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Winnipeg Free Press
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
How ‘Sorry, Baby' writer-producer-star Eva Victor made the year's most exciting debut
The Oscar-winning producer of 'Moonlight' really wanted to get in touch with Eva Victor. Adele Romanski and her producing partner Mark Ceryak were 'kind of obsessed' with the short, comedic videos Victor was putting out on various social media platforms. Titles of some that still exist online include 'when I definitely did not murder my husband' and a series called 'Eva vs. Anxiety.' Romanski and Ceryak started bugging their Pastel productions partner Barry Jenkins, certainly the most well-known name of the bunch, to make the first move and send Victor a direct message. But they had to ask themselves a big question first: Would that be weird? 'We had to negotiate whether or not that was appropriate for Barry, a married man, to send Eva a DM,' Romanski said. 'We were like 'yessss, do it!'' What started as a curiosity about a distinct voice, someone whose observations about the world and society were hilarious, sharp and undeniable, just a few years later would become one of the most exciting debuts in recent memory. 'Sorry, Baby,' which Victor wrote, directed and stars in, is a gentle film about trauma. It's also funny and strange and fresh, a wholly original statement from an artist with a vision. And there's a cat too. The film opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles and expands nationwide in the coming weeks. A boost from Barry Jenkins It's a wild turn of events for Victor, who goes by they/she pronouns and who never dared to dream that they could possibly direct. Victor grew up in San Francisco in a family that cherished and pursued artistic endeavors, even if it wasn't their primary careers. At Northwestern University, Victor focused on playwriting — it was something they could have control over while also pursuing acting. After college it was improv, writing for the satirical website Reductress ('Woman Seduced by Bangs Despite Knowing They're Bad for Her,' 'How to Cut Out All the People who are Not Obsessed with Your Dog'), some acting gigs, like a recurring role on the Showtime series 'Billions,' and social media, where their tweets and videos often went viral. But there was an itch to work on something longer form, something beyond that immediate gratification of virality. Jenkins' message came at the right time. Then at Victor's first meeting at Pastel productions, he planted a seed of an idea: Maybe Victor was already a director. 'He said something that very profoundly impacted me: That the comedy videos I was doing were me directing without me realizing it,' Victor said. 'It was just a different scale. That kind of stuck with me.' 'Sorry, Baby' was born out of a personal story that Victor had wanted to write about for a while. After the general meeting, they had a renewed sense of purpose and went away one snowy winter to a cabin in Maine to write, with their cat, movies and books as companions. The screenplay, in which a New England graduate student named Agnes is assaulted by her thesis adviser, poured out of them. 'I wanted to make a film that was about feeling stuck when everyone around you keeps moving that didn't center any violence. The goal was to have the film and its structure support the time afterwards, not the actual experience,' Victor said. 'I really think the thing it's about is trying to heal and the slow pace at which healing comes and how it's really not linear and how there are joys to be found in the everyday and especially in very affirming friendships and sometimes, like, a sandwich depending on the day.' Somewhere along the way Victor started to also believe that they were the best person for the job. They were the only person standing in their way. 'The less focus there was on me as the creator of it, and the more focus there was on how to tell the story as effectively as possible, the more comfortable I became,' Victor said. 'I understood exactly what I wanted it to look and feel like.' Learning to direct But there was a lot to learn. Before the shoot, Victor also asked Jane Schoenbrun, who they'd met once for pie, if they could come to the 'I Saw the TV Glow' set to just watch. Schoenbrun said yes. 'It was a completely wonderful, transforming experience of friendship and learning,' Victor said. 