At the risk of being too personal, what did you experience that made you write this script? Because it had to have been something pretty big.
A real event definitely inspired it. My husband and I survived a bad car crash—a bad head-on collision about seven years ago and I blacked out. Afterward, when I came to, I couldn’t see, so that was quite disorienting. I was shouting, “I can’t see! I can’t see!” and I was pissed at him for not answering me and he sort of eked out “I can’t breathe.” There was something about that that I couldn’t have even imagine something had happened to him. So coming out of that was so disorienting. I was really concussed and I had that moment where Adrienne is on the couch calling to her daughter—and babies ignore you. They don’t come when you call. So, I just thought for a blip, “Oh my God! I died!” That feeling felt so real but it was only for a second and I knew very much for it not to be true. It was amazing to me how my mind was not working properly. I was really interested in that concussed state. Then, coming out of it, I just felt so freaking grateful that we survived. So, I wanted to share that feeling. I’ve wanted to explore a love story for a long time about the best of times and the worst of times. Sort of a negotiation of whose version of the story is the truth. Kind of looked through that past and whatever story it is you tell about your past is how you’re going to live your future. I really believe that. So, all of those things swirled together to be Wander Darkly.
I feel like you must have done some extensive research. Did you read any books about grief or anything related that you read before you started?
Not books about grief in particular. I found many articles about people who have actually had this sensation that they’re dead and what that feels like and what they said and what helps them out of it. It’s a real syndrome. I sent a lot of that stuff to Sienna. I also happened to have lost a few people in my life around that time, so I explored grief in my own way. I was trying to think about the psychosis of grief as it parallels with the concussion and how our minds protect us from things. How we allow for those strange times in our lives. The production designer, Katie Byron, did give me–before we started shooting—Joan Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking. Mostly that just served to validate me. There were so many things in there that I saw parallels with and it’s such an incredible book. I felt like, “Oh, I’m not alone in my thought process here about how this would go.”
“…coming out of it, I just felt so freaking grateful that we survived.”
I was curious about the scenes in Mexico with the dolphins and how it was to set up that shoot? Had you been there before? How did it go?
I’ve been out on boats since I was 11. I’ve lived in southern California, so I’ve certainly seen dolphins out on the water. I knew it was possible. We had a producer, Monica Levinson, who was—we thought about taking it out because it seemed insane to try to do on our schedule and budget. Monica goes, “Oh no, we can get dolphins. I know a guy. Captain Dave can get you dolphins.” and I was like, “Oh my God, you have to produce this movie. Call Captain Dave. We’re doing it, let’s go.” and she did. The plan was a 2:30 AM call. We did three days. We would all go out to our huge crew boat, and then we had a camera boat or picture boat, and Dave and Monica would go out looking for dolphins at dawn. If they found the dolphins, we would drop everything we were doing on our scene work and race over to Captain Dave and run with the dolphins. It was pretty funny. I do remember some of the crew going…you could hear whispers in the morning of “Bullsh*t, we’re never gonna get dolphins. It’s never gonna happen” and I was like “We are so getting dolphins today! Don’t doubt it. We’re gonna see those dolphins!” On three different days, we did. It was really awesome.
I like the whole cast a lot, but I’m going to ask two separate questions. I’ll start with the dorky one. I think that Beth Grant is hilarious. I love her, but I never would have thought of her for this kind of role. So, how did that happen?
Yeah, Jeanne McCarthy just presented me the idea of Beth. I was familiar with her, and I’m a fan. We sat down to meet and she just understood it. She understood it, she had a vision for it, and I really like her. She’s so open and vulnerable, and that made directing her kind of a dream. I remember we were doing a scene in the car. Beth is a really emotionally available human. The note that I said was, “You know how we had that conversation about whatever? She doesn’t have access to it the way that you do.” She was like, “Oh, I got it.” She made this amazing adjustment, and she blew me away.
