How India Donaldson Knew the Key Scene In 'Good One' Worked
Donaldson talks about being inspired by Kelly Reichardt, her favorite types of characters, and building a sense of patience into a short shoot.
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During the pandemic, while spending time living with her family — and in particular, her two teenage half-siblings — in her childhood home, India Donaldson began to reflect on her teenage years. Though Donaldson’s prior short films tended to center around childish adults, she’d never “thought about making a film about a teenager before that,” she says.
At the time, Donaldson had been trying to get a feature off the ground for a long time. “When COVID hit, it just seemed that much harder to make an independent film,” she says. “But it felt even more urgent that I do it.” So Donaldson leaned into the teenage headspace she was occupying, while also thinking hard about scale. “How can I make a movie that is not totally crushing, with a small group of people and a few characters?” she remembers thinking.
What emerged was Good One. The film — which premiered at Sundance, and which I caught at New Directors/New Films — places a 17-year-old girl named Sam (Lily Collias in one of the year’s great breakthrough performances) on a backpacking trip with her father, Chris (James Le Gros), and his old friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy). Like the protagonists of Donaldson’s short films, Chris and Matt are somewhat oblivious people who are very comfortable taking up space. Donaldson likes these sorts of characters because they force the people around them to react or adjust to them. In Good One, that dynamic is heightened by the power imbalance in the characters’ identities. But even as the stakes escalate and characters transgress, Donaldson’s film remains nuanced and surprising. This week, I spoke to Donaldson about being inspired by Kelly Reichardt, building a sense of patience into a short shoot, and the moment she knew the movie’s climactic moment worked.
This movie primarily takes place within the woods. It struck me that the woods is this potentially endless space that's all more or less the same. So was it tough to write the characters going from Point A to Point B, and to keep it interesting?
I think a big part of it was finding a location, or in our case two locations, that were varied enough that we could create a feeling that they were on a journey. Enough variation within the sameness. And there were points in the script that were specific. I knew we needed a place that would feel like high elevation because they get cell service again. There were certain requirements of the script, where we had to find locations that fit that. But most of it was creating a sense of movement in the journey. But it was also kind of nice and allowed us to move quickly because you can point the camera in any direction and it feels continuous.
One of the things I love about the movie is that everything that comes after the climactic event isn't predictable. It's so nuanced and specific. I'm curious about how that whole section evolved in the writing.
The two things that were always there were what Matt (Danny McCarthy) says and how the dad, Chris (James Le Gros), reacts — or versions of how the dad reacts. I felt like if you put a girl on a trip with two guys, there are certain things you'll be afraid of happening. You're up against cultural expectations. Whether or not you see what's coming with Matt, there's always some people who will feel that it's a possibility. But I felt like there was more room to be free of our cultural expectations in the second hammer. How the dad reacts.
But ultimately how she reacts is the piece of it that changed the most from the beginning of the script to the final execution of the movie. The rock piece of it was the very last thing I added to the script, maybe while we were already almost on our way towards making it.
How did that rock piece come into it?
I've been on a hike and seen those rock towers. And it was a reminder that people do this. And why do they do this? It's this little mark that you make as you pass through this place. It's so interesting that human beings feel the need to make that gesture. So I was interested in that as a visual element for the movie. And then already baked into the movie thematically was weight. It’s there in everything they're carrying. The dad is obsessed with the weight of his pack and not being burdened. And that plays into his behavior. And Sam (Lily Collias) is saddled with all this emotional weight that she didn't ask for. So one day it just popped into my mind that maybe she's not someone who would have the words to say exactly what she means in the moment — to give it to them back — but this passive aggressive gesture is more realistic. And thinking about the shorts I've made, something that's interested me is how people express themselves through gestures that are adjacent to how they feel.
Everything in the movie hinges on that scene at the campfire. When and how did you feel like it worked?
I knew that I wanted to give it a lot of screen time. And for it to be its own three act sequence within the movie. I thought about it that way when I was writing it. I wanted it to have these peaks and valleys and take these turns. And each character would hit multiple different emotions within it. And the length of it would be integral to the end of it being effective. That moment means so much more if we've been sitting with them for thirteen minutes. If it just happens minute two into that scene it has a completely different effect. I wanted to sit with them a lot longer, and to at least give the audience the opportunity to feel things along with Matt and along with Sam.
