Robin Young: So in your movie, this plays out: The idea that this is a struggling, greatly reduced

fishing industry, these hardscrabble fishermen, mostly men. But also endangered in your film is
the Rossi family: Mom, dad and a son deaf. The daughter has kind of been the interpreter for
the family. So there's that parallel story. We understand that CODA was adapted from another
French film.

Siân Heder: So CODA was based on a film called 'La Famille Belier,' which is a French film
[that] came out in 2014. The story was about some French dairy farmers and a hearing
daughter in a deaf family. And she wants to be a singer and wants to leave home. Originally,
Lionsgate had acquired the remake rights to do an American version. And I had just been at
Sundance with my first film, 'Tallulah' and I'd come back from there and I went in to meet with
Patrick Wachsberger, Phillipe Rousselet, who ended up producing the film. But it was originally
a studio movie and they were looking for a filmmaker who could kind of take the kernel premise
of the original and then sort of bring in their own take and make it their own. And because
Gloucester was a special place for me and I had all of these feelings, it's a very cinematic place.
And then the conflict here was very cinematic, too. So I went in and pitched this idea of what if
this family were this struggling fishing clan in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and they got very
excited about that idea. So, Ruby is the lead character and she's the only hearing person in her
family. She's 17 and she's in a fishing family. So she goes out in the morning with her dad and
her brother on the boat. There are a lot of things on a boat that would be helpful to be hearing
for [like] the radio, foghorns and various things. This family goes out sometimes with Ruby,
sometimes without, sometimes the dad and brother are out there. The funny thing is, when I
started researching the film and I started talking to local fishermen here and I said, 'I'm doing
this story and these are going to be family fishermen, their ground fishermen, they're draggers
and they're deaf.' And these guys were like, oh, 'Everyone's deaf, everyone is deaf out on the
boats. The engines are so loud, you go deaf after a while. So half the guys out there deaf.' So
it's interesting when I started working with fishermen when we were shooting, it is so loud on the
boats that they sign with each other. So they have signs for working the wind, stopping the
winch, pulling up the nets. They've sort of developed sign language on the boat between
deckhands and people working on the boat because of how loud it is. So it was sort of a funny
thing. But yes, the premise is that this family is basically losing their livelihood. So Ruby has her
own dreams and wants to go off and pursue her own passion, which is music. She feels like she
bears a lot of responsibility to her family, to the family business, which is struggling. But also,
yes, her parents rely on her because she's sort of their interpreter and their conduit to the
hearing world.

Young: So the Rossi family is losing not only their livelihood because of the pressures on the
fishing industry here, but [they think] they're losing their lifeline, in their daughter, Ruby, who's
helped them hear things on the boat. I mean, there's some hilarity when she is with them in a
doctor's appointment because both parents have a little bit of an itch down there. So take us to
how did you discover this? How did you find out about children of deaf adults?

Heder: Once I knew that I was going to be writing the story, you know, it was not my experience.
Whenever you're writing about a culture that's not your own, about an experience that's not your
own, I am a big believer in research, being a cultural anthropologist and talking to people who've
lived it. So I reached out to a lot of people in my life, through social media, through my friend
circle. And I just went 'Does anybody know someone who's grown up with deaf parents who
could talk to me?' So, I read a bunch of books and then I met with people. I had about three
actual CODA's [Children of Deaf Adults] as I was writing that I was talking to and interviewing
about their experience.

