Omaha: Cole Webley Interview
Omaha: A Conversation With Director Cole Webley
Director Cole Webley joins All Those Moments to discuss his devastating and deeply human film, Omaha, starring John Magaro.
Benji talks to Cole about growing up in Central Washington, making movies while raising a family, depicting scarcity on screen, and the emotional ending of Omaha. They also discuss working with child actors and how this movie explores humbling experiences of parenting while quietly celebrating the kindness of strangers. The conversation also explores masculinity, grief, and what it means to ask for help.
It's one of our favorite conversations we’ve had on the podcast.
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Omaha — Cole Webley
All Those Moments — Full Episode Transcript
00:01
The movie is called Omaha. This podcast is called All Those Moments. I'm the host Benji Wade, and here's my conversation with Omaha director Cole Webley. Cole Webley, thank you so much for joining me. I also want to say thank you so much for making this movie.
As someone who went to film school once upon a time, ended up in a career, I think similar to you doing some commercial advertising. I have so much respect for people who pull this thing off. So thanks for making this movie. It's wonderful. And I can't wait to chat about it.
Yeah, thanks, man. I am happy to talk about this movie and yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for being interested to hear some of the background details and speak more to it. we start with me just asking you how are the screenings going? And I'd love to know what sort of conversations you're having with people at these screenings that you're attending. And I don't mean like the professional critic class.
I mean, everyday people that are watching this movie, especially of course, I have to throw this in there. Parents. You know, the conversations around this film have been, at first they kind of surprised me.
I guess I wasn't ready for the awakening of some of these feelings with people who, you know, I didn't have, I had a really blessed childhood and lucky, you know, childhood, I suppose, two loving parents and a safe and secure and albeit tumultuous with six boys. home, but like a childhood and I knew these people, I knew this world in so much that I had been, I'd lived abroad for a couple years. I had like walked the and lived in Ben and served with people who were on the fringes of society, especially economically speaking.
So it wasn't like a new territory to me to know that this was real and it was happening. a huge part of why I wanted to make the film. To be at such a raw moment where people come out of the screening who are coming up to me and saying, this man is my father. remember this is like, so many feelings about, my mother or me being the oldest. was with somebody in New York last week who with her filled eyes just talked about how she was the oldest and she identified so personally with the role of Ella.
02:26
and having to be that surrogate mother. So look, I made a movie that's very, very raw and rich. If it works for some people, it doesn't work for everybody, but for the folks that it does speak to, I think it awakens and calls forward many, many feelings that are powerful. I have said this before, that families are the source of our greatest, love and joy, which makes them also the source of our deepest pain and tragedy. You know, that familial setting, it's where we seek and look for love from the moment we're born.
And it's where we constantly are looking for approval and security. And this is a movie about those things. So I was taken aback by how strong that landed with some people. And and also moved by their willingness to kind of come up and talk to me about it after the film, you know? I want to ask you, and I'm going to make an assumption that you have a fairly high batting percentage with people who identify with some of the particular circumstances depicted in the story.
And by that, mean, I told you via text that, hey, thanks for the good cry. And it wasn't because I was watching something that was quite harrowing. And it is it was because I also identify with a lot of the circumstances depicted. My mother died of cancer when I was almost 13 years old. My dad was absolutely the furthest from equipped to take that on.
And we were extremely poor growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska. going through this adventure movie or misadventure, whatever you want to call it, the amount to which I identified with it meant and how not just identified with it, but also felt like I was in good hands with the filmmakers behind it. And when people say things like they did about Sean Baker's Florida project, they'll say misery porn or something like that. I feel like it's that can't be coming from people who identify with this type of story from their own personal backgrounds.
So feel free to comment on that in any way, shape or form. I've heard that term, obviously misery porn and.
04:47
And in the context that I appreciate cinema and movies and things, I don't really understand it. I mean, I understand what they're trying to say, but like, it doesn't land that way with me on other people's work. You know, this movie, there's a version of this world that is, or this film that, that is, that's even more challenging. You said, I felt like I was in good hands.
I mean, that was clearly a part of why, how I wanted to make the film. from the first needle drop by Christopher Bearer, that great score, I wanted people to know, listen, we're going on a journey here. There's these warm arms around you throughout. And it's okay if things are tough and bad and hard to get through, but I'm certainly not a nihilist. I don't see the world. that way and I felt like it would be important to not just appreciate some of the beauty of this little family. You know, there's a movie where there's this movie with no sound music.
There's a version of this movie with a much harder ending. Yeah. Sure. And those movies, I probably would love them. Yeah, I mentioned to you the Dardan brothers and how they often don't use music.
And one of the ones that they did, Kid with a Bike, which your film reminded me of, and I'm a huge fan of the Dardan brothers who have also been accused of making quote unquote misery born. I push back so wholeheartedly toward that type of criticism, but I also just feel like it's quite lazy. And I want to come back to it after getting into some of the details of your movie, if that would be okay. Yeah.
I mean, there's somebody who I would like die on the hill of. defending and Sean Baker and Andrea Arnold, know, like fish tank is a huge, was a huge turning point in my, my, you know, my film journey or whatever. Anytime you deal with something as harsh as the realities of this without trying to purport to solve the problem. know, like this film is not
07:05
Film that you're gonna go to and you're gonna say, okay, so that's the problem. identify the problem and now we move to action and That wasn't what the script was. That's not the movie I wanted to make so I Felt like it was very specifically. I had just like a laser focus on What if I read a statistic and I all I wanted to do was understand one family behind that number. Mm-hmm. Who are they?
What are those three days like? And then the movie's over. And that is, it was like such, I felt like I was walking kind of a razor's edge where at any turn you could lose the movie. You could lose the movie in the sense that like, you just start to talk, move them into a lane of like the why and who behind these social. you know, backstops that aren't there and why is this in this situation and who who's to blame and and I'm not even I'm not even saying a political, you know, opinion.
I'm just saying like a like a community opinion, you know, it's like easy to go down that road. And I and I'm into that movie, too. But this is the movie that Robert wrote and the one that I was committed to. for better or worse, what I do know, we captured because it is landing is the humanity of this little family through these incredible performances and all the choices we made as filmmakers, you know. It's interesting. This comes up on our podcast or it has several times and we're not even a year into this thing.
This is going to be episode 17. think we've done 15 movies where modern discourse around movies without going into a whole spiel about it, but how aggravating I find it where there's a certain segment of audience that want things to be explained.
They want a baked in sort of a re not just this whole trend with Netflix telling filmmakers that they need to repeat plot points because of second screen viewings, but wanting it explained or wanting a prescription at the end to the point you just made. think it's more the second I wanting a prescription or wanting or maybe, you know, they're, they're think they, they think that your film is not your activism.
09:28
or your film is not, I mean, you saw how they went after PTA, right? Like they went after him for a movie that, and what I enjoyed that, know, what I loved about the way that he approached that was like, Hey, like, I don't have to sit up here and have talking points for how I feel about everything. Like, that's why I make my movies. and if someone's argument with a film is that I'm not sure what your talking points are. Well, let me make it really clear. My talking points is I love people and I love this family.
