[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

[Narrator] This week on "On Story," we're joined by Celine Song to discuss writing and directing her semi-autobiographical debut feature, the bittersweet romantic drama, "Past Lives."

- My theater teacher used to say this thing, "If the story that you're telling is something that makes you wild, it makes you enthused, it makes you just so [bleep] thrilled, there's gonna be at least some people in the audience because they're also people, that's gonna feel that way about your work."

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] Inspired by Song's own experiences, "Past Lives" tells the story of two childhood friends who reunite as adults and reckon with the nature of the enduring bond between them.

[typewriter dings] - What was it about playwriting that was the medium you wanted to start writing in?

- I really do feel very deeply like I'm a writer first and something that you're able to do in playwriting is in theater, writers are king, so you cannot change a single comma without the writer saying you can.

So there is an amazing thing in theater where you can be on auteur right away, you can be an auteur from the first play you write and it's not something that... you don't need to intern for it, you don't need to be an assistant for it, where you can just show up and then you can have a great script and people are gonna wanna do it.

And to me that was what was really amazing about it because to me it was always the writing and the storytelling that got me interested in doing this in the first place.

- You found success before you transitioned to film with playwriting.

I mean, what was it about your writing you think that helped you find success or helped you become the auteur that you wanted where people did trust your work and gave you success with the plays that you put out?

- I always find the audience to be the most honest group ever, and I just mean the audience that shows up and buys a ticket and watches the thing that you made.

Because I think that of course you can say all these amazing things about like, well, blah, blah, blah, said it was good or there was a review that said it was good and everything, but the audiences has to actually endure watching something.

[audience laughing] So if they do not connect, they don't connect and if they do, they do.

My theater teacher used to say this thing that at the time I didn't even fully understand, but now I think about it all the time where he said, "Well, you're not an alien, you're a person, you're a human being.

So if you have something, if the story that you're telling is something that makes you wild, it makes you enthused, it makes you just so [bleep] thrilled about and what's gonna happen is there's gonna be at least some people in the audience, because they're also people, that's gonna feel that way about your work."

And I think that that's the best thing that I can trust, which is that like if I think it's cool, if I think it's amazing, if I think it's worth pursuing, then usually I will find some people in the audience at least, who feel the same way.

- Let's dive into it.

I know you've touched on this before in other talks, but can you briefly talk about the spark of this movie, where it came from and then also why you thought not only was it a story worth telling, but story worth telling in this new medium for you, of a feature film?

- I did find myself in this bar, in East Village in New York City sitting between my childhood sweetheart who had come to visit me from Korea and who's now a friend and my husband who I live with in New York City and they don't speak the same language so I was translating their small talk and I think in the middle of all of that, I remember feeling like I have become a bit of a portal or bridge between not just these two cultures and two language, but, you know, these two parts of my own history and my own life and who I am.

And there was an amazing thing where I also realized like, well each person doesn't know the part of me that the other person really knows, right?

And I do remember, when I was sitting in that bar and looking up around the bar and I made eye contact with somebody who was looking at us, clearly trying to figure out what the hell was going on with us.

And I remember feeling, I had a couple thoughts, when I made eye contact with that stranger, I was like, first of all, you're never gonna be able to guess, right?

[Man] I think the white guy and the Asian girl are a couple and the Asian guy is her brother.

[Woman] Or the Asian girl and the Asian guy are a couple and the white guy is their American friend.

[Celine] What if I actually told you what it is like to sit there between these two people and know that you are loved in different ways, but it is in a completely ordinary way and a completely extraordinary thing.

But it really stuck with me and I started to tell this particular story of this night to some of my close friends.

What I realized is every friend I told this story to had a story of their own that they could connect to.

And it could be something that is smaller, because maybe you don't cross the Pacific Ocean or maybe it's something where it feels as vast and as extraordinary as what you've seen in, "Past Lives."

But regardless, it really was this thing where at the end of every time I told the story, I became better friends with every friend that I told this to.

I became deeper friends.

We got to know each other deeply.

And that made me feel like, okay, maybe it is worth telling the story.

- Were you first thinking of play or why did you think feature film is the way to go for this?

- My joke that I've told before is that the villain of the story, 'cause they are no villains in the story that are human, the only villain in the story is the 24 years and the Pacific Ocean.

In film, you can tell the story of time and space passing and moving through us, literally, because the movie is about the contradiction.