Heder: [CODA is] a very common term in the deaf community. Sort of everyone knows what a
CODA is. We had conversations about the title of 'Would anyone know what this meant?' And
there are many different CODA experiences, I think. But the interesting thing about CODA's is
that most deaf people are born to hearing parents and there's varying experiences in those
families. Some hearing parents will learn to sign when they know they're going to have a deaf
child. Some parents really forced their kid into oralism, [like reading and speaking], and don't
want them in deaf schools because they want to try to, you know, mainstream them. So, the
experience of a lot of deaf people and deaf people that I know is that they don't grow up in deaf
culture. They have to find deaf culture as they get older and maybe get to go to a deaf school,
make friends and be in the deaf community. So, in a way, CODA's, who grew up with deaf
parents, grow up in deaf culture and ASL might be their first language. They oftentimes feel
more connected to deaf culture than to hearing culture and there's a strange limbo that they
exist and where they're a part of both worlds, but also a part of neither. One CODA, Jack Jason,
who's [Marlee Martin's] longtime interpreter, who's been with her for 30 years, actually since
'Children of a Lesser God. And he described his experience, his childhood as a CODA, as being
the electrical wire.

Heder: He said 'You're the conduit between these two points and your job is to sort of deliver
information and receive information. But in a way, you almost feel like you don't exist or you
don't know who you are. You're the antenna, you're there to facilitate communication.'.

Heder: And oftentimes [CODA's] are a part of conversations that you're not ready for because
they're adult. [For example], Ruby in the doctor's office interpreting about jock itch. Which is
mortifying, like who wants to talk to their parents about their sex life? And a lot of those
responsibilities fall on her because of a class issue, as well. I think if she were in New York or
Los Angeles they might have an interpreter at the local clinic, they don't have it here. So I think
resources and your access to resources when you don't have financial stability is also limited.
So I think they rely on their daughter probably more than they want to.

Young: Well, and I'm glad you said that because you're not saying every CODA family is like this
one. But this one probably represents many where the family, the parents, who love their
daughter but are afraid of losing her. If she were to go away to college, for instance, they've
come to depend on her.

Heder: There is a kind of enmeshment and codependence that I was exploring in the movie and
a tension between that. Because the brother character, Leo, is pissed at his parents. He feels
like they have fallen into this bad habit of relying on Ruby. I love the scene on the beach where
he says, 'We were fine before you and we'll be fine after you and we're not helpless. Go. Let
them struggle. Let me struggle.'

Heder: He says it to his sister and he's really telling her to get out of there. He's the older brother
and he feels like his parents have really turned their attention to relying on his younger sister.
That's an important voice in the movie because not all deaf people would rely on a hearing
person. There's plenty of independent people who and especially with technology and texting
and FaceTime and all of these tools, there's a lot more independence.

Young: We were going to ask about that because in one scene when Ruby, the daughter's
friend, is trying to hit on Ruby's brother, there's hilarity there, too, because Ruby isn't sure she
wants this to happen. So she gives her the false sign language to approach him. The girlfriend
says something like 'Hi, I have herpes,' instead of 'Hi, I think you're hot.' So, hilarity there. But
later, when they are trying to communicate, they do it through texting. So there are ways that
deaf families, deaf units, can communicate with each other. But in this particular instance, for
this family, in this place, there aren't. You did not do this on your own. You hired Alexandria
Wailes, director of ASL, not an interpreter for you on the set, but somebody who did what?

Heder: That's a really important distinction because, yes, we had interpreters on the set. We
started with about seven interpreters on the set and winnowed it down to three by the end. I
think we were overzealous with wanting to make our site as accessible as possible and maybe
overdoing it with interpreters. The dazzle, it's called it's the Director of Artistic Sign Language or
sometimes called an ASL Master. They're really common in theater and I think as more and
more films start to include the deaf experience or deaf characters. This is a really important role
on set because they're not an interpreter. They're a deaf person who has usually a background
in, like dramaturgy. Where, they're doing an interpretation, not just a translation of ASL scenes,
but are doing a creative interpretation as well, because the languages are so different. They
have different syntax and grammar and ASL is really [different]. There's no past or future tense.

Young: We have to say that there are 200 [sign] languages in the world we learn, and so this
person would be doing what it's saying, that would not be a regionally correct thing to do or say
what?