And while we might judge this father, I also have deep empathy for his plight. And I think you should too. And how can that change you? That can change you so that when you read a number or your neighbor or your whatever is going through something, you know, it's as simple as like walking a mile and her shoes, you know, and just saying like, like it or not, like I'm, I'm not Charlie Kaufman, you know, my, I'm not out to solve the complexities of the human experience through as dense and as beautiful and as incredible as a filmmaker as he might be.
I am much more heart first. And that is what I wanted the film to do. I wanted to speak directly to the heart. Well, I said that I didn't want to hear the perspectives of like what you've experienced with professional critics, except I would just want to call out one. And then I'm to circle back to just getting into some, some of your background.
And it's this critic named Ruben Peralta Rigo. Do you know him? No. I was unfamiliar too, but I just want to read what he had to say. At a time when many stories seek to escape reality, This one chooses to confront it and it does so without raising its voice, without excessive dramatization, and without seeking your approval simply by showing.
I think that's a chef's kiss of a summation of how I experienced this movie. So I wanna go back and just talk a little bit about something you and I chatted about when we spoke on the phone of how my decision to wanna talk about this movie and to screen it at the Magic Lantern or local movie theater.
11:51
And it was John Magaro because when preparing to do an episode about Kelly Reichardt's incredible The Mastermind, which he was in, I watched First Cowl and I was like, anything that John Magaro touches now, I'm going to be a part of in some way. So I want to just back up a little bit and at the risk of an overshare, Cole, can I tell you a story of my experience? Can I tell you the story of my experience watching Omaha for the first time? Please. wife and two daughters out of town.
I had mentioned to you that I'm getting ready to do an episode about David Lowery's Mother Mary. And I'm catching up on some of his movies. I'm watching, it's almost midnight. I'm watching The Old Man and the Gun. I'm on my way upstairs carrying a plate of dishes and my laptop.
And I trip on the bottom stair. Drop, I drop the plate. I drop a glass and I catch my laptop. But I sacrificed my foot in the process. I step fully onto this glass.
And so the next day I get up, eight in the morning, I didn't go to the ER because the ER on a midnight in Spokane, Washington is not a place to be. I made it to urgent care, but I'm by myself, by the way, when this happens. I'm just, you you can probably, without me painting a picture, imagine what it looked like. Get stitches in my foot. And I watched this movie. alone at home with my two dogs, missing my family very much and trying to begin the healing process.
So first of all, shout out Greenwich Entertainment and you for letting me screen your movie ahead of it coming to the Magic Lantern. That was my circumstances. And I think it was perfection, to be honest with you. More on that soon. But enough about my family, Cole, can you please set the table for this conversation talking about the family you grew up in and the family that you now have as a dad and what that meant to you? when you read Robert Machoian's script and decided to make this movie?
Yeah, man. First of all, covering is caring. I didn't add for Band-Aids, so make sure you keep that thing covered.
14:07
Sorry about that. That sounds kind of like tumultuous. Yeah, man, I grew up in Eastern Washington, about two hours away from you in Central Washington, but it was Eastern compared to Seattle and the West side. It's called Quincy, a small farming community. One of six boys, my grandparents homesteaded there when they started farming that area.
So we have a lot of history in that small town. My parents are still there. One brother is still there. The rest have kind of moved to Wenatchee and Seattle, areas like that. Half the family are Eastern, like WSU fans, half are UW.
I know all your listeners aren't gonna be Washington folks, but you'll appreciate that. And yeah, I just grew up in a home where we loved movies and that was kind of the entertainment that we could afford for all of us. would go to We would always go to movies and we would go camping. And then one year we did this big road trip to Disneyland. But my favorite part was the Universal Studios tour that we did. That must have been 10 or so.
So when we started running VHS, I fell in love with these BTS scene, you know, behind the scenes stuff. And that's where like I really began the idea of like, I was gonna be a director and I had great parents who gave me all the confidence that I needed to kind of venture down that road. So cut to now I'm in my 20s, I'm at film school and I already got two kids. I was like kind of forced to grow up quite early. I was married at 22 and then we had my first at 23.
And by the time I left school, my undergrad, we had these two beautiful girls and my wife and I, We're just kind of like in the middle of it. We were suddenly young, like parents forced to not really do the things that 20 year olds do now, but be grownups about it. And you're raising these two kids on a tiny salary, trying to cobble together money from editing and cutting stuff as I built my reel to be a commercial director to kind of get some stability around me rather than going off and shooting kind of my
16:29
You know, I didn't get to do the Sean Baker way because I had these responsibilities of my children. I'm not saying Sean didn't, but I'm saying like I had dependence and and thus I kind of pursued commercial directing right out of film school. when it came time and I look at this, I was 40 when I shot the movie like took me a long time. Well, I made all these short films in the interim and I really grew as as a person. I got to raise my kids through their adolescence and preteens.
And I've still got an 11 year old and a 15 year old, but I also have a 20 year old and an 18 year old. And so when it came to make the movie, how that like power of raising these kids so informed the whole process, the way in which John, the metaphor, even the metaphor, know, Robert, I can't take credit for this because it was so beautifully on the written page, but Robert's experience of writing that beautiful metaphor of pushing the car and getting the car to start and who does he need to do it and what does that car represent for this family?
And then him not being able to do it when at the end of the movie. every decision kind of that everybody that was part of this movie were dads. And we loved that there was this film about a single father that really gave an opportunity to see his journey as terrible and as fraught as it might be. But it also informed a little rewrite, which Robert had written this movie 10 years prior. And we were all in different places in a post-COVID world. And we really wanted to give this ending, I wanted to really give this dad a future.
And when I read the script, there was none. It was it was a much harsher kind of ending wasn't violent wasn't terrible wasn't those things but it was just there was no future for this dad and where we really settled on finding it was the final words that he says in that movie when he's sitting there with that nurse. Yeah and I'm not gonna say what and where and whatever but like I feel like that that moment really defined the why of why I wanted to the why of why make the movie you know.
18:54
was it enough to just show this and humanize these people? Yes. But also getting to a point where this dad could go through this small journey and begin his journey towards another ending, or future was really important for me. it weird for me to ask you, is that moment easily missed or I just feel like, let me come back to that. Yeah, let's talk about that on the post on the spoiler spoiler alert return. Yeah, we'll throw out the neon lights.
Don't worry, folks. OK, so what were the ages of your kids again? So I have an 11 year old, a 15 year old, an 18 year old and a 20 year old. OK, wow. So my daughters are 15 and 12.
So I can relate to the one half of your family formation, but very much not the other one. I was. extraordinarily immature and didn't have kids until I was 34 or so. No. I think it's I was extremely immature and was just like, let's have kids. It's it's easy, right?
No. And Robert, my Robert has six kids, the writer. So OK. And they're still got a lot of them at home. So what did your kids think of the movie?