'Jane is so confident about what they want in their films and it was a real honor to watch them so many decisions and stay so calm.' Empowered by what they'd seen, Victor assembled a 'dream team' of experts, like cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry who also teaches at NYU and an editor, Alex O'Flinn, who teaches at UCLA. Victor rounded out the cast with Lucas Hedges, as a kind neighbor, 'Billions' alum Louis Cancelmi, as the thesis adviser, and Naomi Ackie as her best friend Lydie – the first person she talks to after the incident, the one who accompanies her to the hospital, and the one whose life doesn't stop. 'We built the schedule in a way that allowed us to have all our friendship fun scenes at first,' Victor said. 'We kind of got to go through the experience of building a friendship in real time.' Ackie immediately connected to the script and thought whoever wrote it, 'must be the coolest.' The reality of Victor, she said, did not disappoint. 'They don't realize how magnetic their openness is,' Ackie said. 'There's something extremely honest about them and curious and playful.' A Sundance sensation Romanski and everyone at Pastel productions knew they had something special, a gem even. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. 'They're chasing something tonally that I've never seen anybody go after before,' Romanski said. 'It's the blend of both a very, very specific, personal comedic tone and also a true sense of artistry.' But nothing's ever guaranteed until you put it in front of a public audience, which they did earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival where it quickly became a breakout sensation, with standing ovations and the screenwriting award, whose past winners include Lisa Cholodenko, Kenneth Lonergan, Christopher Nolan and Debra Granik. 'You just don't know. Then on the other side, you know,' Romanski said. 'We felt it with 'Aftersun.' We felt it with 'Moonlight.' And we definitely felt it with 'Sorry, Baby.'' And like 'Aftersun' and 'Moonlight' before it, 'Sorry, Baby' also found a home with A24, which promised a theatrical release. Among the giants of the summer movie calendar, in which everything is big, bigger, biggest, 'Sorry, Baby' is the delicate discovery. 'I wanted it to exist in this space between reality and escape. I wanted it to be this immersive thing,' Victor said. 'It's a sensitive film. I hope it finds people when they need it. That's my biggest wish.'
San Francisco Chronicle
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
How ‘Sorry, Baby' writer-producer-star Eva Victor made the year's most exciting debut
The Oscar-winning producer of 'Moonlight' really wanted to get in touch with Eva Victor. Adele Romanski and her producing partner Mark Ceryak were 'kind of obsessed' with the short, comedic videos Victor was putting out on various social media platforms. Titles of some that still exist online include 'when I definitely did not murder my husband' and a series called 'Eva vs. Anxiety.' Romanski and Ceryak started bugging their Pastel productions partner Barry Jenkins, certainly the most well-known name of the bunch, to make the first move and send Victor a direct message. But they had to ask themselves a big question first: Would that be weird? 'We had to negotiate whether or not that was appropriate for Barry, a married man, to send Eva a DM,' Romanski said. 'We were like 'yessss, do it!'' What started as a curiosity about a distinct voice, someone whose observations about the world and society were hilarious, sharp and undeniable, just a few years later would become one of the most exciting debuts in recent memory. 'Sorry, Baby,' which Victor wrote, directed and stars in, is a gentle film about trauma. It's also funny and strange and fresh, a wholly original statement from an artist with a vision. And there's a cat too. The film opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles and expands nationwide in the coming weeks. A boost from Barry Jenkins It's a wild turn of events for Victor, who goes by they/she pronouns and who never dared to dream that they could possibly direct. Victor grew up in San Francisco in a family that cherished and pursued artistic endeavors, even if it wasn't their primary careers. At Northwestern University, Victor focused on playwriting — it was something they could have control over while also pursuing acting. After college it was improv, writing for the satirical website Reductress ('Woman Seduced by Bangs Despite Knowing They're Bad for Her,' 'How to Cut Out All the People who are Not Obsessed with Your Dog'), some acting gigs, like a recurring role on the Showtime series 'Billions,' and social media, where their tweets and videos often went viral. But there was an itch to work on something longer form, something beyond that immediate gratification of virality. Jenkins' message came at the right time. Then at Victor's first meeting at Pastel productions, he planted a seed of an idea: Maybe Victor was already a director. 