As some of the pearl-clutching commentary following the Paris Olympics opening ceremony demonstrated, polyamory is still a subject that provokes strong reactions be that for or against and so it’s understandable that when writer/director Max Novick stumbled across an article about a polycule the seed was sewn for his relationship dramedy Poly. The film drops us into the life of a seemingly blissful throuple as they throw a party to celebrate becoming a four, but unfortunately, all isn’t quite as golden as it seems. Poly and the lives of its three partners could have taken many directions, however Novick’s gripping and at times deeply uncomfortable short is a poignant, bordering on woeful, portrait of jealousy, weighted interpersonal connections and the longing for the return to a life bound by the confines of tradition. Novick’s dramedy delights in its shifting focus on the perspectives of our three players where sympathies switch and we are ultimately left wondering what the path forward for these expectant parents will look like. Directors Notes invited Novick to speak to us about filming the same coverage both handheld and on a tripod to fully immerse his audience in the unfolding situation, embracing the serendipity of mistakes and the effectiveness of writing and shooting with the edit in mind.
How did Poly start as a project?
I graduated film school in 2019 and unsurprisingly failed to get meaningful work, I was mainly working as a PA on commercials. COVID hit and suddenly I had all the time in the world and nothing came out. I came to terms with the fact I may never make another movie and quit writing. A few years later, I’d really come into my own as a person and had so much I wanted to say. The writing bug bit me again and after a few months of writing at least a short a month, Poly was born.
I saw a photograph online in a news article about a polycule with two sets of husbands and wives and the polycule’s two children. I wondered what would happen if any member of the polycule decided they wanted out at that point and how messy it would be to entangle. My parents had a brutal divorce and involving more parties in a separation would only make it tougher. I reduced four members to three for dramatic purposes and suddenly this character of Doug was born. As a dramatist, I always try to put my characters in the worst situation possible and beat them up.
I heard the best line of dialogue one could write is a line that only that specific character could say.
The writing in this blew me away, from all of the little gems like “Harry beats Voldemort” and my favourite “Vibes aren’t even real”. How did you manage to fit so much life, history and love into these characters and their situation?
A lot of it just came from rewriting and rewriting. Years ago, I heard the best line of dialogue one could write is a line that only that specific character could say. I crave authenticity in characters. While I had a sense of who these people were from the first draft, part of my process is to rewrite the scenes as I rehearse with my actors, and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of minds. The core trio of Will Dagger, Paloma Garcia-Lee, and Emmanuel Uceta gave me amazing notes and really helped me make the most specific and fleshed out world I could. For film, I always prefer to under rehearse and let magic happen in the wide shot. Small moments like when Doug bumps into the pans in the kitchen were born that way. I find an honesty in these small moments that I try to preserve to try and keep things feeling raw and truthful.
I feel sorry for Doug but I’m torn. How did you develop his character in order for us to ultimately not hate him?
I think some of it is in the writing, some of it is in Sariel Friedman’s great production design making such a specific world, some of it is in the cinematography and editing by Maxwell Geoffrey and Alexander Frasse, some of it is in Noah Horowitz’s score, but I must give as much credit as I humanly can to Will Dagger. I’d seen Will in a Michael Lukk Litwak short years ago and as I began seeing actors for the role, I realized he would be perfect for it. Will is so easy to love as an audience member and has such range as an actor. I’d love to work with him again and cast him against type. The best advice I ever heard about directing was the Mike Nichols/Woody Allen thing of just hiring the right people and letting them do their thing.
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It’s like I’m drowning in Doug’s head with him as he unravels in the wake of the baby announcement.
There were a lot of careful decisions in the shooting and editing to create that feeling. One of the clearest illustrations of that is the transition from the Doug-Claire scene in the kitchen to the confrontation outside with Pat. We shot the same coverage on a tripod and then handheld so we could ‘pull the rug out’ from under Doug and create a shakier, more anxious feeling. The zooms also helped close in the walls on Doug. Also, when Claire referenced Doug meeting Pat, I pushed to be able to shoot that flashback to put us further into Doug’s head. When he’s questioned who the father is at the party, we also did a Jonathan Demme/Barry Jenkins/Brian De Palma POV shot to help put you in Doug’s head.
We shot the same coverage on a tripod and then handheld so we could ‘pull the rug out’ from under Doug and create a shakier, more anxious feeling
What is your approach on set in order to capture your desired footage and as you so eloquently put it, “let magic happen in the wide shot”?