It's funny, like my oldest ones. My oldest one, she was the first. I would pull her in and we'd shoot five day weeks and then we were shooting a lot of this picture in Utah. And so I would cut on the weekend. So that's not to say like my editor, Jay Shukla gets all the credit for all the work that we did, but I would cut on the weekends, get my feet under me, figure out the scene.
And I would bring in my, my oldest and just give not give her a lot of context and just sit down and let her watch the experience. Yeah. And. And it's almost like I could tell off her expression if the scene was working or not, you know? And I mean, in particular, there's a climactic scene that I had shot and 10 days into the film.
And if that scene doesn't work, the movie doesn't work, know? And I brought her in and then I brought my wife in. And I know you can't trust that kind of feedback because they love you. But I just knew off of their expressions that like we have
21:18
captured a little bit of lightning in a bottle in those moments. She loves the movie. My 18 year old, I think she likes it. She's 18, so I'm trying to get into her psyche a little bit more. You know that they say they come back.
We have a great relationship, but she's also living a full life. And then the kids, you know, they're awesome. They, everybody got to go and be at the premiere. that's cool. They're so supportive. Yeah.
I couldn't have gotten through film school without the help of my then girlfriend, now wife without, and it's one of those things that I'm sure you've experienced this countless times where I don't even need them to say anything. I can just tell by the energy in the air. that, that completely didn't land and I need to revisit that. Yeah. You can't trust your mom, but you can often trust your wife because Mine will just tell me. Mine will too, flat out.
I have more thoughts about the editing, so I'm glad you brought up Jay immediately, because I added that note as one of the last ones I added. I try to add particulars about all the filmmakers involved with these things when I can. Before we talk about your movie, I do just want to say you mentioned where you grew up near the Gorge amphitheater. Did you go to the Gorge many times growing up or when you were a certain age? Of course.
I've never been. I did. Don't judge me. worked concerts there in high school, you know, like we would raise money for our senior class trip by going down and working in concessions. I saw Britney Spears. I saw Britney Spears because like we're almost the same age.
And I remember she was there for a huge concert that we worked for my senior party, my senior class. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It was great.
But there's glimpses in this movie where. this road trip that takes place along long stretches of highway that do very much sell a kind of central Washington, almost Palouse adjacent vibe. And there's also just a great deal of road trip Americana in this movie, including a firestone tire store and nothing more important though than motels and gas stations. So.
23:33
Is that something you experienced a lot growing up in this area? Road trips? feel like it's one of those things speaking as a dad living in Eastern Washington. It's something I try not to take for granted. Having grown up in Alaska where a 360 mile drive in Alaska got you to the nearest city. So road trips were not really a thing for me growing up, but they have been raising my family here, especially camping. yeah, man.
Like we had a suburban, we would, we, my parents, my dad started a youth wrestling program. So. all me and my little brother, my brothers or older brothers would go on these weekend road trips where we jump in the suburban and go to like Walla Walla or Southern, you Washington or way up high Eastern Washington, Mac areas, stuff like that. for these wrestling tournaments and or camping, we spent a lot of time on like Roosevelt as kids and things like that. And then like I said, like And then we were big fans of the Oregon coast.
That was kind of a special trip to get to drive down that the idea that, you just had to sit in those cars and look out the windows and talk to each other and play the license plate game. And I remember as long stretches of I have the tiger playing on cassette tape, you know, in the back to pump us up for the wrestling tournaments. this is a really great childhood stopping and Yeah, we would always stop and if we were lucky, you we could get like a snack or something at the gas station.
It's not like my parents without snacks from us. again, there was like sometimes it was just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we made before the trip. You know, it's interesting now, even though there's so much more prosperity now. But like this film denotes, even though it's set in 2008, as we stand here in 2026, that divide between prosperity and disparity is even larger. And there's more proportionately people struggling. I'm ready to talk about Omaha.
Can we dive in? Yes. Let's do this.
25:46
want to talk about the two log lines, which is a weird way to introduce a movie, but I'm doing so with a purpose. I promise I'm going somewhere with this. according to Wikipedia, a father takes his two children, Ella and Charlie, on a road trip across the United States after their home is foreclosed. According to Rotten Tomatoes, a father conceals the truth about his family's seemingly spontaneous road trip across the American West. Well, Huge difference between those two log lines. I had experienced neither.
I actually love to go into movies completely uninitiated. I had seen the trailer and that's it. Well, the word conceal implies that there's going to be some sort of reveal. So I feel like Rotten Tomatoes is sort of tipping their hand a little bit there. And depending on which one of these you read going into the movie, you might not have any idea where this thing is going.
So I just wanna ask, was there a kind of an intention in the marketing of the movie to just... give the audience the sense and some anticipation that there's something that's going to happen. There's some sort of resolution to this story that's not going to be known until it takes place. And then you won't have any idea when you're going in uninitiated, especially. Well, what was part of it was the conversation of like, how do we land this marketing or share about this film that we care so deeply about that? That doesn't spoil the emotional experience of that journey.
It's actually something that I'm, think like, I won't be able to truly analyze until I look back at the movie in five or six years and know how, how did we do? And it's also the other thing is like, we knew the second that we premiered, that's it, like the cat's out of the bag, we can't, there's only, we can't control the flow of information. You know what mean? We can only control how we get to talk about our movie. And so What we were certain of is the film screens better if you don't spoil the experience of where and why this film arrives at where it does.
So that we hold true to is like we want people to go in and just say, let me get in the car with this family and go. I have a great trailer experience working with MWA trailers. I cold emailed them.
28:07
Mark Woollin and Associates and I, and I got an email back in like 30 seconds of one of the creative directors and she said, I was at Sundance and I saw Omaha was my favorite movie of the festival. I would love to cut your movie. And you know, they had to cut this thing on a, on an indie rate, if you will, you know, and I think it's important for your audience to know they cut the trailer for like, one battle after another, Marty Supreme train dreams, ham net, the Testament of Ann Lee, the secret agent. I mean, that's just in the Jay Kelly.
That's just in the last year, you know, house of dynamite. Sorry, baby. Yeah. I've heard of two or three of those. some of those sound a little familiar. May have done a podcast about a few of them as well.
Well, one thing that they did a great job of capturing is this kind of heavy gravity and bitter sweetness. that's hovering over this movie almost the entire time that the road trip portion is taking place. So before we dive into any more details, it's inevitable that we're gonna spoil this movie. The name of this podcast is called All Those Moments and we mean all of them. And speaking of moments, the conclusion of Omaha Cole is among the things that I'm most eager to talk to you about.
So I wanna start with the beginning and I'm doing so because I feel like, okay, there's this Bookend of shots in the first 10 minutes of your movie. You open with stills of a lived in house. I'm saying stills because it's locked down. No movement in the frame or by the camera. You see like a bowl with half-eaten cereal, a laundry basket filled with unfolded clothes, a pair of some kid's feet, the boy sticking out from the bottom of bed covers.
