The Big Picture · Discussion · Interview
July 6, 2017/ 48 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey sets the scene on 'A Ghost Story' with Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson, then talks to David Lowery the week the film opens: the bedsheet ghost he sat on for a decade, a 30-page script, the movie made in secret, and the existential crisis behind it.
17 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Setting the scene at Sundancewith Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
Lawson was at the film's off-the-radar Sundance premiere. Casey Affleck dies early and haunts the home he shared with Rooney Mara as a sheet with eye holes cut out; divisive for its lack of conventional structure, but Lawson found it hopeful. He praises Lowery's warmth over the bleakness he sees in a lot of young filmmakers.
Lowery's Disney remake, the film he made just before this one; Lawson likes how he folds a Disney ethos and folkloric quality into work at any budget.
Lawson's example of the bleak direction young independent filmmakers tend toward, the trend he thinks Lowery refreshingly avoids.
Cited as evidence Lowery keeps jumping genres while holding onto a consistent core.
In conversation
The bedsheet-ghost image had been in his head almost 10 years. He wrote it in a spontaneous burst finishing post on 'Pete's Dragon' (10 pages the first night, 30 by the next day) and wrote running times into scenes so the crew understood a single line of action might hold for a five-minute take. Shot in secret; kept quiet so a failure could be buried. The 1.33:1 frame with vignettes suits a character trapped in a box, and evokes his parents' slide projections.
His first feature, written the same dialogue-light way from a 20-page script; his proof to himself that a thin script could yield a feature-length film.
The six-month shoot left him worn out and, turning 34, sinking into nihilistic thoughts about mortality: the existential crisis that produced 'A Ghost Story.' Still, he calls it the work he's most proud of.
He stopped reading his own reviews during its release. He hasn't watched it in four years and doesn't want to.
He saw it right before production and flipped for it; the family-haunting sequence became a surprising visual touchstone for the film's language.
The Apichatpong Weerasethakul film he and his cinematographer watched before shooting.
He started to rewatch it and stopped, worried they'd get too close to it. The man in a gorilla suit with light-up LED eyes, goofy yet haunting, was a model for their own Halloween-costume spirit.
Comes up as he talks about his next film, another David Grann adaptation; he cites James Gray's version as proof Grann's journalism already reads like a finished movie.
He saw the new Sofia Coppola the other night, loved it, and caught himself wondering mid-screening whether it would feel great to him in a year or two.
His favorite Coppola and, he says, a masterpiece, though he can't remember whether he felt that on first viewing.
One of his recent favorites; Terence Davies's Emily Dickinson film, which he found passionate despite its muted title.
Bertrand Bonello's film, which he caught at the Seattle festival and called extraordinarily provocative and well-made.
His favorite film of the year so far; he suggests it would make a fantastic double feature with 'A Ghost Story.'
Also mentioned raised along the way
Genre reference points PoltergeistThe Conjuring
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
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