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Transcript
00:00 (typewriter ding)
00:02 - When I wrote this, I didn't have representation.
00:04 I wrote it in, you know,
00:06 the coat closet of our apartment.
00:08 - Okay, you wrote this in a coat closet.
00:10 - Yes. (laughs)
00:12 - With the coats there, or?
00:13 - No, we took the rod down.
00:15 That was my, we used to call it my claw fist.
00:18 (laughs)
00:20 - I'm willing to bet that this is the only screenplay
00:24 Oscar nominated this year that was written in a claw fist.
00:26 (laughs)
00:28 (upbeat music)
00:30 - Beautiful ladies.
00:34 - Oh, thank you, Lydia.
00:36 This is Elizabeth.
00:37 She's playing me in a movie,
00:38 so I'm trying to show her a good time.
00:40 (laughs)
00:41 - That I don't doubt.
00:43 - Why do you wanna play me?
00:49 - When they sent me the script, I just thought,
00:56 now here is a woman with a lot more to her
01:00 than I remember from the tabloids
01:03 and our cultural memory.
01:06 - I don't really think about all that.
01:11 - You don't over dwell on the past?
01:14 - I have my plate pretty full.
01:18 - I mean, I know that for me personally,
01:25 the past weighs on me,
01:27 decisions I've made or relationships.
01:31 - Welcome to Behind the Lens and today,
01:37 well, I love it when I have a first timer.
01:39 She's a first time produced screenplay,
01:43 which is really good.
01:44 Here's what's really impressive.
01:46 It started at Cannes where it was accepted
01:50 as the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival.
01:54 It moved on to all these critics groups
01:56 that have awarded it the year's best screenplay,
01:59 the New York Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics,
02:02 Boston National Society of Film Critics,
02:06 nominated for an Independent Spirit Award
02:08 as best first screenplay,
02:09 and now nominated for best original screenplay
02:12 at the Oscars.
02:13 This is Sammy Birch, hi.
02:15 (laughs)
02:17 - Wow.
02:18 - That's pretty wild.
02:19 - It's crazy.
02:20 - This little journey of your first screenplay.
02:22 I mean, did you have any idea?
02:25 - No, I mean, certainly the idea got a little more possible
02:29 when Todd Haynes signed on.
02:30 (laughs)
02:31 - So how do you come up with the idea for this?
02:33 Write it on spec and what inspired it?
02:36 May, December, of course, is the name of the movie.
02:39 - Yeah, I mean, I really wanted to look at,
02:42 you know, the sort of 90s tabloid culture
02:44 and the way that it has bled into the true crime moment
02:49 machine that we're in right now.
02:52 You know, I grew up in the 90s in West LA
02:56 in the era of O.J. and Monica Lewinsky's
02:59 also from that area.
03:00 So it felt very prevalent
03:03 and it's just been interesting to me.
03:05 - Well, obviously it's based on tabloid culture
03:08 and all of that.
03:09 And a lot of people say Mary Kay Letourneau,
03:12 which was such a famous tabloid story there.
03:15 So this is totally fictionalized.
03:18 - Yes.
03:19 - Is that in your head at all, those stories?
03:22 And it wasn't just her, there's several stories.
03:24 - Yeah, Deborah LaFarge, or you know,
03:26 there's a lot of that.
03:29 That sort of, I mean, I think of them almost
03:32 as novelty criminals, really.
03:34 I mean, there's this celebrity that comes up
03:37 when there's something like this
03:40 that's unexpected in culture.
03:42 But absolutely, I mean, those cases were so,
03:48 so well known to me, I never didn't know them.
03:52 But it was important to me that this was
03:55 a fictionalized version of one of these stories
03:58 because there was just more room
04:02 for, to look at it, to comment on it, you know,
04:06 more than just a kind of literal retelling of something.
04:09 - And what's more intriguing to me
04:11 that takes it out of the lifetime movie of the week
04:14 kind of thing is it's really not about that at all.
04:17 It's really these two women who are marrying each other
04:22 literally and figuratively, sort of being narrated
04:26 by an actress who's going to play the role,
04:29 which I thought was so, you're an original screenplay
04:32 category, I thought that was such an original idea.
04:34 - Thank you, thank you, yeah.
04:37 It's a nice kind of way into a story like this
04:41 where you get the benefit of a journalist
04:46 uncovering something, but then because she's,
04:48 you know, ultimately a television actress
04:52 with a network show about being on a vet,
04:55 you know, vet hospital, it's like,
04:57 there's some sort of humor that comes with that
04:59 and it's more complicated.