'He said something that very profoundly impacted me: That the comedy videos I was doing were me directing without me realizing it,' Victor said. 'It was just a different scale. That kind of stuck with me.' 'Sorry, Baby' was born out of a personal story that Victor had wanted to write about for a while. After the general meeting, they had a renewed sense of purpose and went away one snowy winter to a cabin in Maine to write, with their cat, movies and books as companions. The screenplay, in which a New England graduate student named Agnes is assaulted by her thesis adviser, poured out of them. 'I wanted to make a film that was about feeling stuck when everyone around you keeps moving that didn't center any violence. The goal was to have the film and its structure support the time afterwards, not the actual experience,' Victor said. 'I really think the thing it's about is trying to heal and the slow pace at which healing comes and how it's really not linear and how there are joys to be found in the everyday and especially in very affirming friendships and sometimes, like, a sandwich depending on the day.' Somewhere along the way Victor started to also believe that they were the best person for the job. They were the only person standing in their way. 'The less focus there was on me as the creator of it, and the more focus there was on how to tell the story as effectively as possible, the more comfortable I became,' Victor said. 'I understood exactly what I wanted it to look and feel like.' Learning to direct But there was a lot to learn. Before the shoot, Victor also asked Jane Schoenbrun, who they'd met once for pie, if they could come to the 'I Saw the TV Glow' set to just watch. Schoenbrun said yes. 'It was a completely wonderful, transforming experience of friendship and learning,' Victor said. 'Jane is so confident about what they want in their films and it was a real honor to watch them so many decisions and stay so calm.' Empowered by what they'd seen, Victor assembled a 'dream team' of experts, like cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry who also teaches at NYU and an editor, Alex O'Flinn, who teaches at UCLA. Victor rounded out the cast with Lucas Hedges, as a kind neighbor, 'Billions' alum Louis Cancelmi, as the thesis adviser, and Naomi Ackie as her best friend Lydie – the first person she talks to after the incident, the one who accompanies her to the hospital, and the one whose life doesn't stop. 'We built the schedule in a way that allowed us to have all our friendship fun scenes at first,' Victor said. 'We kind of got to go through the experience of building a friendship in real time.' Ackie immediately connected to the script and thought whoever wrote it, 'must be the coolest.' The reality of Victor, she said, did not disappoint. 'They don't realize how magnetic their openness is,' Ackie said. 'There's something extremely honest about them and curious and playful.' A Sundance sensation Romanski and everyone at Pastel productions knew they had something special, a gem even. 'They're chasing something tonally that I've never seen anybody go after before,' Romanski said. 'It's the blend of both a very, very specific, personal comedic tone and also a true sense of artistry.' But nothing's ever guaranteed until you put it in front of a public audience, which they did earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival where it quickly became a breakout sensation, with standing ovations and the screenwriting award, whose past winners include Lisa Cholodenko, Kenneth Lonergan, Christopher Nolan and Debra Granik. 'You just don't know. Then on the other side, you know,' Romanski said. 'We felt it with 'Aftersun.' We felt it with 'Moonlight.' And we definitely felt it with 'Sorry, Baby.'' And like 'Aftersun' and 'Moonlight' before it, 'Sorry, Baby' also found a home with A24, which promised a theatrical release. Among the giants of the summer movie calendar, in which everything is big, bigger, biggest, 'Sorry, Baby' is the delicate discovery. 'I wanted it to exist in this space between reality and escape. I wanted it to be this immersive thing,' Victor said. 'It's a sensitive film. I hope it finds people when they need it. That's my biggest wish.'
