From co-writer/director Drake Doremus, the relationship drama Endings, Beginnings follows Daphne (Shailene Woodley), a 30-something woman navigating love and heartbreak while also exploring what she wants out of life. After finding herself attracted to best friends Jack (Jamie Dornan) and Frank (Sebastian Stan), for very different reasons, she ends up on a journey that will teach her more about herself than she ever could have expected.
During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, filmmaker Drake Doremus talked about why he finds endless content possibilities in the exploration of relationships, what he wanted to explore with this specific film, putting this cast together, establishing trust with his actors so that they feel comfortable to explore while they’re improvising, why he feels more like a guide on set than a director, whether he views the relationships at the core of the film as a genuine love triangle, what he feels Shailene Woodley brought to this role, how they approached the more intimate scenes, and the excruciating post-production process.
Collider: This is such an interesting in-depth character and relationship study, and you definitely seem to really like exploring relationships in your work. Why do you think there’s so much there to mine, no matter the characters or the setting?
Image via Samuel Goldwyn Films
DRAKE DOREMUS: Yeah, I feel like it’s twofold. It’s about having different experiences in my life, and really just trying to think about what I’m thinking about and where I’m at, and what I’m experiencing and wanna say, or how I’m feeling, or being heartbroken, and different things like that. And also, it stems from my parents and growing up in a divorced home, and always just trying to solve and reconcile how two people can love each other that much, but go so wrong. I’m just constantly trying to fix that and repair my parents’ relationship, in a weird way, and also fix mine and fix my own heart and where I’m at. It’s endless, really. At the end of the day, there are just so many different ways to look at it.
How did this particular film start? Did it start with a type of thing you wanted to explore, or did it start with a specific character? Does it work like that, at all, for you?
DOREMUS: That’s an interesting question. It always starts with where I’m at. I had just gotten out of a long term relationship and was really down. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to make and what I wanted to say, and really, at the end of the day, I realized that, before I could find something new, I really had to look at myself and be okay with myself, and find some peace and find some harmony in my life. So, that is where it all started, knowing that I wanted to get there, but not understanding how to get there. Making the movie was a cathartic experience in trying to understand how to go on that journey, myself.
When you have a character at the center of this, like Daphne, and you have someone like Shailene Woodley, do you think about the character, at the same time tat you think about an actor to do it? How do you do that, so that the character is so well suited to the actor that you end up casting?
Image via Samuel Goldwyn Films
DOREMUS: Gosh, well, thank you so much. I don’t know. Sometimes it starts with writing something for somebody, specifically, but a lot of times, that comes later. With this one, Shailene was actually last to be cast. I had Jamie [Dornan] and Sebastian [Stan], and I’d met with so many actresses. Shailene and I had always chatted over the years, but nothing was the right place, right time, and that’s what this movie was. She was just in the perfect place in her life to do this movie, I feel like, so that was what was exciting for me. I try to find people that are not really right for the character, but are in the right place, spiritually, in their life, to embody that character. That’s where that came from. But no, I didn’t write this movie with anybody in mind, really. This one was totally cast from scratch.
What led you to, to Jamie Dornan and Sebastian Stan? Why did you want them for these characters?
DOREMUS: Jamie and I did this little Hugo Boss short film/fashion/perfume ad thing, a couple of years ago, and hit it off. I thought he was really special and great, and wanted to do a movie with him, so I was like, “Oh, this is the perfect opportunity to put him in something where he can really thrive and do what he does best,” which is really doing something really subtle and nuanced. So, that was a no-brainer for me. And then, I’d been a huge fan of Sebastian’s and thought he was a chameleon, and just loved him in stuff that I’d seen him in and really wanted to work with him, so we met and it was love at first sight, for both of us. We were just like, “Oh, my god, we have to create together and get in the mud.” We had such a long, deep, interesting, emotional conversation, the first time we got together, and I just really wanted to work with him. It felt like my first conversation with Anton [Yelchin]. It reminded me of that and my relationship with him. I was like, “Oh, this is great.” And then, for Daphne, it was really hard. There were a lot of different actresses that did auditions and we did screen tests with a lot of different people. It was a long process. Shailene was actually living in Paris, at the time, and we had this long Skype and talked about it. It just felt like the right fit, so I took a chance, and then everyone met. No one even read together, or knew each other. It was just, a week before, like, “Oh, here we go, let’s do this.”
Do you ever have times where you have to convince your actors to let go and live in it, when your scripts are essentially just an outline with story points? Do you ever have to get actors mentally passed working that way, and letting go and just feeling okay with maybe not getting it right, every time?
Image via Samuel Goldwyn Films
DOREMUS: That’s a great question. Yes, for anyone who hasn’t done an improv film before, that’s the big concern, right off the bat. After a day or two, they lose that and they realize they can trust me and that I’m not gonna use anything that doesn’t work, so then they’re willing to take a chance and fail. Sometimes the first take is the one that ends up in the movie and it’s perfect, but a lot of times, it takes a lot of different iterations and journeys to the scene, to really get to the heart of what’s gonna work. So, I think that it’s just a matter of convincing them to trust me. I’m like, “Don’t worry, I promise every little second in there is gonna be your best performance. On top of that, I’m thinking about the scene and I’m thinking about how to get us there, so don’t worry about failing. Don’t worry about taking chances. Just focus on the objectives and the subtext and the emotion of the scene, and the beginning, middle and end, and I’ll guide you through the rest. That’s where my mind is at. But to be honest with you, I’ve been so lucky with so many of the actors I’ve worked with. Very rarely do I get that feeling. Everyone is all, from the beginning. They understand that, if they’re gonna come and do this process, they have to be that way, so they have to come with that attitude, right off the bat.