05:01 She doesn't have any journalistic integrity as an actress.
05:05 - You mentioned it all changed with Todd Haynes.
05:08 I think it even all changed before Todd Haynes.
05:10 - It did, it's true.
05:11 - I mean, what's the, you know,
05:13 for all those out there that want to emulate this
05:15 and be next year's Oscar nominated first time screenwriter,
05:20 how did this happen?
05:22 How did this get into the big leagues?
05:25 - Yeah, it was really lucky.
05:27 I would, it would be a hard exact thing to follow,
05:30 I think it was a miracle.
05:33 Basically, I got signed, I got managers and it went out
05:37 and it was Jessica Elbaum and Will Ferrell,
05:40 their company, Gloria Sanchez,
05:42 they were the first producers
05:43 and that was the first miracle domino.
05:47 And then it got to Natalie Portman
05:49 and then she said, "I want to play this part
05:51 and produce the film."
05:52 And she got it then to Todd Haynes.
05:55 And with him comes, you know, Christine Vachon,
05:59 Pam Koffler, Laura Rosenthal,
06:00 who's cast during director, everybody that--
06:03 - And of course, Julianne Moore,
06:05 who's made five movies with.
06:07 - Exactly.
06:08 To be part of the heritage of their relationship alone
06:13 is stunning, you know, it really is.
06:17 - That is, it's just amazing.
06:19 The circuitous route that they made it
06:21 and then the movie turns out so well.
06:24 That's the other part of it.
06:26 - It's lucky.
06:27 - No, it's, is it the movie?
06:30 I'm curious though, you're writing this,
06:31 you're writing it in your closet,
06:33 you're inventing this whole thing.
06:34 Did you visualize it and when you see the movie,
06:37 when you see it on screen,
06:38 is that sort of what you were seeing?
06:40 I mean, is--
06:42 - I wouldn't have ever imagined what Todd does,
06:46 what he is, you know, I mean, there's this,
06:49 that's what's been so exciting and so life-changing
06:51 is like the way he, you know,
06:55 makes a language for a film, a visual language.
06:58 And some of those shots of, you know,
07:03 I always think of the dress shop of, you know,
07:06 it's this very long scene, one take,
07:08 it's through a mirror, there are three mirrors in it.
07:11 And the tension is sustained through that.
07:14 That is, you know, when I'm writing,
07:15 I am not thinking about,
07:18 can we hide a camera in the mirror?
07:20 (laughing)
07:21 I'm not thinking about any of that.
07:22 - You leave it to the director.
07:23 - Absolutely, absolutely.
07:25 So it's, that was, it's been so exciting to see.
07:28 - Were you on set the whole time when they're making it?
07:31 - I visited.
07:32 So I was there for a lot of pet shops
07:35 and for graduation, that was a really big day, one day.
07:39 And that was so incredibly fun.
07:43 And I got to meet, I mean, some of the people,
07:46 even Todd, I had not met in person
07:48 'cause so much was in the pandemic.
07:49 So it was like, we'd been Zooming and writing
07:52 and on the phone and it felt like meeting like my pen pal.
07:55 (laughing)
07:56 - That's really interesting too.
07:58 I didn't think of that during the pandemic,
07:59 you never had that kind of physical interaction.
08:02 - It was really, it was so isolated
08:05 that one could have thought, am I hallucinating?
08:08 I mean, it's like Natalie Portman wants to do the movie.
08:11 Oh, I'm still in my apartment, weird.
08:14 - That would be another good movie though.
08:16 Like you do hallucinate and it's not real
08:19 and you're in your plot, you know, that's another kind of.
08:21 - It's like King of Comedy, I'm sitting by myself.
08:24 (laughing)
08:25 - Exactly, now your now husband, Alex,
08:28 who you met when you were in college,
08:30 created the story with you.
08:32 So he is nominated as well with a story by credit.
08:37 So how did you two work together in creating this?
08:39 - Well, you know, we've made shorts together in the past,
08:42 so it was very natural and it was just the kind of thing
08:47 that felt like it was a few conversations
08:50 and then we outlined it on the wall of our living room
08:54 with note cards and then it just was up there for a while.
08:57 You know, it was like, oh yeah,
08:58 we gotta finish this outline.
