Robert Kojder chats with A Little Prayer writer-director Angus MacLachlan…
At Sundance 2023, writer/director Angus MacLachlan premiered A Little Prayer, a quietly moving study of a messy family primarily from the perspective of its patriarch, Bill, played by the always wonderful David Strathairn. Much closer to his son David’s (Will Pullen) partner Tami (a beautifully nuanced turn from Jane Levy), the film follows him as he unearths secrets and dynamics that are challenging to confront. While there is much more going on here, including Tami’s somewhat irresponsible, vulgar, but ultimately well-meaning sister Patti (Anna Camp) returning with her young daughter upon discovering her partner is still addicted to drugs, it’s primarily about Bill mulling over what to do about his son’s infidelity and what to tell Tami. It’s also just as much about her future and what she wants from life.
Following rave reactions at Sundance, Sony Pictures Classics purchased the film and did nothing with it. I’m not sure what their reasoning is. All I know is that they should be stoned for letting such a thing happen. Thankfully, they have dropped the rights entirely, meaning the film can now play festivals again. Apparently, the film has once again found distribution and will receive a theatrical release sometime in the future.
A Little Prayer recently played Ebertfest, and is also the closing night film at the 12th annual Chicago Critics Film Festival, where Angus MacLachlan and Jane Levy will be on-hand to present the film and do a post-showing Q&A. I also gratefully spoke to Angus, probing his mind about parenting, once again shooting a movie in his hometown of Winston-Salem, working with cinematographer Scott Miller to capture quietness and chaos, the brilliant ensemble, and more. If you would like to see them in person at the festival, some tickets are still available here. Please enjoy the interview:
Congratulations that this special gem finally gets out into the world again, playing more film festivals. That must be exciting.
It is! I’m really excited, and this film will have a theatrical release, but, unfortunately, many films play at film festivals and never get out into the world. It’s such an important thing. The whole communal kind of seeing a film with an audience is different from seeing a film just on your device.
We seem to live in an age where parents never want to acknowledge or confront any heinous wrongdoing on behalf of their children, whether they are kids or adults. So to me, watching Bill (David Strathairn) go on this journey felt very timely. Was that intentional, or did the film just come out that way?
No, it certainly was intentional. I’ve been working on this film for almost eight and a half years, and I started it when my daughter was 15. I have one daughter, and she’s now almost 24. She actually lives in Chicago. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago last year. And I realized in retrospect that I was writing about parenting adult children, that I was writing about preparing myself for my daughter to grow up, go to school, and go off in the world. But it was very unconscious because it took so long for me to make the film. And yeah, it absolutely was the intention that you still want to protect them, and you still want to tell them what to do, and you can’t anymore, and how that’s hard to let go.
What drew you to shoot the film in your hometown of Winston-Salem?
Not all of my films are set here, but many are. I imagined this family living here in this specific neighborhood that’s called Konnoak Hills, and that’s actually where we shot it. After I’d written it, I went around and knocked on people’s doors and said, “Can we shoot a film in your house?” One kind of foolish man said okay. He said he would go to the beach for three and a half weeks, and I could have the house. I had written the script with the characters living in a house, and imagined a little guest house in the backyard and a garden shed. And I found this house with all those elements, which was unbelievable. I think it helps actors to feel grounded by imagining their characters in the place where they’re shooting, particularly with Southern stories. The South is often portrayed pejoratively or clichéd, and I want to try to portray something that’s a little bit more real.
This film is very lived in. You accomplished that.
Thank you.
Can you talk about why you chose the 1:59 aspect ratio?
Well, I had a great DP, cinematographer Scott Miller, and we talked about it because we have like 13 scenes in the kitchen, and we wanted that ratio to be kind of intimate, and that these people are kind of pushed together, which is what it often feels like in a family.
That makes sense. Also, I want to talk more about the cinematography since I love the look of this quietly moving film. I noticed some shots are completely still, and others, particularly when things are in the kitchen, like you said, are shaky. So, can you talk about you and Scott Miller’s philosophy behind that?
I love actors. I was an actor for a long time. And I had a great cast. So I really find it fascinating just to watch actors perform and behave in front of a camera. I’m not afraid of it being boring. I really love films that have that aspect. Plus, we had such a short shooting schedule that I had to decide I couldn’t do a lot of coverage, so I chose to sometimes just have scenes that are played in oners. Scott was also the camera operator, so we would move him around. He’s not a very big guy, and he would be there, like in the bathroom, or he is up on the counter with the camera on his shoulder. I would put him in the most difficult, tiny little spaces.
