Three upwardly mobile milennial couples descend on a a luxury farmstay to celebrate a joint thritieth birthday. There’s a weapons manufacturer, an ABC development coordinator, a finance bro, a painter… the full spectrum of the Aussie elite is on display as they naviage infidelity, inequality, and inebriation. Chaos defintiely ensues during the simmering social dynamics of The Birthday Trip.
As the film prepares to release in select Australian cinemas on July 30, Nick L’Barrow spoke with one of the film’s ensemble stars, Luke Jacobz, and the writer-director, James Robert Woods, about creating an organic feeling in a tightly-written ensemble piece, and the freedom of frenetic camera work.
Nick: James, I’d love to start by asking about your process when it comes to writing for a large ensemble of very distinct characters. I can’t imagine it’s an easy feat to pull off, so how do you determine what is important about a character and how that character will work into the greater narrative?
James Roberts Woods: It really started over many years where I was just gathering all of these observations and moments and characters and dysfunctional dynamics that all came from real places. But as far as assembling them, I guess there was a pragmatic element to it. Like, we all knew we couldn’t make a billion-dollar Marvel movie. We knew we were operating on an indie level. This is an achievable, talky drama with an ensemble. And I love dialogue that feels alive. I love scintillating, fast, frenetic dialogue where people talk over each other and get stuff wrong. It’s a real specific minutiae that you don’t find in some movies. The process really was in finding the characters on things like a political spectrum. What do they listen to? What’s their backstory? And then when I had that, it was quite easy to write them and throw them into each scene. On the exposition front, that’s something that is important, but it can be done clunkily. I tried really hard, rather than just saying the subtext, bringing it out in a way that feels more real. I would work with an ensemble cast again one-thousand times over. It was really fun, and the cast were incredible.
Nick: And for you, Luke, how much does that sort of detail work for your process in finding a character? And how do you make something that feels so specifically created feel so organic, even improvised at points?
Luke Jacobz: I had read it a couple of times, but when we heard it at the table read, I knew it was something different. When you’re reading it, you put your own voice on the characters before that. But you hear everyone else’s takes on the characters and it completely flipped it for me. It’s got a different tone, a different voice. And when I got a sense of everyone’s take on the dialogue, it really did become more alive for me. Then everyone went out, developed their characters more, and it came even more alive. It was a wonderful process of building it more and more each time. I’m just so proud to be part of the cast because we all had a really great time. We were all able to have the freedom to explore our characters. James didn’t just give us one take to do things one way. There was a lot of communication, him giving us a chance to do it a different way. And that’s refreshing because a lot of the time you’re told how to do something, you do it, then you move on. That freedom was a wonderful thing to be able to have. We all mentioned off set how liberating it was to have multiple attempts at each scene.
Nick: How did James’ shooting style – that very frenetic, handheld camera style – help that liberating feeling?
LJ: It was so great because it meant we had directions like “don’t walk too far that way”. We were just given an area, and because James was shooting this with the camera on the shoulder, he would find what he wanted to focus on in the scene. It was like having freedom in a rehearsal space where you let things play out. And because James knew his dialogue, and how we wanted to edit it, he knew what he was looking for. It felt like he was always one step ahead of us, and we didn’t have to worry about where the camera was. Watching this in the theatre was great, because there were so many lines that started off camera, and the camera would then turn to it. And when we were filming, that’s how it felt. I felt like an audience member because I would just naturally turn to where the dialogue was coming from, and it worked so well for those awkward scenes or awkward silences. It felt so voyeuristic.
Nick: It sounds cliche to say, but the farm stay itself feels like an integral character to the story. And the way the location is written into the story, and then how it’s shot, made me think about how this movie might look in a high-rise apartment in urban Sydney during a wanker-y dinner party! How important was the location to the story, James?
