When Sadie Bones was a freshman at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in New York, her class was greatest to a screening of “Memento” and as the amnesia-stricken widow played by Guy Pearce in the Christopher Nolan thriller struggled to retain any memories of his own, the film itself left an indelible impression on Bones.
“I was like I have to do film because it’s one of those mediums you can show the world exactly what it looks like through your eyes,” recalls Bones. “In a very literal way, you could be like, this is what it looks like, this is what it sounds like to me. This is my perception. Sit in my brain for a second and watch. Maybe I’m just a super horrible narcissist and I so badly want to show my perspective and for some reason think it matters, but also, what a way to tell a story?”
Narcissism would be the last quality you would think of to watch Bones’ feature debut “If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing” in both its utter lack of vanity and the generosity that its characters show one another as the 17-year-old at its center, Sydnie (Aitana Doyle), faces an unexpected pregnancy. Bones wasn’t ever with child herself, but she has hardly hidden the autobiographical nature of the film as the sudden level of responsibility thrust upon her reveals an unsuitable partner in her college-bound boyfriend Lucas (Brandon Fannin) and is taken as a sign of the direction in her life that her parents (Nadia Dajani and David Krumholtz) have urged her to find, though this is hardly the path they would’ve recommended.
At 19 in real life, Bones is only a few years removed from this period of leaving the nest herself and being left to her own devices, but while the raw emotion of that time comes through undiluted, it takes the form of a confident comedy where she can now laugh at certain youthful missteps when Sydnie vacillates between welcoming Daniel back into her life and making the mistake of taking interest in the lead singer of a local band (Andrew Michael Fama), all the while knowing her life is going to change radically once the baby arrives. The film is blessed by a refreshing lack of judgment as Sydnie stumbles her way towards a path forward and the adults around her know that chastising her will only add to stunting her growth, creating the drama of being the only one that needs to get out of her own way in terms of how she sees herself.
Bones could lean on her own support system to make her debut at such an early age, which as she explains was certainly larger than she ever could imagine when she first put pen to paper, but ultimately it reflects an enormous amount of creative energy and imagination when “If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing” features cameos from her work as a painter, musician and even as an actress. With the film now available to audiences everywhere to stream after a festival run that began last year at Bentonville, the filmmaker spoke about how the film grew from her own uncertainty about what came next in her own life, feeling at home on a set where she was the least experienced member of the crew and how she envisions a filmography that tells one continuous story.
How did this come about?
I was in my last semester of the two-year conservatory at Strasburg, which I had started at 16 and I was like, “Crap, what am I going to do next?” I’m freshly 18 and [I thought] “Can’t go to real college” [since I] didn’t really finish high school, so that was not an option and at the same time, I had all this typical teenage drama with boys and friends and parents. So I was writing about the very literal boy drama going on in my life, and also the very real fear ofnot knowing what to make of myself and my life going forward. Writing [the script] was just a way to cope and then a friend and I [starting saying], “Well, what if we just tried to [make it] by ourselves and do as much as we can?” We started telling people that we were just going to make this feature. And then it got into the hands of Mandy Ward, our producer, and she [said], “No, we’re going to do this right. And she really legitimized it. And here we are now.
I’ve heard you say you actually didn’t know how big the scope of this would be until you walked on set and saw a bunch of big trucks pull up. What was it like realizing you were taking something on that could be this big?
It was crazy because we were just going to do it with really student film vibes and as it gained traction and people came on board, it grew and grew to an extent without my knowledge. Because when you’re making a film, you hire a certain DP, then your DP goes and hires gaffers and grips and you’re not aware of that. I didn’t know what equipment she wanted to use. I just knew the creative and the shot list, but not the technical stuff happening on the other side of that. And I didn’t know we were hiring the catering. I knew my core team — my producer, DP, AD, but I didn’t know we had now a second AD. Everyone was letting me focus on the creative side of things, so we pull up on set on day one, there’s a giant truck with all this equipment and I’m like, “This is for us? This is ours?”
Beyond that, we all went around and introduced ourselves because I [realized] there’s a lot of people in this crew and [it was funny because] we’re all on the sidewalk and we’re setting up the first shot and someone asked me, “Well, what’s your role here?” And I was like, “I’m the director” because I was by far the youngest person there. So I just looked like maybe a lost puppy on that first day.
Was there a moment you could start feeling confident about what you were doing?
Yeah, those first few days that we had were definitely challenging because I had crazy imposter syndrome, but the first day was a chill day, the second day we shot in the diner and then the third day we were shooting in my teenage bedroom at my mom’s house. And I had set it up and painted, and I was having a great time [in general], but I think I really got my footing the week two. We were shooting all this stuff with the band and I was in some of it [as an actor], so I [thought], “Okay, I need to lock in because like I’m now taking on this extra role and being in front of the camera immediately gave me a better sense of like what my actors were experiencing.
