Bluebird is an emotionally drawn tale set in an often forgotten area of Maine, where life finds itself mimicking the cold weather and the quiet but deep lifestyle. Lance Edmands tells a tale that is simple in theory but has many facets. It is an exploration of family relationships and internal struggle. The film constructs the perfect picture of a small town and simple mistake that affects a plethora of people. Although the film feels a bit predictable at times from the outside: struggling young mother, an absent husband, a teenager trying to find itself, etc – the raw emotion and the developments through the setting and location stands it apart from just another tragic movie.
The film debuting at Tribeca Film Festival made quite the impression with its integral look into the lives of two dissimilar families going through different kinds of struggles and holding distinctive dynamics. Amy Thorton, primarily a theater-based actress, performs the role of Lesley in a subtle but effective way. Her theater performances seem to not wane on her film performance in Bluebird. Then, the man who many people know as the rich sweet talker from his character on Mad Men, John Slattery, plays a more emotional role. His character in Bluebird leads a very different lifestyle living a life that is at a dead end and trying to pick up his family that is crumbling around him.
Lance Edmands is known mostly for his work in the editing field, working on projects such as Nobody Walks and the hit TV series, The Wire. Bluebird is his first feature that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.
I was very happy to sit down with Lance Edmands to find out more about the background and ideas for the film. After explaining why my accent was clearly American, Lance and I quickly started getting right to the heart of his story and Bluebird.
Angela: So to start off how many festivals have you been in, specifically in Europe?
Lance: This is my fifth festival on this particular European trip but we’ve played a few more in Europe and all over the world. A lot. I don’t even know how many. We started in Poland and then went to Vienna, then to Amsterdam, and then off to Greece. This is the last stop before I head back home.
A: How would you describe your film to someone who knows nothing about it?
L: I describe it as an ensemble drama that takes place in a wintery town of Northern Maine about how a tragic event unites a group of characters who are isolated in their own way. It goes onto to show how this event breaks them apart and brings them back together again.
A: I’ve read that you were inspired by the location of the film for the idea of this story. How did you actually conceive the idea for the premise of this film? Did you have a planned story before you head over to that location and then just change things as you were influenced by the area or did you first choose this location and kind of started realizing what you wanted to do with it once you got there?
L: More the latter. I sort of started with the place and I mediated on the different type of characters that would be detached from this place and embodied the idea of this place. The central event about the boy was an event I remembered from my childhood where my brother went through a similar situation where he fell asleep on a bus and was discovered later but that wasn’t a tragic event because it wasn’t winter. It was something that always stuck with me as a kid because as his older brother it was my job to make sure he was okay and got home. The idea of the guilt from it and the kind of mundane event that led to these things – it seemed like it made sense because I felt there was a connection with the story and the location. To me the area seemed to have this feeling of being “left behind.” The people of the town hadn’t “flown South,” as the bluebird so we have the idea of this bird being left behind and this boy being left behind and I felt it resonated with the other sort of stories in the film. It all came together kind of intuitively and it really kind of developed from a series of sketches and little moments I kind of fused into the screenplay. It took a long time to figure out what the overall story was and how all these different images and characters related to each other. In a certain sense, I was working backwards – starting with the emotional feeling and location and kind of building a story in to that.
A: Bouncing off the bluebird idea. Did you want it to be more of a symbol in the story or was it not as complicated as that?
L: Well of course I see it as a symbol but I really like the audience to kind of decide for themselves what they see it as.
A: Yes, ultimately everyone is going to interpret it differently but from your point of view – I mean it really could have been anything that distracted her. Why a bluebird?
L: It was kind of important that it was a bluebird because a bluebird in Maine is a bird that flies South for the winter. Extending off what I said before, the bird has a kinship with the characters who have kind of been left in this cold forgotten town, where maybe they should of thought of going South when the economy started spiraling and businesses were shutting down. So here are these people left in a place where they should no longer be, just like the bird. I tried to pick moments where nature and these people, particularly Lesley (the bus driver) and this bluebird, feel this connection; a moment where they have an unspoken understanding that maybe they share something. It’s a lot of different things. It’s a distraction. It’s just a thing that starts a ripple effect of events. It functions in a lot of different ways for me but ultimately it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
A: In the opening you decided to focus on the timber factor for a good amount of time. I thought it was interesting because it wasn’t just a shot of it – it was a lingering over this machine work. Why did you decide to open with something like this?
L: I had always written the script to start with that and then in the process of editing it just felt right because to me the film is about cycles and things repeating themselves and people making the same mistakes as their elders. I also thought of it as the cycle of life with the trees coming from the ground and turning it into paper and going back into the ground again. I also wanted to in some ways make a documentary about this location and this felt to me as the heart of the town, seeing the different machines, which serves the heart and feeds the blood to the rest of the town. That place since we started the movie has actually been shut down, turned into scrap metal and torn apart. In some ways I wanted to capture it before it was gone and sort of preserve this place and this way of life on film.
