The Black List Interview: Lauren Hadaway on THE NOVICE

Today, we Kate talks with Lauren Hadaway about her debut film, THE NOVICE, which is now nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature, Best Female Lead, and Best Director. Lauren discusses how the film came together, her personal background as a rower, how the Black List has factored into her journey, and much more.

I loved this film, I think it’s an incredibly accomplished debut — you’ve created such a vivid and immersive world around this kind of central queer POV that we really haven’t seen in a sports movie before. I’m wondering how THE NOVICE first started taking shape in your mind — and how first started approaching Alex on the page?

Because I come from a background in post-sound, I made a very clear decision in 2016 to be writing and directing within five years. At that point, it became a matter of what’s going to be the story that only I can tell — what can make a splash, no pun intended or maybe pun intended — that I can do, that I can fucking see. I was a collegiate rower and that’s not a sport that’s been explored onscreen. I wanted to do something with themes of grit and ambition, and so I kinda just combined all [those ideas.] I wrote the first draft of the script in July 2017 — with writing, the first draft, for me, is when you put something down…it’s kind of a vomit draft. By the time you get to the end of it, you begin to figure out who your character is more and more — from the first draft to when we shot in late 2019, that’s almost two and a half years. Obviously, the script grew and developed. It’s in some ways a coming-of-age story, so really it became this kind of mix of catharsis and exploring these things I wanted to see.

Alex is an exceptionally demanding lead part for any actor, and Isabelle Fuhrman is really terrific in an incredibly challenging role. I think there are a lot of directors that would break down an actor’s psyche to get that performance, but I think you did a masterful job in calibrating Isabelle’s emotional variance. I’m wondering how you guys built that trust together to make sure that Alex came alive and was still relatable even in this sort of mythic pursuit for greatness in rowing…

One of the reasons I cast Isabelle — and her auditions were great — was that when I met her, I could sense there was this ferocity, this intensity…she had this binder with all these notes, these tabs and everything, and this great energy to her. I thought that was going to be really important for the character. She also had a background in running, and a physicality that I knew. It was very clear to my producers that there were not going to be doubles — this isn’t a sport you can pick up in an afternoon either. We need time, we need someone who is dedicated and a little bit crazy — and that was Isabelle. She was totally in it and it became easy. I mean it wasn’t — there’s no stick and carrots to ration here, she’s in every scene. This is not two words — this is Isabelle’s thing. She was completely dedicated. She was rowing like six hours a day.

I had to go up to Canada, but we were texting constantly and building trust in that way. The thing that was most nerve-wracking for me was that I hadn’t really directed actors — a little bit on the ADR stage with my background in sound, but it’s not quite the same. I didn’t come from a background of a ton of short films, commercials, or music videos or whatever. So it was fucking nerve-wracking, but the first day, the first scene we was shot was actually the Port-A-Potty scene where [Isabelle] freaks out. And we shot that early — a splinter day — because we shot it at an actual regatta. I remember being really nervous. We had only cast Isabelle on meeting her and a letter she wrote, and her auditions, but it wasn’t an extensive process, we hadn’t done rehearsals or anything. I was just like, “Oh, this is going to determine everything right now. If she can do it, I can do it.” And we did the scene and she totally got it — she nailed it and I realized that I wasn’t going to have to hold her hand, she’s got total control of this character, this performance, she knows what it is and what it needs to be, and she’s elevating it beyond what I thought it was even going to be. So, that was a huge weight off.

The first week of shooting was water week, which for me, or for anyone really, is a nightmare. As a first-time director, in your first big almost wintertime in Canada, and you’re shooting on the water — it was just survival mode in just getting the shots. And you really had to kind of let Isabelle do her thing and that thing is just continually bringing it and bringing it, so when we got to the dialogue moments — at that point the trust was built. I trusted her, I hope that she trusted me in the sense that we made it through, we survived that. Even in the post-production process, I was sending her for edits, giving her thoughts on things, and keeping her very involved. We’re friends, we talk constantly, we’re texting constantly. So it’s kind of an organic process.

