Sorry, Baby: How Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, and Lucas Hedges Created 2025's Best Movie
Forgive me for what is about to be a bit of a sentimental beginning to this story. As a person who covers movies for a living, I've often heard stories of critics or editors going to film festivals and seeing the start of a legendary career. People speak with reverence about seeing Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992, for example, or Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides at Cannes in 1999. Those stories are always accompanied with a sense of wonder, like they can't believe they were lucky enough to be in that place at that time to witness that thing. I've always hoped to have a moment like that myself. And this year, with Sorry, Baby premiering at Sundance, I finally got the chance.
Eva Victor's beautiful directorial debut, which comes out in limited release today, follows Agnes, (played by Victor) a grad student who experiences something traumatic at the hands of a person they trust. The story focuses less on the traumatic event itself and on all the ways Agnes tries to cope and heal after the fact, especially as the people around them start to move on with their own lives. It blends a sharp poignancy about grief with moments of humor and light, relying on the comedic sense Victor used in the front-facing videos they became known for. Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice, Mickey 17) plays Lydie, Agnes's best friend and anchor, and Lucas Hedges (Ladybird, Manchester by the Sea) plays Gavin, Agnes's neighbor. They both try to keep Agnes grounded as she moves through her own healing.
The movie earned glowing reviews out of Sundance and is produced by Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of Moonlight. Cosmopolitan sat down with the movie's three leads to talk through making the movie in less than four weeks, how Victor got both Ackie and Hedges to hop on board, and why the friendship at the center is the real romance.
Eva Victor: It did influence the setting of the film. I felt very inspired by it, and I felt that it was both upsettingly cold and dreary and lonely, and also at the same time very romantic. I loved that. It's a very personal story, but I found a lot of joy in creating parts of it. Maine was a huge part of the creation of the story.
I grew up in San Francisco and there's no seasons. Seasons tell time in a way that feels so weird, and you feel time differently, and winter is so weird in terms of loneliness. When we finally decided to shoot near Boston, it was about finding locations that felt sort of analogous to the places I had imagined them taking place in Maine.
EV: The whole shoot was supposed to have snow, and we scheduled it at that exact time to try to capture snow, and it snowed the weekend before, and then the last shot of the film, there was a little snow coming down. We couldn't even use that because it didn't match. Then I found out that happened to Certain Women, Kelly Reichardt's movie, and I was like, okay, so it's a good thing.
Eva: Always non-linear. It was always starting with the friendship weekend away, the joy of that. You have to fall in love with them in order to later care. In the edit, we experimented with many versions of how that beginning moved. And our final realization is that if you don't have this moment where Naomi does this thing where she's like, you're fucking your neighbor, Gavin, waving her arms around, the film doesn't work. I want to start the film with the joy and the love, because then there's something you lose. And I also wanted to give Agnes this fighting chance of being a whole person. As a society, we often flatten people who've been through that sort of trauma.
Naomi Ackie: It's what I love about filmmaking. Every film feels like a student film. Every single one.
Lucas Hedges: Even Mickey 17?
Naomi: To an extent, yeah. You're always conscious of time, and you're always running around. It's like a house. No matter how big it is, you'll always feel it.
Eva: No matter the budget, time is time.
Lucas: Every human is mortal and every film is mortal. There's no amount of money you can do to make something immortal.
Eva: And sometimes time is a constraint that's beautiful.
Naomi: It's like when you watch a toddler and they start making their first words. You're actually watching someone build the language for the first time. That's really, really cool. And usually that language evolves over time. With Eva, with Zoë, the film you make is who you are. And then if you're a part of that first creation of that first language, then you have the privilege of getting to watch how that evolves over time. When I'm going to watch Eva's next movie, I can see how they stretched.
Naomi: Yeah, I did actually. It was even in feedback that we got about their friendship, this reminds me of me and my best friend. It also made my job very easy, to enact that idea of a really strong bond and a friendship. Friendships are romantic. They're the loves of your life. And you get to choose it.
Eva: When I was looking for this partner on the film, I would always say, Agnes is the moon and Lydie is the sun.
Naomi: And I'm a Leo, so that makes sense.