Time Magazine
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Eva Victor on Finding a New Vocabulary for Trauma in 'Sorry, Baby'
Pop culture has come a long way from 1980s cinema's deployment of sexual assault as a gag (a la John Hughes' Sixteen Candles). But the grammar movies and television use to dramatize such crimes remains by and large unsophisticated. Even #MeToo thrillers and biopics, the projects that on paper appear most likely to confront the subject with the deftest hand, have been known to whiff on their promise; they either treat the abuse as the character, as in Blonde, or the character as a cypher, as in Promising Young Woman, and as such, fail to fulfill their promise as cultural commentary. Maybe these projects can be forgiven for the letdown; assault isn't easy to talk about, to reenact on set, or to watch on screen. It might just take another perspective on the subject—say, that of a comedian—to compel pop culture to expand its visual vocabulary for telling stories about it. Enter Eva Victor, whose feature debut, Sorry, Baby, premiered at Sundance earlier this year to hosannas (including a screenwriting prize) and sold to A24 for a reported $8 million at a festival where buyers weren't shelling out for much. Chief among its praises was that the movie depicts the utterly life-change effect of sexual violence on a victim while simultaneously depicting how the world continues to turn, inexorably, after they've been attacked. 'Something bad happened to Agnes,' reads the official synopsis. 'But life goes on - for everyone around her, at least.' Victor's background as a writer for sites like Reductress, and perhaps especially their Twitter video sketches (where they frantically rant about, for instance, the bright side of the USPS getting dismantled), inform the tone of Sorry, Baby. The humor comes easily but not at the expense of the somber reality it attempts to capture. Apart from writing and directing, Victor plays the lead, Agnes, a grad student in a small, rural town trudging through her days, coming to terms with an assault she endured by her advisor and professor, Preston (Louis Cancelmi); the film takes a chronologically disordered structure, beginning a year after the attack, then flashing back to that time in her life, and to that moment, orchestrated with a chilling sense of distance—a contrast to bubblier moments between Agnes and her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who has since moved to New York City, and on with her life. Sorry, Baby doesn't make light of what happens to Agnes. Rather it finds lightness in spite of it. Here, humor—sardonic, wry, and silly—is a balm. Since its Sundance debut, the film has played many festivals, from Cannes to Independent Film Festival Boston, which picked Sorry, Baby as the capstone for this year's edition of the fest. (The film's production took place 30 miles north of the city, in the coastal town of Ipswich, though Victor's buzz was just as much the reason for attending the fest's closing night as their choice in shooting locations.) While in town for the April festival, Victor sat down to talk about how Sorry, Baby leans on comedy to express the experience of living post-assault. Excerpts of that conversation are below, ahead of the movie's June 27 theatrical release. Victor: Totally. It's interesting, because I think of Agnes as very isolated, which is in some ways the opposite of privacy; isolation is being alone, not by choice, but because you're running from something, like your fear that people will devastate you, and so you make yourself lonely for that reason. Whereas privacy is you saying, 'I've chosen to give myself this time as an act of care for myself.' I do think that as an artist, I crave privacy because that is when you get to really check in with yourself. It's really hard to check in with yourself when you're surrounded by voices, and people. There are conscious things and subconscious things in the film that people are telling me about that are interesting, but I think Agnes is maybe on the dark side of that coin. There's very little people are pointing out in terms of threads in the film that I didn't plan. Because you spend so much time working on every element of the film, there's nothing you see on screen that's not been thought out, or tried a different way; everything you see is a choice. I can explain to you why every single thing exists in the film as it does. The thing I find really exciting is when people notice threads in the film that were more intense in the script, but had to get cut down for different reasons. I love a watcher who sees those little things, and pulls out little secrets that are in the film–but I can't tell you [what they are] because someone will have to watch it to see them. But I do like when people watch with a curious eye about why certain things are happening at certain points in the film; there are little secrets along the way. So much of the joy of making a film is you do your part in creating the film as well as you can to be as effective as possible for you, and then people come to it and find what they need to find in it. That's the joy of being a moviegoer: you get to take from a film what you want. It exists to be something for different people, and to exist in these really specific ways