I prefer to watch older movies where they shot less coverage and aim to tell the story in as few angles as possible, not out of a flashy ‘oner’ thing that’s so trendy now, but a Woody Allen/John Ford/Kurosawa technique of the moving master. I like seeing the actors interact in the same shot as sometimes, cutting creates a ‘choppy’ rhythm to the performances that’s artificial. Part of it is, like the Uta Hagen book, Respect for Acting, I don’t like to do too many takes for the sake of being on a tight schedule, respecting the crew’s time, and avoiding a feeling I’ve had as an actor before. It’s a feeling that emerges when you shoot too many angles and takes, and it stops feeling like what you’re doing matters. I love when actors make so-called ‘mistakes’. In the afore mentioned kitchen scene, Doug bumped into the pots and pans during one take. I wish I came up with that in the script stage and asked Will to keep doing that. It creates authenticity. Like wrong notes in jazz, if you work with great actors, they know how to resolve a ‘wrong note’ and keep the scene organic instead of stopping it.
I like seeing the actors interact in the same shot as sometimes, cutting creates a ‘choppy’ rhythm to the performances that’s artificial.
The editing which enables us to see different moments in hindsight is so fluid and just enough. How did you and Alexander get that balance right?
Alexander Frasse: Max very much wrote and shot the film with the edit in mind, which always makes my job a lot easier. So, in the edit I really had the space to focus on tone and pacing. It certainly was a balancing act because the film tows a line between drama and comedy, juxtaposing some very big comedic gestures with very intimate moments of vulnerability. I think one of the most important aspects of this was getting the right balance between the three main characters’ perspectives. The film is certainly centered around Doug’s point of view, but it was also important to find moments of empathy with Claire and Pat so that they weren’t reduced to one-dimensional antagonists. I think the cutaways and some of the more playful visual gags really allowed us to step in and out of Doug’s mind in a very direct way, which in turn gave us more space to linger with some other characters a little longer and get a glimpse into their world without losing momentum.
Max Novick: My cinematographer, Maxwell Geoffrey, and I meticulously planned our coverage. I always try to do the Hitchcock “shoot for the edit”. With that, I got lucky to meet and work with a brilliant editor. Alexander has great taste and great instincts – the cut away to Pat at the end of the outdoor confrontation scene is a great example of Alexander’s skill, it helped bring a lot of added depth to Pat’s character. The three of us have since shot and cut another short together, The Sabbath, coming next year. We had a unique situation where Maxwell was also our colorist.
We shot on a Canon C300 Mark III we borrowed from my old friend Tyler Wallach, using a rented Canon CN-E 15.5-47mm T2.8 zoom with a Black Satin ¼ filter in front. For the dream sequence/flash forward at the start of the film, we used a Pearlescent 2 filter. For G&E, we had a pretty minimal package due to our small budget, and our crew did amazing work with what we had. One of my favorite visual shifts happens when we go from the kitchen to the fight outside. To get from stix to handheld, we had two versions of our OTS shots, one handheld, and one on stix. In post, we added a bit of film grain.
Can you elaborate on why you chose the filter you did for the dream sequence and how you further separated those worlds?
During a particularly rough period of my life, I would have the most vivid, peaceful dreams. Given the film is designed to torture and test Doug, I wanted to make the most ‘heavenly’ ideal dream world. Alexander and I came up with starting on white and dissolving in as a nice way to create an ethereal feeling. I know they’re considered ‘out of style’ now but I love a good dissolve.
Like wrong notes in jazz, if you work with great actors, they know how to resolve a ‘wrong note’ and keep the scene organic instead of stopping it.
I would love to hear from Noah about the music as the soundtrack is truly a piece of genius.
Noah Horowitz: The process of scoring Poly began with a question from my longtime friend and collaborator, Max Novick: “Could we use a toy piano to signify Doug’s childlike relationship to the world of the film?” I was very excited by the idea, but practical considerations soon came into play. The brittle and tacky sound of a toy piano was extremely distracting during extended dialogue sequences! This realization led to the final concept for the score: the perfect sound of a grand piano representing Doug’s relationship with Claire, the unsettling sound of a prepared piano (a piano with screws and putty on the strings) representing his relationship with Pat, and a toy piano representing Doug’s deeply unserious relationship with himself.
For a film about a three-person relationship, almost every cue is musically derived from the two-note oscillation that begins the score, suggesting from the start Doug’s unhappiness with Pat’s involvement in the relationship. The two notes of the oscillation also happen to be the note names C (Claire) and D (Doug).
Max, what are you working on next?
I have a feature version of Poly I’m shopping around. I got excellent advice from the great writer/director Michael Tyburski who turned a short of his into the excellent feature The Sound of Silence (a film that deserves more attention) that you must let the feature take on a creative life of its own and not be too attached to the short, and it has been really fun to see where the story and these characters I love so much went by opening it up.
Early next year, I’ll be releasing a short online called The Sabbath, another relationship dramedy with many of the same collaborators from Poly. I’m also writing another feature and starting on my first novel, a modern retelling of Oedipus set on Long Island about an intermarried Jewish family.