And a bit later, the dad and his daughter push start their car, as you were describing, and he's taking his two kids out of the home that they've lived in, presumably their entire lives. And I feel like at this point in the movie, the audience, if they're paying attention at all, probably knows what the kids don't, and that's that they're never coming back to this house.
As this road trip begins, your camera, though, it returns to the house with a series of four more of these lockdown shots, an empty bedroom, a pedestal sink with a photograph of the kid's mom, we think, at the bottom of the vanity mirror.
30:26
and some doodles on the wall that might have been created with permanent marker, who among us is parents, right? And then you return to the same overhead shot of the empty bed of the boy who had just been removed from the bed by his dad. And I just wanted to start here because I was especially struck by that final shot, watching this again alone without my family in an empty house. We all do this. We wander through our... house when our kids are out of town or our family's out of town and it just, it doesn't have their aura and their energy and all those things.
I felt returning to that shot of the empty bed, I was like, okay, this was made by a parent who knows ball. We all know that feeling. It's always heartbreaking. And by the nature of this movie being a road trip, there's not a lot of montage. So I feel like in the first eight to nine minutes, this is where you had to front load you and your editor Jay Shukla had to front load everything we know about where this family came from.
So can you talk to me about the choices you made creatively and what you wanted to accomplish in those eight to nine minutes? Yeah, I love you talking about those shots. There's some moments in the movie that I saw the most clear and those were some of them. Paul and I got in a car, we went and we drove around, we found this house in Southern Utah in a town called Helper. And we knocked the door and we walked in and the minute I was in there, I was like this, have to shoot in this house.
You know, this is like, there's so much love and warmth and in history in this house. and, so yeah, yeah, you're right. You know, it was, it was funny. I remember shooting that shot, the very first shot of the movie, which opens up in that kitchen with that bowl of cereal. Yep. And I was shooting it and there's a few things.
If you look at that shot, there's some funeral flowers in it. And the homeowner who was just standing there was like, Hey, why don't you put, why don't you put a bowl of half eaten cereal in there? Like, like they had to go to earlier. did, you know how, like when your kids never put it away and I was like, my gosh, that's so genius.
32:43
His name is Steve and we just rented the house from Steve and I was like, yes, Steve, that's incredible. And so, you know, we had shot the movie and those were, they weren't pickups, but we just didn't have time to shoot them. So we came back after we wrapped the principal. We came back for one day and did like three hours at that house and got to shoot some extra shots, which I really wanted. And we just had ran out of time.
So. It was really cool for him as, as also like a parent to just kind of not be a filmmaker and be like, you know, it make this shot better. That's one of my, that's incredible. It's one of my favorite things about John sales, his wonderful book about the making of mate one and him saying he would talk to his Dolly grips. would talk to a second AC. just like anybody, he wanted them to know what they were doing at all times within the story so that an idea could come from anywhere. You never know.
And it's one of the best things about the communal art form of filmmaking is like, yes, the dude whose house you're renting to shoot your film might have a great idea. And the half-eaten bowl of cereal is one of the first things that got my ass watching your movie. So through the first 20 minutes of the road trip, we're getting the sense that this dad is a few things. really broke. has a lot of cash in an envelope and whatever belongings they have in this car.
He also looks to be a construction worker and anybody who knows anything about the Great Recession knows that that is an industry that was completely devastated by the recession. How did you work together with both your DP, Paul Myers, shout out and John Magaro to capture like all these small, sometimes macro details of scarcity? You've got this Toyota Tercel wagon as it barrels down the highway with the kid, two kids and a dog. Like how did you work together to just define how those moments and the details that you wanted to capture in your camera?
Yeah, dude, that was, it's the combination of kind of emotion evolving into practical ideas of location design and composition and things like that. I knew I wanted, you know, like there's the shot in the bathroom that you mentioned, scarcity. mean,
35:01
Why do kids doodle? They doodle if they have, they doodle if they're like, they draw on walls, whether they're in a $10 million home or a tiny $200 million or $200,000 rental, you know. But this family in particular just said it didn't get washed off, just that there's like a photo stuck in the mirror. Like those things are indicative of that home and who these kids were. when you get to John in the car, John wearing just a singular outfit the whole time.
He was that hoodie and that t-shirt, you know, the kids have some wardrobe changes, but, you know, he's just living in what he's wearing. things that we never re I also don't think he eats. Does he ever eat man? He eats a little bit at the, at the gas station or at the burger joint. Okay. Yeah, but he doesn't eat at the zoo.
And he also, you know, there's a simplicity to him. We never get to see him shower and get cleaned up. Like that was a choice. There is also I want to give a shout out to my makeup team who did really invisible but great work with hair and makeup on this movie to give these kids like. that sheen and that that grease that felt like every child I wanted them to my I was like I want these kids to look like they've been running around Disneyland or an amusement park for eight hours.
That's how they should look the whole time that they have that kind of wear in their in their eyes and then their body and the heat of the day and stuff. But you talk about the car, the car was super important. That was the first thing I cast. I wanted a vehicle that felt like a cocoon, that it was like part utilitarian and part family, you know, that it had those racks on the roof that you could put a ladder on it. But it was like, what do call them?
It was like the wagon version, you know?
37:13
That's like you go on road trips and those things. And all wheel drive. Yeah, dude. So that thing's still in my garage. I don't know what to do. that's like, don't ever get rid of that thing.
And it has this thorough patina of it's been through some shit, which I really love. Yeah. And that was like a choice to not fix any of that stuff. And it was one of those things where it looks like an actor. When I saw that car, And I looked in multiple states and I ended up finding it a couple hours or an hour away from me.
But when I found it, I was like, that is exactly who dad is. You know, he's trying his best. He's beat to hell. He can be family man and he can be a hard worker. but the world is turned on him and there's no, there's no room for him anymore in terms of, you know, and that, that's one thing that I just love that about the vehicle. Sorry.
No, it's. Well, another thing that's established early on, this is my words, not yours, but he's a loving, but not entirely capable dad, like so many dads in families where far more of the parenting is done by the mom, again, who among us. And the mom's given a voice, in particular, singing voice in the movie. And I want to talk, and this is going to be a pretty big spoiler moment. But I do want to talk about this sort of gap in parenting skill, all right?
Yeah. Ready? It's a big blinking lights one. Go watch this movie if you haven't seen it. The decision to get rid of the dog.
I know it has to be the most controversial thing that you've experienced with audiences. But I want to talk about it a little bit. I want to set you up to ask you something. This is, I feel like it's telegraphed in the storytelling. You know that. wherever this journey's headed, this dad can barely keep one foot in front of the other with his two kids in this state of grief.
And again, when I was a kid and lost my mom at the age that is close to the same age as Ella,
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you can tell he's uneasy about having the dog. So I just want to ask you what from you or Robert Machoian did you want to accomplish with this piece of storytelling? And I also want to ask you about the performance of Wyatt Solis as the kid Charlie in this moment. But I just first want to say, was the thinking about this big, huge, huge decision in the storytelling? Yeah, I think when you said incapable, I mean, what we don't get into is his mental state.