Heder: There are many sign languages, as I just learned, having to do Sundance, London and
realizing BSL, British Sign Language, is a totally different language than ASL. But yes, there are
regionalisms. There are signs that are locally used in Gloucester and Rockport that Marley or
Troy or Daniel, my deaf actors would never know those signs. So it's picking up in the way that
you have a Boston accent. You know, a deaf person can watch someone sign and it's a
regionalism. Also, getting everyone to sign together. It wasn't just working with Amelia, [who
played Ruby], the hearing person who learned to sign, but it was also working with Marlee and
Daniel and Troy to have them feel like a family. Decisions were made, like Ruby's closer to her
dad, so she would probably sign more like Frank. She would pick up on the way that he signed
as opposed to, Marley's character, Jackie. So it was really creative. It was like having a dialect
coach. I will say, Anne Tomasetti came in, so I had two Dazzles. I had Alexandria Wailes and
Anne Tomasetti. Alexandria was there to help me translate the script, and then Anne took over
in production. She was next to me at the monitor every day, every step of the way, and every
shot.

Young: You also had Heather Rossi? Did you name the characters after her family? Because
she's a child of deaf adults, but they're fishermen.

Heder: You talk about movie magic or synchronicity in the universe, but Anne Tomasetti came,
and she was one of my directors of ASL, and she came to set. Director language with an actor
is so specific. When you're trying to give an acting note to somebody, you really need an
interpreter who's also got a creative sensibility, who can understand your intention, who can
hang on a set in these crazy environments, be out on a fishing boat, standing in fish at three to
five-foot waves. So, it was trying to find the right interpreters for the set environment. So Anne
said to me, 'My friend Heather Rossi, you should reach out to her. She's an interpreter. She lives
in New York. You could bring her in.' But it's amazing. Her last name is Rossi. She's a CODA
herself, and her dad was a fisherman. I thought that was so wild and cool. So we actually
brought Heather to work on the movie. And when she showed up, she was blown away. She
was like, 'This is so weird that you wrote this story.' Rossi was a name I just came up with. A lot
of people around here are Italian. I was like, 'This is a great last name.' But yeah, both of her
parents were deaf. She had this role of being the family interpreter and feeling a lot of guilt
about leaving home and became an interpreter as an adult. Her dad was a fisherman, and he
had a boat that he named Deaf Boater. The reason he named it Deaf Boater is if he ever had an
encounter with the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard would see the name of the boat and know
that in a boarding situation he might not be responding, which is a scene in the movie.

Young: Okay we've got about five files opened here but it's okay because there is so many
layers! There's a scene in the film where the father and son go out without Ruby, their
interpreter, that day because she is having her own life that day. They are radioed, they don't
hear the radio, and the tension builds because it's the harbourmaster trying to get their attention.
They end up having to board the boat in a really gripping scene. And the whole time they're
completely unaware of what's going on. Are you worried that you might here from someone... so
many questions here. Are you worried that you might hear from someone in the deaf community
'are you saying that we shouldn't be fishermen? Are you saying that it's too dangerous? We
can't hear?'

Heder: I think no. I'm not saying that and definitely deaf people are lawyers, they're doctors, they
hold all kinds of jobs and professions. It's more about us as a society adjusting to accessibility to
make sure those opportunities are open. I think the bigger issue that I was addressing in that
scene is what happens when deaf people encounter law enforcement, which goes south a lot
because a lot of law enforcement is not properly trained to deal. And when they see someone
not responding or not following directions or commands it can go to a really bad place. It can
escalate very quickly and I have deaf friends who've talked about being pulled over by the cops.
One friend says he keeps a little card that says I'm deaf right next to his driver's seat because
even reaching for the glove compartment to get a card that says 'I am deaf' on it, could be
construed as something scary by the officer and it could escalate. So those situations are very
common. And I've actually heard the opposite about that scene. I've heard I'm glad that you
included something like that because this is a problem that happens a lot.