09:00 (laughing)
09:02 Like art and then I transcribed it
09:06 and went into the closet.
09:08 So it was a very organic process
09:10 of just throwing out ideas and it's very intuitive.
09:14 - Do you have to write by yourself?
09:16 I ask that 'cause I'm a writer too
09:18 and I just can't sit in a room and collaborate with somebody.
09:21 - Oh no, yeah, I can't.
09:22 (laughing)
09:23 - It's too hard for me.
09:24 I have to just do it myself.
09:25 - Yeah, I like to talk a lot about stuff before
09:28 but then, you know, when it comes to like
09:31 the physical writing, yeah, a closet at least is needed.
09:35 - You gotta do that, that's your process.
09:36 That's your way of getting into this.
09:39 What would you say the key theme of this?
09:42 I think there's so many but to me,
09:43 it's all about our identity in many ways.
09:46 - Yeah, I think identity, I mean, denial.
09:50 I think that there's so much,
09:52 there's so many different kinds of denial
09:55 that these characters exude.
09:57 Some of it is willful and some of it is protective
10:00 but I think that's a big theme that I see in the movie.
10:05 - The character of Joe, who's about 36 in the movie,
10:09 you know, who was this teenager that she got involved with,
10:14 is Charles Melton who plays him so beautifully.
10:16 It's a very unusual character.
10:18 I mean, he comes from Riverdale,
10:20 this kind of stuff and everything
10:22 and I really think he showed something there.
10:25 Was that all on the page too,
10:26 the way you envisioned that character?
10:28 - I mean, he brought so much to it.
10:30 He brought such a physicality
10:33 that really took my breath away of how he holds his body
10:38 and how he has to talk about identity,
10:42 how this character has to perform fatherhood,
10:46 perform husband, perform, you know,
10:49 I mean, all of these things are,
10:51 these identities he's had to build up
10:53 because of how arrested he is
10:58 because of what happened to him
10:59 but Charles really had such a sensitivity
11:03 and a vulnerability right from the first audition
11:06 that I saw and that's been such an exciting thing to watch.
11:11 - On that, yeah, yeah.
11:13 And there's that whole, how do you come up with,
11:15 Butterflies plays a kind of interesting thing in this.
11:19 I'm just wondering, how in your head
11:20 do you come up with this whole thing
11:22 with the butterflies in the middle of this?
11:24 Because it's a perfect metaphor for him
11:27 as sort of coming out of his own little cocoon, I guess.
11:31 Yeah.
11:31 - Totally, yeah.
11:32 I mean, practically speaking,
11:35 I read about people that actually do this
11:38 around the time where I was still writing notes
11:40 before we put the cards on the wall.
11:42 And I thought that was so great that people do this
11:47 with modern butterflies.
11:48 They actually, you know, bring them into their house
11:50 and let them free.
11:52 And that felt really right here.
11:55 You know, I think the whole setting being a pet shop,
11:58 there is this sort of,
11:59 there are all these sort of tiny witnesses
12:02 in this movie.
12:04 And I think, you know, there is the metaphor,
12:08 but I think it's also one that is subconscious
12:11 for Joe's character.
12:12 I think that he's stuffing so much down
12:17 that there are these things,
12:19 any opportunity to grow out of the concrete,
12:22 some message of you are not okay.
12:25 I think that all felt right.
12:28 And he is such a caretaker, this character.
12:31 But I mean, they had to be on butterfly watch.
12:35 - Really?
12:36 - There was a, they had to get those, you know, cocoons.
12:40 And there was a setup like this 24 hours a day.
12:45 And then like a woman giving birth,
12:47 the DP, Chris Blavel,
12:48 was got a call at like six in the morning,
12:50 like, "It's happening, you have to get over."
12:52 (laughing)
12:53 And it was like the house next to their house.
12:55 - Wow.
12:56 - So those were, I always think that,
12:58 that butterfly's birth is immortalized forever.
13:02 - It's amazing.
13:03 - You have no idea.
13:04 - And you just like sit there in a room
13:06 and type that in there
13:07 and then cause all those production problems.
13:09 - I know.
13:10 (laughing)
13:12 It's so funny.
13:13 - I mean, really, you know,
13:14 I mean, that sounds pretty elaborate.
13:15 Like, you know.
13:16 - I know.
13:17 - I would think the magic of movies,
13:18 they find a way to CGI it or something.
13:20 - Yeah, it's real.
13:21 - It's real.
