipped,
not complete sentences, just describing, like, movement and emotion.
HAY: It was meant to create a rhythm of sorts
and again, because Matt and Karyn are so creatively connected...
that was all very crafted with together,
once we started shooting this, of what these rhythms were going to be
and what these movements were gonna be.
And one of my very favorite moments in the movie
is this moment where they all come out of the van with the guns and masks.
And it's really been gratifying to watch it with audiences who,
and with this music cue, who really suddenly realize with her
how deeply...
how much more deep she is into it than she thought she was going to be.
Fuck!
211 in progress.
HAY: And something that's interesting that we've talked about
is that maybe you can only, that has different meanings, again,
once you watch the movie,
if you hopefully watch it a second time is,
you know, she has her reasons for going into this bank
with guns blazing,
which appear to be in the beginning that she's making a tactical...
She's not supposed to do what she's been doing...
but she does it anyway, which is also part of her character.
And also the fragility of the situation inside the bank,
you know, given what we learn about what happened in the past in a bank
that she wants to intervene.
But by the end of the movie, you learn that she is...
She cannot allow Petra and Silas to get away from her now.
She can't allow them to be arrested either.
MANFREDI: Kind of these little things that slowly become bigger
and slowly add up to a feeling of like, wait,
this doesn't quite fit together
if she's just investigating this case, you know?
Then once you learn she's plotting
- to murder Silas, then... - HAY: Yeah.
And I think that moment where she starts for the bank...
reaching for her handgun,
and realizes that she's got this MP5 in the trunk
was something that was always in the script
and that we always felt was going to be...
(shouting)
HAY: ...a good moment.
PETRA: You think I'm joking? Huh?
MANFREDI: This was the only location we were at for more than two days.
HAY: Yeah, this was...
We needed every single second.
MANFREDI: Luckily, no one got the flu.
- But everyone got the flu. - HAY: Yeah.
Again, it was so important to us to have these, kind of, regular cops,
and that they're not, nobody here is a SWAT team member
or is really specifically trained for these situations.
And we had a lot of amazing advisers that we worked with,
including Gerald Conrad, who's Nicole's weapons trainer,
and Mike Smith, our stunt coordinator.
And we just understood from the beginning
that this had to be a story about people who are...
Let's go.
...out of their depth in many ways.
This is a fucking gunfight.
MANFREDI: When we were thinking about this scene,
we looked into the North Hollywood bank heist,
was in the mid-'90s,
and it was the...
it was one of the first times when the LAPD was kind of outgunned.
HAY: Outgunned. Yeah.
MANFREDI: And so there was all of this chaos in trying to deal with that,
and it was just, you know...
It was this mix of intense professionalism,
but also confusion, also having to improvise on the fly,
and it was really helpful to kind of have that in mind.
HAY: We referred, yeah, kind of specifically
in some of the radio chatter that happens afterwards
and how these professionals kind of organize themselves
after an event like this.
And again, in the interest of trying to make it feel
as close to real as possible
and close to scary as possible,
and that's the goal is to be very close to her as well.
And this was an important moment for us, too,
and again shows Nicole, how perfectly she gets this character
that she's having trouble reloading the gun,
which is very, you know, that again, it's not this smooth operation.
It's very hard to keep yourself together in these situations, obviously.
And something our advisers told us many times,
we'd say, "Well, would this really happen? Would this really happen?
Would she do this or that?" And they'd say you can...
Anything under the sun is possible in situations like this.
And there's...
Doing it right isn't really an option.
(alarm bell ringing)
HAY: And this is interestingly, also, we, you know...
There's a bit in the script.
The gunfight kind of continued out onto the street in the script originally,
and that was an example of something we were like,
you know, we don't... we can't do that
because the location doesn't lay out that way,
but also, rhythmically, it felt like that was...
- this timing was right. - MANFREDI: Mm-hmm.
HAY: You're trying to manage everything, again, to keep it real.
Like, you see those cops...
It's very important that you see those flashing lights down the street
'cause they would be on the way by this time.
And this is the kind of radio chatter we were talking about.
OFFICER (on radio): Three to four suspects left bank, headed east.
Automatic weapons.
DISPATCHER (on radio): All units, Code Three.
Witnesses advise three to four suspects...
HAY: And the scene that is to come is actually very unlikely
to be based on something that really happened to one of us seeing,
but it actually, some version of this happened to me as a child.
You're going to see a child in this ice cream shop,
and he represents the young Phil
who witnessed a strangely similar incident
with some undercover cops and a person fleeing from a robbery.
MANFREDI: The clothes he's wearing, they're actually Phil's childhood clothes.
HAY: I never dressed that cool when I was a kid.
And the look that she gives him there is so...
meaningful to me.