Is Nora 12 or is she 40?

And the truth is that the answer is both.

And the answer is both throughout the whole film.

And the answer is also like, well in Hae Sung's eyes, her child sweetheart, she's always 12.

And also in his eyes, in this moment, she's 40.

So for me to really express that contradiction, it really felt like I need it to be told in a cinematic form because you need to be able to see the child and to see the grownup and to see both of those worlds crash into each other in that way.

- You have the story in mind, you're looking at the precipice of, I think film's the way to go, but you've never made a feature film before, so, so how do you find your first step?

- When I first decided to write the story, I ran right into a structural problem, which is that, I'm sure there's some people in this audience who wants to write something bilingually in here and this was also 2018, before, "Parasite," where there was a whole conversation about subtitles, which I really did think it changed how people watch things with subtitles and of course Covid did that as well.

And this was 2018 and I was like, "Okay, so maybe I'll make it a spec and maybe you'll give me other jobs."

[Celine laughing] Maybe if I write it great and then people are gonna think that I'm a good writer and it's gonna give me other jobs, but I really hope somebody will make it and I hope it's me.

And I think that from there I just wrote it the way that I write anything.

'cause I come from theater, so you always write assuming that no one's gonna do your play.

[all laughing] Being in theater for 10 years, like I said earlier, is that you sort of end up saying like, "Yeah, but I'm gonna just write what I wanna write and worry about what I'm gonna do with it later."

And I think that's really what it was.

I just wrote the script and then from there I think that it really was about this script getting me to here.

I feel like being in this room in the writer's conference is so special, because I know that in my bones this is sort of at the heart of what everything is.

It's like people ask me questions all the time of like, "How'd you get to make your movie?

How'd you get to make your first movie?

How'd you get A24?

How'd you get these actors?"

And I'm always like, "Well, it all starts with the script."

Which is really true, that A24 came on board because of the script.

My actors auditioned for me because of the script.

So because the script is the representation of exactly what kind of movie that I'm dreaming about, if you connect to that dream, then you're gonna come help me make it and then you're gonna wanna come be a part of the team that makes this dream come true.

[typewriter dings] - I wanna dig into the actual writing process.

I'm fascinated by, it's something that strikes me when you were talking about the seed of actually in real life, translating between your friend and your partner, is I imagine there must have been a similar feeling on the page when you're translating Hae Sung and Arthur onto the page and yourself.

Was there a bit of like a duplication or echo there or how was that process of actually translating real life onto the page, the way you translated from language to language?

- Even though it really started from a very subjective place, there is gonna be a process of what I call the objectification of like, you're almost turning life into something that you can look at on the page, which is gonna be a completely different process.

And part of it is, like the fantasy of the film is that everybody's so articulate and deep, immediately, [all laughing] which is not true about life, 'cause we are meandering, we get lost in our thoughts and even in feeling you're not feeling 10 things, you're feeling 1,000 things, I feel like, in life.

It was kind of a thing where you're turning that into, whatever, 100-something pages of script.

At that point, when I'm showing it to my actors, I'm not asking them to imitate real people or emulate real people.

I'm not asking to play real people, I'm asking to play characters.

We have different history in life and what we're trying to find is what is the best history in life for Nora.

So by the end of that, it really was so much about telling the story itself and it's really turning it into the story itself, yeah.

- What was the hardest character to write?

Was it harder to write a version of yourself in Nora, was it harder to write Arthur and Hae Sung?

- Nora wasn't the hardest, it was Arthur who's the hardest, of course.

And the final scene that I wrote actually is the scene in the bedroom.

So my first draft didn't have the scene in the bedroom, if you guys remember that scene where Nora and Arthur are talking in the bed.

- Tiny apartment in the East Village with some Jewish guy who writes books.

Is that what your parents wanted for you?

- You're asking me if you, Arthur Zaturansky, are the answer to my family's immigrant dream?

[Arthur] Yeah.

- Wow... [Celine] That was the last scene that I wrote and I had a draft without that scene in it.

Can you believe it?

Impossible!

But this is why you need another draft.

[all laughing] But it really was that thing where I was like, the way that Nora and Arthur met in the first draft was actually more extended.

It was a lot longer in my very, very original draft, where I invested a little bit more page time on Nora and Arthur meeting in that artist residency and then I didn't have that scene in the bedroom.