based on what you're coming in with. In terms of humor, it's a really powerful coping mechanism, and it gets you through really dark days. Things are so bizarre and absurd sometimes that laughing is the only way through, and I do think a lot of the funny stuff happens when Agnes and Lydie are able to be witnesses together. Things are a little less funny when Lydie's not there, but when Lydie's there, they're this united front; they're kind of like warriors in this thing together, in this weird world. I think the reason the doctor scene, without giving too much away, lands is because both Agnes and Lydie are contending with how absurd the moment is, but they have each other. On some level, if Lydie's there, you know that Agnes will be okay. Yeah. And, when Agnes is alone, these two women are creating a real gaslighting energy, and she has no one to convene with and say, 'That was weird, right?' She's completely alone, and these women are so unified. Building the tone after the middle of the film was about figuring out how humor moves through that. There's the doctor scene, which does have some humor to it; then the HR scene, which is her by herself, gets a lot darker. And then she runs into Gavin, played by Lucas Hedges, and then there's comedy in that scene because of the absurdity of Agnes coming in really hot and Gavin being this whimsical neighbor. So, it's about finding ways for the humor to go through these waxing and waning moments in the film, and taking the audience along for that journey. Watching this made me think about the way media sensationalizes trauma. [The film] is holistic in the sense that Agnes' life is shaped by what happens to her, but it isn't the entire movie; we aren't forcibly living in that sensation the entire time. I wonder if you feel that we need to develop our language to talk about that theme. Totally. I only know how to talk about my experience with this film, but it's really interesting; the film does a deliberate job at giving you the language it wants to use. The film calls it the 'bad thing,' and the only person who says the word 'rape' is the doctor. So the film is carefully moving through the language of that topic, and it's interesting reading the way people write about the film so far, because we deliberately have a log line that's meant to be more holistic. I don't want anyone to feel surprised in a scary way seeing the film, but it's meant to hold one's hand while watching it, and it's interesting having writers use the word 'rape' or use the phrase 'sexual assault,' which makes sense; I understand. But it's a really interesting experience, since the film tries to create its own language for this topic. I don't know if our world has all the words it needs to talk about this, and I think our world really has trouble with nuance. It's good that there's more work about this, because every experience of sexual trauma is different, and everyone deserves a voice in speaking about their own experience; I hope that we get to a place where we understand how to talk about it without it being crass, or maybe not crass, but violent. I don't know. I'm figuring it out. I definitely know how I want to talk about it, and everything I want to say is in the film. So watch the film and you can figure out what I think. You mention nuance; that's something hard to come by. I feel like empathy is key. I wish that whenever I've had panic attacks while driving, John Carroll Lynch would've shown up and handed me a sandwich. Me too. That's why I made that happen for myself. Well, you have that divine power. You can make that happen for yourself. Yeah. He's wonderful. He is. Now at the risk of stating the obvious, that feels important; that scene contrasts with the scene with the doctor, the scene with HR, where there's zero empathy whatsoever. Yes, the doctor calls 'the bad thing' what it is; but he should care about how that makes others feel. Did that play into your calculus? 'How is this word going to make the people I'm showing the movie to feel?' Yeah, definitely. I made the film for the person I was that needed this film, so making sure nothing felt what would've been incredibly triggering to me, to the point where I couldn't watch it, felt important. In terms of empathy, it's an interesting question; looking at the doctor, and looking at the HR women, they're people doing what their job told them to do. These are the institutions that make it hard for people to feel safe after something horrible happens, and they are the facilitators of that. But they're not evil in their core; they're trying to do their jobs. It's just that they don't understand that their job is doing something hurtful. With the professor, Preston, Louis [Cancelmi] and I spent so much time talking about the real warmth and respect he has to have for Agnes in the scenes we see him in, so that the audience doesn't see him as a bad guy until she does. We didn't want to undermine Agnes' experience of him by showing that he has these dark colors, until it's too late, which is what Agnes experiences too. Each character being as complicated as possible, in the midst of this intense story about something really scary, was a way through it for me; it's not about good and evil, it's about these people who are incredibly flawed, who are incredibly hurtful.