What is the toll of the grief that he's dealing with? We see it manifest in his choices, but we don't psychoanalyze them in the film. so to the state, John and I spoke about kind of how bad it would be with this guy and how he felt. know, Robert speaks a lot of this in Q and A's, which I really love how he articulates it. But it's the concept that like, I thought we were going to do this together and now she's gone and not even being able to imagine a world without that partner and raising those kids together.
So the idea that he would eliminate anything else in his life that didn't allow him to do to keep those kids. Now, ultimately, we know where the movie ends up. But but I think housing this dog at the SPCA and giving it giving it away was was it wasn't a choice. It was the it was the only thing he could do. It is it is that I'm not going to spend one penny more on anything but my kids. and I'm gonna do this thing that I know is gonna be hard but might be the best choice for them.
Someone said when watching the film that what I love about this movie is that this father loves his kids so deeply, he thinks what he's doing is the right thing for them when ultimately it probably isn't. You could make a lot of debate on whether the kids would be safe with dad or not, right, ultimately.
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But we know that whatever experience they have in there, that was, this is like a deeply traumatizing event for them. not the dog, but the ending, both the dog and the ending. to me, felt like, you know, dad is spending every penny he can. He has that conversation that how much dog food costs and they're, they're in the burger joint. is it a foreshadowing? Sure. And like you said, you saw it coming. 100%. And it's also a big turning point that moves us into the second act of the movie.
I mean, I saw it coming, but it's not as though I saw yet. Actually, I never saw where this thing was concluding. I was sucker punched by that, the ultimate conclusion to the movie in its last 10 minutes. But what it does is it sets you up with a piece of critical information. So when you do get that reveal at the last 10 minutes, it's like, OK.
I can see why that decision was made, even though I can have, and I also love, this is the first time, and I'm gonna come back to this, where you are basically surfacing the prejudices of the audience at this point. It's like, oh, you're gonna crap on this dad for making this decision to get rid of this dog.
We know that's what the audience is gonna do, but I think that's a moment where it's like, that says more about the audience and the things that they're gonna have to work through. about their feelings toward this character that they're probably in a position they're like whether they want to or not. Yeah, I'm glad that you said that. They're passing judgment. They're going, I would never do that. Yeah, it's funny to see the different types of people and no judgment.
But there is a large portion of audiences who are more angry about that scene than the end of the movie. I'll put it that way. Okay, I have to ask you about Wyatt Solis who plays the character Charlie. I'm gonna have many thoughts about Ella as well, but you mentioned in your interview with Sundance, Wyatt's ability to be incredibly present shocked me. He delivers a performance and a key moment of the film that I couldn't have dreamt of.
And I just wanna ask you, because for me it was this, but was that what you were talking about or were you talking about a different scene? It's the scene with the dog being given away is the one that I went, I had notes about.
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Wow, this kid just killed it with his performance here. Is this the scene that you were referring to there or was it a different scene? For me, it was a different scene. For me, it was the third act, the climax. But I will say this, Wyatt said something in a Q &A in New York this past weekend where he talks about that scene in particular, which has showed his wisdom.
He was six when we shot the movie, he's now nine. And he says to me, or he says to the audience, says, you know, I know that as I watched my performance in that moment, I wasn't being very emotional, but I was very emotional on the inside. And and I was like, dang, you know, and then he said, like, I can't remember if he alluded to the fact of how that resulted in the final scene, the climax in his performance there.
But look, a six year old, you You know, you can barely get, it's hard to communicate an emotional nuance with an adult and how to perform a scene that you really see in your mind's eye as a director. It's hard enough with grownups and things like that. I mean, it's impossible to really speak that language with a six-year-old with emotional complexity. that is not at all what I tried to do when directing Wyatt.
I simply, wanted to establish an environment where he felt like he could pretend and that he felt he was surrounded by people who loved him and would take care of him and had a good time and that he was not at school, that he wasn't on a baseball team, that he was never being asked to perform. It was simply that Wyatt was with Molly, who he loves, and John, who he loves, and me, who he trusts and loves, you know, and So we built, we worked really hard to create an environment where he could do that. And then we just were like, okay, we spoke about the scenes.
I never took Wyatt through the arc of the movie. His mom and dad, they knew the script and he memorized words. But to the extent that Wyatt really understood the movie, like there's no way. Molly did, she was nine and 10 and she's like more of a trained actress and she's incredible.
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I mean, that scene alone, Molly's nuance of watching and understanding and seeing her without words, understand what her dad is doing in that moment, that journey and her closeup. just think about that a lot as to like how good she is there.
For me, if I read your quote about being, him delivering a performance in a key moment of the film and why it's that scene for me is you talk about, he's six years old at the time and it's at that age. where when you have a response to something traumatic that's happening and you kind of steal yourself and you do this moment, it is almost performative when kids do this. But when they're really upset and they're like, I know what being upset sounds like. And he shouts, get the dog and then come back in the car and then we'll go.
And the way he says it, every parent has experienced this moment where it's like, I make so many mistakes as a dad. And my kids are given full license. They're encouraged to call me out when I'm in the wrong. And it's a moment like that. And that's why I just thought it completely, it sold what was already just such a difficult scene to do and it punctuated it really well.
And I sat with that decision of John to give the dog away for the rest of the movie. And I realized, these, and of course, cause I'm a filmmaker person, I'm like thinking, They're doing this on purpose. They're, they're wanting me to check my baggage about this decision that was made by John. I want to talk a little bit about the depiction of scarcity. I clocked Cole at least five encounters in the movie where dad and Ella, dad or Ella are interacting with a cashier, a retail worker in the exact cost of something comes up.
Buying two kites, $4.99. Got to put one back a couple of times at gas stations, $30.50 at the Omaha zoo. And finally, As a kid whose parents used food stamps when I was young, there was no Visa EBT card. was, you pulled out what looked like Monopoly money to me as a kid. And it was always thoroughly embarrassing. And they're buying food at a grocery store, finally at the end of the movie, which is a feeling anybody's ever been on road trips eating garbage knows.
It's like, we're finally somewhere where we can get something that's not total garbage, even though they're buying Lunchables. It's penny counting. This is real for a lot of people and it's extremely humiliating.
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Is that going to be 82 food stamps or cash eights, sir? Food. OK. Just.
48:55
it declined. You only have 20, 43 left on your food stamps.
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I've been a retail worker. I've been that kid. I've been lucky to not be that dad. But talk to me about Robert's script, about the choices you wanted to make in these many moments of showing exact dollar amounts and what that meant to John Magaro playing dad. Yeah, again, we wanted to put a specificity around that impossible kind of aspect of this family.
It almost felt like for it to not be a caricature, we had to mine into as much of the specifics. And it's why it's a Lunchable. It's why it's cheap and those two kites are like right next to the cashier. It's why we wanted to hear numbers. It's why we went back and we made sure every gas station dollar amount was true to that month of that year when the movie takes place, you know?
