Even after she found her sacred text, it would take Stewart years to bring her vision to fruition. She first announced her intention to direct a feat
Even after she found her sacred text, it would take Stewart years to bring her vision to fruition. She first announced her intention to direct a feature at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. The first brief film she’d directed, Come Swim, had played at the festival the year before. An abstract, immersive trip following a man coping with anxiety and heartbreak, the 17-minute movie revealed Stewart’s interest in playing with time and sound design, as she captures feelings more than linear storylines. No one knew it at the time, but some of those stylistic choices would translate to her directorial debut.
Stewart first read Yuknavitch’s memoir on her Kindle while she was filming the movie JT LeRoy in 2017. She immediately reached out to Yuknavitch about adapting it. “I read this book and I was, like, Holy fuck,” she says. “Imagine doing the thing that I love to do the very most, which is [to] start fires under myself and other people, and try and have exchanges of emotion that feel like lightning in a bottle—but then also take it, and break it, and make it about iteration and writing.”
Stewart flew up to Portland, Oregon, to convince Yuknavitch that she was the right person to adapt her memoir. She thought it would be a tough sell, seeing as how Stewart had never directed anything before. “I was, like, ‘What can I get you? A fucking tea, a beer, a martini? How many hugs is it going to take?’” she says. “But it wasn’t difficult. It felt intrinsic from the start.”
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