Take him!
PETRA: Fuck you, Erin.
HAY: I also felt it was somehow important that she calls her by name.
She immediately is like she has not seen this person in a long time,
and it's just immediately back to this connection, weirdly.
MANFREDI: This is one of these times where we talked a lot
with our stunt coordinator, Mike, about making it look messy.
And these aren't professional fighters.
It's dirty and it's messy.
HAY: And it's funny because it's like it requires so much,
you realize when you make these movies, requires so much dedication
from every crew member too,
to accept and enhance the aesthetic of the movie
because, you know, for a stunt coordinator,
most of the time, they're asked to do more and more
and more spectacular and more
and show off the tools in their toolbox.
And with Mike, he was always so,
he's so story based in a great way.
And so his connection, you know, when Karyn would...
start to work with him on stuff, you know,
it's like you're kind of...
In a way, you're asking your stunt coordinator
to work with one hand tied behind their back,
but you're also asking them to go into... I think he relished
and the team relished getting into the most real possible
and most brutal version of this stuff and that be the specificity.
MANFREDI: This might be my favorite set of takes
of the different things that Tatiana did...
Right before entering the trunk.
Right before the trunk was closed on her.
HAY: Again, something you don't talk about details that are in the script
and that are important in the movie, while seeming to maybe not be,
we talked a lot about how we wanted this story of those other two guys
who got away to continue off screen.
So that's why you're hearing the sounds of a gun battle that's ongoing
and you're hearing the approaching cops and you're hearing helicopters.
MANFREDI: It's the confusion that lets her get away.
HAY: Yeah, exactly. And also this is such an important scene
because this is where, as an audience member,
you're probably saying,
- okay, she's really... - MANFREDI: Now she's kidnapping.
HAY: There is really something, something else is going on here
than what I thought was going on with her.
(helicopter passing overhead)
(Erin grunts)
MANFREDI: This is one of those things
that you don't think about when you're writing it
but since it's all filmed out of order, you know,
her bending over there, just keeping track of where,
how injured she was at the time,
you know, where on another day, you're like,
okay, now you're one day removed for this,
or, you know, the next day,
you haven't been kicked at all yet, so you're fine.
Like, just keeping track of that,
Nicole's ability to track her physicality that way
was, I don't know, it may seem simple, but it was impressive to me.
HAY: And again, having now these people... I love that shot...
that now having people kind of...
after her was important, right?
Because we talked a lot about she couldn't just leave this crime scene.
Obviously, now, not only her own superiors,
but this happened in Inglewood in our story,
and it's like, there's the Inglewood cops are going to be involved,
and everyone's going to be actually looking for her now.
It was important to acknowledge that
and to kind of go back to what Matt was saying.
Again, I can't say enough about how shockingly comprehensive and incredible
Nicole's performance and take on this character were
that she was able to keep this person...
in her and to keep, as Matt said,
to keep all of her complexity kind of together
throughout this entire movie,
it's just... it's truly remarkable.
And again,
the fact that we're watching a story of someone
who is kind of rotting from the inside from the beginning
but then who is accumulating all these kind of physical injuries
to go with it...
BELL: Won't matter if I bring him in.
and yet maintaining this feral force of life,
that is really... I'm just kind of in awe of how she did it.
MANFREDI: There was more to this scene at one point,
and it was one of those things where Petra kind of baits Erin
at one point in the full version of the scene
about she tells a story about Chris
that implies that maybe Chris has been unfaithful,
and we don't know if it's a lie, and it's a pretty cruel thing.
And so the kind of ambiguity of that...
although it was really kind of interesting,
it ends up working against other stuff in the story,
the kind of... the pureness of...
or the supposed pureness, of the love she has for Chris,
which kind of contributes to the tragedy
of her mistake and complicity in his death.
Like, all of that gets a little muddied...
if there's this kind of question about things.
HAY: Yeah. It was interesting. It was such an amazing...
It's a monologue that Petra, Tatiana, gives as Petra
and is so amazing.
But again as Matt said,
in the needs of the final movie,
it was sending us in a direction that wasn't helpful.
But what is there in this scene
which I've always loved is how connected these two are
and how they do have a special kind of understanding of one another.
And that it kind of, you know,
it mirrors things about just Bell's condition,
which is she's the kind of person that tells you she's right all the time,
and that has actually the appearance of this kind of...
force of right somehow
or at least the force of being the boss of everything.
And yet she keeps telling people how wrong they are
when she's the one who's wrong.
I mean, she's also the one who is wrong.
- (phone buzzing) - Oh, fuck.
Make it simple.
Answer the fucking phone. Make it simple.