Robert had experienced a time where he, think, was on EBT early raising kids. And so he kind of had real practical experience with that. There was a part of me as we were shooting all this, you know, and it was there, maybe there was like 10 or 20 % more on the page that we pulled back from that we just felt like there's a little bit more conversation with him in that cashier and in the gas, in the grocery store at the end.
With Molly, she specifically has like an interaction with her that we cut from the picture that I think like when we got in there and we got to see Molly's look from where she clocks this situation and we just left it off of John's look contrasting with Molly, who he's hoping is not understanding what's going on, but who very clearly is kind of watching us as you know, I love that Molly is that bridge between childhood and coming of age in the movie. And we constantly are in her POV and seeing kind of that perspective.
Whereas Charlie, all he can think about is I want to switch this candy bar for this candy bar up on at that cash register. Molly's paying attention and she's feeling the weight of this, this with her dad. mean, so those were all very, very much on the page. Even the fact that he could get them what kind of ice cream it's the cheap.
51:25
pull it open and eat it right there at the gas station. But what is he doing? He's spending his money on putting fricking oil on the car. know, topping it off, topping off the oil that the car has been burning over that road trip. As the kids are having this cheap ice cream, you know what I mean? And again, as I said, I came from a home that always felt food secure, you know?
And we definitely had enough to. but these kids, don't. And then we had to draw those numbers and make those things as real as possible. People talk about that moment where at the zoo, he hands her, I think he has $3 remaining. We just didn't want to just like broad strokes brush what those realities were. I want to chat with you about this family finally making their arrival in Omaha.
We've grown so attached to them by this point. We're totally rooting for their happiness. John, dad parks the car on a hill and they're walking up, they're cresting this hill. It's my favorite shot in the movie. Shout out Paul Myers, your DP.
The car is parked in the middle of this hillside street somewhere in Omaha. And the next time we see this hill, you've bookended, I think quite beautifully through flashback. One of the best edits in the movie, the rolling jump that the car is going to need. Can you just shed some insights when you got to this section of the production about the order in which it was shot and the kind of mentality or where your actors were at on their journey portraying these characters?
There's a great scene right before we move into the final act turning point where, in climax, where they end up at the zoo. that zoo, there was purpose for Obviously, just the purpose of the kids getting to have this incredible day. But in our screenplay, there was like more to do with that zoo. There was these other scenes and there was some like real storytelling that we were doing there rather than just like the experience and beauty and nuance of just this day of bliss for the kids. And I think where the movie really took shape in the way that I love it is we
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I one day woke up and just went into the edit and was like, we're going to cut this, this, this, this. We're just going to pull all that out and all that zoo is going to be, it's going to be preparatory for what we're about to do for the rest of the movie. And it just is a family in the best moments of their day, whether it be three hours or two hours, whatever they're doing at that zoo.
So that really set me up when we did that to, to just kind of allow the best version of the road trip. in that moment and then segue into where these kids are emotionally, which is to say, maybe things are going to be okay. You know, and we move right off of that into dad parking the car on this road. then go into that shot that you talk about.
If you remember preceding that road, the kids are still carefree doing would you rather jokes as they've left the zoo indicative kind of like, would you rather whatever animal or this animal would you rather be a coyote? drawn the sketch of the three monsters and he's the dragon and yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And so we come to that moment, which you describe, which is this incredible location that we found in Omaha, where they walk, you're walking up a street and you kind of see the whole backdrop of that, of the industrial or like the business portion of town. and you know, there's somebody in this road, we shot it on a longer lens to really distort. kind of and compress the frame to show them, you know, really coming up over that roadway.
And that was like kind of this beautiful moment where they're all three holding hands coming up over this road at their destination. And our music cue comes in there and then we move into kind of this very big moment that the movie concludes with. Yeah, there's a line in there that I really love where Charlie says, dad, can we swim at the pool like at the hotel when we get there? Because they had swam earlier. Just re-establishing kind of his naivete and just innocence as a kid.
But Molly very clearly understands from the moment they start, they pull that car over, that something is happening. Something dramatic is happening. She's clocking her dad.
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And we're, we are able to kind of like stay with her through those, those emotions until the scene, you know, again, spoiler at the hospital. And her look and the car you linger on that shot. It's a great edit. It's just excruciating. She's looking over. think she's in the passenger seat and she's looking over at her dad and you're like, doesn't want to get out of the car.
Yeah. I mean, I, I'm still watching this for the first time. I've only seen it once. I was like, I have no idea. Is it a family member?
I'm still, don't know. It's the, speaking, I love the word naivety. I'm naive as a movie watcher. I've seen so many movies, bleak ones, ones filled with despair. And I'm still rooting for something.
It's a family member. Is it a job? be something good. I know it's not going to be, but that's how I felt when reading the script as an audience member. was just like, you know, all the things that I'm hoping for it to be. So. Against.
Way past spoilers, but John has voluntarily given up his kids in very dramatic fashion. And he's dealing with, he's soaked up in the aftermath of that choice. And we go on this journey with him. I wrote down when watching your movie, it was like you have a classic running scene at the end of a movie that has, you know, a catharsis, purgation, something's coming. But unlike the 400 blows, which ends with Antoine looking across the ocean, it's like, this is. he's got dogs barking at him through a fence.
Like he returns to the hospital and the attendant working there, the nurse. I want to shout out the absolutely insane performance from Talia Balsam. I feel like these scenes, both the writing, the direction, the performances are in perfect harmony. It's hard not to think that if he doesn't voluntarily give up his kids, they might be taken away from him anyway. And she takes him to the same place in the lobby where his kids had stayed the night before. while, you know, Ella's quietly crying and Charlie's sleeping.
This nurse hands John water and asks him for his name. And this is John Magaro at the peak of his powers as an actor. It's... I feel like the subtly most powerful moment in the movie. It's what broke me for the first time.
He says his name. It's all he says back. He doesn't say, name is, it's just Martin Harper. The way he says it was so much uncertainty.
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Was there something, was this on the page or did you, did some of this happen when cameras rolled? Because something about the reveal of just his name, Cole, it made me cry. It's as though just by asking, she has helped restore his dignity. We find out the nurse's name is Edie. And just by asking for his name, she's given him a lifeline and also helped him to give purchase to him as a human being.
Can you talk about that section, please? Yeah, man. I'm so glad that you brought this up and that that's a great. It's such a great scene to for it's it's great that we're talking about that scene, but I mean the way that which you form it is is really important. I This is the major though major rewrite or whatever you want to call that we did was this scene and what happened to John post voluntarily leaving his kids at that hospital and We worked on this dialogue of what?
Talia's character would say in the parking lot, what she would say when she got him in there, the tone at which she would approach this man, where her judgment would lie, how much of that would come through. And getting some background is we shot that scene at like two in the morning. Talia flew in for one day from New York, so she's trying to perform the scene at four in the morning her time. And she's got a lot of technical dialogue that we trimmed out of the movie ultimately that she's got to deliver. And then John is, know, this is independent movies, man.
