Last year, I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert with my dad and one of his childhood best friends. I’ve been out of the closet for a long time, but this was the first time I’d ever been in this social configuration — me + my dad + his friend — as a queer woman. The experience was fascinating, nesting dolls of miscommunication and genuine connection and endless specificity.
India Donaldson’s debut feature Good One captures this experience. Sam (Lily Collias) is a queer teenage who sets off on a backpacking trip with her dad (James Le Gros) and his buddy Matt (Danny McCarthy). Matt’s son bailed so Lily ends up a third wheel to these two middle aged men. She gains a window into their intimate conversations, accepting — for better or worse — the layers of their complex humanity.
It’s a confident debut. It’s patient and subtle and formally assured. It lacks the conventions often found in the American coming-of-age movies screened at Sundance. I was lucky enough to talk to India about her approach to screenwriting, her production priorities, and some of the movie’s more surprising inspirations.
Drew: After seeing Good One at Sundance, I watched three of your shorts and I feel like all four films are really confident in their pace and in what they withhold. What do your scripts look like on the page? How visual are they?
India: They’re very dialogue heavy. Well, except for If Found which has almost no dialogue, because that was made as a challenge to myself.
A lot of the visual ideas come about through the process from the shooting and making. But where the camera is and what it’s focusing on is always in the script. Like in Good One, a lot of the dialogue that’s on the page is playing off-screen and I would indicate that we were grounding a scene in Sam even if she’s saying hardly anything. So it’s a mix of talky dialogue and certain visual ideas.
Drew: Especially with Good One, was that ever a problem in terms of raising funds? I can imagine in the American film industry, a financier reading this script and being like, hmm is someone going to get murdered?
India: (laughs)
Drew: But I appreciate how gradually the film unravels! Was there any pushback on that?
India: It was hard to raise money. Actually, we were raising money until a couple weeks before we went to Sundance. Every step of the way we were raising money. This film came together with the support with many, many different people and organizations and entities. There was never going to be one production company that would want to give me all the money for this movie. It was a challenge even though we made it for a really modest sum.
I kept hearing this phrase that became a pet peeve of mine: execution-dependent. (laughs) But I really designed it from a script level to be makeable and for me and a small group of friends and collaborators to conceptualize a production that was small and lean but where we could still be ambitious about the story and our visual ideas. I think keeping it contained was the only way we could make a film like this, because it’s not the type of film that people necessarily want to finance.
Drew: About how big was your crew?
India: 17 or so. We were about 20 with the actors.
Drew: I know that you’ve shot on 16mm before. Was the decision to shoot digitally just due to budget and practicality or do certain stories feel more attuned to that format?
India: It was really just the cost. I would’ve loved to shoot it on 16, but we would’ve had to have more resources. It’s easier with a short, because you can be really mindful about the amount of film you’re shooting and we just didn’t have the luxury here. I love the process of shooting on film, and I obviously love the look too. But every project has its own set of constraints and that was one of them with this.
It’s also a question of how you spend your money. We prioritized certain things like the crew having comfortable housing and everyone having their own room. Things like that were more important to me than shooting on film.
Drew: (laughs) I love to hear that. As much as shooting on film, I also love when crew is comfortable and treated well, so that seems like a good call.
India: Right? And decent food. It was long days outdoors. You have to do the best you can to treat people right.
Drew: What was the casting process like? Because your cast is excellent. I certainly understand the annoyance of a script being called execution-dependent, but with something with this much dialogue you are relying on the performers to be really, really strong and they are really, really strong.
India: It was different with each actor. I worked with a casting director named Taylor Williams who I adore. She was a real creative collaborator on the project and we just spent a lot of time watching stuff and talking about different actors and their different performances. For the two guys, we conceptually imagined the qualities that certain people would bring to the role. And I’m really lucky that the people we asked said yes.
James Le Gros is one of those actors who every time he shows up in something, I lean in. He always draws me in. He’s one of those actors I always pay attention to. Agreeing to be in the film is such a testament to him as an actor and a person. He knew what he was signing up for. He’s made so many films and seen every scale of production. And he really showed up for us as a holistic collaborator. He wasn’t just good in the movie, he was aware of the scale and the time that we had and all those practicalities. I got really lucky there.
I’d seen Danny McCarthy in an Annie Baker play and he delivered this really specific performance. He had this very moving monologue and I remember writing his name down after I saw it. He always came to mind in the writing of this character.