HAY: And it was really important to invest, you know,
what it meant to Petra to finally give up on Silas,
who has kind of, despite everything, maintained this sway over her
and over, you know, the other people that he keeps
pulling in around him.
MANFREDI: I like watching her on this phone call.
You don't even need to hear Silas' side.
You know exactly what he's saying to her based on her performance.
It's cool.
Okay, I'll wait for it, then.
HAY: And again, it's something Karyn talked a lot about on the day
that we knew was there...
but she knew how important it was...
that it means something to Petra to finally give up on Silas
and that the idea of giving up, which is the one thing
that Bell will not do, in this case it's a release and a relief
actually for Petra.
It's something that she needs to do,
is to give up and ask for her to send the cops.
And it was important for us to note later
that she does send the cops. She doesn't just leave her there.
...wanted it, same as me.
HAY: And she generously offers her a gallon of water.
MANFREDI: It's a lot of water.
Can you get the cops here pretty fast?
I think I need some help.
ERIN: Yeah.
They'll be here.
HAY: And again, we knew when writing it that we had to sort of...
The key that led into this next scene, which is, again,
this is one of the most important scenes of the movie
where we really again take a much deeper step down
into wrongness with her,
is to understand as we're writing, okay, what is...
what pulls her consciousness and us into this scene,
and it's the discussion.
And thus it's important for Petra to say...
you know, you think you're better than me and you're not.
But it was even more important to say you wanted the money.
You just have didn't have the balls to take it.
And we sort of learned she did have the balls to take it, you know?
We got more than enough to arrest.
HAY: Balls is the wrong word.
- But she's... - MANFREDI: Chutzpah.
HAY: Chutzpah.
MANFREDI: But again, this is like we cut off this scene pretty quickly.
And that was always kind of the intent in writing it to just get in and out...
as quickly and have the moment be hopefully as potent as possible.
HAY: Well, and then to understand eventually that it's not her...
you know, that her self-hatred springing from this.
It doesn't come from...
It's not mainly about breaking the law or doing something wrong.
It's that we're starting to realize, it's about having pulled
this other person in with her, that that's the sin,
that she can't forgive herself for, that she's actually pulled
this person she loves down, a good person.
I need you to take the money.
All right. Stop talking now!
- Ethan, can... - No. We had one promise.
Yeah, and I kept it.
I put it in storage, and I never looked at it again.
HAY: And again, now we're in the part of the script and the movie
where we're trying to...
We're unveiling, like, the...
Now we know she actually got away with some money
and that she's hidden it and that she's ashamed about it,
and it's again trying to figure out how...
how and when to let us know that.
MANFREDI: Again, this is a scene that is unrelated to the investigation,
you know, how structurally to fit this in
in a way that doesn't stop the story cold.
And I think we spent a lot of time
talking about the timing of her meet-up with Silas...
and the reveals that are inherent in these scenes
that kind of contribute to the investigation.
HAY: And it's really important to us when we spoke about this with the actors,
and we also wrote it in their back stories,
and you feel it here that they do love each other,
like, that was very important to us.
And as much as she can, as much as she's capable of
while living in this kind of state of regret
and that she's constantly living in...
and that there is something tragic about it,
because I also think what's so important
from Scoot's performance, too,
is you sense his innate goodness, this guy.
Even though he's also willing to be corrupted to some degree,
he's a good person.
And I think that leading into what is coming,
to realize that this is it for them
and that they are important to one another.
Get the money.
HAY: It's emotionally very important.
And again, she's able to tell somebody,
get what she wants out of somebody
or get them to bend to her will again,
it's her kind of tragic talent.
This was a bit we added sort of as well late in the game.
While we were shooting, actually, we had a break.
We shot part of this movie before Christmas,
and then we had a two week break and then we shot the rest of it.
Anyhow, over that time, we sort of realized...
that we wanted to see her...
dealing with the kind of injury that she'd been given
and the pain that she's in
and realized that that could be what leads her into this section
where another very important reveal happens.
And I think Nicole says sometimes
that it's really an important hook into understanding her
and a really important emotional connection for...
or an important emotional touchstone for her was this idea
that, you know, the sadness, that the relationship,
in Nicole's words, that she begins this relationship with her daughter
and we find out she's pregnant in this scene
when she's high and she's on drugs,
and she's also in a morally compromised place
and, like, what a way to begin a relationship with a child.
And so...
MANFREDI: I mean, you can tell it's happening which is so great.
You can tell even before you reveal what she's doing,
you kind of know that it's a pregnancy test
just based on her performance there.
You know it is positive.
- And that look of realization. - Yep.
HAY: So, yeah, I think that like us and like Karyn,
I think Nicole really felt like
she's a person who she finds these moments of real specificity
and then can build everything around them,
can find, you know, what is the core, and then...
