“Tone was always on the brain”: writer and director Josh Margolin on Tom Cruise-approved action comedy ‘Thelma’
It goes without saying that there aren’t too many action comedies carrying shades of Mission: Impossible boasting a star well into their 90s, but writer and director Josh Margolin’s debut feature Thelma offers yet more proof that age is nothing but a number.
Inspired by a situation that befell the filmmaker’s real grandmother, who’s also called Thelma and turned 104 years old this past summer, Academy Award-nominated character actor extraordinaire June Squibb takes on the first major leading role of her career in the title role.
Squibb’s 93-year-old Thelma Post finds herself the victim of a scam when a con artist convinces her to part with $10,000 after posing as her grandson, Fred Hechinger’s Daniel, and claiming he needs the cash to get himself out of legal trouble. When the realisation dawns, the intrepid hero sets out on a journey across Los Angeles – on a mobility scooter alongside late Shaft star Richard Roundtree’s old friend Ben, naturally – to reclaim her stolen money and set things right.
Thelma warmed hearts and earned stellar notices for not only turning Squibb into an unlikely action star but also offering resonant insights and explorations of the pitfalls that can often face the older generations when they live alone and constantly struggle between independence and autonomy.
“It’s honestly been very, very surreal and very exciting,” Margolin admitted of the reception that greeted his film ahead of its arrival on home video. “It started out as a pretty small, kind of personal movie with a little bit of a genre twist in there. But it’s just been really cool to see that it’s connected with so many people, or that so many people have seen themselves in it, or seen their grandparents in it, or seen family members.”
With the story coming from a place of personal experience and his own relationship with the real-life Thelma, Margolin confessed that “it’s hard to conceptualise the fact that people are watching it and people are actually seeing it around the world,” but he nonetheless feels “very, very lucky that so many people have responded to it and it’s really gotten out there.”
The entire shoot went by without the two Thelmas meeting in person, but when they did finally cross paths, the clash of grans was caught on camera, giving Margolin the chance to capture the moment his two worlds collided and Squibb came face-to-face with the person she was effectively playing onscreen.
“It was long, long overdue and highly anticipated for all involved,” he said. “I’m so glad we got it on camera, too, because it’s really nice to be able to just have that moment immortalised. Just for me, personally, I’m happy that we have it. It was really sweet and so nice to see them in the same place. It had been such a funny process of them being siloed, but obviously, very connected through the movie. And so I think they were both excited to finally actually see each other and talk.”
If anybody was asked to imagine a movie that intentionally evokes the DNA of Mission: Impossible and revolves around a protagonist who tracks down the person who stole ten grand from them and had an accomplice hold them at gunpoint, the chances are high that Thelma wouldn’t be the film they pictured.
Of course, that’s entirely the point, with Margolin seeking to balance the tropes of the conventional action thriller and then applying them to the story he wanted to tell: “It started from the personal place because the scam was based on a scam, or the movie’s based on an incident that happened to my grandma, almost exactly how it plays out in the movie.”
“My family got freaked out; they thought I was in jail,” the director continued. “Luckily, in real life, we intervened before she actually sent the money. But it was a close call, and I started imagining what might have happened if she had sent it and then potentially set out on her own to get it back, which I would not have put past her.”
Margolin thought the framework “already felt like it had a little bit of action DNA in it, just in the idea of somebody getting swindled and then going back to get what’s theirs,” and he grew increasingly excited at the prospects of “taking those tropes and shrinking them down to really capture everyday heroism.” The
“The feats might be smaller, but because the people are more real and more human and more fallible, those little challenges actually pose a real danger,” he elaborated. “To me, that alchemy, the idea of combining those and getting to tell the story of my grandma fighting for what’s left of her autonomy and also facing some limitations and family anxiety and all the different things that come with that, to tell that story through that lens, just got me really excited, especially as a fan of action movies.”
It’s a light-hearted movie without a doubt, but Thelma also has some timely and relevant things to say about the perils that face older people, especially in an era when scams like the one the title hero falls victim to are becoming increasingly common. On the other hand, it’s still a comic caper that toys with the parameters of action cinema, which makes Margolin fully aware of the tonal tightrope he needs to walk.
“That’s what excited me about it,” he confessed. “Basically taking those tropes and shrinking them down and getting a chance to celebrate this character’s grit and tenacity and fight for her autonomy through the lens of an action movie, but not played for parody, played for laughs and thrills and all the rest, but treated sincerely in a way that I just got really excited about what that could look like and what that could feel like.”
“The tone was always a really, really sensitive thing and a topic of conversation throughout every stage of the process from script to production,” Margolin offered. “And especially in post, because of how much the score played a role in keeping things coherent and also giving things stakes, but not overshooting them and feeling like we’re poking fun as opposed to having fun and creating genuine tension and genuine excitement.”
It wasn’t an easy balance to strike, though, with Thelma touching base with drama, comedy, action, and thriller, often in the space of the same scene, with Margolin cognisant of the fact “it’s easy for one of them to feel like they’re taking over at any given moment.” Heading in, he knew that his film could “feel like it’s a bunch of different movies crammed together because we’re playing in these different ideas,” and placing story and character at the forefront was pivotal to finding the tone.