A: Did you grow in a town similar to this one?
L: I grew up in a more coastal town in Maine that was more touristy. This place has some tourists because of their hiking but we weren’t affected as much as this little town with the downfall of the economy. There are both similarties and differences. Although, Northern Maine and where I’m from, Southern Maine, feel like very dissimilar places sometimes. I was more interested in the mythic Maine backdrop, the Maine of Thoreau, the Maine of the deep dark woods, so I was kind of drawn to this place to go North.
A: In a way the forgotten part of Maine…
L: Yeah, definitely. It’s also the Maine you don’t see because when you usually see Maine in TV, films and literature its mostly that coastal side with lighthouses and lobsters, and that’s kind of the world I grew up in, but I wanted to show the other side that’s more rural farming and timber industry Maine. It’s just as cool and interesting, and beautiful but you just don’t see it as much.
A: The film is essentially about relationships, more specifically family relationships. What made you want to explore this in your story?
L: Yes, the film is definitely about family. I think that grew naturally out of the story and also wanting to understand different types of peoples’ reactions to it. The family unit, to me, seemed like the most direct way to kind of see how this problem reverberated through different people. I wanted to see not only how the school bus driver and the mother react to it but also the reactions of people involved in a secondary way, such as Lesley’s husband and daughter and Marla’s mother. They aren’t affected directly but are still feeling it from a distance. I didn’t set out to make a movie specifically about families but it turned into that as the story evolved.
A: All the characters seemed to be going through their own inner turmoil in the story, which ultimately ended up affecting their relationships with each other. Is that something you consciously tried to show with these family relationships?
L: Yes, the movie is a lot about inner lives and their effects. It is a real challenge to make a film like this with showing emotional interiors and also human reactions to things because its really hard to show interior life in cinema, which tends to be quite literal and mostly focusing on action. It also can be difficult to show characters that are reacting to things because audiences are used to seeing characters that are actively creating things rather than responding to them. It’s tricky to mind these things that are typically novelistic or literary kind of approaches to a story.
A: Did you feel like that was the hardest part of making the film?
L: Yeah, absolutely. I always had to find ways to dramatize or express these characters’ interiors and worked hard at trying to find ways to show all these conflicting emotions inside of each character.
A: You seemed to develop the female characters much more in depth than the male characters. Ultimately, they took up most of the dominant roles. Was that just out of preference or did it develop the way as you started writing the story?
L: I definitely saw it as driven by Lesley and Marla on two sides. Two women that are very different but similar in a certain way. I guess I felt it was primarily their story but I was interested less in them being female and more in them just being characters that you necessarily don’t see a lot. I’m always looking for ways to depict people that don’t get shown a lot. But yes, I do love strong female characters. I really enjoy watching movies about them.
A: So in the future, I’m assuming we can expect more exploration and depth of female characters?
L: Yeah, definitely. It’s not that I don’t think men are interesting. I mean I am one, but maybe it’s the fact that I am one that drives me to want to explore females more. As a writer, I’m more attracted to things I have to work to understand so I’m not as interested in writing about my own personal experiences or things I’m familiar with. I think trying to understand another perspective is the way you make a story richer in a way.
A: What were you looking for when you chose actors for these roles?
L: It was hard because I wanted a woman who could believably live in this place and drive a bus. It’s shockingly difficult to find someone that embodies those qualities, while still remaining an emotional character. This is a place I knew really well so it was hard to imagine just anybody fitting into the tapestry of that place seamlessly. Amy Morton was a suggestion of my casting director and I liked her right away. She’s known for her stage work – being on Broadway and nominated for Tony’s several times. She’s from Chicago, kind of no B.S. kind of girl and she seemed to just be a perfect fit for the part. She can be hard, drive a bus, and there is something about her presence that is very grounded and earthy and I really liked about her. But that was really hard to find. There are not many actresses that can fill that kind of role.
A: What originally connected you to film? Was it something you discovered you loved in your childhood days or later in life?
L: I guess you could say childhood days… I used to have really vivid dreams as a kid and the closest thing I could get to replicating those dreams was through film. I just wanted to find a way to live inside these fantasies. I think making movies is the best way to construct your own reality and live inside it.
A: What’s in store for you next?
L: I am working on a couple things. I have an original script that I’m finishing and I hopefully will be adapting a book but I am still working on getting that sorted that out. Let’s see what gets made first!
Words by Angela Markovic
Bluebird will be in theaters on 17th January 2014.
