Show Notes
Sorry Baby is a movie that makes no apologies. No apologies for how moved you’ll be by its depiction of a character (and her cat) working through their trauma in a wintry Massachusetts town. No apologies how for much you’ll laugh in a film that for all extents and purposes is a tale of sexual assault. And no apologies for how ambitious it is – playing with time and playing with chronology. Which is why we’re excited to welcome onto the show this week, the one and only Eva Victor, the film’s writer, director and star.
Until this impressive debut feature, Eva was best known for a series of online videos – videos that eventually caught the attention of one Barry Jenkins, director of Moonlight and one of the first ever guests on Script Apart. Spotting a flair for comedy and observations about the human condition in those viral shorts, the story goes that Barry reached out to Eva inviting them to send him a screenplay that his production company might be able to produce. What Eva came back with was a tale of a college student whose life is upended by a bruising betrayal of trust by their academic mentor.
When we meet them years later, the film’s protagonist, Agnes – played by Eva – seems to be trapped in carbonite by those events, while all manner of change and chrysalis cruelly occurs around her. Their best friend, Lydie, played by Naomi Ackie, is gliding through milestones in her life. The world is moving on. Agnes, meanwhile, still has a way to go in putting the past behind them.
In the spoiler-filled conversation you’re about to hear, Eva and Al get under the skin of that captivating character. They tell us about how the initial idea for Sorry Baby involved a character who habitually attended court hearings. We get into the film’s non-linear structure and its mirroring of how recovery from assault is a journey full of movement back and forwards in time. We also discuss the scenes cut from their shooting script that would have made for a quite different movie – including a non-sequitor sequence involving two random guys talking about sandwiches for two minutes in the middle of one of the movie’s most important scenes, and an earlier encounter with Pete, the sandwich shop owner with whom Agnes shares a pivotal moment of quiet human co-existence, in the film’s beautiful third act.
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