And then of course, as I was looking at it, looking at script, something that I noticed is that, well I know exactly what it is that Arthur is going through, but it actually might be worth backing him up a little bit, 'cause it's like what I really want more than anything is for Arthur to be not a villain or like Arthur to be... 'cause by the way, when Arthur walks into the film, I don't expect anybody in the audience to be cheering and be glad to see him.

[audience laughing] That's the amazing thing about somebody who enters into your life and disrupts a love story.

It's like, well that person's gonna show up and the whole audience is gonna be like, "Boo, go away.

Go back where you came from!"

And this is something that my actor John Magaro really understood, 'cause I actually met a bunch of actors for the character of Arthur and some actors, they actually thought that their job was easy.

So there are some of them, they were like talking about Arthur as like, "Yeah, you just show up and you're just the husband."

And you're like, "Absolutely not!"

And that was usually a good sign that that's probably not the right person to play the role, but John really understood how difficult it was and I sent him the scene afterwards, when I wrote it, I was like, "This is gonna be the scene and this is a huge scene, so you need to read it right now."

And he calls me and he's like, "Oh, he's fighting for his life, in this scene, he's fighting for his life and he's fighting for his wife."

- It's just that you make my life so much bigger and I'm wondering if I do the same thing for you.

[Celine] It was the most difficult character because I can't overstay his welcome, but also I need to make sure that I'm backing him, I'm rooting for him and then he has all the tools to win the audience over in the third act.

[typewriter dings] - You mentioned earlier how your characters or the dialogue is more eloquent than sometimes in real life and that's what kind of struck me about that scene was that when I watched it, I was like, "This dialogue is so on the money and so good."

But it was also like, the way they both distilled what they were feeling into like perfect words, it shouldn't have felt realistic to me and still did.

How did you find that bridge between those two?

- If it's the truth and the characters mean it, then I think that it is much easier for the audience to come along with any kind of language, almost.

Because the part of it is, it's something that you wanna believe, which is that like you're able to communicate in this way.

I think the difference between being an amateur writer and being a professional writer is that being an amateur writer, which I've been for a long time, is that part of it is that you're writing for yourself and part of it is writing for what makes me happy, what makes me thrilled.

But I know that, and of course that amateur writer is living in me all the time, because it has to, I have to believe in the thing that I'm working on.

But when you talk about what it's like to be a professional artist, I don't think it's that you're paid to write, 'cause of course that's usually what we say professional artists, that you get paid to be an artist.

But the truth is, I think being a professional artist is to think of art as a way to communicate with your audience and I think that that to me is always the bridge that I have to go from, the amateur girl to the person who is having to show up for an audience who is sitting down every day and this is something that I know is very true.

Every time the audience member buys a ticket and comes and sits in the movie theater, I know that every audience member is rooting for the movie, because they don't wanna have a bad time.

They want to be there and they want to love the movie that they're watching and that's why they bought the ticket.

Just like when you're telling a story to your friend, part of it is you're telling the story to the audience and you have to make sure that they're not left in the dark and they're also able to believe and be immersed in it and to feel like they're actually right there in a way, just like any good storytelling, the accumulation of everything that has happened before is gonna land you in a place where you're just going to want to speak about what's happened in this movie, as these characters.

So I think that's really at the heart of it, yeah.

- What is your gut check when writing and when thinking about the audience?

Is it just yourself being in the shoes of the audience?

Are you talking to other people or sharing drafts with other people?

Like how are you feeling out the audience and that relationship with them in a more concrete way while writing?

- I think a part of it is that you don't know until, I mean, I've done it for 10 years and something that you realize when you're sitting in the room watching your own play happen in front of you, in front of an audience, you see everything, you feel everything, because like your audience will maybe not laugh at a joke and they'll teach you, you know, and maybe they will not feel moved and they'll teach you and maybe they'll fall asleep, that will teach you.

So there is an amazing thing, it's a bit of a bootcamp or something.

There is a kind of a really direct relationship that I have with the audience for what it's worth.

And of course every audience is different and I'm always curious about differences in audiences in different regions, in different parts of the world, different countries.

But at the end of the day, we are all, I think something that I wondered about always and I've kind of believed, but I've really been confirming as "Past Lives" is coming out globally, is that, at the end of the day, there is something that is universal that connects all of us.