Eva: Then I met Naomi, and she was so awesome. And then we read together. I fell in love with her, honestly, and it really elevated the film. The film doesn't work if this friendship doesn't work. And it was this huge exhale from everyone, we found this person who makes the film. I feel like God touched me in sending me Naomi.
Naomi: Oh, don't you dare! That's very nice.
Eva: It was just right. That she wanted to do the movie is crazy. I'm still not over that she wanted to do it.
Lucas: The letter mattered more after I read the script, because the letter takes on the context of the script. I read the letter, and then I read the script, and then I was like, Oh, I can't wait to read the letter again, because now I know who this person is. I got to read something and fall in love with the story, and then immediately connect with it as Lucas. It was a cherry on the top. Immediately I wrote my response, but it was 11 p.m. so I couldn't send it until I got up. I got up early the next day to reach out to my manager. And I sleep in, so... I woke the fuck up.
Lucas: I pictured him being an opera singer. The film is operatic almost, in terms of the emotions. Even the sets, it feels like somebody could just start singing. He also felt big, in a way that was full and yet also inherently silly. And there's something about an opera singer that's inherently kind of laughable. What they do is so earnest. They're stuck in a gesture so large that you can't help feeling bad for them.
Eva: The experience Agnes is having is the classic thing of being left behind. Lydie shows up with their partner, who is a funhouse mirror, evolved version of Agnes. Agnes has been the baby, and Agnes is like, I'm not the baby anymore. And so the baby takes on this pain of, I'm not gonna get all the love anymore, which is inherently selfish. In moments after trauma, the way to survive is to just think about yourself, which is selfish to people around you, but it's also necessary for survival.
Though Lydie has done all this generous loving and care, the end of the film is the first time Agnes is able to see outside herself and see Lydie's need, which is wanting to go on a walk with her partner. Agnes watching the baby for 20 minutes is obviously a super small thing that doesn't balance anything out, but is a moment of, this isn't about me. And I think for Agnes, that's huge. And then Agnes seeing the baby, that's the moment when Agnes is like, I'm going to be able to give you what Lydie gave to me. It's really small, and it's not at all balanced. But I think that is the small change of going from FOMO to, I am of use, just not how I used to be.
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Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
In new indie flick ‘Ponyboi,' River Gallo sheds light on an intersex experience
'How the f— does this baby know if she loves her father?' asked River Gallo one day at Walmart, maybe 10 years ago, when they saw an infant sucking on a pacifier emblazoned with the words 'I love my daddy.' 'That started the ball rolling about my own issues with my father and with this compulsory love that we have with our families, specifically with our parents, specifically in this instance with my father, her father, our fathers, and with masculinity in general,' says a radiant Gallo during a recent video interview. The spontaneous moment of introspection planted the seed for what became a 10-minute performance piece while studying acting at NYU — then their USC thesis-turned-short film 'Ponyboi,' released in 2017, which Gallo wrote, starred in, and co-directed with Sadé Clacken Joseph. That project ultimately evolved into 'Ponyboi' the feature, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024, became the first film produced under Fox Entertainment Studios' indie label, Tideline, and was released June 27 in theaters across the United States. A consummate multihyphenate, Gallo again wrote the screenplay, served as producer and stars as the titular character: an intersex, Latine sex worker in New Jersey who is desperate to escape their pimp (played by Dylan O'Brien) and the world of crime and violence that surrounds them. Flashbacks to Ponyboi's childhood, made difficult due to the medical procedures forced on them and the temperament of their classically macho Latino father, fill in the viewer on the protagonist's past. Meanwhile, dreamy sequences with a handsome, cowboy hat-wearing stranger named Bruce (Murray Bartlett), an idealized embodiment of a positive masculinity, construct a rich world both visually and thematically in Ponyboi's present. '[At] face value, 'Ponyboi' can seem like, 'Oh, it's just a person-on-the-run kind of movie,' but upon a closer look, it's about someone finding freedom in the acceptance of their past and the possibility that, through transcending their own beliefs about themselves, perhaps their future could be a little brighter,' Gallo explains. Gallo is the child of Salvadoran immigrants who escaped their country's civil war in 1980 and lived undocumented in the U.S. Gallo grew up in New Jersey and showed interest in acting from an early age. It was a strict teacher's unexpected encouragement, after Gallo appeared in a musical during their sophomore year of high school, that convinced them to pursue a life in art. 