It’s all about the women on film this week on #BTLRadioShow thanks to writer/director BRIAN CAVALLARO and his latest film 32 WEEKS, and our prerecorded exclusive interview with writer/director JULIA HART talking I’M YOUR WOMAN.
We open the show with our prerecorded exclusive interview with writer/director JULIA HART talking about her latest film, I’M YOUR WOMAN. (Hart is also the force behind Disney’s Stargirl which you can watch on Disney+.) We’ve all seen mafia crime thrillers before and with rare exceptions, all are told from the male perspective with the wives, girlfriends, and children relegated to background window dressing. Stepping outside of the box, together with co-writer Jordan Horowitz, Hart gives us the story of Jean with Rachel Brosnahan delivering one of the best performances of her career in the role, along with Marsha Stephanie Blake, Arinze Kene, Frankie Faison, and Bill Heck. A mob wife with no skills and no street smarts, Jean is oblivious to what her husband Eddie does for a living. She lives in an upscale suburban neighborhood, is perfectly coiffed, has impeccably manicured nails, and wears the trendiest fashion the 1970’s has to offer, but she can’t cook, doesn’t clean, and is in fact so inept she doesn’t even know how to cut tags out of clothing. Just imagine what happens when Eddie arrives home “from work” one day holding out a baby like it’s the latest edition headline of the National Enquirer and saying “He’s yours.” But then take it a step further and have Cal, one of Eddie’s enforcers, show up at the house in the dead of night to whisk Jean and the baby to safety only to then have to leave her on her own. And this is just the beginning of Jean’s story. Take a listen as Julia and I go deep into her creating a perfect apportioned 1970’s world with all the colors of the period both in production design and costume, color palette, choreographing and shooting action sequences, the themes tackled within the film, casting and chemistry, Jean’s journey and arc of the characters, and, of course, working with a baby.
Then we welcome writer/director BRIAN CAVALLARO back to the show to talk about his new film, 32 WEEKS. Brian last joined us a couple of years ago for Against the Night, a chilling film shot in a 100+-year-old abandoned prison in suburban Philadelphia. With the majority of that film in darkness with much lighting relegated to single headlamps only, Brian now not only shifts coasts with 32 WEEKS but brings us out of the terror of the dark and into the light of sunny Santa Monica, California, while exploring the empty darkness of one woman’s mind following a car accident that left her with short term memory amnesia and many unanswered questions. The biggest unanswered questions A long time award-winning producer, as well as director of multiple episodes in many television series, as well as reality and awards show, it’s exciting to see Brian behind the camera with narrative features. Even more exciting is to see his directorial range and growth just between 32 WEEKS and Against the Night. Listen as Brian dives into the genesis of the story, the twists and turns and ambiguity created not only through the script but by nuanced performances and keen editing, finding the pacing and timing of reveals with editing most particularly with flashbacks of memory, casting, cinematography, visual metaphor, the challenges of a multiplicity of locations especially on a lo budget/no budget/micro-budget film, and so much more.