And she's very good at recognizing the core,
I learned.
MANFREDI: I have a crush on BA Self Storage
- where we filmed this. - HAY: Yeah.
MANFREDI: It's one of those places that is so LA.
It's like the top of it is level
with the freeways that are on either side.
So it kind of sits below the freeway,
and it's just weird space in the middle of Silver Lake.
HAY: It was written into the script from the very beginning.
And then again, kind of important here
in the emotional landscape of the movie is that she's...
All these compromises have turned out to be for nothing.
And the kind of idea of the stain is obviously,
you know, has many different meanings.
But the fact that it just felt really appropriate for us
that she's left with this kind of sad remnant
of her big scheme
and what it was, all that sacrifice was, of course, stained, you know,
and of course it can't be used for good, this,
though she finds a way to use it for kind of good,
which I suppose is the,
like, the moral landscape of this movie is like if she finds a way
to take the remnants of this and turn it into kind of good,
which is getting rid of this guy
and clearing some space for her daughter, basically.
MANFREDI: And this is one of those times in the writing
where you kind of maybe have a little bit of a blind spot
where you think something is going to be completely obvious
and doesn't need any further explanation.
And then when we first were showing this to family and friends,
there was a question of did she...
Is that the first time she saw the money?
How does she... Wouldn't she know it's tainted already?
And those were the tiny little bits of ADR
we went back in to kind of like
let you know that that was the first time she had seen it.
- That jacket. - HAY: Yeah.
HAY: It's a good time to mention Audrey Fisher,
our costume designer, who again is...
We really were fortunate to have such a tremendous crew working
on a, you know, intense independent film in LA.
And, again, bringing a very specific,
and hopefully feels very real aesthetic to it.
It's yours if you want it.
HAY: And this scene also contains another one of those lines where
I don't think we put a spotlight on it when we were writing it,
but it turned so important.
To both the idea of that she doesn't care what happens to her,
and that is her power, actually,
and that making excuses for what you want is weak.
And I think that the way she takes control of this scene
is really helpful to understanding,
again, understanding her power because you see her...
constantly tugged between being empowered and disempowered
by the world and by herself.
And it's her relentlessness and her, kind of, her...
She has this innate spark of life and potency
that we always relate it to Karyn and Nicole
and relate it to a coyote, kind of energy of the survivor
and the kind of...
That was kind of the avatar for Erin, I think, in some way,
MANFREDI: This is also one of those moments
where the script changes based on
the consideration of the actor, I mean Nicole,
at one point in the script, she uses the fact that she...
how much she loves her daughter as a threat to kind of scare Jay...
in terms of what she'll do.
And we had a conversation with her,
and Nicole said, "I don't think I would give him that.
"I don't think I would say the words 'love' to him.
"I'll save that for the scene that's coming up
between me and my daughter when I finally say it."
And so it was... it was just... it was really gratifying
to work with someone who was so smart about the script.
- HAY: Sensitive and attuned. - MANFREDI: Yeah.
HAY: And also, as I said, you start,
if you're working with an artist like that,
you start to learn about your own character,
your own creation from her,
and that's so gratifying.
And then this begins the sequence
- which really does kind of... - MANFREDI: Tell you everything.
HAY: ...tell you everything.
And it's interesting that kind of an almost a narrative
when questioned for me, if you're writing saying,
by now we know Chris is not around anymore.
And so we know the idea of dreading
what's going to happen in this bank really felt palpable to me.
And really it's not surprise that we're trying
to use to get the audience to be interested,
but it's that sort of dread
and the inexorable kind of march toward, like,
we know something bad happens in that bank,
and we don't know exactly what it's going to look like.
And that's interesting, because most of the time
you're trying to use suspense.
You're trying to say, as when she walks in that bank
in the present day, you don't know what's going to happen,
and it's actually very...
Hopefully, it adds to it that it's very transgressive
that it's not...
It's surprising and you don't expect to be there.
And in this case, you know you're going to be there eventually.
And hopefully if it works for you, the pleasure and the understanding in it
is seeing exactly how this thing we've been dreading came to pass.
And we believe we did nothing to cause them to mistrust us.
HAY: And, sort of seeing in a way, like,
I just was reminded that those shots we talked a little bit about,
that part of this movie is about the kind of outlaw romance,
like on a literal sense, that she and Chris are kind of having
that romance of two outlaws together,
but the idea of the romance of that story of, like,
how romantic the notion of being outlaws is being so poisonous
and actually being so destructive to them.
And sort of, in a way, the shots in the van are that,
like, those kind of hero shots of the bank robbers
donning their masks...
and getting ready to pull off this heist,
and we're kind of playing against the romance of it.