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
In ‘Sorry, Baby,' writer, director, and star Eva Victor sought new ways to make sense of trauma recovery
'It's a story about trying to heal, more than about healing,' says Victor, who was previously best known for acting in ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The film's deft touch (the assault is never seen) and finely tuned balance of pain and humor earned it critical acclaim: at the Sundance Film Festival, it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and won a screenwriting award; it was also nominated for three awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Advertisement When 'Sorry, Baby' opens, Agnes (Victor) is a literature professor at the school where she got her graduate degree… and where she had been assaulted by her thesis advisor. She welcomes old grad school friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who is visiting both to check up on Agnes and to share big news: she's having a baby. Advertisement When Lydie asks if it's hard still being at the school, Agnes responds, 'It's hard being anywhere.' When Lydie tells Agnes about the baby, Agnes's first reaction is to ask, 'Are you scared?' Those are telling responses, Victor says. 'There's a selfishness to trying to heal from trauma that's necessary. You have to focus on yourself, so relationships become unbalanced.' The film shifts back in time to the year of 'the bad thing' and its aftermath, working its way back forward as Agnes experiences a series of setbacks in her efforts to find level ground, before finally finding some equilibrium thanks to the support of Lydie and Gavin (Lucas Hedges), a quirky and lonely but sweet and sincere neighbor. 'Healing is super nonlinear and one thing can set you back two years,' Victor says. 'There's a jury duty scene where Agnes is forced out of her cave too soon, which makes her retreat more. I put Agnes through a lot, because that's what happens.' Before the pandemic, Victor had made their name by getting laughs, working at the feminist satire website Reductress and the Story Pirates, an arts education group that adapts children's stories into short comic sketches, and by posting comedic videos of cultural commentary that went viral. In 2020, 'with life on pause, I thought about what I want to do before I die,' they recall, while also watching dozens of 'beautiful, intense, and devastating movies' by directors like Jane Campion, Mike Leigh, and David Lynch. 'I liked how heightened but human they were, and how movies can double down on what it means to be a person.' Inspired, Victor decided to take their own trauma story 'head on.' Advertisement 'But I got to build a world around this character, so the whole story supports her journey, and her attempt at survival is the center of the story,' Victor says, adding that the perpetrator, played by Louis Cancelmi, only has a few scenes, then disappears 'so the focus was in the right spot.' They sent the screenplay to Barry Jenkins ('Moonlight'), who had followed Victor on social media. He and his team produced the movie and encouraged Victor to direct. 'That was quite meaningful, because I got to make this on my own terms,' Victor says. 'With this kind of trauma, someone decides where your body goes without your permission, so getting to say, 'My body goes here' and then having a crew of people say 'We'll light that spot, we'll support you' was great.' Victor stayed in Boston while prepping the film, which shot in and around Ipswich, piecing together different towns to make one fictional town. 'I was inspired by the cold and the gray, but also the New England small college town energy,' Victor says. 'It reminded me of Their co-stars were impressed by Victor as both a writer and director. 'This film has so much space for human beings as they are, without the extra stuff around it,' says Ackie, whose recent films like 'Blink Twice' and ' Advertisement The one stylized choice was telling the story in a non-linear way, but Ackie found 'it explains Agnes's emotional landscape and informs the viewer in a way that I didn't anticipate.' Victor says they introduced Agnes several years on so that we could see her, despite the obvious pain she's suffering, able to experience joy with Lydie. 'We flatten people who've been through this kind of trauma — we don't want to face the fact that this could happen to any of us, so we make them into tragic figures in our heads and then try to simplify people and dismiss them,' Victor says. 'I wanted audiences to meet Agnes first as a full person.' For all its pathos, Ackie says, 'Sorry, Baby' is genuinely funny. 'There are countless awkward moments everyone feels internally every single day — I feel awkward all the time, and what's funny is how actual human beings handle those moments.' The seamless shifts in tone 'made us feel like we collectively pulled off a magic trick,' adds Hedges, who plays Agnes' neighbor with a wonderful guilelessness. Watching the film and seeing how Victor directed the 'bad thing' — showing Agnes going into her professor's house then staying focused on the exterior as time passes until she finally emerges and, in a state of shock, walks to her car and drives home — he says he felt, 'I've never seen this, something where I felt so involved in something that I'm not seeing.' Victor says not showing what happened was not just about avoiding trauma porn. 'We're watching the house in the way that Agnes is experiencing the moment — this sense of doom creeps up on us — and the trauma response of freezing is a dissociative thing.' Advertisement And having a devastated Agnes tentatively recount the assault to an empathetic Lydie — the first scene Victor wrote — makes audiences take her at her word. 'The reason the rest of the film isn't a tragedy is because of Lydie's support and love and the way she listens to Agnes.' While they were telling this extremely personal story, Victor didn't wrap their head around the idea that people would eventually see the film. 'I don't think I totally understood how exposed I'd be,' they say. But Victor has no regrets. 'It was a powerful and meta way to make decisions for myself and for my body and to have people support that and now to celebrate it is really meaningful.'