I think that really shows in the film — that level of trust that you guys built. You’re talking about coming from a background in sound design and the sound in THE NOVICE is really stunning. We see so much of Alex’s journey externalized through these really incredible soundscapes — and sound is often such a tricky thing for filmmakers to nail. Coming from a background in sound design, how were you able to find that balance of kind of wanting to assault the audience with these big, aggressive sound moments, but then not be totally alienating in those moments too…

Directors all the way from indies to all these huge blockbusters are rarely thinking about sound to the extent that they can be. It’s half the cinematic experience and for it to just be the thing that people slop up onto the side is really, honestly, I think, a tragedy. It was very clear to me from the beginning, that because this film is a very internally driven thing, there’s not going to be a lot of external motivation. It’s an internal drive thing, and film is a visual and sonic medium — it’s not a novel, we’re not having voiceover. So I really tried to use visuals and the sound together to put the audience in the head of someone. How do you show an audience —who probably don’t know anything about rowing, and most of them have probably never experienced this level of obsession — HOW do you put them in that headspace? I wanted it to be a punch in the face. I wanted it to feel like the audience can’t breathe. I wanted it to feel like driving off the edge of the cliff, like THELMA AND LOUISE. That kind of feeling that you can’t catch a breath until the very end.

With the sound I wanted— and same thing with the visuals too — to play with dynamics. With sound, you can’t just constantly have an assault of loud loud loud, crazy crazy crazy because it numbs the audience and you become blind to it, in the same way as nose blindness, you can’t smell your own house because you smell it every day. So you really have to fuck with dynamics to keep people feeling uneasy and squeamish, not knowing what’s coming next with that anticipation — playing with quiet moments and then smashing into these really louder, more visceral things that maybe we aren’t expecting. I really tried to do that and have fun with it in a way because again, someone’s spending 94 minutes of their life watching this movie — I want it to be an experience. And I love all genres of cinema, but I know that what I respond to most, like I want to fucking feel, is that I want to be taken for a ride, I want to feel emotions — that’s what I want. So I was trying to give that experience to a viewer as well.

You just mentioned the dynamic range in the picture editing as well — the editing in this film is really beautiful. We really do get into Alex’s headspace with the gorgeous montages you’ve created throughout. I noticed that you were credited as an editor on the film as well, and I’m wondering how you balanced all of those roles — writing, directing, editing, sound design — without completely losing your mind.

Well, I did lose my mind. [laughs] Don’t worry, I absolutely lost my mind on this, I was having my Alex Dall 2.0 experience. I think that writing, directing, and editing specifically are all extensions of the same thing — they’re all extensions of the writing process. It’s also an indie film and we just didn’t have the money — we went into shooting this knowing that we really didn’t have much money budgeted for post, so it was, “Let’s just get this thing fucking shot.” And I literally said to my producer — “Well, worst case I can do a lot and get us kind of going,” and that’s kind of what happened, it was a case of necessity. We did six days a week, but I found that having a day off was terrible for me — you lose the momentum and getting started again was fucking horrendous. So on quote-unquote off days I would go and sit at this shitty chain restaurant in Peterborough, Canada and edit scenes. And some of those scenes that actually exist in the movie — I didn’t change a frame. Once we got done with shooting, I just kept editing, because, again, we just didn’t have any fucking money left. I just kept going.

I think the sound design process is something else that other up-and-coming filmmakers hopefully can learn.Good editors and sound editors always put in the sound design in the first pass of [the movie] because again, going back, sound is half the experience so you can’t just — people only get one first impression to watch their cut. So you try to be very careful to put the sound in that needs to be there to tell the story, to make the audience feel, to try to capture what you’re trying to do. And you’re already starting to do that actively in the editing bay — by the time that a producer sees it, or anyone else sees it, things were already very developed and cooked in a way, it’s kind of gradual the way everything rolls together and you just keep going little by little. It was brutal the second half of 2020 doing post on this in my kitchen during the pandemic — I was also working a day job on the Snyder Cut, so I was working some 100 hour weeks. So yes, I lost my mind, but I think it was all worth it in hindsight.

You mention your background in rowing and feeling like you were going through the Alex Dall 2.0 experience in making this film — did you ever wonder about taking up rowing again? Or is that completely out of your mind at this point?

I actually started again — back in 2014 at the time. I’ve always been writing and I thought I’d end up a novelist because it’s something you can do on you own in a room when no one’s looking at you — and I wanted to write a story about rowing, I was considering trying to write a novel about it. I joined the Los Angeles Rowing Club and rowed for another year, but found that it just wasn’t the same because you’re waking up at 4, driving across the city…then you’re there, everyone is there to have a good time, get some exercise, and I’m there to fucking win and it just didn’t end up being worth it in a way. So I was like, “I’m done, I’m never doing this again.” With the first draft of the script that I wrote in July 2017, I was actually in the UK at the time on the first iteration of JUSTICE LEAGUE — I was there for reshoots for like five weeks and that’s when I was writing. I found the rowing club — Bedfordshire I think — and I actually rode with them once to kind of get into it. But that’s really it.