'My biology teacher, Mrs. Lagatol, came to see my musical, and the next day I was waiting for her to say something to me, and she didn't say anything,' Gallo recalls. 'Then she gave me back a test, and on the test was a little Post-it that said: 'If you had been the only one on stage, it would've been worth the price of admission. Bravo.'' Gallo still keeps that Post-it note framed. Though their parents were supportive, Gallo admits feeling frustration in recent years that their family has not fully understood the magnitude of what they've accomplished as a marginalized person in entertainment: an intersex individual and a first-generation Latine. 'Not to toot my own horn, but for a graduate of any film program, getting your first feature to Sundance is the biggest deal in the world,' says Gallo. 'There hasn't been a person like me to do what I'm doing. There's no precedent or pioneer in my specific identities.' This desire for a more informed validation is even stronger in relation to their father. 'I don't think my dad has seen any of my films. My mom has; she was at the premiere at Sundance, which was really beautiful, and so was my sister,' Gallo says. 'But I wouldn't be surprised if my dad never sees my movies. That's hard, but he's supportive in other ways.' Halfway through our conversation, Gallo realizes they are wearing a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. That's no coincidence, since 'The Boss,' a fellow New Jerseyan, influenced multiple aspects of 'Ponyboi.' As they wrote the screenplay for the short version, Gallo was also reading Springsteen's autobiography, 'Born to Run,' and that seeped into their work. 'I remember taking a trip to the Jersey Shore that summer and then looking up at the Stone Pony, the venue where [Springsteen] had his first big performance, and just being like, 'Stone pony, stone pony, pony, pony, pony boy, ponyboi. That's a good name.' And then that was just what I decided to name the character' For Gallo, the emblematic American singer-songwriter represents 'the idea of being working class,' which Gallo thinks 'transcends political ideology.' As a child of immigrants, Springsteen's work speaks to Gallo profoundly. 'My dad, who is more dark-skinned than me, was an electrician, and he was a union guy who experienced all this racism in New York unions,' Gallo says. 'There's so much of what I see in Bruce Springsteen in my father and also just in how Bruce Springsteen describes his relationship with his dad, who was also a man who couldn't express his emotions.' For the feature, Gallo enlisted Esteban Arango, a Colombian-born, L.A.-based filmmaker whose debut feature, 'Blast Beat,' premiered at Sundance in 2020. But while Gallo believes Arango understood the nuances of the narrative, it admittedly pained them to relinquish the director's chair. But it was a necessary sacrifice in order to focus on the performance and move the project along. 'It was difficult because I went to school for directing,' Gallo explains. 'But I just don't think the movie would've happened on this timeline if I had wanted to direct it. It would've taken much longer, and we needed the film at this moment in time.' Arango brought his own 'abrasive' edge to the narrative. 'I felt the story needed more darkness,' the director explains via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. 'The hypermasculine world of New Jersey is constantly trying to oppress and reject Ponyboi, because they have a much softer, feminine energy they want to project.' The contrast between the tenderness of Ponyboi's interiority and the harshness of their reality is what Arango focused on. Though Arango hesitated to take on the film, given that he is not queer, his personal history as an immigrant functioned as an entry point into this tale of shifting, complex identities. Still, throughout the entire process, Arango was clear that, first and foremost, 'Ponyboi' was a story centering intersex people — and all those who don't fit into the rigid gender binary. 'Their plight should be our plight, because they are at the forefront of what it means to be free,' he says. 'When somebody attacks them or doesn't understand why they present themselves as they are, it's really an attack on all of us, and it's a reflection of our misunderstanding of ourselves.' Back in 2023, Gallo was one of three subjects in Julie Cohen's incisive documentary 'Every Body,' about the intersex experience, including the ways the medical industry performs unnecessary procedures in order to 'normalize' intersex people. Gallo confesses that for a long time they thought being intersex was something they would never feel comfortable talking about — something they even would take 'to the grave,' as they put it. 'There's no other way that I can explain the fact that now I've made so much work reflecting on my identity other than it being an act of God,' Gallo says. 