Taylor Swift made a rare public appearance at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, in an interview with indie director Mike Mills to discuss her short film “All Too Well”. She spoke with Mills for an hour at the Beacon Theater in New York, giving a fascinating look at her creative process. This was a whole new side of Dr. Swift – meet Film Geek (Taylor’s version).
Taylor has been silent on social media radio for most of the year. She gave her speech about entering New York University last month, but here she became even more personal, revealing how her filmmaking was influenced by John Cassavetes and Barbara Stanwick. (Her mind!) She screened the film and brought out stars Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. And as a cover for everything, she ended with a solo acoustic performance of “All Too Well”, all 10 heartbreaking minutes.
Taylor has entered the hardcore film mode suitable for such a prestigious film festival. She summed up her goals with a quote from Cassavetes: “I have never seen an exploding helicopter. I’ve never seen anyone go and blow someone’s head off. Then why should I make movies about them? But I have saw people destroy themselves in the slightest way. ” Swift added, “Wow, me I felt that. “
Mills was a completely sympathetic host – like the father in the song, he was fascinated by her self-concealed jokes. He has directed videos for The National, so, as Swift explained, “We’re both in Aaron Desner’s cinematic universe, which is a good place to live.” is to find it. ” They had a perfect understanding – when he praised her narrative flair, he said: “You’re really good at…” She joined in with “Drama?”
They also joked about her persistent insistence on doing things her own way. She received one of the biggest laughs at the event when she said, “People often underestimate me for how embarrassing I will be to prove myself.”
Mills is an artist who is obviously not used to hearing a theater full of screaming fans. As he jokingly said, “That’s how all my questions and answers go.” He was visibly shocked by the fan’s enthusiasm. There was a touching moment when Mills joked that he would feel depressed when he mentioned his movies and no one screamed. Swift said, “I’ll show you. Who here watched a movie called Come on, come on? ”After a huge roar from the fans, she told him:“ They are just very nice. Not just for me. ”
She went into the nuts and bolts of her directing process, right down to the fonts and the lenses of the cameras. “This is not a music video,” she explained. “We approached everything differently. In the kitchen scene, she said, “I wanted to be close enough to be able to count freckles.” For the first time, she became interested in making movies on the set of her music videos. As she joked, “It started with intervention.” Her first time directing was her video for “The Man” in 2019. “Once I started directing music videos, I didn’t want to do it.”
She talks about her identification with the heroine played by Sadie Sink. “I really write a lot about girls,” she said. “I am very fascinated and I have always been in this phase of becoming a young woman when you are at this very fragile and vulnerable age. I think 19 and 20 are such a deep age for young women. She described the heroine as “an everyday, curious young woman who ends up completely over her head.”
Swift pointed to the Easter eggs buried deep in the film, as the red typewriter the heroine used to write her novel first appeared in the guy’s apartment. As Swift sees the story, the typewriter is a gift he gave her to encourage her as a writer because he saw her creative spark early on. It was surprising to hear her discuss her identification with the male character, whom she saw as both positive and negative. Mills added: “It’s a fucking trip to be a man, let’s be honest. He swims in manhood. “
In one of her most surprising revelations, she discussed how the end of All Too Well was influenced by 1930s film classics. This scene of the ex-boyfriend standing in front of reading the heroine’s book in the cold? Swift is inspired by the last scene from King Vidor’s 1937 film Stella Dallas, when Stanwick has to watch his daughter’s wedding through a window.
(The Swift / Stanwyck relationship is deep – one of Barbara’s most underrated mourners is My Reputation. FWIW, the film legend was born in Brooklyn, where the song takes place, and she died by accident in 1989. I can go on, but let’s just say that right now is a great time to be Swiftie, who is also a fan of Stanwick.)
She brought Sink and O’Brien out to talk more about the characters. (“I called them She and He,” Swift said.) They revealed that the key scenes – the kitchen dispute, the final separation – had been written in advance, but when it came time for dialogue in the kitchen, they dropped the script. Swift said, “What you saw was mostly improvisation.”
They also discussed the strange journey of the song, which is unlike anything else in the history of pop music – an underrated deep version that became the number one hit in its extended 10-minute version. As Swift pointed out, it was never a single, “because the label never wanted to choose it.” Still, the lost 10-minute version has become a fan craze. “I promoted so many albums, went on so many tours and did so many meetings and congratulations. And every time I got, “When are you going to release the 10-minute version of All Too Well? You just wouldn’t play it.”
She was quoted as saying by Pablo Neruda, who served as her epigraph to the short film: “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” She called it an order that haunts me and still haunts me. It’s a forced thing to read something so touching. ” (The great Chilean poet was a world legend in his lifetime, but even Neruda probably never imagined how future generations would literally scream at the sight of his name. One of the applauders in the house: Jim Jarmusch, one of the world’s best legendary directors. Let’s Pray for “Stranger Than Paradise (Taylor’s Version)”
But the highlight of the event came at the end when Swift grabbed his acoustic guitar and asked the audience, “Do you have an extra 10 minutes?” Not surprisingly, everyone did. Swift performed the full version of the song, strictly solo, which she managed to do only once before the premiere of the film last November. (Which was also on Broadway, just a few blocks away.) As with the film’s screening, the strongest moment was the audience shouting “Fuck the patriarch!”
The key line of the extended “Everything is too good” is when she asks: “Only between us, does the love affair cripple you too?” One of the things that always sets her apart as a songwriter is her unique ability to make even the biggest stadium-sized gestures feel like an intimate “Only Between Us”. Her appearance at Tribeca was a rare in-depth look at how she does this on film, just as she does in music.
Add Comment