And it's interesting this whole sequence...
is really of a piece in terms of the...
I think that this music, the cutting, the storytelling...
this is a moment where it all has to be
very organically connected...
And the music cue that's coming up when they enter the bank
is really one of my favorites
that I might have ever heard from Teddy, and I've loved everything he does.
It's just a very...
It always hits me very viscerally,
and I hope it hits other people the same way.
And that's the cue that's coming up right now.
And again, we had written that we wanted...
this to be in surveillance camera.
And again, that's always going to be Karyn's choice, you know?
But she, I think, liked that idea for the difference of it
and for the kind of cold reality of it and then decided also,
and I think, very correctly, to shoot...
kind of this sort of footage in outside of that aesthetic,
to connect us to the emotions of the individuals.
No fucking dye packs in here, right?
- MANFREDI: By the way, how good is she? - HAY: She is really, really good.
The bank teller is Cecily Breaux.
Yeah.
And it's truly a remarkable thing when, you know,
again, testament to the professionalism of actors,
like, she had auditioned for Karyn,
and Karyn really thought she was great.
And then she came on the set.
And when she wrapped, when she'd finished her takes,
this is a character who, you know, is in the movie for half a day,
the entire crew burst into applause,
and that's like one of these magical things that happens in a movie.
It was so moving what she accomplished.
That's kind of...
That's a really nice thing when it happens.
MANFREDI: I mean, yeah, the scene is totally different
if she doesn't do what she did, and it's so good.
And she did it in not very much time.
HAY: And then this scene coming up, it's very satisfying
because the audience really jumps every time it happens.
MANFREDI: It's a testament to some great sound mixing, too.
HAY: Yeah.
That explosion of the dye pack really gets people...
out of their seats.
MANFREDI: Yeah, they worked on that for a little bit.
HAY: And then the way he drops those... I mean, I think that
this is where the evil of Silas is very, very clear.
And then some of these shots,
again, what Julie Kirkwood and Karyn did to...
just what this means to Chris and what this means to her and his...
just the way he looks when he pulls off his mask.
I mean, the...
Sebastian has many a fan,
and I think that they probably liked that moment.
MANFREDI: Well, it says it all. It's all about her.
It's like the root of her guilt right there.
It's exactly what they didn't want to happen.
HAY: He's capable of doing the right thing at the cost of everything, you know,
even though he's compromised.
SILAS: No fucking dye pack? Huh?
FBI!
HAY: And again, it's funny when we were shooting this,
just speaking with Sebastian and Toby about it...
it's just the idea of this could have gone very differently,
even in that moment, you know, he might have hit Silas.
He might have...
not ended up dead at the end of this.
Then what would have happened? But this is what happened.
And this is the kind of...
just the bitter truth, basically.
TOBY: What the fuck?
HAY: And again, kind of what Nicole does in this entire sequence
is just incredible to me.
- TOBY: Fuckin' do it! - No!
Everything that she's doing
and where we end up in a couple minutes...
was a truly...
One of the most inspiring things
that I've ever seen on a movie set was...
- MANFREDI: Her reaction. - HAY: ...her reaction
when she gets out of that van and how...
just how...
Are you fucking cops, Erin?
HAY: ...remarkable it was.
TOBY: Are you fucking cops?
Erin, are you a fucking cop?
HAY: She is a cop.
Just talk to me, Erin. Talk to me.
Now tell me, are you a fuckin' cop?
Don't tell me you're a fuckin' cop.
TOBY (sobbing): Don't tell me you're a fuckin' cop.
TOBY: Don't fuckin' do that!
MANFREDI: This is one of those times where we had a stunt
where we were going to show the van really hitting that pretty hard...
and there was just...
there was a time issue, and there was all kinds of things that came up,
and I think we ended up the better for it,
because it is much more impressionistic.
You don't need to see the big hit.
HAY: Well, you realize, too, that you've seen that, you know?
And that's something that's in the vocabulary of movies now,
is those amazing...
The technology of showing a car crash
has really leaped forward, it seems.
You've seen many of those.
And so we were like, for both practical and aesthetic reasons,
we thought maybe this would be better.
And then just details like seeing,
you know, again, Bill Corso, our amazing makeup artist
we talked about, in her present day,
she's got a broken nose.
And you see eventually
this is when she got that broken nose and that's, again,
the idea of having something she's just been carrying with her this entire time.
MANFREDI: But this moment, the back and forth from the van
to the thing and her breakdown here,
her performance...
HAY: The sound that she made the first time we heard it,
we just, like... everybody's jaw dropped.
MANFREDI: And the fact that she really got it.
HAY: It's so, so real and animal. Yeah.
HAY: This is when we knew kind of there was like the emotional...
part of the movie was gonna work.