'Because I just had the feeling that the world needed it now, and also that I needed it now. I'm glad that 'Ponyboi' taught me about the agency that I have over my art and myself and my life.' Anti-trans legislation, Gallo explains, includes loopholes enabling doctors to 'normalize' intersex bodies and continue the medically unnecessary, and at times nonconsensual surgeries on intersex youth. 'The intersex narrative in [trans legislation] is invisible and not spoken about enough,' they say. 'These are also anti-intersex bills.' To fully understand Gallo as a person and an artist, one should watch both 'Every Body' and 'Ponyboi.' The doc shows the bones of what made Gallo who they are without symbols, just the raw facts of how their intersex identity shaped them. 'Ponyboi,' on the other hand, exposes their interior life with the poetry that the cinematic medium allows for. However, what happens with 'Ponyboi' now isn't as important to Gallo as the fact that the movie exists as a testament of their totality as a creative force. 'Love my movie, hate my movie, I don't care, because my movie healed something deep inside of me that I was waiting a lifetime to be healed from,' Gallo states fervently. 'Intersex people are still invisible in this culture, but I can at least say that I don't feel invisible to myself anymore. And it was all worth it for that.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Eva Victor's Sundance Darling ‘Sorry, Baby' Debuts In Limited Release
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Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
A ‘Tombstone' tribute to Val Kilmer, plus the week's best movies in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. Opening this weekend and winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, 'Sorry, Baby' is the feature film debut for writer, director and actor Eva Victor. Personally, it's among my favorite films of the year for its complex mix of comedy and drama, offbeat whimsy and deep vulnerability. (I'd previously called it 'fresh, inventive and invigorating' and that still feels right to me.) The story tells some five years in the life of Agnes (Victor), a teacher at a small East Coast college attempting to move forward following a traumatic event. In her review for the paper, Katie Walsh called the film 'a movie that lingers,' attributing that to 'the profound and nuanced honesty Victor extracts from each moment.' I spoke to Victor about the process of making the film. The story is rooted in Victor's own experiences, so every stage, from writing to production to bringing it to audiences, has had its own nuances and contours. 'It's a very personal film for a lot of people and there's a sadness to that because it's a community of people who have experienced things that they shouldn't have had to,' says Victor. 'It's life-affirming for me to know that I wrote the film in a leap-of-faith way to be like: 'Is anyone else feeling like this?' And it's nice to know that there are people who are understanding what that is.' On Saturday, the Academy Museum will screen the world premiere of a 4K restoration of 1993's 'Tombstone' as a tribute to actor Val Kilmer. Directed by George P. Cosmatos, the film tells the legendary story of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, which has become one of the foundational myths of the American western. Kilmer stars as Doc Holliday, who comes to the aid of his friend, retired lawman Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell). The cast also includes Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley and Dana Delany. The role was a special one for Kilmer, who titled his memoir 'I'm Your Huckleberry' after a line in the movie. In his original review of the film, Peter Rainer declared the film the latest of the then-in-vogue 'designer Westerns' and highlighted Kilmer's turn, writing, 'Val Kilmer's Holliday is classic camp performance, although it may not have started out that way. His Southern drawl sounds like a languorous cross between early Brando and Mr. Blackwell. Stricken with tuberculosis, his eyes red-rimmed, Doc coughs delicately and matches Ringo line for line in Latin. He also shoots straighter than anyone else in the movie — his powers of recuperation make Rasputin seem like a pushover.' The film will also be playing on July 26 at Vidiots. Winner of three prizes at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, 'Familiar Touch' is the narrative feature debut of writer-director Sarah Friedland. The sensitive and compassionate story follows Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant), an 80-something retired cook, as she settles into an assisted-living facility while grappling with memory loss. Friedland and Chalfant will be at select showings throughout the weekend for Q&As. In his review of the movie, Robert Abele wrote, 'The mystery of Ruth's mindfulness — which ebbs and flows — is at the core of Chalfant's brilliant, award-worthy performance. Hers is a virtuosity that doesn't ask for pity or applause or even link arms with the stricken-but-defiant disease-playing headliners who have gone before her. Chalfant's Ruth is merely, momentously human: an older woman in need, but no less expressive of life's fullness because of it.' Esther Zuckerman spoke to Friedland about shooting the film at Pasadena's Villa Gardens retirement community in collaboration with staff and residents. The production held a five-week filmmaking workshop, involving the residents as background actors and production assistants. 