UK-born writer-director Sophie Goodhart had one of the longest roads from her original MY BLIND BROTHER short (starring Tony Hale) to her feature debut of the same name—13 years, to be exact. In the interim, she wrote a few scripts, some of which got made into actual movies, including 2010’s THE LOCKSMITH and the just shot SEX GUARANTEED, both of which were directed by Brad and Todd Barnes.
The film is a remarkable achievement, in that it seems to give audiences (limited) permission to both laugh at and be jealous of people we are close to who are also disabled in some way because of all the attention they get. MY BLIND BROTHER stars Nick Kroll as the brother and permanent helper of his blind brother (Adam Scott), who also happens to be something of an arrogant dick athlete. While Scott’s character get a great deal of attention for all of his athletic feats, no one seems to recognize that Kroll has to accomplish the exact same feats since he’s guiding this brother along whatever course he has chosen to defeat.
The two men meet Rose (a remarkable performance by Jenny Slate), who is on a quest to be a better person after her boyfriend died right as she was breaking up with him. She is attempting to help the blind, and she ends up almost accidentally dating Scott’s Robbie when it’s clear she’s a perfect match for Kroll’s Bill, who is perceived as something less than Robbie by many, but Rose seems him for the good guy that he really is. MY BLIND BROTHER is very funny but it also brings up some very real, complicated issues about siblings, living with or dating a disabled person, and karma.
I had a chance to sit down briefly with Goodhart (who was on the verge of giving birth just as shooting on the film wrapped) at the SXSW Film Festival in March, where we talked about the process of turning the short into a feature, and the process of turned Nick Kroll from a guy that primarily plays douchebags to a romantic lead. Please enjoy my chat with Sophie Goodhart…
Capone: Hi, Sophie.
Sophie Goodhart: Hello. How are you?
Capone: Good. So I saw that this is based on a short that you did quite awhile ago.
SG: Yes. And your first question is, what the fuck have I be doing this?
Capone: That’s a good question. What did that short focus on, and what was the process when you started building and broadening it?
SG: The short was based on my sister, who was diagnosed with MS when I was in my early 20s. I adore her. She’s a great fucking person. We have a really good relationship. After the initial, like, “This is sad. I can’t believe this has happened,” I was like, “Oh, wait. She’s heroic, and I’m just lazy and flaky, and this is going to be forever.” And while she gets up every morning and has to deal with these seriously difficult things in her life, I still struggle with things like tiredness or hunger. “What is this feeling? Oh, I’m just a bit tired.” So I just wanted to explore that shame/resentment thing, and so wrote the Bill and Robbie story for the short, and it was much darker. It was much more like Bill really wanted Robbie dead.
And I wasn’t planning on making it into a feature. I was writing a story about Rose. I thought the Rose story fit really well into the other story, and then tonally, I love the darkness of the short, but I didn’t really feel like, as an audience member, I wanted to watch that kind of darkness for an hour and a half, because there’s a detachment that’s interesting and maybe quirky and novel, but I really like having a good time when I watch a film. So I thought, I’m going to take some of the darkness out and put romance in. So tonally it shifted.
Capone: I will say as someone who really embraces darkness in storytelling, I will say there are two things that really impressed me. I think you took some chances here in that you weren’t afraid to portray that jealousy that the more able-bodied sibling has, and then of course that’s immediately followed by guilt of feeling jealousy. You weren’t afraid to portray the bother with affliction as a jerk, as like a selfish, ego-maniacal person.
SG: I think that’s something interesting about athletes. I think to have that determination and focus to try to win and work that hard, you have to have an ability to close people down and get this absolutely amazing tunnel vision of like, “That’s what I want to get.”
But also the reality is with the Robbie character, life is hard and scary and complicated, and the way Bill’s found to cope with things is to be shameful and needy, and the way Robbie’s found to cope with his insecurity is to close it the fuck down. So he choses to be bombastic and cold and aggressive to quiet the scary voices in his head. What I loved about what Adam did is he exposes these moments of vulnerability. He showed tiny, little glimpses of them, and then at the end you get this like “Oh wow. You know exactly what you’re be doing and you’re making this choice.”
Capone: It’s fun to see after years of watching Nick play abrasive…
SG: Dicks [laughs].
Capone: Yeah, and in the last couple of things I’ve seen him in, he’s actually been a real sweetheart, and down on himself but in a way you would embrace him.
SG: I think he’s become a romantic lead.
Capone: I’m going to ask you a question I would never ask a male director…
SG: Don’t do it!
Capone: It’s for very good reason. I was at the Q&A last night, and you said you were really pregnant by the time you reached the end of the shoot. Did that impact the way you would approach a day of shooting?
SG: I was scared going into directing my first film. It had been such a long time, and I hadn’t done it for so long, and I just thought, “Do I know how to do it?” I know how to write, but do I know how to direct? And actually I think the pregnancy was a really healthy distraction for me. And also being pregnant is alarming because you’re like, “Oh, what’s going to happen today? The baby’s going to come out!” And also I was like really, really old. So I was like, “Oh, this is a disaster!” So the film took my mind off the pregnancy, and the pregnancy took my mind off the film. So actually it was a plus, and I’m planning to wear a fake bump for the rest of my life. If I ever get to make another film, I’m going to be like 67 with a giant stomach like, “Yes, I’m still with child.”
Capone: Somebody mentioned the scenes on the water. You said they were shot last. That had to be terrifying.
SG: Yeah. Partly, we just had actually scheduled them to happen in the middle, but the weather was so bad—giant storms, all the sediment in the lake, so we couldn’t put actors in the water. It was a mess. So we had to shoot the water at the end, and I would not have chosen to do that, and I was very, very pregnant at the end. Also, just the adrenaline of like, I’ve waited so long to do this that by the time I got there, the baby could have been crowning, and I would have been like, “Yeah, just go!” Hand up my own vagina.
Capone: I love that you said, “A little thing like this pregnancy isn’t going to stop me from making my first feature.” Anyway, it was so great to meet you. Thank you so much.