Then the scenes, like when Patty comes home, you’re talking about in the kitchen. I wanted that jerkiness because it’s like an earthquake in the family when she comes home. Suddenly, everything’s a mess and everything’s turned upside down. So a lot of it was intentional, or the shot where Jane Levy’s character, Tami, is in the Planned Parenthood. It’s a 360-degree shot. I always wanted that to be just on her face. Scott and I said, well, why don’t we do this sort of almost 360-degree pan because she’s so good in it, her performance, and connecting it with the idea of that kind of choice she makes is very difficult. I want to see her go through an entire emotional thing. She starts, she’s okay, she’s calm, she thinks, she smiles, she goes through emotions, she pulls herself together, which also kind of connects to the very end of the film where they, where he says, this is what a panorama is in art, where you see the whole picture. Then she sees the yard in front of this museum and says, “Here’s a panorama right where we live.” That’s what I’m trying to do.
Since you brought up the ending, did you always know you wanted to end the film with that shot?
Yeah. It took me so long to make this film that I would walk to that museum, and they have these beautiful gardens, and I would say, okay, I would love to see this happen at the end. And we did it.
You brought up Jane Levy, who is phenomenal in this film. These actors are working with very nuanced material. Can you talk about what advice or support you gave them to find the emotional honesty of each scene?
I give them the script, and then we talk about it. And I have a lot of ideas about who these people are or what their backgrounds were. And I always say, I think that she came from this, and this is what happened to her. And I will say always to actors, if this doesn’t sound right to you, just throw it away and come up with your own. We had one day with the main actors to read through the script, and that’s all the rehearsal we had. So they had to form the simulacrum of a family that had known each other their entire lives, and they all had such respect for each other and bounced off each other. Jane is just terrific; all of them were terrific. They really cared about the film and the script. They really trusted the text. I’m just overjoyed at what they brought to it.
Was there anything that they brought to you and changed about their characters?
Nothing was changed. They added things. An example is when David Strathairn and Celia Weston’s characters, who are this married couple for 40 years at least, every time he would leave for work, he leans over and just sort of touches her or says, “Bye, sweetheart.” That’s just them. And she says it back. Just that little gesture shows you their marriage, shows you what they’ve gone through. And that’s something that really good actors can bring, some kind of behavior that, you know, brings forth what you intend.
It’s a little beautiful touch. Also, as far as I know, Jane is from California. What made you choose her over a Southern actor?
Actually, Jane Levy went to the same high school that David went to.
That’s crazy. I didn’t know that.
They discovered that on set, a little town in northern California. They had both gone to the same high school. Yes, I’m very specific. I’m a Southerner. I was born here. I still live here, and I really object a lot of times to the way Southerners are portrayed pejoratively or clichéd. And so I’m very specific. I hate bad Southern accents, so I give my work to actors, sometimes Southern and from a campus in the South. Celia Weston is from the South. But I will then give them either films or TV as references for how Southerners behave or sound. Sherman’s March by Ross McElwee, who’s a great documentarian, is one I often will say for people to watch to know how South Carolina/North Carolina people talk and behave. Jane also worked with a dialect coach and was very specific about what she was doing and did it great.
Other scenes I love are Bill, lying awake and contemplating things. What keeps you awake at night in these crazy times we live in?
Oh my God, everything is so awful, that I have another friend who is a novelist and her second book just came out and it wasn’t as big a deal as the first book, but we’ve said to each other, if it’s not terrible, it’s good. It’s because everything seems so terrible that it’s not awful. You gotta appreciate it. And again, I’m so excited that this film is being shown at the Chicago Critics Film Festival. We were just at Ebertfest. Even talking to you, someone who appreciates my work, is really meaningful to me, because so many things keep me awake at night.
Well, thank you. I’m happy to be here talking to you as well. Also, there’s a small supporting character early on who has one of my favorite lines: These people need to grow up. Do you think part of the message here is that no matter who we are, there’s always more we can learn and more ways we can evolve?
Yeah, absolutely. And I love that character too. Ashley Shelton plays her. She came in at the last minute. I actually had cast another woman, and we couldn’t use her. And so Ashley came in, and she’s an emergency room nurse, and I think nurses are like the most heroic people. They and teachers should be paid more than anybody else.
Absolutely!
