I am, in an attempt to charmingly brag a little (bear with me), a very good letter writer. And if one could ever prove themselves in the art of letter writing, I believe I have done it. But to be totally honest, I didn’t know I possessed this very skill before I set out to make my very first feature film, Mother, Couch, which is now in theaters around the country. I stumbled upon learning this about myself after the advisors around me encouraged me to write personal letters to the actors I wanted to work with. So I did, and hereʼs my evidence; Throughout the past year, the most common question I’ve received is, “How could you get all these A-list stars to be in your movie?” And the question is valid ‒ itʼs my first movie, so, how did I do that? The person asking the question is, I think, not only aware that it is my first movie, but also a tiny movie. Comparing Ewan McGregorʼs salary from my film to what he might earn from any Star Wars sequel is silly. And in case you wanted to smack a “nepo baby” sticker on my forehead, you might soon discover that my mother was a hairdresser and my father was a salesman for a local travel agency in the south of Sweden. I have no real relation to any form of art in my family, other than my grandfather was a talented amateur pianist. So, to get back to the question “How did you manage to recruit these terrific actors?”, the answer is simple: I wrote them letters.
All you need in life is a sharp knife.” This was how I began my letter to Ellen Burstyn, a letter that would eventually convince her to play the character in my movie named Mother. There are, of course, various reasons why a sharp knife is an essential tool to carry with you, one reason being self-defense. It is true: you never know when you need to stab someone either in the back or instigate the very first stab itself. The stabbing game is not a fair game. You either stab someone first or get stabbed and then stab someone back. This is where a sharp knife becomes handy. The smaller the better, because the risk of killing the person youʼre stabbing is high, so a small scalpel or a letter knife is my recommendation, I told her. Ellen picked the latter. She showed me all of the knives she possessed. “They’re a collectible thing, knives, arenʼt they?” she said, before displaying them all on her bed in her Upper West Side bedroom. “The tiny ones are the worst,” I said, a line I also later put in the script. She agreed. While the big knives kill, the big ones donʼt hurt as much as the tiny ones. Because it is true, people who have been stabbed with big knives often experience no sensation of the actual stab itself, just the warmth of the blood. However, with a smaller knife, you will feel immediate pain, as everyone knows who has ever had the unpleasant experience of a small nick in the finger when chopping onions or carrots. I didn’t include that in my letter to her highness, Ms. Burstyn, however I did end the letter with, “It would be my honor serving as your fork,” and Iʼll let you add the pieces that led up to that final sentence.
Now, in case you thought my movie was just about mothers stabbing their kids in the back, itʼs about much more, for example, reunion. Reunion is something modern movies usually discourage as blatant and boring, but something I find arguably more important than a heroic achievement. Reunion is undervalued and underestimated as an impactful emotional arc in a heroʼs journey. I believe if loss occurs, like death, reunion is inevitable. This is why we typically celebrate death and loss with a funeral, a kind of reunion. This type of celebration happens regardless of whether you believe in a higher power or the earth; reunion is always present in death, and I think itʼs in reunion youʼll find peace, no matter how many stab wounds you have on your back.
Mother, Couch is my very first picture and itʼs out in theaters across the United States and the world now. Excellent players such as Ewan McGregor, Ellen Burstyn, F. Murray Abraham, Taylor Russell and Lara Flynn Boyle made it all real. All wounded souls, just like me, with various scars from various sizes of knives.
Featured image, showing Ellen Burstyn during the making of Mother, Couch, is by Marcus Ibanez; all images used with permission.
