He, Who Loves Me
Director’s Statement
When you’re the writer-director, you never stop writing, do you? When you really love something, you always find it's worth going back to, worth trying to improve. Like Ethan going to Arthur, I kept coming back to He, Who Loves Me. Life imitates art, et cetera.
That wasn’t the plan, though. I started suspecting we were in for it at around the assembly cut. It was too long, too off. The script I had written, when all laid out in time and space, felt kind of aimless.
Then I was told ‘Cut Gavin’. Whose Gavin? You’ll never know, more due to my writing than anything else. He just didn’t fit in the story. That doesn’t mean it was easy--We’re talking about a ten-minute film with three characters, each of which is introduced in the first two minutes. Not a lot of room to mess around. Out the window goes the structure. We started cutting.
A few structural and emotional reorientations later, plus some wholesale liberal cutting, we finally had something. It was honestly kind of magical—rewriting by way of collage. We just grabbed stuff and put it next to other, different stuff. And we were amazed, eventually, that it worked.
At this point, I want to give a special thanks to David Nguyen, the picture editor. He probably spent close to a hundred hours on this little eleven-minute short and was always open to hearing my annoying little suggestions and thoughts. This movie wouldn’t be what it is without him, and so: thank you!
And, to the rest of the crew: thank you for fighting to make this frankly outrageous idea happen, and thank you for taking it seriously even when I was doing my best conspiracy theorist impression on set. I am indebted to you all.
I am proud of this film, and immensely fortunate that the version we ended up with is actually my favourite version. It has a certain simplicity, as opposed to the numerous overstuffed versions I had tried to force. This story had to be about climate change, multigenerational conflict, trauma, crisis, selfish communication, fake news, etc. And it still is, pretty much, about those things. But I just don’t make a point to show off, which is an instinct only the likes of Lynch and Eggers should indulge.
I mentioned at the beginning of this note that life imitates art—and I really mean that. Sometimes stories tell you what they’re about, and you just have to listen. We kept going back, never giving up, because we loved this story. Which is the message, in the end—love is worth fighting for. After months of trying to make this story into something it’s not, I finally listened and made it into what it wanted to be. Ironically, it now resembles my original single-page synopsis written a year ago (Feb 3rd, 2021) than any other version. It knew what it was, and found its way back to it, despite my best efforts.
Good on you, Ethan & Arthur. Hope it works out for you guys.
Derek Sharp – February 12th, 2022
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What was the inspiration for this story?
It comes from a variety of places. A lot of my work focuses on the apocalypse, or near apocalypse. Climate change is the obvious reason– there is an entirely preventable, slow moving apocalypse heading right for our head. It’s the kind of thing that will give you an existential crisis if you think about it too hard, which is something I often treat as a personal challenge.
One night I asked my girlfriend “What would you do if you knew you’d die tomorrow?”. I offered that I’d want to resolve any unresolved relationships in my life, I’d want to be brave and speak candidly in a way I am usually unable to do. So was born Ethan, and so was born Arthur.
The broadcast was inspired by An Inconvenient Truth; by that I mean the broadcast is an easily accessible, seemingly authoritative account of a massive, undeniable problem. Is it a bit too high brow? Maybe, but it's there for all to see.
Finally, there tends to be a disconnect between younger people who grew up with climate change on their mind, and the older folks who had some life beforehand, who've seen their fair share of cold wars and Y2Ks. There’s a sense that humanity is immortal, that we’ve all been through worse. I worry that’s just survivorship bias. I wanted to write about that disconnect– one between someone who is naive enough to believe such an outrageous problem at face value, and someone who is too jaded to take it seriously.
How long did it take to make this film?
Assuming we hit our early April finish date, it’ll be about fourteen months all said and done. The first pitch was submitted Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021, and I was writing and developing it until about July. We got greenlit and started crewing in mid-summer 2021, and started pre-production in September for a late October shoot date. Once things got rolling, it moved very quickly.
Did you learn anything from making this movie?
What didn’t I learn? Honestly, my entire conception of filmmaking shifted a bit. I learned the most about directing, though–I learned that I have to push for what I need, and push for it as early as possible. Whether this is in pre-production, production, or post, this production had many more small little conflicts than I was used to. I won’t bore you with all of them, but one particularly instructional one jumps to mind.
We were shooting the final scene, and we had just shot what might end up being the last shot of the day. Everyone was exhausted. I called cut, and everyone looked to me to see if we could go home. I felt like something was probably off, it didn’t feel right, but nothing jumped to mind. Pressure mounting, I just said, ‘Yeah, ok, we can go’. That was the mistake.
I ran to my script supervisor, Matt, and asked to see the beats I had laid out. After some discussion, I realized that I didn’t properly get a pretty important beat, and that without it, the scene wouldn’t work. I was pretty bitter about it, wishing I had just asked for five minutes to think it over before breaking. Oh well, live and learn, right? Next time I’ll stand my ground.
Next time began as soon as I showed up to set the following morning. Matt ran up to me and said “Hey, I think we should re-shoot that shot from last night.” Oh? Can we do that? I brought it up to the 1st AD, Danielle, who seemed pretty unsure. We need to do it, I told her. She told me if I could convince the crew to stay later than planned, we could do it.
So, I pushed for it, declaring it our goal to reshoot that last shot. Sure enough, we made time for it and got it done. It was our most complex lighting setup, and so doing it again was not an enviable job. But they did it without complaint, and I am entirely grateful. The lesson here is this: the director’s loyalty, ultimately, is to the story they’re telling. Not to the schedule, budget, or even reality.
The resolution of the film teaches a lesson. How can you apply the lesson in the film to your own life?
The lesson is that real love and connection and connection requires transparency and candor, and that this love is worth fighting for, even if it seems to be impossible. For me, applying it is a consistent and never-ending struggle. Opening up can be difficult, and balancing my own needs from them with others’ needs from me is doubly so. To unapologetically have needs, but to respect if they can’t be met, is a fine line to walk, and something that I myself, and people in my life, struggle with from various directions. So, I think the lesson of the film is more aspirational than anything; we should all hope to be brave enough to run back to those we love, even if it promises difficulty. Let's just hope we do it before the aliens arrive.
Can you tell us more about your upcoming project?
I’m about to release a PSA I developed and directed with my peer Nusayba Mustafa, who was also the director of photography. The PSA was developed for The Arquives, a local Toronto nonprofit that seeks to archive queer history. Beyond that, I have several projects at various stages; I’m developing a comedy web series that follows student politicians as they search for meaning in their work; I’m writing a feature exploring the social and psychological consequences of unaddressed climate change; and, I am also in early development on a feature that tackles the ghost story in a new and exciting way.
Where was this film made?
That’s a big question! ‘Made’ can mean many things. It was shot in North York, just outside of Toronto! Pre & Post Production were completed at Humber College in the Film and Television Production Program. People from all over worked on it at various points, too, so it really was a community effort.
What was the size of the crew?
Thirty four people, give or take, with several people taking on double duty.