People say, “I know that woman” because she’s lively when you first see her. She’s drunk, but she’s sort of the moral center of the film. She’s the one who tells her good friend to actually reveal more about what happens. But yes, she also says everybody just needs to grow up. If you ask me, you know, at the same time, she’s completely drunk at the VFW, but I’m sure she got an Uber to go home. I love that character and her performance.
That can be a deleted scene on the Blu-ray [laughs]. Anyway, how did the concept of the woman singing every morning find its way into the screenplay?
That came about because I used to go to New York quite a bit and stay with a friend of mine who lived right on Washington Square South. Every morning, there was a woman who would walk down the street singing at the top of her lungs and not very well. And I would run to the window, and I never could see her. I thought that was funny and intriguing, and I thought, I will put this in the film. And to me, she’s important because she’s bothersome to everybody else in the family, except for Tami and Bill. She’s special. She brings something to their life, and she’s kinda like grace in that you can’t hold onto it. It just, sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not there.
To me, one of the intentions at the very end of the film is that after Bill has been at Narcedelia’s house and comes home, he’s a little drunk. He gets in bed with his wife and they hold hands, and then there’s another scene of trekking down the neighborhood, and there’s orchestral music on the soundtrack, and then it stops abruptly. It’s when you would’ve expected to hear that unseen singer, but she’s not there because that grace has left their lives at that moment. All you hear is the crow on the soundtrack. So that’s my intention for putting it in the film.
Are there any real-life oddities about Winston-Salem that you remember, were curious about, and would like to share with us?
One oddity is that there’s a recreated 18th-century part of Winston-Salem called Old Salem. Winston-Salem was two different towns, and it was settled by Moravians, a religious group from the Czech Republic. And so the mother, Celia Weston, you see her in this odd little outfit with a little cap on, and then you find out later in the film that she’s a docent there. That’s something that local audiences know exactly why she’s dressed that way, but people who don’t know her are like, “What the hell is she wearing?” Then hopefully it’s explained. Also, there’s, I think it’s a 12-pointed star hanging from the front of their house when the same character walks out at night. You see behind her, it’s a Moravian star that a lot of Winston-Salem people hang, which is very beautiful to me.
You brought up Celia Weston again. I just want to add that she’s terrific here and another voice of reason to the story. Did you have a favorite scene to shoot with her?
Everything is great with her. She has this incredible facility for real, true, veracity in emotions. Then, at the next second, she can say something incredibly funny, and it’s not jarring. She really understands both those intentions in my writing of real emotion and intentional humor in how people express themselves. So she’s just a delight to work with always. She’s been in three of my films, actually.
You also mentioned that your daughter partially inspired this film, but what else draws you to writing and directing movies about messy family dynamics?
Well, I have a family. I think they’re fascinating. It’s not intentional that relationships and families don’t often, certainly in this film, they’re not what you expect or run-of-the-mill. A father and daughter-in-law are closer in this film than a father and his own son and daughter. Not that he doesn’t love them, his son and daughter, but they have an affinity, as they say, they’re kindred spirits. I think it happens a lot in families. It’s just fascinating to me.
When the movie first started, and they’re having coffee together, I thought she was his daughter. Is that the impression you were going for?
Yeah, you don’t really know what the relationships are.
I’ve loved everything I’ve seen from Ramin Bahrani. Can you talk about how he got involved as an executive producer?
Ramin is also from Winston-Salem. He grew up here and is about eight years younger than I am. When he was 15, his best friend’s mother knew me and said, “My son has a friend who wants to be a film director. Would you meet with him?” And I went, “No, okay.” So I met with him, and he is exactly at 15 what he is now. He’s very intense. So we talked about it. He then became a great director, and we’re great friends. We send our screenplays back and forth to each other. And then after this film came together, he said If you want, I could put his name on it as executive producer. And I went, fantastic, ’cause he’s so respected. He’s such a great filmmaker. He is so well known, and that he appreciated the film enough to want to do that was great.
Like presumably everyone, I think it’s ridiculous that the film still doesn’t have distribution plans, but I’m happy you said that it will get a theatrical release. Do you know when that will be yet?
No, I don’t yet. We’re going to announce the distribution soon. I hope that it’s soon. It’s been a long journey.
Me too. It deserves to be seen by more people. Thank you for your time. I hope the Music Box screening goes well. I think people are gonna love it.
Oh, I hope so. Thank you so much.
SEE ALSO: Read our review of A Little Prayer here
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