No! No!
HAY: Again, it's trying... It's investing in the consequences,
and the consequences can be really raw and rough.
And that's kind of the decision we made with this movie,
and what it had to be was that it's the...
the pain has to be pretty unmitigated at this moment.
And yet she technically gets away with it for a while,
for a really long time.
MANFREDI: I think that's the transition.
That's what gets her to this moment here.
I mean, the kind of devastation that she's finally reckoning with.
HAY: And we definitely, at least for me,
I always knew this scene was going to be the heart of the movie
or, to me, I kept coming back to this is that this is where,
in a way, this is the climax of the movie,
because it's her actually changing
and in the vocabulary of kind of parents and kids.
We just talked a lot about how meaningful it is
to actually be heard as a kid by your mother
and to understand your mother actually as a human being and as not,
as someone who has been going around...
acting like she's, you know...
got the answer as to what's right and wrong,
and who is able to finally be honest in this scene
and reveal that she doesn't and that,
we talked about the scene as this has to be her...
What she has to accomplish here
is to give her daughter the tools to live on without her,
because I think she knows that she's likely to...
She knows something's wrong here with her body.
She knows she's kind of headed to the end,
and she needs to, in her way with what she can do, offer that
and actually connect.
MANFREDI: Well, this is also we talked a lot about
when thinking about this scene, like this is the...
this is the moment where
perhaps for the first time in her relationship with Shelby
that she's admitted that she's wrong, that she apologizes
and the first time Shelby's heard anything like that from her mom.
Even in the story she tells about going out in the snow,
there was probably...
Even though she kind of saves them from something she's done,
I'm sure there wasn't an apology afterwards.
HAY: Right.
(clears throat)
HAY: And I really love what Jade Pettyjohn does in this scene
and how there's some interesting things to observe
about that, in the process of editing,
that the choice that Karyn made to stay,
Karyn and Plummy made, to stay
for a really long time on each of them
and not cut back and forth a lot.
And especially on Nicole to let...
to watch everything land on her
and her process everything in this story
I think was really right
and was really inspired, I think.
...trying to go back to our car.
Did it actually happen?
HAY: To me, when I watch this, I see Erin is,
you know, she's kind of stepping off a ledge for her.
This is the most high stakes thing that there is for her,
is to admit how culpable she is to her daughter.
Like, I could tell something was wrong with you
because I was looking at your shoes.
They were just sneakers.
And they were so wet that they were falling apart.
HAY: And I think also the the general space and silence of this scene
is really important, you know?
I don't remember when we figured out that maybe it was pretty quickly, that...
hopefully in a surprising way
'cause it kind of surprised me, I think, when we talked about it,
the idea of seeing this story
or seeing at the end of the movie
and the end of her life, actually seeing what...
seeing this...
- MANFREDI: The end of the story play out. - HAY: ...envisioned.
Yeah. And, to me, it's the most moving,
as an audience member,
when that happens and we see her...
in the snow with her daughter,
that really gets it, I think.
"We shouldn't be here. Why did you take us here?"
We were out there all alone for no reason.
Like a couple of animals.
I just kept saying, "Why?"
HAY: And again, I think we talked about how...
that there's...
You couldn't just answer me...
HAY: ...with these two people,
that there's this moment of connection
and this really, actually surprisingly...
generous moment from Shelby to her mom
where she admits how she felt very safe with her, and that that's...
very profound to her.
But then the truth is she, the anger that she has
underneath being in that situation in the first place and, to me,
it ends up being really an encapsulation of who Erin is
that she's the kind of person that will kind of throw you out
into the wild and then save you,
because she does have this powerful instinct
to protect and to save,
but she's also so flawed
that she's, in a way, it's a metaphor for everything.
She's put them all in this situation,
and that's what is her struggle with herself,
that she knows she's made this whole world.
She's with her choices and her mistakes.
And she's the one who put them all in the wilderness,
literally and figuratively.
MANFREDI: And this is one of those times...
I mean, this is where I think that conversation
that on the day we were shooting the park with Jay
about not saying the word "love" really pays off here,
because I think saying that is such a open and vulnerable...
moment.
I mean, not just for this, but for anyone in a movie,
when you're saying it sincerely...
it's like a risk, you know, it's...
And to have that moment be the only time she says that in the movie
I think was a great choice
and just a great insight into the character.
HAY: And to me, in the end, you have
a movie where you're trying to do a lot of different things,
and it's a crime story and it's a cop story
and it's all those things, and it's got gunfights
and it's got all these scenes that have their own reason for being.
But again, to me, like what I'm looking for in a movie ultimately
is often two people talking to each other
and two people connecting in the way that they can,
and that's kind of what's moving about movies when it can happen.