I did have a rowing machine and I gave it to Isabelle — she came to my house one day and I rolled this thing out, people were out walking their dog, it’s fucking Saturday afternoon in LA and I was giving her her first lesson, basically what Coach Pete gives to the Alex and the girls, I was giving to Isabelle. And then we put the thing in her car, and off she drove — and then I sold that thing. When I moved to Paris, I fucking put it outside, got rid of it, never again. Knock on wood. Never say never, but not for me. [laughs]

There are such bold soundtrack choices in this film — I was really glad to hear Brenda Lee and Connie Francis, and I think a lot of contemporary films have neglected that great soundtrack backdrop of 50s and 60s music. I’m curious — what inspired those choices? Especially because so much of the other sound design is modern and assaultive, so to then to have these great moments of these torch songs playing to the picture…

It goes back to “How do you make the audience feel what they’re supposed to be feeling here?” Really, in a lot of filmmaking, the beautiful parts are these accidental discoveries that happen along the way. The first time I heard one of those songs, I believe it was “La Di Da” that I heard…I don’t really listen to a lot of modern music, I listen to oldies and Spotify, and you know they recommend shit to you. One of these songs popped up when I was driving one day in 2017, and I heard it and I was like “holy fuck” — this whole scene, that foggy row scene in the middle of the film, the beautiful sunrise thing came into my head with that song, that was the seed that started it.

That wasn’t too long after the first draft. That was the first scene we shot on the real shoot day and it went perfectly, and naively I thought everything would go that smoothly. It did not. But then, I [also] framed the rowing very loosely as this analogy between the B-story romance situation…but the real romance is between Alex and the sport of rowing. If you look at how these songs are working and where they’re hitting…in this whole trajectory, it sort of melds like a relationship, the initial spark and the beginning of the relationship, the getting to know each other, the very first time making love,. Which is the first slo-mo, 500fps thing where I was like “Isabelle, I’m going to objectify you, this is our ’90s erotic sex scene and it’s with a fucking ERG.” And then the falling in love, the bliss of being in love, you think that nothing could go wrong and that this is forever — that’s the foggy row. And then the slow mo…things just start kinda crumbling and shit goes wrong.

I know The Black List factors into your path as a creator and filmmaker and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how all that transpired, particularly your relationship with Zack Zucker?

I’d always loved writing, I always wanted to do it — I wanted to be a director when I was 15, but I hit college and got imposter syndrome and kinda shied away from that and never thought I could do it. And then when i made this goal in November 2016, that I was really actively doing this — I wrote this script, and I was a closeted writer, you know. Coming out as dating women was easier for me than telling people I wanted to be a writer/director in Los Angeles, especially when you have a successful first career. I didn’t tell people what I was doing — this was a goal I made to myself, I kept to myself. I kinda worked in solitude and I wrote the first draft of the script. I was maybe telling my girlfriend at the time that I was doing it, but not anyone else.

I only had one friend who I was talking to about this — and I wanted unbiased feedback that no one [in my life] could give me and be kind of anonymous. So that’s when I first put it on the Black List. It did decently up there and some people reached out to me — I would try to meet with anyone who reached out, even if it was a director who was trying to do it for themselves, just to get connections. But Zack stood out in the sense that he was looking to be a producer, which was a little different because maybe that was going to be useful for me. The thing that really stuck with him — and this is the same thing in some ways that drew me to Isabelle — is that he had this energy to him. He’s a really nice and a friendly guy but he had this kind of drive that I could sense. And he followed up with me, as silly as that sounds. I made a sort of mood/vignette proof of concept thing that I mentioned I was doing and he asked me to send it to him, and I did — he followed up and was very enthusiastic, he was very kind of actively doing this. I was like, “Well, this is someone who believed in this from the very beginning. He wants to do this, he’s pursuing me.” He comes from a background of the agency world and studios, so my other producer that I was thinking might be good on this that I knew from college — I had done sound for another indie film he made — I thought the two of them would be a good kind of balance to each other. So I was like, you guys should meet, and then they did and they hit it off. And here we are, however many years later. So, yeah. That’s the origin story there.

There’s a ton of ownership from you in this film, which can be tricky for any filmmaker, but particularly for first-time female filmmakers. I’m wondering how you were sort of able to keep your north star through this process — through the post-production madness, finding a distributor, playing festivals — especially in the time of COVID.