JRW: I think the destination birthday is a nice trope. It gets you in and puts all of these people in the same place. But I think to be in a wondrous location does change your emotional state. Like Jim and Angie, for example, maybe their dalliance wouldn’t happen at that dinner party from hell. But after they’ve gazed at the stars, and witnessed the beauty of nature, it creates the context for pushing the emotions further than you might in your normal day-to-day life. I mean, I’d love to do a sequel that’s in the city! But, because this also isn’t your normal Aussie outback vibe, there is this extra kind of magic to it. It’s actually an ancient rainforest. I’m not saying it’s Narnia, but it does have a certain quality to it, and I wanted that mystique to be a part of the shooting process as well as being part of the characters’ questions themselves through this wonderment.
LJ: What I liked about it too is that these feel like conversations that you wouldn’t have in the city. They’ve been removed from their comfort zone, and they’re in this beautiful, picturesque place, and it reveals who they really are as people. Some of them still have their same personalities even though they’re at this beautiful homestead.
Nick: James, you mentioned the “star gazing scene”, and I loved that scene. Not just because it’s one of the moments in the film where you feel like you can breathe through the chaos, but I am also obsessed with space. I love camping because I can stare at this eternal thing I don’t fully understand, but am completely amazed by. And I love how you get the characters to verbalise that in a way that I could resonate with, but have never been able to describe myself. Have either of you watched or experienced something that was able to put into words a way you felt about something that you couldn’t do before?
JRW: Firstly, that’s really cool to hear. People seem to respond well to that scene.
LJ: It’s my wife’s favourite scene.
JRW: By the way, I fucked up the edit of that scene. The WOW signal goes way longer than 72 seconds. I think that scene goes for like 100 seconds! But, to answer your question, the first thing that comes to mind is an Australian film I saw recently called The Sword of Silence, which was shot in the Brisbane hinterland, in black and white, 16mm. It’s very art-house. The dialogue is in a made up language. It ticks all of the cinephile boxes. But there is this amazing, luminescent, light-up sword and bow and arrow that wasn’t necessarily a realisation, so to say. But, it was the most recent moment where I was, like, moved by what I was seeing. I also get invigorated when I see difficult filmmaking. When I watch an Avatar fight scene or something, and the work James Cameron does on that, I think about how I just couldn’t do that. The amount of mental capacity to do that just fills me with wonderment in a filmmaking sense.
LJ: I can’t think of one off the top of my head. But I am just getting lost in this bubble of James talking about cinema and film! I’ve been very lucky to be in his presence for the last short while.
Nick: In the spirit of your character Luke – I see aspects of myself in Lars, especially his unwavering “fake it until you make it” demeanour. I can only imagine in an industry like entertainment, you’ve had to “fake it until you make it”. Was there a time that idea paid off for either of you?
JRW: That’s such a cool question. I mean, my first job at Yahoo 7!, I ran the X-Factor website – which is where I first came to know Luke Jacobz! And I got that job fraudulently because I pretended that I had a media and communications degree. My friend had it, so I just asked him what it was called, and just put it on my CV! But, I did that job well, so I feel like it was fine for them! But it was just that complete, blind confidence of a 20-year-old that led me to work on the X-Factor website, and then 15 years later, working with Luke Jacobz on the silver screen. Life is weird!
LJ: I didn’t know how to present. Most of my career had been commercials or drama shows. And I went in for an audition for a presenting role, and I said, “I don’t know how to present”. And it was my mum or dad who said, “Well, why don’t you just ‘act’ like a presenter?” Be an actor, and when I go into that room, the role is being a presenter on screen. And I got it! But it was that same idea where I had no idea what I was doing. And since then, I’ve really carried that mentality. Whether it’s making a film or doing live television, no one’s lives are in danger. You can just have some fun. I still get nervous before I do anything, but I’ve learned to harness that energy into pretending to know what I’m doing. I’m still figuring it all out every single day. I’m continually faking it until I make it!
Thank you to Luke and James for their time, and to Badlands and TM Publicity for organising the interview. The Birthday Trip is in select Australian cinemas July 30.