Young: Well, the other thing that the scene reminds you is that pretty soon father and son are
going to have to do something so that if calls come over the radio and Ruby is not there, they're
going to have to have some kind of a technology that alerts them that it's happening. But one
note we want to make in passing as you were searching for a stunt person to do this incredible
boarding in the middle of the ocean, the harbourmaster who was kind of helping you out said,
well why don't I do it? And that's the real Gloucester harbormaster.

Heder: So our harbourmaster, T.J., the Gloucester harbourmaster, was working on our Marine
crew with Joe Boyland, and he had been helping us out. And we were going to do this Coast
Guard boarding and I had actually called him when I was researching the script of how would
this go down? If the Coast Guard were boarding, what would the language they would use?
How would it escalate? What would be the violations that they were? And so, T.J. we were
talking about it and I said, I want to do this really high-speed Coast Guard boarding. It's intense
and I want a great stunt. And he said, well, I've done hundreds of those boardings. I was in the
Coast Guard for years. I boarded a million boats. Why don't I do it? And so, sure enough, there
we had the harbourmaster in Gloucester and they did that stunt so fast and so intensely. I was
nervous. It was a very... at one point we shattered every window on the boat we were using
because they pulled up too fast and the boats hit each other. And but it was a very intense,
dramatic scene. And but he did it like he was doing it in his sleep because he'd done it so many
times.

Young: You immersed yourself in... you learn sign or are learning still. Yeah. How has this film,
which is just marvelous, how has it changed you?

Heder: People keep asking about the Sundance experience, which I understand why they're
asking me about that, because it was an incredible Sundance moment and it set records and
won all these awards. And I was recently talking about why am I not having like a bigger
reaction to this moment that the film is having as it comes out in the world. And part of the
reason is that the experience of making the film was one of the most profound, life-changing
experiences I've ever had, creatively or otherwise. I think I don't know that I ever would have
engaged with this community in the way that I did. And it is been such a gift to me as a person,
the friends that I've made, the relationships that I have. And yes, I mean, I started learning and it
sounds cheesy to talk about, but really the experience of making the film was the thing. And in a
way, when I finished making the film we were telling the story about a family. We became a
family making the film. It was physically painful to end the film. I think everyone was heartbroken
because we had to separate. We've been in the small town having this very intense experience
together. And so it was almost like, wow, if nothing ever happened with this film, if it just sat on a
shelf somewhere, it would still be a complete experience. So I started studying sign language
immediately when I knew I was going to be writing it because I knew I wanted a good portion of
the film to be in ASL. I felt like it was really important to have an understanding of the language.
And a lot of deaf culture stems from the language itself. I think there are things you need to do
as a human to communicate in sign that affect how you behave with other humans. You cannot
have a signed conversation unless you were looking directly at the person. Half the time that
I've been talking to you, I've been looking out there at the water. I couldn't do that. If we were
signing with each other, I'd be looking in your eyes and you would be looking at my intense. And
it's intense. And it's something we're really not used to in hearing culture. It's very connected.
You don't look away. You don't walk away. In a fight, you have to stay engaged because the
moment someone disconnects and leaves the room, the fight is over. So it's a very intense,
connected language in that way. You're never looking at your phone and having a conversation.
You're never....

Young: Well, and the acting let's just re-acknowledge Marlee Matlin as the mom, Troy Kotsur,
her husband, Daniel Durant, who plays the son, and Emilia Jones, who also learned to sign to
play Ruby. As you watch and tell me how you had to film it differently because you're filming
people signing and there's going to be a deaf audience. As you watch your reminded people
who know deaf people know this and people who are deaf people know this. You're reminded
that it's a ballet, it's dancing, it's orchestral. It's I now know the sign for a**h***, if I may say. I
mean, it's expressive…

Heder: … which kind of looks like an a**h***.

Young: Yes, sort of does. It's just so coordinated and artistic in and of itself.