It was rough — 2020 was not a good year for me. Because doing all of this in the darkness…it feels like you’re on an island and you’re isolated even more than you normally are. The fact that I was doing it when Nathan [Nugent] was working on it in Ireland, I was in Texas at the time and I hadn’t even met him in real life. I didn’t even meet my composer in real life until Tribeca. The post-production process was so isolating and then to be in a pandemic, and then to be working another job — everyone else on an indie film, you know, they’re doing other things. Nobody is working on this full time really but me. It was rough and I don’t know what my north star was other than “I have to.”

What is Alex’s north star in this film? Why the fuck is she doing this? Well, she has to. She has to until it feels right until it feels done. And the editing was a discovery process. Like I said, the writing/directing/editing are three very different extensions of the writing, and the film that I wrote is different from the film I directed is different from the film that ended up after being edited. So, I don’t know. Honestly, it all clicked…I mean, it didn’t click… It didn’t feel right to me, I didn’t stop freaking out about this until maybe August or September, right before the festival deadlines.

At the time I hadn’t figured out the music — not the songs, but the composing specifically. I had done a bunch of different versions of it, but nothing was quite working. I had gone on this drive because of the pandemic — like what the fuck else are you supposed to do but drive when you’re losing your goddamn mind. And I had this drive I would do through the Angeles Crest Mountains and I put on this — again, this random fucking Spotify playlist of movie soundtracks — and something came up from Alex Weston from THE FAREWELL. That film is nothing like this film, but when I heard it, it was nothing like any of the scores I had thus far cut into the film. When I heard it, it suddenly clicked for me and I turned around, drove home, and ended up cutting a ton of scenes out of the film, like seven minutes of the film, which is a lot, re-temp scored everything, and wrote him this impassioned email, like he’s gotta come on, he’s gotta be involved. And then when I started cutting in the temp score using his stuff and some similar-sounding stuff, it finally started clicking — and then it felt right. But today with the pandemic, we didn’t know what film festivals were going to fucking exist, we didn’t know if theaters were going to exist, if people were going to be buying movies — none of that. It goes back to this aspect of being present, and one foot in front of the other. Whatever fucking philosophy this is, but the idea that the only thing I can control is the work that I’m doing. So, try and stay focused on that and to try to be very present and do one day at a time. And eventually, you look back and see how far you’ve come, but when you’re in the thick of it, it feels like a goddamn nightmare.

What’s next for you, to the extent that you can talk about it?

Well…this is an analogy which I’ve given a lot, which is that I’ve discovered that writing and directing feels like having children in the 1800s. You have to have a lot of them because most of them aren’t going to make it into adulthood. You have to nurture them, you have to love them all. So I don’t know for sure, but what I can say is that my tastes kind of go all over. I’ve got a little bit of everything in the pipeline in theory. But the thing I’m actively doing revisions on right now is revising a lesbian comedy I wrote. There are things that I want to do that are action, I have a historical fantasy thing that I want to do, a horror thing. And too, getting sent things and trying to be very careful about what step that I make next because I think you only have so much energy. When I evaluate a project, I ask myself, “Am I willing to cry in a fetal position on the floor over this or not?” And if the answer is no, then it’s a pass. Hit me up in hopefully two years — knock on wood — and maybe we’ll be talking about something else one day.

What do you hope audiences, especially driven young women who might see a bit of themselves in Alex, take away from THE NOVICE?

For me, the thing that I’ve learned in writing it and sort of examining it through interviews is that it’s constantly evolving and changing — I think it’s okay to be ambitious and all that, but there are other things that enrich lives in some sense. And that’s the thing that Dani is trying to sort of tell Alex, but she’s not going to hear it until she’s ready. There’s more to life than this, but these things are important. The other thing, the sort of moral lesson…I don’t know if it’s moral per se, but the lesson of the film is the idea that Alex isn’t the best per se naturally, but she still gets pretty fucking far. And I think too, it’s sort of my imposter syndrome going into writing and directing and why I pretended I didn’t want to do it for so long — I thought I couldn’t do it because I’m not a creative savant.

But the blessing of my first career is that I worked with a lot of people I fucking really admire in all sorts of different ways: editors, directors, producers, sound people. The reality is that coming from a small town in Texas, you think that anybody working in this industry successfully must be a fucking brilliant creative genius — you cannot touch them. But that’s just not the case. People are just decent, hard-working people for the most part. Some geniuses, some assholes, but for the most part, in the bell curve, decent hard-working people. And then when you realize that the only thing separating you from everyone else is what I said earlier too: One foot in front of the other. You have to do the work. Then, I think that anything is possible for anyone.

THE NOVICE is now rentable on a streaming platform near you — don’t miss the Independent Spirit Awards on March 6th either!