Writer-director Hannah Marks, who got her started acting in such projects as Accepted, Weeds, Necessary Roughness and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agencymade her directorial debut with after all, which she also wrote. And she directed another movie she wrote, Mark, Mary and some other peoplebefore she directed Do not let me gocurrently streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video.
For Marks, directing a movie she didn’t write was something she “really enjoyed.”
“It was a great experience because I got an outside perspective on the material, and it was really fun to riff on the material that already existed,” Marks says. The Hollywood Reporter. “We improvised a bit and played a bit because everyone was so cooperative and involved.”
But that doesn’t mean making Do not let me go was not without challenges. The movie stars John Cho and Mia Isaac as a father and daughter taking a road trip from California to New Orleans, ostensibly for Cho’s Max to attend his college reunion. But the journey is really a way for Max, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, to… reconnect daughter Wally (Isaac) to her mother and pass on some useful life lessons to him.
With Cho from New Zealand while working on Netflix Cowboy Bebop amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Marks and Co. choosing between the actor and making an American road trip movie in New Zealand.
“The borders were closed and it wasn’t really feasible to have both John Cho and America, so we chose John Cho because ultimately, although this is an American story, the most important aspect of it was the father-daughter relationship and John was so perfect for the part we thought we would come to him,” recalls Marks. “There were zero cases of COVID in New Zealand at the time, so it was incredibly safe for us to go there and shoot the film. Of course there were many challenges, as you can imagine.”
Marks quickly ticks off some of those challenges: “It’s an American road trip film set in the summer, and we were in Auckland in the winter. The weather was a challenge. All the driving was a challenge. There they drive on the other side of the road. They just don’t have that many roads and highways, and you can’t close them, so that was difficult.”
She adds, “In addition, left-hand drive cars are illegal unless it’s a vintage car, and that’s how Max’s Wagoneer was born. It wasn’t originally part of the story. Before he drove some kind of modern Toyota… It was funny, there were so many random things you wouldn’t expect that just felt weird like the doors – I noticed all their doorknobs and door handles were way higher there than they are here . I’m trying to sell California, New Mexico, New Orleans, Florida all in Auckland. There is no other New Orleans.”
Despite all those difficulties and adjusting aspects of the story, such as the car, because of the geography, Marks says filming in New Zealand “ultimately” made everything “better”.
“We really had an incredible local crew that was really supportive of trying to make everything look like America,” she says.
After not writing Do not let me go and the upcoming film adaptation of John Green’s best-selling novel Turtles all the way downwhich she directed for HBO Max, Marks sees herself writing screenplays for future stories.
“I’ll probably write the next one because I didn’t write the last two and I can’t wait to get started again, even though I loved the screenplays I got to direct and I’m so grateful, but I really long for it.” to write something to do,” she said.
But that doesn’t mean Marks didn’t have personal connections with Do not let me go. Speak with THRMarks shares how she got involved with the film, why it appealed to her, making movies for streaming services, and her future as a writer-director.
How did this project come to you and why did you want to direct it?
I had a general meeting with Peter Saraf at the Big Beach offices in New York. I was such a big fan of his because he made Little Miss Sunshine and Amendment and all these great movies. And he sent me the script for… Do not let me go after our meeting, and I read it right away and I liked it so much. I was so shocked by the ending of the twist and I thought it was so daring and brave, both with how the movie started and with the twist at the end, so it just felt really emotionally resonating to me. And I had a lot of connections with it in my own life. So that’s really where it all started.
Can you elaborate on the connections with your own life?
My father taught me to drive and he is also a cancer patient.
[The following paragraph contains spoilers from Don’t Make Me Go.]
And besides, I have a problem with my heart. That’s why that spin really shook me. I really hope and think mine won’t kill me, but I do have a problem with my heart valves that I check and check that I don’t always talk about, but that definitely connected me with the twist that’s happening.
[Spoilers end]
What do you hope people get out of this movie?
I hope they take away from you that you can come of age at any point in your life. This is not just about a 15 year old coming of age, this is also about her 40 year old father coming of age. It’s never too late to change things or try or take a risk. I hope I still try to pursue my dreams and different career paths and aspirations when I am older. I want that to sing at the end of the movie.
This movie will be released on Amazon and your next movie Turtles all the way down is for HBO Max. How do you feel about this movie being released on a streaming platform in this era where the future of theatrical releases is somewhat in question?
I love going to the cinema and have so much nostalgia for it because it is so important to me. However, I don’t like to talk about streaming because it means so many more artists can make movies, and I’m lucky enough to be one of them. Streaming allows me to create projects that normally wouldn’t have been created. I have no qualms about streaming or not letting the movie hit theaters because it really allows us to tell so many more stories and reach such a large audience.
Turtles all the way down has been some time in development and you’ve been attached for a while also – first it was on Fox and now it’s on HBO Max. What was it like to be a part of that project, when it’s happened a few times over?
It was great because I think I’ve grown with the project. When I first started interviewing for this movie I was 23 or 24 and now I’m in my late twenties. In my own personal life I have changed and grown, and it is exciting to see my perspective change with the project. The story became even more relevant during the pandemic because the main character is so terrified of germs and infectious diseases, and now we can all relate to that, not just people with anxiety or people who are hypochondriacs. I think we’ve all had that experience now. So in a weird way the movie became even more universal at that time, and I really believe it wasn’t supposed to be made until now.
What kind of stories do you hope to tell in the future as a writer-director?
I think I will always focus on a central relationship, and my characters will always be my primary focus. I like to add a higher concept to what I write. The last thing I wrote, which I haven’t taken out yet, has a robot and is set in the near future, and I’ve really, really enjoyed that process, and really liked it, but it’s still of course kind of a relationship movie even if it has a robot.
This interview has been edited and abbreviated for clarity.