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Fest Track On Sirk TV Interview: THE SURRENDER [SXSW 2025] - Part I
Fest Track
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3/25/2025
Writer/Director Julia Max and Actress Colby Minifie talk to Fest Track about balance, detail and approach in regards to their film "The Surrender" playing the Midnighter section at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
Category
🎥
Short film
Transcript
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00:00
This is Tim Wastbrook from FesTrackOnStreetTV.
00:29
I'm here at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
00:59
I read it and was like, well, this is, I know exactly who these people are.
01:03
And I know, I understand this relationship.
01:06
And so, and also it's dealing with something like losing your parent
01:10
and taking care of a parent who is sick, which is a horrible thing to be doing.
01:17
A beautiful gesture, but like something that's very difficult to do.
01:20
And so like being in that space and imagining that,
01:23
and then imagine that person dying,
01:24
and then imagining your mother wanting to bring them back to life.
01:27
It's like a very real thing, very grounded thing.
01:30
Yeah.
01:30
I mean, I'm like, right, this is where it goes.
01:35
But because it's grounded in that family drama, that stuff becomes easy.
01:41
Okay.
01:41
You know, if the beginning part of the movie was not believable,
01:45
you'd be like, why am I in this circle?
01:47
What the hell?
01:48
You're treating me like a child that was getting in the way.
01:50
Oh, fine.
01:51
It's my fault that you left.
01:52
Is that what you're saying?
01:53
Fine, then it is my fault.
01:54
No, it is your fault!
01:56
That you stayed away so long.
01:57
You should have come back sooner.
01:59
You should have come back when he was coherent enough to recognize you.
02:02
I didn't know how bad it was.
02:03
You just kept saying he was doing fine.
02:05
I mean, the interesting thing is when we were taking this script around
02:08
to producers and financiers and everything,
02:12
the note we kept getting, because it's a horror film,
02:14
I was like, well, you got to get to the horror stuff faster.
02:17
So why don't you just speed it up?
02:19
And, you know, just trim all the mother-daughter stuff,
02:21
and have all that stuff wrap up by the first act.
02:24
Just get into the horror!
02:25
Horrible note.
02:26
I know, and I kept getting that.
02:28
I was like, I don't know.
02:29
That's the way to go.
02:30
And I actually tried a draft that way.
02:35
It really did not work.
02:37
Because the thing is, if you don't have that slow build at the beginning,
02:43
you don't care about the characters.
02:45
And if you don't care about the mother and daughter and their relationship,
02:49
and you don't ground the film in reality,
02:51
the rest of it becomes completely meaningless.
02:54
And it's just, you know, it's random.
02:58
It's just for shock value.
03:00
Nobody says those kind of things!
03:03
I'm not going to go into every excruciating detail.
03:05
The weight loss, the vomit!
03:07
You should have told me!
03:08
You knew he was sick!
03:10
And you just didn't want to deal with it.
03:11
No, you didn't want to deal with it!
03:13
He wanted to die in peace without the chemo.
03:15
But you forced him into treatment,
03:17
even though the doctor said it wasn't going to save him!
03:18
But that's the thing with this story.
03:20
It's like, if you get into it too quickly, you jump the shark.
03:23
And there's nowhere to go, you know?
03:26
And so you have to really kind of give these little pieces bit by bit
03:32
so that it feels grounded in reality,
03:36
so that it really makes an emotional impact
03:38
and is scary when you get to that end bit.
03:41
And to your earlier point,
03:44
it doesn't feel like I'm having to do too much crazy imagining stuff
03:49
because every piece of information has been...
03:52
Like, every scene, there's a new piece of information
03:55
that she has to deal with.
03:56
And then the next scene, it's like, wait, now I have to do what?
03:58
And then, oh, it's now we have to contend with this.
04:01
And so because each scene is so economical in that way,
04:05
like, by the time you get to the circle, it's just like,
04:08
okay, now we're...
04:11
What? It worked?
04:12
But it didn't matter what he wanted.
04:14
And it didn't matter what I wanted
04:15
because the only thing that ever f***ing matters is what you want!
04:23
Go! Go!
04:34
Well, the beauty of it is I've got the legend Kate Burton to play with.
04:38
And because we both come from theatre,
04:40
where we're both very much like,
04:42
let's just play and see what this is.
04:44
We're both very interested, and you were too,
04:46
in the scene study of it.
04:48
And what is this person doing to this person at this...
04:52
What is this line doing to her?
04:54
And what is this line doing to her?
04:56
And like, how are we going to...
04:57
It could be a theatre play.
04:58
I mean, no doubt, but okay.
05:00
No, that's...
05:00
There is an element to it.
05:02
Yeah, yeah.
05:03
And that's what attracted me to this,
05:04
is that like, there's these long oners,
05:08
where it's the scene,
05:10
these beautiful scenes between a mother and daughter.
05:13
And like, I love a two...
05:15
I've been wanting to do a two-hander forever.
05:17
And to get to do it with Kate Burton, are you kidding me?
05:21
Hello.
05:37
I feel like so much of that we got to play with
05:40
in the rehearsal process,
05:41
which was really wonderful,
05:43
because that's where we got to kind of tweak the script
05:46
to make it fit more,
05:47
and see what things were getting bumped on early,
05:50
so that we had time to adjust.
05:51
But you had rehearsals.
05:52
Yes, a lot of independent.
05:54
Yeah, you don't get the time,
05:55
but it saves time to have those rehearsals,
05:58
because then you're not doing it on set,
06:00
and trying to be like,
06:01
wait, why is this not working?
06:02
We love rehearsal.
06:04
Love rehearsal.
06:05
Not everybody does.
06:06
Do you?
06:07
Rehearsal is my favorite thing.
06:10
It's my favorite thing.
06:11
I like...
06:12
Because this is...
06:14
We're just trying to...
06:16
Like, in theatre, we get a month of it,
06:19
and we get to see all the different ways
06:21
in which something can play.
06:23
And I love to see all the different avenues of something,
06:27
and then once the camera's rolling,
06:28
you're just like, let's fly.
06:31
Thank you for coming, Ivan.
06:33
I hope you didn't have any trouble finding the place.
06:50
This is Megan.
06:53
Does it take away from the instinct of it sometimes,
06:55
because you've rehearsed it so much,
06:56
or does it open it up?
06:58
I think for me, it opens it up.
06:59
For some people, it doesn't.
07:00
For some people, they're not interested.
07:02
But I will say, Kate has...
07:05
I really learned a lot from Kate on this,
07:08
and I mean, of course.
07:10
But she had a really hard job.
07:14
I have the job of being on the receiving end of all of it.
07:17
She had a job of having to justify all of this behavior.
07:23
And she asked questions.
07:26
She asked a lot of questions in the rehearsal process.
07:29
And she was honest.
07:31
She was like, I have a question about this.
07:35
She was wondering how it sat in her body,
07:37
and she was honest about where things were sitting in her body.
07:40
And that was a beautiful thing,
07:41
because it meant that we could all get behind Barbara's point of view.
07:48
I think it's very important in this movie
07:50
to get behind Megan's point of view,
07:51
as much as it is to get behind Barbara's.
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