Fox, a documentarian, turned her process of discovery into her first narrative film.
You are a documentarian, so you’re used to probing the personal to unlock truths and construct narratives.
How soon after re-discovering the story did you decide to make it into a film?
Credit: Kyle Kaplan/HBO; Inset: Kyle Kaplan/HBO
But once I heard all these other women’s stories suddenly there was a paradigm shift in my mind.
So it wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I was ready to tell this story.
Did you ever consider making a documentary?
What was the impetus for making this a narrative film?
No, it was always a fictional story for me.
Never once, ever, did I ever think of it as a documentary.
I think because it’s really an investigation of memory, and there are no witnesses.
And I knew he would never speak, and there’s no images of what happened.
You know the film is really a visual investigation of myself, fictionalized.
I don’t make such a distinction between documentary and fiction that many people in America do.
For me, there’s a more fluid cross between the two types of storytelling.
You really find the language that fits the story you want to tell.
And for me, it had to be fictional and also use a lot of fantasy and experimental language.
What prompted you to do that?
A film for me isn’t finished until it goes onscreen.
I’m also very pragmatic and pretty early on, I settled on using my own name.
I went back and forth.
Sometimes in the early days I was using a fictional name, but I really felt very strongly.
People would very easily say, “You’re making it up.
It can’t be like that.
A little girl can’t love the man who abuses her.
Memory doesn’t work like that.”
There’s no fade to black and they walk into a room.
That it really is, in a very ordinary way, horror.
Little Jenny is throwing up after every encounter.
And she’s in pain.
Child sexual abuse is horrible, but it’s also a huge manipulation.
They are verbatim pieces of what I heard.
You were merging fiction and reality.
Some of the lines are from dialogue I had on the phone.
It’s a real amalgam of truth and fantasy.
Reality is so thick.
But not the idea of crafting narrative from an amalgamation of truth and fictionthat I’ve always done.
How did you arrive at that narrative approach?
I was really interested in the mind and how basically the child spun the adult she wanted to be.
I was really interested in that story that had propelled me to be who I am.
I’m seen as fearless.
I went to Lebanon at 21 to make a film in the middle of a war.
I’ve had quite the fearless life on the outside.
I’m not saying I believe in that.
I said, “I’m not going to think of a three act structure.
I’m just going to find these units of memory,” and I did that.
It was really process oriented.
Laura Dern is playing a version of you.
Laura came on the film very early, a year and a half before we had financing.
When we got the financing, we began to sit and work with the script.
She did have really clear ideas and some things I rewrote with her thoughts in mind.
She was very much a partner.
We really had to talk about how the character she plays isn’t angry at the time.
It’s about a really mature relationship.
They’ve gone through a lot.
They’ve come through the other side and now they’re basically trying to figure out what happened.
All my actors just had great influence on me and the script.
That’s the best of both worlds, frankly.
How did you talk through those scenes with him?
Were they something you saw him visibly struggle with?
We all know Jason is the most wonderful, kind, generous, unassuming human being.
He’s a wonderful man.
It was actually Laura Dern’s idea to cast him.
I can’t speak to why he took the part.
I know he really responded to the script.
We were turned down by a lot of men who just didn’t have the courage frankly.
We worked a lot together as with all the actors.
First of all, we could never have done it without a body double.
I think it was really hard for him, and I really think he did such a beautiful job.
What did you make of that and was that reaction something you anticipated?
Funny, I didn’t notice.
Frankly, I don’t read my own reviews.
So that might be why I didn’t notice.
Most women, if it didn’t happen to them, they know someone in their family.
I don’t think it was a surprise for women.
But I do think women have lived with this, therefore it isn’t a shock.
Women have been living on this planet.
So there’s a way that we’re more familiar with it.
The real issue is how can men not know?
How could we have such different lives?
Do you feel that making the film has helped you to heal or find a sense of peace?
I don’t think of life that way.
We all have trauma.
I’m in a continual process of that.
It’s not like now it’s over and I can go onto something else.