Does it also help that your body of work continues to grow and they can see what you’ve done with other films and actors who have trusted you?
Image via Samuel Goldwyn Films
DOREMUS: Oh, gosh, I hope so ‘cause that’s currency, to be honest. If I couldn’t get the actors that I’m able to get to put in movies, I wouldn’t be able to make movies. So, for me, I’m even more than ever diligent about every single frame of the performance of every character in the movie because I want actors to watch the movies and to feel that way, and to have that immediate trust, where they can go, “I know, no matter what I do, I’m gonna be as best I can be, in this movie.”
Do you feel like more than just a director then? Do you feel like the guide of the movie, on set, since you’re the one that’s having to make sure that you end up where you eventually need to go?
DOREMUS: Totally. I would use that word for my process, way more than director. The idea of a director is that they go, “Stand here, say this, hit this mark, do this, do that.” That, to me, is a very different kind of filmmaking, and I really appreciate that filmmaking, but guide is a much better term for the way I do it, which is more about shaping something or painting, in a sense, as opposed to execution. For us, it’s not about executing something, it’s about exploring it, and exploring the shit out of it, until it’s completely explored and there’s no way to explore it any more. Then, we know that it’s time to move on. We’ve emptied well. We’ve rung out the towel on this emotional beat.
There are times when the relationships can border on being a little bit toxic, so were you looking to have a genuine love triangle, or were you not looking at it that way?
DOREMUS: On the surface, it certainly is. It’s more essentially a love triangle in her own heart, and her getting in her own way, and her needing chaos, in order to feel safe, to feel okay, and to feel distracted from what’s really going on inside of her heart. It’s a self-concocted, self-realized toxicity that somehow is needed, in a way, to give herself pain, in order to feel. Essentially, it’s a masochistic way to look at relationships, and I certainly have found myself in my share of toxic relationships, as well, so I can relate. The triangle part of it certainly was the structure of the movie, but beyond that, I think it’s more of an internal struggle for her.
What did you most enjoy about working with Shailene Woodley and about watching what she brought to this?
Image via Samuel Goldwyn Films
DOREMUS: Oh, man, every day, I just got more and more excited. I haven’t seen everything that she’s done, but I really felt like she was pushing herself to do something totally different than she’d done before, and in a totally different way. That was just exciting for me, to be able to be a part of something new for her. It felt like she was being vulnerable and really emotionally naked, in a way. So, for me, watching her realize that she enjoyed that and that she was proud of that and that she wanted to explore that was what was so inspiring to me, every day. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s about working with actors, and working with actors who want to do that, who want to be surprised, and who want to surprise themselves essentially. To me, that’s heaven. That’s everything. She just made it so enjoyable. She’s so kind, so smart, and so thoughtful that it just makes the experience so easy. And then, the crew and the rest of the cast took her lead and that energy permeated through the entire shoot and set, and it just made it so enjoyable.
This movie has a few very intimate scenes, which is obviously never terribly comfortable to do on a set. How did you handle doing those scenes? Did you and Shailene Woodley have a lot of conversations about those scenes and what they would be and how you would shoot them? How did that work, to make her feel comfortable?
DOREMUS: It’s a really delicate thing. She’s just so brave. You could talk about anything. She really trusted Sebastian, she really trusted Jamie, and she really trusted me, so it made it a lot easier. And then, it was just a lot of conversations about, “Okay, what are we comfortable with and what do we want to scene to feel like and look like?” Sometimes it’s looking at references from other movies. Sometimes it’s just talking about it, at length. The second sex scene between Sebastian and Shailene, we actually shot it twice because I went back and looked at it. It’s the one that takes place on the floor, before they go to Big Sur, and I looked at it, and it didn’t feel the way I thought it needed to feel. It didn’t have the energy or the passion to it. So, we redid it, but we watched it together and talked about what didn’t work and, fundamentally, what we wanted to change about it, and that helped us get there. Sometimes it’s not perfect. Sometimes you have to go redo it or rethink about it. The first sex scene in the movie, the first take, it was like, “Oh, my god, it’s amazing. We’ll use it.” So, it varies. For me, it’s about having a lengthy conversation. I’m really proud of, with the last couple of movies, just trying to depict it, as it really is. I hate sex scenes in movies that are so glossy and so perfect. Sex is so messy and it’s awkward, at times It’s a little bit uncomfortable, but it’s hot and it’s exciting. I’m just trying to get to the heart of the truth of what that feels like, especially with characters that are maybe conflicted about having sex with each other. For me, that’s interesting, trying to explore that.
What was the editing process like on this? Did it go pretty easily? Did you spend a lot of time fine tuning things? Did you have to cut a lot out?
Image via Samuel Goldwyn Films
DOREMUS: There are 10 to 12 scenes that I’m still really bummed are not in the movie, but just for story reasons or timing reasons, we couldn’t keep them in there. It’s excruciating because the first cut is four hours, and the movie is not working, at all. You start a month backwards of a normal movie, just because you have so much footage and so many different directions you could go, with each scene. The worst part of the process for me, by far, is the first month and a half to two months of editing, every time. It’s like wrangling a wild animal to the ground. It doesn’t work until it works. That’s the crazy part. If you have a perfect script, and you know exactly where the actor’s gonna stand, and no one’s talking on top of each other, and it’s clinical execution style of filmmaking, you’re boxed into making a scene a certain way. But the way we do it, there are just so many options that it’s like a puzzle. You have to just keep trying different pieces until they fit.
Endings, Beginnings is available on digital and on-demand on May 1st.
