After its debut at Sundance Film Festival 2022, indie drama Sometimes I Think About Dying finally makes its way to UK screens on April 19.
Starring Daisy Ridley, the film follows a reclusive young woman, Fran, who attempts to connect with a new co-worker in small-town Oregon. You can read our thoughts on the film here.
Director Rachel Lambert had a chat with FILMHOUNDS to discuss some of the film's directional choices and unwrap her processes as a director.
It feels like a lifetime ago seeing it at Sundance. How was that festival experience for you?
Overwhelming on so many levels. But in terms of the reception, that was also overwhelming, overwhelmingly positive. You believe in something but you never know what people are gonna think. So I was really, really pleased.
The thing that really stood out to me most with the film is how it perfectly captures that small-town life; the small talk, the seemingly mundane lives everybody leads. Is that something that you particularly relate to? Or was that already captured in the script?
I think it's a combination of things. There's definitely some things about it in the script, in terms of how it very much indicated that these people genuinely are invested in their world, whatever role that might be. And I don't know if every other director would take that this way. My interpretation of it was that it was sincere. I don't know if someone else might feel differently, but when I read it, I was like, “Oh, this is sincere.” I think it's more interesting when it's sincere. I think cynicism is awful and I'm not a cynic, and my interpretation of it was therefore not cynical. And that was a really important direction that I gave everybody at the outset was like, this is all very sincere. There's no snark, there's no cynicism. And that really opened the project up, I think, for everybody.
I grew up in a lot of small towns, for sure. And wherever I shoot, the time I spend in a place that I'm shooting is a part of my process. I guess you could say that is a very important part. In that process, you listen to where you're at, you pay attention to it. No, I'm not here to graft myself onto a film and on to what it becomes, I'm there to pay attention to where it lives, who's in it, what it has to say, and allow it to blossom, and put it in the most fertile soil possible. That's my job. So I would more likely say that instead of my background it's paying attention to what's on the page, what's coming out of my artists, and what that town was like to live in for so long.
It's quite obvious with the way the film is shot that there's always some kind of outer life surrounding Fran, with everybody out of focus or cut off at the waist so we don't see their faces. But the sound editing is used for a similar effect, mixing in everybody's voices and conversations. Was that a conscious decision early on, or did that come later in the process?
I just wanted to collect as much life as possible. I wanted to be able to capture as much as possible, so I could craft and make decisions on how to build that world. So it wasn't so much like, “Lav (lavalier microphone) A, B and C, you're going to be used on this scene, and we're going to mix it in later.” But everyone was lav'd every day (laughs). And I'd call, “Okay, we're gonna bring in da da da, you're gonna play at your desk today, and you're gonna play over there.” Everything was live, everything was happening all the time. We definitely were thinking a lot about Robert Altman, when we were mixing in the post world. In the edit room, there was a real opportunity for us to indulge in that 360 idea, both visually and sonically. Ryan (editor Ryan Kendrick), Dustin (cinematographer Dustin Lane) and I talk about these things months before we shoot.
I do heavy, rigorous prep. I'm so prepped I could spit out, like, coordinates. That's how specific my thoughts are leading up to [the shoot], but then the minute you're on set, you let it go. We're so prepared we know where the camera wants to live, da da da, but we don't want any of that to leak out and take over the room for the other artists at work. So they feel, hopefully, that they are in a free space, in a light space, in a comfortable space. And they hopefully have absolutely no idea how much I've been tearing my hair out for the last five hours to be so prepared. I think that's true with sound as well. They all thought, “Oh, well she needs to be able to call us in whenever” or, “Oh, she just wants to get some extra little sounds of the water.” But I knew I was going to be collecting all these ingredients to then go build and play, and push the paddles a bit on where we push in and push out of [Frans's] consciousness in her world.
With all the in-depth prep that you do for your shoots, what kind of research did you do for this particular project? Did you go out to these different communities and spend time there?
Oh yeah, I embed heavy. From the minute I know a movie is gonna get made, I go and live there. And even sometimes before it's planning to get made, I'm out there all the time. Making trips, doing prep, doing tests. And I scout all my own locations, so I'm out there getting locations, sometimes locking them myself (giggles), softly and then going, “…and here's my producers.” They do the firm work, I'm not going to take credit for that. But in terms of finding the spaces and building relationships with the towns, with the people, with the places, yeah, I like to do all of that. That's a part of directing to me. I think that living in the place, breathing the place, understanding the place, building those relationships, and finding where the movie lives, is, for me, how I direct, a part of how I direct anyway.