And then with Lily, we’d been looking for the right person for a while. The luckiest I got throughout this entire process was meeting her. I met her through my younger sister. They were in high school together at the time. It was just one of those gut instincts where I was like oh my god this is the person. So yeah each actor was its own process, but all of it happened in collaboration with Taylor and with her feedback.
Drew: What did you hope to capture about the relationship between queer women and their dads?
India: (laughs)
Drew: And maybe more broadly the relationship between queer women and cishet masculinity? Because I do think it’s such an important aspect of the movie even if it’s not explicit.
India: Yeah! It’s a quiet element throughout.
I don’t think I wanted to say anything specific, but more just point to it. Yeah this dad is okay with his daughter being queer. He doesn’t care. Whatever. It’s not this huge source of tension in their lives. But there are just so many ways in which he cannot understand her experience in the world — who she is and her sexuality and the body she’s in. All these things. I wanted to point to that disconnect.
Drew: It was interesting to me, because it wasn’t tagged as LGBTQ+ in the Sundance program. And I find that this happens a lot with film festivals. Aftersun also wasn’t tagged that way at TIFF.
India: Yeah I noticed that too!
Drew: If it isn’t a romance, it’s not labeled as queer.
India: Yes.
Drew: And I get it from a programming standpoint. You want people to show up and like what they see and not get angry that it’s not some lesbian romance.
India: (laughs) This is not what I signed up for! Two straight guys talking.
Drew: (laughs) But I find it to be interesting and, in a way, limiting in our view of what we think of as queer cinema. So I’m curious, what do you personally look for from queer cinema, both as a filmmaker and as a viewer?
India: I mean, I’m with you. I’m interested in queer stories that span the gamut of what that can mean. Often the films that get labeled that way are about trauma, and, sure, those are important and need to exist. But I’m interested in stories that incorporate queer characters where it’s a quality of who they are and how they exist in the world and it informs their entire experience in ways that are subtle. I think queer cinema can mean a lot of things. It can be a broad umbrella term. I mean, stories can be queer without even being about queer characters.
Drew: For sure. I agree.
Something I really like about Good One is her queerness feels important, but it’s not overtly what it’s about. I think often there’s a dichotomy of work that’s either all trauma or very much the romance or it’s like yes they just happen to be gay and it doesn’t impact anything at all.
India: Right yeah.
Drew: And there is this middle ground that is so clear here. The ways this character interacts with these two men would be different if she was straight, but it doesn’t define everything about her and her relationship to them.
India: Yes, totally. Thank you very much. That is exactly what I was hoping for. It does affect her experience and their perception of her. It’s not nothing, but it’s also not about that.
Drew: I’ve seen a lot of people compare Good One to Kelly Reichardt which as a fan of hers I totally see that comparison as both apt and complimentary. But in prepping for this, did you look to any films or filmmakers who would maybe surprise viewers?
India: I was thinking about Miyazaki a lot and the way stillness in nature is incorporated into his film. The meditative quality. The gentle yet immense presence of nature in his whole filmography. I was thinking about Mike Leigh and the way his films see the humor in human behavior while also being empathetic toward them.
Wait let me pull up the Letterboxd list of movies Wilson, the DP, and I were watching leading up to it.
Drew: Oo please. Love a Letterboxd inspo list. Those are both really great answers though. I finally saw Secrets and Lies for the first time recently.
India: Oh my God.
Drew: In theatres actually. And it was such a great experience.
India: It’s a masterpiece. Masterpiece.
Okay, also About Elly.
Drew: I haven’t seen that! I’ve seen a lot of Farhadi’s other films, but not that one.
India: I love his movies. That one in particular, just the way in which you see a group of people project things onto a young woman. It’s really interesting the ways she navigates this identity other people are projecting onto her and the way the film handles her point of view.
The Loneliest Planet. Have you seen that?
Drew: I haven’t!
India: It’s also a movie about three people on a backpacking trip where something happens deep into the movie that fundamentally changes it. It’s kind of an interesting sister movie in many ways. I was looking for movies where people are moving at a walking pace — Meek’s Cutoff also — and how that informs the story and how the camera captures it.
I could keep going. I love Maren Ade’s second film Everyone Else.
Drew: Ah! That’s such a good movie.
India: Obsessed with that movie. So much of the relationship is revealed through the specificities of a hike that goes wrong. I watched that sequence many times. Again, there’s a combination between humor and deeply felt real human emotions.
Good One is now playing in limited theatres.
I like saying I was a queer teen even tho I was only into women roll off tongue