And so that's why this was so important to this,
to us and to the story.
And as Matt was saying, the fact that
this is so hard for the character of Erin and you understand why, you know,
that she's not a person who goes around communicating love,
because it makes her vulnerable and because it makes her ashamed.
And that's something Karyn talked about a lot.
And one of the first things Nicole said about the character
was how driven she is by shame.
- MANFREDI: She's killed people she loves. - HAY: Yeah.
- MANFREDI: Or been responsible for it. - HAY: Right.
So this shot has always been one of my favorites is this walk that she...
The way she's walking, it just makes me feel very close to her somehow
and very...
Walking across in this beautiful location.
MANFREDI: We talked about this balance of...
She can't, she's not saying goodbye, although, you know, it's...
She knows that something potentially bad is coming.
And so, it's almost like it's a balance there that we are trying to find.
HAY: But it really is, I realized, the emotional...
It is the emotional climax of the movie,
and in some ways it is the climax.
Because now with everything to come
in kind of a revenge story,
you'd be really gearing up to wanting to see her take this guy out.
And I think for us, what we talked about a lot is that,
like, you know how hollow revenge is, you know,
and how in a weird way, it can't be satisfying,
because revenge is a very empty gesture,
and I think that was really important to us.
But it's also a challenge because you have to then
hope that the unconventional way that this plays out...
offers you a different kind of satisfaction
and that the joltingness of it and the kind of perfunctory nature
of her final kind of killing of Silas leaves you with a sense of that,
as Nicole said after doing it on the day,
saying like, that didn't change anything, that didn't heal anything.
The healing happens elsewhere.
MANFREDI: We talked about it a lot.
This is the first time they've seen each other
in 17 years after what happened,
and would there be more to say?
And do we want to say more?
And yeah, like Phil was saying, to us, it was...
She's already kind of accomplished what she needs to accomplish.
And she's soon gonna learn that this was not the satisfying
or the kind of redemptive road to take.
HAY: And it's interesting to see,
'cause obviously what we have to do here is to let people understand,
start to understand, okay, this is the beginning.
Oh, she's the killer. She's the one who,
that body in the beginning, she created it.
And it's interesting to see people kind of realize that at different moments,
that, like, some, it's the second they see him
with that red jacket they call it back to that,
some it takes a little bit longer.
But that red-handled gun, really, to me,
I realize that's the critical piece to really make
there'd be no doubt about it.
MANFREDI: Toby did a lot of these falls, and I was really worried about him.
HAY: Yeah. It is remarkable when the actor just decides to do it,
and he's very, very good at it.
But again like this, the perfunctory nature of it,
perfunctory nature of it.
And then this is the kind of more literal laying out.
And we played, or Karyn played with many different,
you know, levels of information and different cuts
and different number of cuts.
MANFREDI: We had a lot of lines in the script
that we thought we could cut back to.
Some of them made it in here, some of them...
HAY: And rhythmically, some of them just was too, too long.
And you're experimenting, like,
on the page, it's one thing, but on the screen,
how long it takes to understand something is different.
And then, of course...
Actually, I think that blood pattern too is, first of all, so beautiful,
but it also helps us get right back into the understanding...
that this is the thing.
She's the killer, you know?
We thought she was investigating something,
but she was committing it.
And then the skateboarders, as we said, which...
I think it was Karyn who originally kind of thought of them.
And we sort of, again, the metaphor of it actually kind of snuck up on us
in a way about somebody just finally getting it right
after trying and trying and trying,
and it's why it kind of attained the importance it did.
Where the fuck you been?
ANTONIO: Can't keep coming to work like this.
MANFREDI: That was a line we added,
because we had cut the earlier scene with him,
and it didn't have the history of him
kind of knowing that he was kind of this up and comer
and she was this kind of, like, disrespected, kind of career...
career officer who maybe came into work drunk more than once.
And so rather than have him...
You didn't want him to be so overly concerned about her state.
- He was like this is a common thing. - HAY: Sadly, he's...
MANFREDI: Can't keep coming into work like this.
HAY: Yeah, he's seen her like this several times, you know?
I mean, not quite this bad, but it has to be plausible
that she just asked for a little time
and it's not surprising to him.
I just need a minute. Yeah?
HAY: And it was sort of important to us to...
what's in that envelope and taking care of loose ends.
And this was interesting again, a thing where it maybe seems obvious,
but it was a realization to me.
It took me a while and having seen the movie maybe 15 different times
before I connected the purple of her kind of bleeding
- with the purple on the bills. - MANFREDI: Right.
- I got that right away. - HAY: I'm sure, Matt, Matt...
Really, his knowledge is far greater
- than my own. - MANFREDI: Unparalleled.