Heder: Well, it's an incredibly visual, wonderful language to shoot on film because you...and as
a writer, I remember sitting across from Alexandria as we were doing the translation of the
script. The director yeah? She was my director of Sign Language, and we sat in an apartment in
New York. And we look...she sat across the table from me. There's no written form of ASL so
she's not... she's taking notes for herself called ASL Gloss, but she would read a line and sign it
back to me and then ask me about my intention with the line. And I'd look at the sign. And
sometimes the sign felt too passive for my intention. I wanted the actors really angry in this
moment. And I love a sign that felt sharper, more violent, she would play with the words and find
the sign that was the expression. And it is like a dance. I mean, it's so beautiful when you watch
it and it's such an incredibly and to go back to myself learning sign, it's a very organic way to
express yourself. It's a very connected way to express yourself.

Young: You've just been talking with your hands the whole time.

Heder: Well, it's hard not to sign now. It's so funny. This is yes in sign. And when I'm on Zoom
calls I'm sort of making.... you've got your hand in there....

Heder: It's like nodding a fist. Yeah. And when you're talking with a deaf person and you're really
engaged, it's a way of actively listening. You're sort of nodding your fist as a yes I'm listening to
you and I catch myself on Zoom calls now or in Zoom meetings. Kind of my hand will come up
and would be nodding along and people are like what is she doing? But it's a very engaged,
active way to be communicating and it's very beautiful. And Troy in particular is an incredible
signer. And you'll talk to other deaf people and they all talk about Troy's ASL because his ASL is
very expressive. It's very creative. He's using a lot of classifiers which aren't signs themselves.
They're kind of gestural interpretations of the thing that you're talking about. And so he's
wonderful to watch. And he became so embedded in the community here, he would go out to
Pratty's the local fishermen bar. And at first it was like, oh this is research for my character. And
then after a while, he was just there every Saturday night and there was always a fistfight. And I
really like Troy get out of there before 11 p.m. because it's always going to go south at 11:00
p.m. But you'd see Troy standing at the bar telling a full story in sign language and these group
of hearing fishermen standing around him, cracking up, laughing, totally engaged with the story,
totally following the story. And so, in a way, I think there's a fear that exists between the hearing
community and the deaf community of hearing people not knowing how to engage. And yet we
have so many tools at our disposal as humans. I've many times now sat in a restaurant with
deaf friends and watched the waiter walk to the table and panic. And you see this moment of
panic where it's kind of like, oh no, what do I do? And I'm like, you have so many tools. You
have your hands, you have the menu. You could point, you could write something down with a
pen. It's like we have a million ways to communicate and…

Young: … text each other.

Heder: You could text each other what you're doing all day long anyway, so I think there is a real
fear of getting it wrong or something. It's like will I offend this person if I try? Will I if I gesture or
if I pull out a pen and pencil, am I going to offend this person and generally no is the answer. I
think any attempt to communicate and make it easier and our bodies, our communication tools
and we forget that because so often we're just, chit-chatting with our mouths and not using our
bodies. And we're not actually connected to most of what we're saying.

Young: It's an extraordinary cast brought together by you, the director, Emilia Jones, just
stunning who plays the daughter. We mentioned Troy Kotsur, a deaf actor in the deaf
community, a deaf actor, Daniel Durant, same known in the deaf community for their acting. Just
what was it like to work with Marlee Matlin?