Everything that you see in the movie that is at that hospital was shot in one day. You know, and so he's been asked to do a lot of heavy lifting emotionally that day and he's exhausted and we're day 12 on a you know, indie movies. I'm sitting there absolutely terrified behind the monitor that we're set up to fail. I've got two actors who are exhausted. We're about to do the final scene in the movie, who it's on a rewrite that hasn't had a lot of time to know their lines.
And the only thing I can say is that that's why you hire incredible actors. know, and, and
1:00:55
I remember when John said his name in particular and then the line, I think I'm going to need some help on that close up. I knew that's the take. There was no other take that was going to even be close to it. And I remember in post, like we were looking at that line and there was like a little nervousness. And, I, and I understand if some people with harder hearing don't. capture every one of his words because he says it so, so much in a way that carries the weight of kind of like, how would I even get these words out?
Which in a literal way makes it kind of hard to understand. And we were just like, are people going to hear it? Cause it's such an important line. And we were in an ADR booth with John and Copenhagen and where my great sound designer, Peter Albrecht sent his bass out of, and. We both were just, I was like, I don't know, man.
And he watched the line and we just, and he's like, there's no way I'm, I'm not even going to put anything on tape. Like that's that you just have to go with that. Oh, you considered ADRing that? We considered like articulating a line or word within that. So it was a little more clear because we had had a few people who were like, what is he saying?
And Peter, we had kind of got to the end of how we could technically save that line, but It was one of those things that I was just like, we're never that performance. was so perfect. man, your coverage of that scene, the edit, it is absolutely breathtaking. I feel like it's just pure magic. I couldn't, when preparing to do this podcast and writing notes about it, Cole, thinking about that scene made me cry. I'm going to need some help.
The pacing, the amount of space you gave between that delivery back to Talia for reaction, the weight of that declaration, how hard that must have been for Martin to say, how hard it was for him to say his name and then to follow it with, I'm going to need some help. I struggled this morning before coming down here to ask my daughter with some help taking out the trash because I have five stitches in my foot.
1:03:19
It's very hard as a man, a dad. It is. It just, it shouldn't be this way, but it is. There's all this gender performance crap that we put up with as, as like sad sack Americans. And I hate it.
And it's not just Americans. It's all over the world. This is a problem of masculinity and what it looks like to perform a masculine role, to be a dad, a construction worker who's out of work. and lost his wife and has these two kids now. He's not a perfect dad. I'm not a perfect dad.
But the fact that he says, I'm going to need some help is just. It's everything that makes this movie in so many ways, a kind of. Operator's manual for humanity, you know. But I do just want to ask you about the final title shot sequence. Was that on the page?
I don't think I need to read it, but maybe I'll just paraphrase it. But was it on the page in the script? How did that come about? The post script? Yeah.
So the final shot is we find out in the July of 2008, state of Nebraska passed a safe haven law, which decriminalized the leaving of unharmed infants so that the child becomes a ward of the state. Nebraska instituted the law without specifying an age and then parents from all over the country started traveling to Nebraska to drop off their kids. Before Nebraska was able to rewrite the law, 35 children had been abandoned. None of them infants. I just, I do actually want to start by saying, guess what?
Martin's not one of them. You know, I mean, he doesn't, he, he's not permanently one of them because of that line. I'm going to need some help. You can tell he's already being put into the process of, do I keep my kids? How do I get them back?
I'm not in a position because of whatever. Like you said, we don't, the movie doesn't speculate on whatever diagnosable depression, anxiety, et cetera, that he's going through, but you know, he's, he's going to need some help because the truth is he really does want his kids. So I'm saying a lot there. That's, that's word salad, but.
1:05:43
just, I guess, start with, did you have this in mind to do the reveal of the titles before shooting the movie? Was that in the script? Yeah, it's exactly how it was in the script. And it was something we, I wrestled with. Will people have patience?
Will it be as effective? And the answer to everything is make the movie you want to make and do the movie that you... make the film that I would want to see. And I ultimately, like we tried a few things in edit about where that postscript and text went. And did we ease the audience into it with an opening line and things like that. And in the end, like it was, there was nothing better than the way that I experienced when I read the script.
And we went back and I really just trusted that. And that was exactly how it was written and how we wanted to convey it. And there was no other way to do that. It was like, it wasn't like we were going to cut to some mashup of real news. You know what I mean?
It was like, hey, like you experienced walking through and I'm of course, not, I'm of course not comparing the film to some like museum. but like exhibit, when you look at stills of an event and then it's memorialized with a statement on a placard, that's the sentiment that I kind of wanted to say. It's like, this really happened. This is how many kids went through this. This is one of those families. So it was exactly as it were on the page.
Now, the only thing that changed was in the way that we shot it was we let ended on John's face. And I cut in that little scene with him and them on the road. And then we cut back to the car, which is sitting against the Omaha backdrops in silence. And I felt really moved to include that hopeful and beautiful encapsulation of him parenting those kids along the side of that road. But I was not going to include that without having the empty car.
1:08:02
with no music set against Omaha. That really brought the movie back to the thing, to the reality that this was, this really happened, you know? It's really excellent montage. And I think one of the things I really appreciated about it is, and I almost don't, I don't want you to tell me differently, but I read that little flashback scene as being John, maybe before all of the events that proceeded. this, the foreclosure, the death of his wife and the mother of his kids, that this was him when he's at his far more optimal self. And then you cut back to the car.
It's excellent montage. And then you're like, okay. There's work to do, you know, I'm going to need some help. I did want to say you said something in your Sundance interview. I love us.
I think we are innately good. I think we struggle most of the time. So I'm going to give you a list here. The woman waiting in line with her baby at the gas station, the parking enforcement attendant, the nurse, Edie, of course, goes without saying. This movie feels like a treatise about the kindness of strangers and how the shame and stigma that comes from being broke, especially for men. is a kind of shame that prevents a lot of people who are hurting from accessing the kindness of strangers by simply saying, I need help.
So I want to ask you, that was your quote. It feels like it's peppered throughout this movie. How much of that was on your mind when you were making this movie, The Kindness of Strangers? You'll notice also that every one of those characters are women. Yeah.
And they...
1:10:01
They are for us, de facto concept of being raised by a community and the inherent kind of love of mothers all around us and women in particular. And that perspective that they led with kindness and they led with this grace that was like really gave John, you know, I think we're whether he understood it or not were transformative in his ability to open up his heart and say, I need help. It is so easy to have this armchair judgment. know, we had someone say, well, you must have had to ignore all these programs and things that could have helped his family.
And that sentiment is what I want the film to challenge, is that your reaction would be, how many things did he ignore? Why didn't he just pull himself up from those bootstraps? know, like that way of thinking leads to more harm to people in our communities than the alternative, which is how about we just open our, our hearts up first.
And look, I didn't make this film as like part of this like social movement, but that's why I loved the movie that it was like, that it took on that perception of who this family was. these women, these people that they encounter throughout the film are in my estimation the best version of how we should react as fellow brothers and sisters in humanity. And a few of them were authority figures. And where do we see our authority figures today?