13:22 - Yeah.
13:23 - It's real, that's amazing.
13:23 Did you always wanna be a writer?
13:24 Was this?
13:25 - For a long time.
13:26 I used to write plays in high school,
13:29 middle school and in high school
13:30 and put them on with my friends at school
13:32 and that was kind of the beginning of it
13:34 and then I went to college for screenwriting.
13:37 So my degree is very applicable to a well-rounded life.
13:42 - Yeah.
13:43 (laughing)
13:44 But it was, and you said you made short films too, right?
13:46 - Yeah.
13:47 With Alex, we made some,
13:50 a lot of them are, you know,
13:51 with a lot of comedians
13:52 that we were in New York with at the time
13:54 and it's always been fun.
13:57 - You're from LA?
13:58 - Yeah.
13:59 - So are your parents in the business
14:01 or was that something that you just sort of
14:02 were born into that you were gonna do this?
14:04 - Yeah, I mean, they both came out here
14:06 'cause they wanted to be in the movies
14:09 and my mom ended up,
14:11 really, circuitously, she ended up in casting.
14:15 - Ah.
14:16 - And still casts, she's in Atlanta now.
14:19 She's, for the past 15 years,
14:20 she does like local casting in Atlanta and North Carolina.
14:24 - Oh, wow.
14:25 - And then my dad is one of those people
14:28 that has like an encyclopedia of movies
14:31 in his mind from a very,
14:33 there's amazing evidence of him.
14:36 It's like a nine-year-old, like,
14:38 flyers he gave to the neighborhood
14:39 to have like silent comedy screenings.
14:42 - What?
14:43 (laughing)
14:43 Wow, okay.
14:44 - In his Dallas neighborhood, you know.
14:45 - He's a bit of a film historian.
14:46 - A film historian, absolutely.
14:48 And he's worked in various elements of the industry,
14:51 but yeah.
14:52 - And your sister too, right?
14:54 She's a-- - She's a musician.
14:55 - A musician. - Yeah.
14:56 - She's in show business.
14:57 - Yeah.
14:58 - Yeah.
14:59 - She's been touring-- - What was it in the water
15:00 in the Berkshire world there?
15:01 - I don't know.
15:03 That's a good question.
15:04 (laughing)
15:06 - What interests me too is you've written another screenplay
15:10 that is a finished film called "Coyote vs. Acme,"
15:13 which was quite controversial for a while
15:17 because Warner Brothers had the movie
15:19 and then decided they weren't gonna release it.
15:22 - I know. - After it was made.
15:23 - I know.
15:25 - And then people have seen it since then.
15:27 They're trying to get it to another studio.
15:29 - Yeah.
15:30 - And love it.
15:31 - I know.
15:32 It's really-- - So what's going on?
15:33 As a writer, I would be devastated.
15:36 - It's really hard and it's also such a,
15:39 Dave Green, the director, I love so much.
15:42 And I mean, he's put so many years of his life
15:45 as well as, I mean, a movie like this,
15:47 so many artists work on a movie like this
15:51 'cause it's hybrid animation, live action.
15:54 And I really hope it finds its home
15:58 and doesn't go into a vault forever.
16:01 I mean, that's really horrible to think,
16:03 but I'm really proud of the movie.
16:06 And Will Forte is so good and funny
16:09 and it's a legal thriller for kids.
16:12 So if you want to watch a legal thriller for kids--
16:16 - I do.
16:17 - I do.
16:18 - Your kids are walking around with briefcases right in.
16:22 - With those Looney Tunes characters in it too.
16:24 - Exactly, it was such an honor to hold
16:27 the candle of that for a second.
16:30 And Wile E. Coyote has so much emotion for being silent.
16:35 - How do you go from May, December,
16:38 and that's what happened, this came after, right?
16:41 - Yeah, well, I was writing, I was going back and forth.
16:43 - You were going back and forth.
16:45 How did you get this gig on Coyote?
16:47 - Literally from this script.
16:49 - Really?
16:50 They looked at May, December and said,
16:52 "Yeah, Wile E. Coyote."
16:53 (laughing)
16:55 - I know, I was shocked.
16:57 I was shocked till the moment I got the phone call.
16:59 I was like, "Surely I'm not gonna get this job."
17:01 But it was so fun.
17:04 And yeah, going back and forth,
17:07 I cannot tell you the humor of that,
17:10 of getting notes from Todd Haynes
17:13 that are just so really like poetry, the notes themselves.
