How Jane Schoenbrun’s directing style inspired Eva Victor’s feature debut: “A complete masterclass”
In the current film industry, it is no easy feat to make an independent feature film, let alone if it’s your directorial debut. But Eva Victor, the director of Sorry, Baby, manages to make this insurmountable task look easy through their effortless blend of humour, pain and tenderness in a story about trying to move on.
Sorry, Baby is not the kind of film you see very often. Eva Victor makes everyone else in the industry look like a talentless worm through their assured feature debut that tackles a well-worn Hollywood narrative in a fresh and sensitive way. It’s even more impressive when you factor in the fact that it was made on a simple budget of $2million, with a director who was both starring in the leading role and directing with no previous experience in this role.
But for Victor, they had the opportunity to learn from one of the very best after asking indie icon Jane Schoenbrun for advice, shadowing them on the set of I Saw the TV Glow and picking up some important lessons about how to advocate for yourself and your story.
When discussing this, they told Letterboxd, “Jane Schoenbrun and I have had a lot of conversations about what it’s like to put your soul into a film and what that feels like and how intense it is. I had met Jane for pie once, and we became friends that way, and then I sent them an email and was like, ‘I know this is potentially insane, but could I please come shadow you? I need to learn how to do this, and I need to watch someone do it who I think is brilliant.’ And they were so welcoming and invited me, and they said, ‘Come for as long as you want’. So I came for a part of prep and then for the whole shoot.”
The release of I Saw the TV Glow came with an intense buzz and frenetic fervour that still hasn’t faded today, with Schoenbrun sharing a deeply personal story about the trans experience that clings to your bones and haunts you for many months afterwards.
Victor expanded on the lessons they learnt from being on set, saying, “And it was a complete masterclass in everything. Jane is such a calm and confident director and so sure of what they want”. They also spoke about how inspiring it can be to watch someone in their own skin in relation to how they work: “Really, really, really clear and that was so cool to watch, because I think just watching someone really own being the expert of their own film as very meaningful, because it gave me this feeling of ‘Oh, I am the expert of this film’.”
When making such a vulnerable story on reel that is tinged with your own lived experiences, it’s important to feel empowered and assertive in articulating your vision, something that Victor seemingly mastered after creating something that is so in control of its own tone and how to communicate the bridges between the different periods of acceptance in this character’s life. You have to be the master of your own ship, something that Victor has mastered through Sorry, Baby and the love, loss and small moments of hope that help us find a new equilibrium.