Heder: Marlee is a riot first of all. The first time I met her, I had her in mind when I was writing
the script. She's obviously the most famous deaf actress out there and Oscar winner and was
the right age for this character. Normally I see Marlee play... she's on the West Wing or she's
playing these kind of put-together career ladies. And this was a working-class local, skinny
jean-wearing leopard print Gloucester lady. And so I think it was it was fun to explore that side of
Marlee because she's married to a cop in real life. She's a very down-to-earth personality. She
swears a lot. She's a dirty sense of humor. She's... And we just had... We had so much fun this
cast. And I think Troy and Daniel and Marlee had worked together before. So Troy actually
became an actor because of Marlee. Troy saw Marlee and Children of a Lesser God when he
was a teenager and thought, oh, I could do that, I could be an actor. And so I think it was a very
powerful experience for him to be working, playing husband and wife with her. And Daniel, as a
young actor who's incredible and both Daniel and Troy are very involved in Deaf West, which is
a wonderful theater company based in Los Angeles. But they've been to Broadway many times
with Spring Awakening and Big River. And so I'd seen Troy on stage twice before I cast him in
very different roles. One was an Edward Albee play and he played this buttoned-up, intellectual
kind of neurotic guy. And I thought, oh, that guy's a wonderful actor, felt very different from this
role. But he just has so much presence, an amazing face. And he came in to audition. And
when he walked in the room, he just had this little cap on and his face looked like he'd been out
at sea for thirty years. And he just was the guy like there was no other option for me, for that
character. And then it was fun because they... Troy had played Daniel's father before. And the
hardest thing to create as a director is chemistry. Like it's the one kind of sort of spiritual thing
that you can't direct somebody into. It's like the two people either have it or they don't. And you
can feel that stuff on screen. And so to have this family that came in with a love for each other
and in a history with each other, and Emilia really was the outsider and they really embraced her
and Marlee took her under her wing and was really a mama bird and was grilling her on her
ASL, would make her play games in the van on the way to set to get her up to speed. And so
the family dynamic was wonderful. And I remember the first time we went out to dinner in
Gloucester and Emilia was sitting at a table with Troy and Marlee and Daniel. And she
immediately fell into this CODA role where she started translating for the waiter and signing
back and forth with them. And it was so beautiful to watch because it was just almost immediate
that this dynamic started taking place in real life as well as with the characters.

Young: What a piece of work. Now it goes to the public. How are you anticipating that?

Heder: My hope is just that...I think there's somethin’ everyone asks like, what's your agenda?
And I do think the more that I've learned about the deaf community and the struggles in the deaf
community and accessibility and all of these things. I think I feel like I'm hopefully an ally and an
activist and want to push inclusion in Hollywood, want to push more stories about deafness and
disability. And but I think the most powerful tool we have as storytellers is creating empathy. And
I think hopefully people will watch this family and just feel like, oh this feels like my family or oh
that reminds me of my dad or that and the difference is that they're deaf, but there's not they're
not other in any other way. They're really a hilarious, weird, quirky family that fights and laughs
and so I guess my hope is that it normalizes a deaf family and feels universal and that people
don't...people feel the familiarity of this family and feel more connected and then maybe want to
create those bridges.

Young: Your parents don't have to be deaf to come to a school assembly and be a little puzzled
in this case, and in this case they can't hear it, which is heartbreaking because it's music. CODA
Children of Deaf Adults is also, of course, a musical term.

Heder: Yes.