'It came a lot from the anti-ageist ideas of the project,' Friedland says. 'If we're going to make this film the character study of an older woman that sees older adults as valuable and talented and capacious, let's engage their capaciousness and their creativity on all sides of production.' Tsui Hark's 'Shanghai Blues' in 4K Though he is best known to American audiences for his action movies, Hong Kong director Tsui Hark has been versatile in many other genres. Now getting a new 4K restoration from the original negative for its 40th anniversary is Tsui's 1984 screwball romantic comedy 'Shanghai Blues.' Opening in 1937 Shanghai, the story concerns an aspiring musician, Do-Re-Mi (Kenny Bee), and a woman, Shu-Shu (Sylvia Chang), who, after a chance encounter, vow to meet again in the same spot after the war. Leaping forward to peacetime a decade later, the two find themselves living in the same building without realizing it, as he becomes involved with her roommate (Sally Yeh). The film will be playing at the American Cinematheque at the Los Feliz 3 on Fri., Tues. and Sat., July 5. It will also play multiple Laemmle locations on Weds. And expect more on Hong Kong cinema later this summer when Beyond Fest launches a series of new restorations of such classics as 'Hard Boiled,' 'The Killer' and Hark's 1986 'Peking Opera Blues.' 'Much Ado About Nothing' On Monday, Vidiots will screen Kenneth Branagh's 1993 adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing.' About a bunch of incredibly good-looking people having a great time in the Italian countryside, the film stars Branagh, Emma Thompson, Kate Beckinsale, Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard, Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington. Branagh and Thompson were married in real life at the time, and in his original review of the film, Kenneth Turan wrote, 'Actors as well as athletes have a prime of life, a time when everything they touch seems a miracle. And the crowning pleasure of watching Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in this rollicking version of 'Much Ado About Nothing' is the way it allows us to share in that state of special grace, to watch the English-speaking world's reigning acting couple perform at the top of their game. … Seeing them beautifully play off each other is an enormous pleasure for lovers of the romance of language as well as fanciers of romantic love.' 'The Spirit of '76' live commentary On Thursday, July 3, as part of the 7th House screening series at the Philosophical Research Society, there will be a screening of 1990's 'The Spirit of '76' featuring a live commentary by stars Jeff and Steven McDonald of the band Redd Kross. The film is something of a singular object: a loving satire of the 1970s made from the perspective of the burgeoning '90s, written and directed by Lucas Reiner, with a co-story credit to Roman Coppola, costumes designed by Sofia Coppola and a cast that includes David Cassidy, Leif Garrett, Olivia d'Abo, Don Novello, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner and Devo. From the extremely drab future of 2176, three adventurers are sent back in time to July 4, 1776 but mistakenly land in the year 1976. They meet two teenagers (the McDonald brothers) who help them navigate the present and find their way back to their own time. In his original review of the film, Kevin Thomas did not catch the vibes, as he wrote, 'Movies do not get more inane than 'The Spirit of '76' … You have to wonder how this film ever got made, let alone released.' Jerry Bruckheimer is still revved up Among the big releases this weekend is Joseph Kosinski's racing drama 'F1,' starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris. The film reunited Kosinski with screenwriter Ehren Kruger and producer Jerry Bruckheimer following their huge success with 'Top Gun: Maverick.' Josh Rottenberg spoke to the 81-year-old Bruckheimer about his legendary career working on movies such as 'Beverly Hills Cop,' 'Bad Boys,' 'Armageddon' and countless more, making sleek commercial pictures that have been defining the Hollywood blockbuster for decades. 'It's changed a lot,' Bruckheimer says of the movie business. 'Streaming hit a lot of places hard. They spent too much money and now they've got problems with that. Some of the studios aren't healthy. But the business, if you do it right, is healthy.' Bruckheimer is not one of the doomsayers foretelling the end of movies. 'I've been doing this over 50 years and that doom has been there every time a new technology shows up,' he says. 'And yet, look at what's happened. Look at 'Minecraft.' Look at 'Sinners.' Look at 'Lilo & Stitch.' If you do it right, people show up.'