HAY: But it was again the details,
we want to take care of everybody like that.
We talked about it originally, you know,
to say we need to understand that Petra is going to be found.
We need to understand he's going to find this.
She's giving him the tools to implicate herself.
MANFREDI: And this is what the journey kind gets us to in my mind.
Like that envelope. What's in that envelope?
That confession was not part of the original plan.
She was just going to kill Silas,
and that was going to solve everything for her.
But this whole journey, this whole exploration of herself
gets us to that confession.
HAY: That she thought it was going to close the book,
- but she... - MANFREDI: Yeah.
HAY: ...what she learns about herself
is that what she actually does need to do
is own up and atone in the only way that she can.
MANFREDI: And this scene was kind of always... We always conceived of this scene
being last.
In a lot of movies or a lot of perhaps other iterations,
this scene when she says "do it for me"
would precede the bank robbery...
but, to us, showing it here...
after we've seen that Chris dies,
we know what's going to come of this scene,
having it here kind of enhanced the tragedy of it.
And also, we're flashing back right before she dies
to, like, this is not only the moment where it goes wrong,
but it's perhaps her last moment of hope.
HAY: Right.
And that is what's stuck in her mind, that combination.
Do it for me.
For us.
HAY: Because again, as a tragedy, it's...
This is the, you know... It's... We're hopeful, hoping
to show the deepening of her...
complicity in her own downfall, that this...
It's really how it affects other people
that is the haunting thing,
and that's, you know, that we talked occasionally...
I remember once we said...
it is not the story of an amoral or even immoral person.
It's a story... The reason she's suffering so much is that she is moral.
She knows what's right and wrong, and she did the wrong thing anyway.
And that's what causes suffering.
If she wasn't moral in some way, all she would care about is survival
and getting her way in getting what she wants.
And obviously she's tried that and it doesn't work,
and it hasn't solved anything.
- Shut it down, okay? - Yeah.
- And we accept the consequences. - Yes.
Nobody gets a fuckin' scratch.
It's good. The plan is good.
HAY: And again, it's, you know, the connection
that these two actors have as these characters was...
It was always... It was there from the beginning,
but it was just kind of amazing to watch
the two of them develop this together over a very short amount of time.
MANFREDI: Yeah, in some ways this is the last good moment of her life.
HAY: Yeah.
I gotta get back.
HAY: And I think, as you can hear from the music
and as you can see from Karyn's treatment of it
and kind of what we...
Again, this was all written very sparely in the script.
It's all there, but it's written in a very kind of spare, minimal fashion
and, you know, Karyn spoke about...
Nice ass.
HAY: ...that there's a kind of an ecstatic moment it's leading to,
the sort of almost a spiritual moment
and that Karyn's choice to do that was to kind of extend
empathy toward this flawed character at the end of her life
and, you know, you can say that her story is...
The end of any life is momentous and is mysterious
and has these sort of elemental, mythical things.
And I think that's what seeing that dog is about
and seeing these birds is about and, of course,
then seeing...
getting to that shot of her with her daughter in the snow
is to, you know, hopefully, if it makes you feel connected
to every mundane person connected to this...
the biggest thing in the world, which is the end of someone's life.
And I think something about this scene that really I keep coming back to,
kind of speaking to Nicole about it,
it was the very last thing we shot out in this cedar grove in Los Feliz...
- MANFREDI: Griffith Park. - HAY: Yeah. In Griffith Park.
And talking about how this is the primal part of the story
or this is the ancient part of the story,
a woman and her daughter in the snow surviving.
And I think Nicole told us that that's something she really connected to,
this fierce energy,
again, so complicated by everything she does.
But the core of her,
she's a mother, and she's a very unconventional mother
in terms of screen... in screen terms.
But in terms of the world, I think, you know,
she had such a powerful understanding of this flawed mother
and that's what was eventually going to be either her salvation
as much as she could get it or not.
You know, and again, it's sort of the, for me...
it's so apt that she ends by herself in her car, which is her...
her world and her, you know...
her domain in some ways.
- MANFREDI: Then the skateboarder - HAY: And then the skateboarder.
Which I think again for Karyn,
and for us, was a...
It's just meant to be a punctuation.
- HAY: And... - MANFREDI: Yeah.
- MANFREDI: Thanks for listening. - HAY: Yes. Thank you so much.
And again, it's kind of special to be able to do this as screenwriters.
And thank you for Karyn for coming up with the idea of having us do this.
- So thank you again. - MANFREDI: Thank you.
And if you watch to the very end and you see the FamilyStyle logo,
shout out to my wife, Abby Weintraub, who did that logo.
HAY: She designed it. That's our company together.
- So thank you. - MANFREDI: Thanks.
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