17:18 And then getting on a Zoom with so many people
17:23 and being like, "Okay, Tweety Bird, what's up?"
17:26 You know, like it's very different.
17:28 There is sort of animal imagery in both.
17:31 - Well, there is a little bit of that, but yeah.
17:34 But it's, wow, well, to use a Looney Tunes thing,
17:38 that's not all folks for your career here.
17:40 You're clearly versatile.
17:42 (laughing)
17:43 - Thank you, yeah.
17:44 - What do you have cooking?
17:45 What do you wanna do next?
17:47 - I have some good stuff.
17:49 I'm sure I'm not allowed to say any of it,
17:51 but different things. - Oh, sure, go ahead.
17:54 I'm not gonna tell anyone.
17:55 (laughing)
17:57 - Oh, just, you know, I'm very luckily,
18:02 I have two projects, one with Killer Films again
18:06 and one with Gloria Sanchez and Jessica and Will Ferrell.
18:09 So I'm really, in that sense, I'm very excited
18:12 of staying in the family with these amazing people.
18:15 I've been honored to work with.
18:17 - Yeah, what was Todd Haynes like to work with?
18:19 I'm such a fan of his. - He's really the best.
18:21 - Yeah. - Literally, it's like,
18:23 it makes me think how embarrassing,
18:26 first of all, you know when directors have that,
18:28 you know, the stereotype of being like really horrible
18:33 and scary, mad men.
18:34 I'm like, Todd is Todd and he's so nice and cool
18:39 and funny and easy and it's like, you can see it
18:42 in why he's able to maintain these relationships
18:46 that are 30 years long. - Right, yeah.
18:48 - Like Christine Bachon and him, they met in college.
18:51 So it's like, it's so easy to see why he's so,
18:56 not only fun to work with, but just getting to witness
19:01 someone so thoughtful that's also so bold
19:07 is so inspiring, of course.
19:09 - Yeah, are we gonna see you direct?
19:11 You're gonna follow?
19:12 - You know, I would, especially with Alex,
19:15 because of our, you know, all the shorts we've made,
19:17 we would love to do that.
19:19 But I wanna be really thoughtful
19:21 about what that project would be.
19:24 - Right, what it is. - Yeah.
19:25 - So you get, now I'm just curious, I met you in Cannes,
19:28 which I think is an incredible thing
19:30 to have your first script and walk up those steps
19:33 and be in that environment, you know, with the first script.
19:36 And then you get nominated for an Oscar
19:39 and you have to sit there.
19:40 So did you get up and watch the--
19:42 - Oh yeah, we woke up. - Oh, you did.
19:44 - I'm not gonna play it cool.
19:45 I mean, we wanted the full experience, you know?
19:48 We didn't know what was gonna happen.
19:50 And yeah, that was very early to wake up,
19:53 five in the morning.
19:55 - Five in the morning, yeah.
19:56 - So it added a real surreal element to the day.
20:01 - Yeah. - Yeah.
20:02 - And when you see your name come up on that screen.
20:05 - I start sobbing.
20:06 - Which, I mean, it makes sense, of course,
20:09 but I was kind of surprised.
20:10 But honestly, my family for generations
20:15 has been called the Weeping Birches.
20:17 So I was like, I guess here's my turn.
20:19 I'm Weeping. - Wow.
20:22 - It was, I think just the shock of it too.
20:26 And it was such theatricality to like, you know,
20:29 build up to this announcement and, you know,
20:32 it's dark outside. - I know.
20:34 (laughing)
20:35 - It was kind of wild.
20:36 - Yeah, welcome to the Oscars.
20:38 - Oh my God.
20:39 - Yeah, you excited to be going?
20:41 - Yes, I'm so excited to go to the Oscars.
20:45 - I know, right?
20:47 I mean, you can't beat it.
20:48 Well, May, December is what had brought you there
20:51 and it's very well-deserved.
20:53 It really is. - Oh, thank you.
20:54 - And so talented.
20:56 I mean, really, this is a rich, rich story
20:59 and one that Netflix has, it's a whole world scene.
21:02 When you're on Netflix, you know, globally,
21:04 it's pretty amazing. - It's amazing, yeah.
21:07 - Well, thank you, Sammy Birch,
21:08 for coming in and sharing all the stories behind the lens.
21:12 Thanks. - Thank you so much.
21:14 (upbeat music)
21:17 (upbeat music)