Nightbitch came into Marielle Heller’s life at a time when she really got it.
The film is based on Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel about an exhausted mom who finds herself turning into a dog — and getting in touch with her canine instincts. Amy Adams and production company Annapurna optioned the horror-comedy before the book was published and asked Heller — a screenwriter, director and actor — about directing the film adaptation, starring Adams.
“I had just had my second child and I was very isolated. My husband was in production, and so I was home alone with two kids for the first time, and reading this book about a stay-at-home mom and motherhood was very cathartic,” Heller tells MovieMaker.
“So I started adapting that book, kind of in the crux of mothering two kids with no help and no support, really, in the middle of Covid. It became this sort of safe haven for me to put all my frustrations and all of the parts of me that felt like I was slightly losing my mind right into the script.”
Heller’s films include the 2015 comedy The Diary of a Teenage Girl,starring Bel Powley, 2018’s forgery drama Can You Ever Forgive Me, starring Melissa McCarthy, and 2019’s biographical A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers.
Her acting credits include Netflix’s 2020 chess drama The Queen’s Gambit and 2021’s Peacock comedy series MacGruber, co-createdby her husband, The Lonely Island veteran Jorma Taccone.
In our latest Things I’ve Learned as Moviemaker, Heller talks about the lonely parts of filmmaking, loving what’s on the screen, and the myth of magic. — M.M.
Marielle Heller on Nightbitch and Being a Lone Wolf
1. When I talk to filmmakers who are making their first movie, I feel, sometimes, like I’m a voice of doom and gloom, because I really warn them how alone they’re going to feel, and that that’s normal. Nobody’s going to help you as much as you expect them to help you when you make your first movie.
Nobody’s going to care as much as you care… It really requires you to be the engine and to recognize that you’re going to be the person who cares more than anybody about every detail, and that can be a very lonely feeling. That amount of responsibility falling on your shoulders, I think, is not for the faint of heart.
2. There’s a sort of false narrative that’s probably been fed from fiction and movies that if you’re brilliant enough, you’ll just sit down and write a brilliant novel or a brilliant screenplay, and it’s just not how it works.
You have to work and work and work and rewrite and write bad things and bad things and bad things, and then eventually write something decent, and then be able to tell the difference and be able to not screw it up on your next rewrite. It’s just work… there’s no real magic to it.
3. Making movies is horrifically painful, and it hurts during a lot of parts of it. I have a very complicated relationship with it in a certain way. I love production. I love being on set… but I hate prep. I hate the eight or 10 weeks before shooting, where it’s so important, but all you’re doing is planning, and it’s all anticipation with no satisfaction.
It’s just this buildup of thinking through everything that could possibly go wrong once you start shooting. I find it torturous.
4. Gregg Araki, who was one of my advisors at the Sundance Lab, told me: When you’re looking at the monitor and you’re looking at the screen, do not call “action” until you love everything you see. It’s a very hard thing to follow, and it is very important. You get to decide when it’s done, when it’s ready, and you have to be looking with such a discerning eye.
5. I think the goal of filmmaking is to reflect humanity and make people feel less alone, and tell stories that make people feel more connected to each other. There’s some greater source out there that we’re all trying to find our connection to, and I think that’s what art can do at its best.
Nightbitch arrives in theaters December 6 from Searchlight Pictures.
Main image: Marielle Heller and Amy Adams behind the scenes of Nightbitch. Photo by Anne Marie Fox, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
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