I mean, it's like, It's so disheartening to kind of hear this chorus of people who were cheering on these enforcers as opposed to cheering for the marginalized and saying, we want to help you rather than cast this harsh kind of judgment, not just like.
1:12:23
moral judgment, but just like the societal judgment. You can't do this because you haven't done X, Y, and Z. And I love that you caught that because they all came from, think, the best versions of how we hope that we can encounter others in society who are in the place that this family is, you know? And I think by casting John Magaro, who has this sort of innate charm and this kind of emotional register to every performance that he takes on, It's easy to fall into like a trap of thinking this has to be a narrative that's got some sort of pleasant closure to it.
Like there's no way that this John McArdle is going to win at the end. So he's going to something great is going to happen. He's going to find this wellspring of confidence and great parenting. But it's like this movie does two things at the same time, which I really appreciate. It shows that you, Cole Webley as filmmaker, you love us.
You talk in that quote about our innate goodness, but you're also asking people at the same time to shed their bullshit. their judgments about what they experience of this dad, and to forget their judgments about what they think this dad and his kids are going through. And so many movies in this category are, there's a catharsis or kind of a purgation, but I did some digging around, mostly Google, and it made me want to re-watch your movie and think about this sentence while doing so. This is a kind of summary of the 2008 Safe Havens Law in Nebraska.
Lawmakers and observers realized, that many families weren't trying to abandon babies. They were desperate for help with older children and couldn't get it. Not didn't, not wouldn't, couldn't get it. So that's what I hope people think about when they watch this movie, or if they're curious, and I hope they're curious after watching it, about what else might be lurking underneath the sort of the obvious text of the movie.
1:14:19
I'm almost done. You've been so generous with your time. When you set out to make this movie, Cole, who did you want to see it and what did you want them to feel about these topics? I wish I was the type of director that could just stand on and just say, like, I don't care what you feel or what you, I just made it for me, but I'm too polite. So I'll try and answer that.
I think, first of all, I wished everybody would watch my movie. who doesn't want everybody, as many people as possible, I would love for them to watch this film. Did I make it? So I tried to make something that was for everybody. And I know that there's a huge portion of our, the people who only want to watch movies as entertainment. So I suppose if you're coming to this film just to be entertained, maybe it's not for you.
Though I tried to make it fun too and you know, blah, blah. I feel like if you're a curious human, if you're interested in the complexities of this journey that we're all on, then this is a movie for you. It's a movie that hopefully asks you to understand a very brief moment in the history of the state and the history of Nebraska of a law that is in its essence, hoping to help people, the Safe Haven Law. It certainly has saved lives, undoubtedly.
And in this case, even with the hope to help these children, the real reason they couldn't come up with an age is because the question was posed, well, how old is too old to help a child? And the ramifications of that is this. And what you said is really interesting in our research, some of these people dropping their child off. They knew the simple fact was that if they had to wait and go through the bureaucracy, they didn't know if they could get the help they needed.
But if they gave up the right to parent that child through abandonment, that child would suddenly be under the careful watch of the US government, which I say that word careful, big question mark. But it would mean that they were now in the system and that help could be more immediate.
1:16:44
rather than standing in line and hoping that you could check every box before they gave you that care, right? All the means testing and the red tape and the bureaucratic hurdles. Yeah, it's just, it's like taxes. It's just really complicated. I want people to watch this movie who are curious, who are eager to experience vicariously something that they haven't experienced.
And that maybe that helps us see folks with a little less judgment, I suppose. But it's a hard answer. It's a hard one to answer. And it's one that I simply love to distill down to just like, how do I feel about this family? And I hope that there is love at the end, you know, I hope that you just feel love for these kids and this parent.
And that that is a powerful emotion. I think that's beautifully said. I haven't brought her up and it almost goes without saying if you've seen this movie in particular, but Molly Bell, right? As Ella looks a little like a young Juliette Lewis. I don't know if you caught that or if that's something that stuck out to you, but the fact that she's born in Manchester, lived in Brisbane for many years as well, but has no discernible accent playing an American kid.
I was like, kid's American? Almost like, this is just, I'm weird and this is why I do this podcast. Ella is almost like a character in a Miyazaki movie. She's so expressive and charming, like a little bit like some of the kind of growing up too young of a Chihiro and Spirited Away, or guess Satsuki in My Neighbor Totoro, who has to take care of her sibling. She just is.
And she has such that like porcelain face too, you know? Yes. It's just, what a find. She was so good in this movie. Incredible.
Can't wait to see what happens with her career. I have so many other things I would love to chat with you about, but I would take the rest of your day and we can't do that. Cole Webley, thank you so much for coming on all those moments. I am, it probably goes without saying if you've gotten this far in the podcast, huge fan of this movie. I think far more importantly, I'm a huge fan of your humanity.
1:19:10
and how your humanity is shown throughout this movie. I hope you'll FaceTime me from Barcelona because it's my favorite place on earth. So that's where you're headed next, right? Yeah, yeah. I just headed out there to do a commercial, but let me just echo what you said.
I want to shout out before we conclude, Molly Belle Wright is why this movie works. John Magaro is why this movie works. Wyatt Solis is why this movie. These are three people who had to carry the weight of this film. I want to thank and say specifically Meg Mormon and Sunday Balling, my casting directors who helped us find Molly and Wyatt on that extensive search.
And of course, you know, so many people come together to kind of pull a movie together. My producer Preston Lee, who was the first one who said this script is for you. I read it as an audience member and I loved it to death, but it was my producer who said, Cole, this movie was born for you to kind of direct with your sensibilities and, and really well opened my eyes to going back and looking at it in that way because Robert and I were working on a different script. And it was, but it was a movie that I knew was a movie that from the second that I read it.
And I was so happy to kind of like have my awakening that way through Preston. So yeah, man. Thanks for having me on. Thanks. I'll share the love to the rest of the team.
Robert Michoian, Jay Shukla, Paul Myers, everybody in that key creative group that helped put this thing together. Christopher Barrett's score. Go watch the movie, share it. We're opening May 8th across the nation in a lot of art house theaters. And then after that run, we'll be rentable. but thanks for talking about it.
Thanks for having me on. course. I, have to ask, there be a physical media version of this? you think? Yeah, I just approved the DVD or the Blu-ray cover. Yeah. Let's go best of luck with this film, Cole, whatever you choose to do next as a filmmaker, I will be there day one.
And if you roll through the five nine or when you roll through the five nine the next time and you're anywhere near Spokane, please hit me up. I love that part of the country. was just up there in Colville and a little cabin.
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before you and I connected. So I'll be back. I actually really want to shoot a movie up there. My friend Clint Bentley Bentley shot Train Dreams. You talked to Dolpho about that having been shot in that region.
So that's a life goal is to come back and shoot in my own state. Amazing. Thank you so much, Cole. I look forward to speaking with you again sometime in the future. And like I mentioned, best of luck with the rest of rolling your movie out because it's it's wonderful and I can't wait to to see how people take it. it.
Thanks, Benji. All of those. in time tears