Which is the way that you listen to a story like this, that is about just the way that we go through time and space, which is something that is ultimately totally universal.

Maybe you don't know what it's like to immigrate and cross Pacific Ocean, but you do know what it's like to be not 16 and to think about, "Man, I used to be 16, I'm never gonna be 16 again."

And maybe you'll know what it's like to leave college and start a job, 'cause even that, there is a bit of a grief that you can really understand, that you can connect to as Nora is walking home crying.

I am probably the harshest critic of it.

And the other part of it is like, I do have to share it with an audience at some point and then I think it really does come down to listening to them.

And a part of it is to let the audience know what they're watching.

So the opening scene of my movie, which is of course the three of them sitting as grownups and a question is posed where the audience is cast as the people who is watching the three of them.

And the question is, of course, who are these people to each other?

And by presenting that as the opening scene, the audience knows what they're watching for.

So it's a trick, where you're getting to have the audience know the language of this film and understand the language of this film, because of course it's gonna get built and broken down throughout this movie.

So you're having to tell them, "Hey, this is a story of these three people and you're gonna figure out who they are to each other."

And of course when we get to the end and the audience has a better idea of who they are to each other, still the answer is gonna be a mystery, 'cause the answer of who these three people are to each other is at the end of the day, [speaking Korean] which is that word in Korean.

And the thing about that word is that the word is more mysterious than the question itself.

So a part of it is that as you carry the audience through the 24 years that this film is, when you introduce them to it right up front, the audience is gonna come with you to all of it.

And part of the being in theater for 10 years is that I trust the audience to come through all of it.

- Were there specific visual choices that you got to make that you were excited about that were new to you?

- The core of everything, and this was a part of the conversation that I was having with my DP, Shabier Kirchner, is that every step of the way we were just talking about story and character.

So, so much of it had to be about how the camera is going to live through this story.

I think about the Madison Square Park scene, where Nora and Hae Sung see each other for the first time in 24 years.

And part of that scene, something that we were talking about is this swinging camera, which is something that me and my DP watched in "A Distance."

The creator film, "A Distance," has a scene where the camera swings between, when we're having this conversation, it swings from one person and then stays there for an indeterminate and kind of a poetic amount of time And then we'll move to the next person, When Hae Sung and Nora see each other for the first time, so much of that is about the longing and missing each other and also the reality that they are finally together, but it's not gonna be a thing where they can just run at each other and then be together.

It's a kind of about the push and pull of it and the way that you long for the other person.

So we're talking about that camera movement as a way to express longing.

So there is a way in which that there is a missing the person that you're seeing and then also the gladness with which that you see that person that you're seeing in the shot that felt like it spoke to the scene, to the story and the character and what they're going through.

So in that situation, for example, we just knew that that was the payoff of that whole sequence.

- How scientific were you with that?

Like when you were with your DP, like were you actually like marking exactly like... - Well, I think that it really had to do with the way that the actors were sitting in the silence.

Because part of the silence in the film is that you don't know how long it's gonna be.

So it really was a fluid thing.

To me that really is sort of at the heart of how I was approaching this whole film, which is that the movie is very much about also about the contradiction of time, so 24 years can pass like this and two minutes can feel like eternity.

So something that I knew in the ending scene, when we are having the actors wait for the Uber, he says it's gonna be two minutes until the Uber comes, when that was happening, the actors only knew two things, which is that the cart was not gonna come until the two of them turn and face each other and the second thing was they have to face each other as slowly as they possibly can.

So those are the only direction I gave them and nobody on set knew when the Uber was gonna come except for myself.

And the thing about the way that that silence works is that it has to feel both, like it is too [bleep] long, this is too long a time to be waiting for an Uber, but also it has to feel like when the Uber comes like, "Oh my God, no, no, give me 10 more seconds.

Just a little more time!"

So it has to be the contradiction of too long and too short.

So that was something that you can't really do in numbers.

It's something that you can only feel as a person with my own internal clock.

So I didn't even have a full plan for when I wanted to the Uber to come and I think that that really is at the end of the day, how one can achieve that.

There is a way in which that you have to trust the human instinct or like the human feeling of time, because that's sometimes the only way that you're going to get to the truth of it.

[speaking Korean] [speaking Korean] [speaking Korean] [typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching on "Past Lives: A Conversation With Celine Song" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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