There's one sequence that always sticks in my mind, which is the murder mystery party. It has such joyous moments and I do think there's quite some clever stuff that's happening within the scene. You get so invested in this strange situation with strange characters we've only just met, and it just works. Was it quite challenging to put all of that together?
The only challenge was that we only had two nights on the houseboat. Dustin and I had to make a battle plan. Sometimes I can feel like a general but those nights we'd wait in a car, because we always get to set first but we sit in the car, we wait for everybody. You don't want your boss there the first time you're showing up to set to get a cup of coffee for the shift. No, you got to let everybody go be with each other for a minute and then you show up because you want people to be able to feel themselves for a minute. And I remember sitting in that car looking at Dustin, like, “We're going to war tonight (laughs). Okay, we got to get this done.” But I don't want any of that in the room if I can afford it. So I try to make sure the way I behave, and the way that I'm in there, and the way that I'm moving people around, it seems not so tight and rigorous, and that we have all the time in the world. That kind of dials down the pressure on them and that allows them to be alive and happy in the space. I think those kinds of behavioural choices are really important.
I think the first big decision with that was “Okay, I know that I don't have a lot of time and I know it's a crazy circumstance, so what is this moment about?” It's about a person entering a space that should feel alive with natural, real friendships. We should want, with [Fran], to be a part of this like “I want to be at this party. I want to know these people.” I knew that one of our actors, Bree Elrod, who was playing Amelia, had done a lot of theatre there. And I said, “What if we got all your pals from that world to play the pals at your party? And in that way, it's like your real friend and you guys are like really hosting this party.” And then they played that game. You're not going to just, like, pretend. No, we're going to play the game. I think that investment from those decisions down probably created an environment in which everyone could believe it and live in it. It meant that we could kind of jump into that ease and that fun very quickly. I think there were decisions I made to put them in that position, but at the end of the day that was just those ensemble members locking in, investing, and having a good time for our benefit.
I love how a lot of secrets behind cinema are “I just grabbed some local people and their mates, and we brought them on board to a party.”
To be fair they're all actors, right? Like, Vin Shambry is in there and he's a very well-known, not only Portland actor, but he has done a lot of national tourism, musical theatre. He's like a big deal. And he's like, “Yeah, I'll come in for a couple nights.” And I was like, “Vin is gonna be over two nights to play some guy? This is amazing!” So we had incredible local actors, they're all like the best, because Bree does a lot of great theatre. When I was like, “Can we get your actor friends to come?” It wasn't just random friends, it was actor friends, people that have done theatre that know how to lock in, play, be in the scene. And they all came in with these incredible instincts as trained performers, and incredible instincts as friends. So I want to asterisk that and say, it wasn't just any old mates, it was like specific ones (laughs).
It's all about who you know.
It is! (laughs)
Talking about who you know, who came on board first: Daisy Ridley the producer, or Daisy Ridley the actor?
I don't know if there was one before the other. Being a part of it so early, she was the first phone call. Alex (producer Alex Saks) brought me the script and then I went to Daisy. That was the first conversation that me and Alex had with anyone about making this film. We were coming out of COVID and Daisy had never done an American film, let alone an indie out here in America. So it was a huge endeavour for all of us for so many reasons. It felt like we were linking arms from conversation one because Alex and Daisy are incredibly smart, intrepid women. From that first conversation, I think without even having to articulate it, we all kind of knew, we're gonna have to link up and make this film. And so I don't know if there was one before the other. It felt organic, she was always a partner.
And what was it like working with her throughout the entire project?
It was a dream. She's a wonderful partner, and an incredible performer. She has this perfect marriage of razor-sharp technical acumen and a real depth and absolute sensitivity as an emotional artist. You marry that and it's just this unstoppable person on set, performer on set. And to have that kind of person as your number one on the call sheet every day, it felt so lucky to have that kind of leadership, artistically and technically. Every day that I get to go to work with [Daisy], it was a dream.
Sometimes I Think About Dying is in cinemas April 19