“That was always the concern,” Margolin agreed. “How do we ratchet up from daily life dramedy about this family into something that has these action tropes, but not feel like we’re suddenly switching aspect ratios and really hammering the idea that we’re playing on these tropes? I wanted it to feel as seamless as it could, and then feel like we’re escalating and escalating and escalating, and then by the end, she’s showing up at the place, and she has the gun, and we’re kind of getting as close to the real thing as possible within the rules of the movie. So, tone was always on the brain, and it was super helpful.”
Nick Chuba’s fantastic score is one of Thelma‘s strongest assets, and finding the right soundscape found the composer and filmmaker “seeing eye-to-eye pretty early on” in that they both “wanted to have a somewhat retro Lalo Schifrin-inspired spy DNA to it.” Still, settling on the perfect musical accompaniment was “definitely a process of some experimentation,” with Chuba hitting the nail on the head.
“Nick had a great way of talking about it,” Margolin outlined. “His pitch early on was to basically score the movie from Thelma’s perspective, to play on some of the film scores and DNA of the spy movies that she would have been exposed to at a certain time, so that it would feel like the scope and scale of the movie was always generated by her perspective, as opposed to a bigger action score, again, that could feel like we’re playing for parody and playing for laughs.”
The question he constantly asked himself during post-production was, “How do we calibrate it so that it’s the right size?” knowing that it would be “really easy to get too big and also easy to get too small.” From Margolin’s perspective, “We needed something propulsive, but we couldn’t overshoot,” and it was mission accomplished based on how the score elevates and enhances the onscreen action.
With Squibb’s Thelma obviously being Thelma and the story originating from an incident in Margolin’s personal life, it seems fair to assume that Hechinger’s Daniel would be the Josh, but even though the writer and director acknowledged that there’s “quite a bit” of himself in the character of the grandson, he didn’t want to make him a full-blown surrogate.
“I would try to hew it as closely to something I could imagine myself doing as possible, albeit with some changes and some things judged for the needs of the movie,” he said. “In terms of that feeling of Daniel struggling with transitioning into adulthood and taking some responsibility for himself and trying to figure out what he has to offer and where he’s capable when he feels kind of incapable in other ways, that’s definitely something I really relate to and think about a lot.
Unlike his onscreen counterpart, Margolin has “always known what I wanted to do in terms of making movies and writing and acting and directing and all of that.” However, “if that were taken away, I have nothing to offer.” Harsh, maybe, but nonetheless important when the time came for Thelma to start taking shape on the page.
“I don’t know what I would do. I have no tangible skills,” came the self-deprecating assessment. “That’s definitely something that I struggle with or have struggled with growing up. I’d say a lot of it is inspired by me with some biographical changes tweaked for the sake of the movie.”
The movie incorporates footage of Tom Cruise from Mission: Impossible – Fallout, meaning Margolin and the Thelma team had to reach out to the A-list megastar for approval. It’s become a major part of the action icon’s mythology that he watches as many films as humanly possible to feed his undying love of cinema, but has he gotten around to seeing Squibb’s odyssey across Los Angeles yet?
“We’ve definitely sent the movie his way,” came the reply. “I don’t know if he’s seen it yet. I know he was in production, and so I’m not sure. I think he probably hasn’t yet, but unconfirmed. We’re hoping he’ll get his eyes on it one of these days, but we’re also very grateful that he gave us permission to use those clips in the first place. We’re happy to be patient and excited for him to see it whenever the moment is right.”
Whether Cruise has checked Thelma off his watch list or not, the fact remains that it was a huge coup for Margolin and his feature debut just to get approval from an actor who’s always been famously protective of their likeness and how, when, where, and why it gets used, which is a stamp of approval in itself.
“We’re very, very grateful to him for giving us that permission,” Margolin reiterated. “Because, yeah, I agree. We shot it two ways: with the option and without. And we were really hoping we’d get the sign-off because it’s such a part of the DNA of the movie, and we hope a fun kind of send-up of his legacy, too. We sent the table read clip that we did on Zoom, and then the script for the scene where he’s referenced and a little bit of the context around it, and we got the sign-off from him, which was very, very cool, and a big relief. And surprise!”
As far as first films go, a widely acclaimed genre-bending dramedy steeped in the DNA of the action genre that got the personal seal of approval from Tom Cruise is a solid start, to put it lightly. That said, if Margolin was given carte blanche and complete creative freedom to make his dream movie, he’d aim even higher than Mission: Impossible.
“If I’m speaking a little bit to my younger self, just kind of pie in the skying it a little bit, I think I would want to make a Batman movie,” the filmmaker revealed. “I’m a big Batman fan, and I think if somebody was like, ‘You know what, you can go and make a Batman movie, and you can take a big swing, and you can do something wild with it, and we’re not going to touch it’, I think I would have to say that would be pretty pie in the sky for me, so let’s go for it.”