That definitely helped me know how to talk to them a little bit better and feel more confident in what I was telling them. Also, you immediately have to have that much more trust in your team because I can’t watch my monitor, so I’m trusting my AD and my DP for it to look good and we’re getting what I want. I realized I cared way more than anyone else that I was really young, like I’m the only one here that actually cares that I’m 18 years old. Nobody else here is thinking about that as much as I am, and then I was right back to my normal, really bossy self. [laughs] I bought a bull horn and everyone really hated to see the bull horn and my Red Bull combo coming, but that was my thing.
Since you mentioned Sydnie’s bedroom, that space is really amazing and says so much about the character. What was it like to design?
It was a lot of fun. That was my bedroom in my mom’s house when I was in high school and I had moved out like long before we shot the movie but I [asked her] “Well, can we shoot in there?” And she [said] “Sure.” And I was like, “Great, I want to paint it purple,” and she has her aesthetic and it does not include that. [laughs] And she was very upset. But to her credit, we painted it purple and it took a while to grow on her. But then Ava Bodnar and I picked out all of these travel-related things — there’s a giant map with different travel destinations and a bunch of birds and fairies, things that fly — and I put those up all around the room and I like the idea of it being a nest. I set that up six months before we ever even started shooting.
That’s particularly funny to hear when one of the great aspects of this film is how no one’s parents actually gets angry at their kids in spite of what happens as it has in plenty of movies before and you still find the drama. Was that a hard balance to strike?
Yeah, I think the way that the family reacts and people [in general] react to her, it’s not like she’s being shunned for being pregnant as much as she begins to self-isolate. That was the way I naturally gravitated towards because my mom has always said, she was like, “Well, don’t get pregnant, but if you did, it would be great because I would have a chance to raise a kid again and do it right this time.” [laughs] She’s very sassy and rude about it, so I based the adult reaction around that and I would love to say that I did all this stuff on purpose and it was intentional, but really I was just writing, “Well, this happened to me, this happened to me and this happened to me” and then I had a script. I’ve fictionalized a bunch of stuff, but it was generally inspired by a lot from my real life that I don’t think I understood when I was writing it until I watched the movie. Then I was like, “Whoa. When I said that, I didn’t even mean that.” I wasn’t privy to that when I was writing it.
What’s it like giving this over to Aitana and having her as the lead in this?
It was very scary because it’s so personal, but we had had an acting class together, so I knew she was talented. I was worried at first. I felt like she was too cool. She’s such a cool girl and I’m not. I am very weird. But she crushed it and she was on top of her stuff and everyone in the cast really listened to me — to my references and the music I sent them and the stories I told them and really trusted me and the script, so it was a good experience.
The music seems like it was pretty integral in general – not only do you have a band in the film, but a lot of sequences seem to be crafted around a song. Was that a foundational element?
The music was always going to be a big part of it because I love music. It’s a big part of my life and I love a guy in a band, unfortunately. One of the first things I do is start compiling playlists and the songs [performed by the band] in the movie were actually written by me and my boom operator one night. And then the rest of the music in the film, some of it is like very sentimental. Like when Sydnie’s giving birth, the song that plays is called “Starting to Get It Together” and it’s by my dad’s band and I actually used it as the ending credit song in the first short film I ever made when I was eight, so that one’s very special. And the end credit song, “Here Come the Geese” by the Barenaked Ladies was from their children’s music album that I used to listen to as a kid, so that one was really important to me as well.
Then when my composer Josh Landau came on, he totally understood the film and we had a unique process where he sent me his library of work and a lot of it is his fucking around at home or while he was actually on tour. I listened to all of it and placed a bunch of it and then he would make tweaks for me to fit it into the film. But I think we were randomly both going through breakups, so it was a really collective emotional space and it came together really well because of that. I forced my AD Bruce to listen to every Taylor Swift song ever so he could be fully immersed in what I was doing as well. But people got and understood that.
Something really lovely that I discovered after the film in part explains the ending of this film, which I wouldn’t want to spoil, but is it true that you plan to start each new film you make with some type of connection to the last one you made?
Yeah, my short film that I made before “Mockingbird” ends on a beach at sunrise, so “Mockingbird” begins on a beach at sunrise and it ends on a plane and I have this idea that I would like my works to be a continuous stream. I don’t know if it will be that literal, but the next script that I wrote chronologically after “Mockingbird,” it does begin on a plane. It doesn’t always happen that things get greenlit chronologically like that, but the way things are going, what I think will be my next project begins with people traveling at the start of a trip, so it worked out the way I had imagined where there is this throughline. I like that I didn’t do it on purpose either. I like that it just naturally seems to flow that way.
I can’t wait to see whatever’s next. What’s it been like getting this out into the world so far?
It’s been a dream. Every day I’m pinching myself, like no way this is my life. My goal in making the movie was so I could watch it. I want this to be materialized, so every step beyond that is just extra credit and I’m just so grateful.
“If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing” will be available on October 14th on streaming platforms including AppleTV and Prime Video.