There were so many challenges of shooting that scene — the length of it, that it was night time. And we shot it over two days, on the second half of the last two days of the shoot. And it's a lot of dialogue for those actors. It was challenging for everyone involved in bringing that scene together. Our production designer, Becca Brooks Morrin, had twisted her ankle that day. Every layer was tricky. But it really felt like it was going to be OK when we shot the moment with Lily and Matt. Our cinematographer, Wilson [Cameron], found the shot of Lily's reaction with Danny in soft focus coming in and out of frame and partly obscuring her face. When Wilson found that shot and we saw Lily's performance, I was just like, "OK, this is the whole scene." I could breathe a sigh of relief. Somehow that shot made it all gel.
What you're describing is a certain degree of patience in that scene. And I feel like that characterizes the whole movie. It is moving at its pace. And yet, you guys shot it in 12 days, I think. So how do you instill a movie with that quality of patience while working so fast?
I think it was built into the script. The script demanded a certain amount of patience. The script made you listen to those guys talking for that many pages. And then Wilson, who shot the movie, and I talked about how we're not going to have nearly enough time for anything, but we would capture some nature stuff every day. I didn't know how we were going to use it. But I think that is such a big part of how the movie feels ultimately. The punctuations of these little unplanned moments. There's a moment with a slug that just came out of the circumstances of shooting and Lily actually seeing a slug next to the chair she was sitting in. So I think we allowed space to capture things we couldn't anticipate.
What was your initial conception of each of the three main characters? And how did that change when these actors embodied them?
I have these friends who are much more ardent and experienced backpackers than I'll ever be. And when I started writing this script I had a long conversation with them about all the details and textures of backpacking. I tried to get them to tell me stories about specific memories of being on the trail to help me generate ideas. And they told me about this adage in that world, which is that you pack your fears. And that unlocked something about the characters for me. I was like, "Oh, I can say so much about who these guys are through their relationship to gear and to the process and the nuances and requirements of being on a trip like this."
Matt is not thinking practically, he's stuck in the past, and he's just searching for comforts, anything to make him feel more grounded because his life is in free fall. And he's also uncomfortable with his own thoughts because he's processing in real time. So he talks a lot and he has some insights, but a lot of times he's just talking for the sake of it.
And with Chris, he's this tightly controlled person. He thinks if he can control every aspect of his life, then he can exist. But of course that's not how life works. I think about him as someone constantly coming up against what he can't control. People have asked me in Q&As what he should've done. And something that's come up for me in showing the film is that if he had just listened or accepted that what happened happened and had not asked anything of her — if he had let go of that need to control — maybe that would've been more generous or productive.
And then Sam is someone whose baseline way of being is making other people feel comfortable. And learning how to sit with discomfort or the feeling of having disappointed somebody is actually this necessary process of becoming a human being in the world. And this trip is maybe a little step along the way of her figuring that out. Maybe similar to her dad, you can't control everything by being agreeable. Or by being a nurturer or anticipating what other people need from you physically or emotionally. And you'll kill yourself trying to do that.
That's the core of who these people are. How specific of an image did you have of them in your mind? And then what was the process of looking at different actors?
I think I only really had a vague idea in my mind. Casting is not a perfect process. You can't guarantee that exactly the person you envisioned will say yes. And I feel very fortunate everyone in the movie agreed to be in it. But I have to give these characters over to the actors, and the characters will be better for it. They’ll be more interesting and layered and specific. So I feel like it's about identifying some quality or point of emotional connection you have with their past performances or who they are, and then giving it over to them and letting them make the character a whole person.
Danny, for example, I had seen in an Annie Baker play, and he delivers this monologue where he becomes unexpectedly vulnerable and emotionally exposed. And I felt in his performance that he doesn't go into that monologue knowing he's going to get emotional, it happens unexpectedly. I felt that the actor who played Matt had to do that multiple times in the film, in increasingly intense ways. I had seen him do this really precise thing in a play, so that was the kernel that maybe this guy is Matt.
I know that Kelly Reichardt, and Old Joy in particular, was a big inspiration for this movie. So I was wondering if you remember the first time you saw Old Joy and what impression it left on you.
I definitely remember the first time I saw Old Joy. I caught it at a retrospective of Kelly Reichardt’s work at MOMA. I had already seen a lot of her work, but not in a movie theater. And seeing Old Joy in a movie theater and then hearing [Reichardt] talk about it afterwards, it really exposed to me how powerful it is to see a quiet movie about a relationship in a movie theater. And watching those performances and that relationship and being so drawn in by it and how patient her filmmaking is felt so generous and trusting of her audience. Trusting us to sit with these characters and slowly expose their dynamics in ways that aren't telegraphing anything big. The subtlety of it just felt incredibly inspiring. And she talked about the intention behind it, how she designed that film to be makeable with limited resources. That also opened something up for me — Oh, you have to design a film to be successful on its own terms. You need to set it up from a script level to be makeable and succeed.
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