Young: And just a little on that. I mean, it broke my heart to see deaf parents not able to hear
their deaf child on stage.
Heder: Well, I think CODA does have a double meaning in the title because it's children of deaf
adults, but it's also the end of a piece of music and sort of wraps up the piece of music. And it's
a story about the end of childhood. And you also talked about the connection when you watch
ASL, there's something inherently musical about the language. There's a moment in the film
where Ruby is asked how she feels when she sings and she doesn't have English words to
describe it. She signs something in ASL because it is melodic, it is rhythmic. It has all these
elements music has that I actually don't feel like spoken language always has. So the sort of
wink-wink irony of her family's deaf and she's a singer, actually dropped into a much deeper
place, which is no her culture and her language actually lends itself to this thing that she loves,
which is music. And yes, there is irony in the fact that her parents can't experience that. But
there's also a universal thing there, which is anything that your child wants to do that you can't
participate in. Whether you're a family of doctors and your kid wants to be an artist and you don't
get what that is. And so you don't know how to support them in that dream. And there's a lot of
fear there as a parent. So I think Marlee and I talked a lot about like this is not just, oh, I want
my kid to stay because I rely on her to be my interpreter. It's I want my kid to stay because I'm a
mom. And it's scary to have your kid leave home. But also my kid is pursuing something that I
don't know how to participate in and I don't know how to help her with it. And in fact, I can't even
tell you if she's good or not. Is there's a sign she's like she could be awful. And so I think that
concert scene. Yes was heartbreaking because I think it's the moment where the parents really
watch the world connect to something their daughter can do and strangers connect to
something their daughter can do that they can't connect to. And I think that's a fear as a parent.
And it's not actually about being deaf. It's just a fear that you're going to eventually lose a kind of
closeness with your child and they're going to go out in the world and they're going to have to
make their own way, and you're not always going to be there to help them on that journey. And
for Emilia and Emilia is the actress. Ruby's the character. But we talked a lot about as a
teenager who's responding to this kind of responsibility and feeling trapped. And I want to get
out of here and you guys rely on me. But in fact, she gets a lot of self-worth out of this role. I
think a lot of the CODAS I spoke to, spoke with describe this feeling of yes, I felt like I had a lot
of responsibility, but I also felt really important. And as a kid, I felt like I had this role. And I was
important and needed and powerful. And that's hard to let go, because when you're going out in
the world, like you might be small and you might not have a role and it might take you a while to
find your own identity.

Young: People want to speak for themselves at the restaurant table. You don't have help them.

Heder: You don't have to help them. And so that that fear of actually think that Joni Mitchell song
is perfect 'Both Sides, Now' that she sings at the end, because Joni Mitchell has described that
song as being when childhood fantasy butts up against adult reality. And that song really
marked for her the end of her childhood and having to figure out who you are outside of the
culture, your identity as a kid. And that's what the movie's about. It's like once you remove
yourself from the comfort zone of your identity within the people that you love, how do you find
your own voice?
Young: You do a very brave thing. We've spent the entire film. One of the side stories is that
Ruby is starting a relationship with a young man. It's lovely. And they are going to sing a duet at
this concert and we hear them practicing snippets of it. And now we're going to finally get to
hear them on stage, perform this song. And no you stop several notes in so that we could hear
what Ruby's parents hear, which is nothing.

Heder: Well, there's definitely, the concert scene in movies is a trope like you wait, you watch
them rehearse, you watch, they struggle, and then you're waiting for the big performance or you
finally get to see what they do. And it was very intentional that I took that away, at the moment
where the audience is ready to hear her sing. You've watched her practice. You've watched her
get it wrong. You've seen that song is actually five times in the movie. I thought or people are
going to get so sick of this Marvin Gaye song. I think luckily they don't. But it was very
intentional that right at the moment where you are ready to experience that performance, I
actually and it was important that it happened then in the movie, because I think audiences are
very invested in the characters emotionally at that point. And you love them, you love the
parents. And so when when the sound is taken away and you are put in there perspective of
having to watch the audience and the detectives and get clues off of people's faces as to what's
happening. Is my kid talented? What is she doing? Is it going well? And it really subverts
expectation for movie, from storytelling because that is the climax where you want to experience
it. And in a way, it's the less important scene. The more important scene is the scene that
follows where she sings alone to her father because he asks her to. And and so in a way, it was
holding off the emotion that you want, the cathartic release that you want in that concert scene
you don't get. But you do get it in the following scene, which is much more intimate and quiet.

Young: I think a fishing boat has come in because we suddenly have every seagull in New
England here. Thank you so much.

Heder: Yeah. This was so lovely to talk to you and especially out here, because I'm just to be.
Yes with the seagulls pounding us. But also, I can look at seven places that we shot within one
hundred feet of us. So it's really a beautiful place to be back here and thinking about the movie
and talking about the movie.