SIFF Interview: Writer/Director Nick Naveda and Producers Nancy Taylor and Taylor Grabowsky Share the Magic of ‘Say You Will’

SIFFcast host, Jeremy, chats with Nick Naveda, writer/director of Say You Will.
Pictured (L-R): Katherine Hughes (Ellie), Nick Naveda (writer/director), Travis Tope (Sam)

As I stood in the SIFF Uptown Cinema lobby, a woman with long, strawberry blonde hair made a beeline toward me with arms outstretched for a hug. “This must be Nancy Taylor,” I thought, “My fellow SunBreaker, Chris, did say they were lovely folks.” I was set to interview her and Taylor Grabowsky, the producers of Say You Will, a film about two teens, Sam and Ellie, who forge an unexpectedly special and timely connection the summer after their high school graduation. I was happy to learn that writer/director, Nick Naveda, would be joining us.

As we settled into a semi semicircle –the chairs were locked to the sidewalk on short cables– in front of a busy coffee shop across from a bustling bus stop, I fired away with questions, they answered, we laughed. From the start, I felt like I was hanging out with some really cool, new friends.

I really enjoyed the movie. How did it come about? How did you three come to work on the project together?

Nick: I wrote the script in my first year of working with a writer/director in LA. You know when you move away from your hometown and miss the people and places that shaped you, and you’re accepting this new chapter but still missing the old things? I wanted to write something about that time. Whenever anybody read the script, we ended up getting into these intense conversations about our childhoods and the first people we showed ourselves to…I just knew there was something there that really connected with people. UTA was the agency the script was circulating around and that’s how I found these two.

Nancy: Nick and I emailed back-and-forth a lot for our bosses but had never met in person. A mutual friend of ours told me about his script and after reading it during lunch, I immediately fell in love with the characters and story. I went home and called Taylor and told him, “You have to read this. Drop everything that you’re doing.” Taylor and I were fortunate enough to have a financier approach us. She wanted to make a complex coming of age film, and something she could also work on with her teenage daughter.

Taylor: Nancy and I have very similar taste in projects, and the stars began to align. I remember thinking, “this is gonna be good.” Nick did not disappoint. I was floored by the writing, and just to give you a time frame of how all this came together, I read it in February of last year, we got it financed in April, had a table read in May, and went into production in August. We had a 15-day shoot to get it all done so it was a fast and furious journey.

Nancy: As producers, we were so lucky to find Nick’s script. Due to limited resources as an independent film, every single person that came to the table was willing to work with what we had because they loved the script.

Nick: Honestly, I could have never expected this. I knew we were in the trenches together and we were gonna do it but to get the actors and crew that we did for my…our first feature film – it was a dream.

That’s awesome. It sounds like the movie wanted to be made.

Nancy: A few years ago, Taylor texted me to tell me about this incredible live reading of American Beauty that he went to, and was raving about “this amazing actor Travis Tope.” A couple months later, my mother read Nick’s script and was watching Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. She took a picture of the TV and texted me, “This actress, Katherine Hughes, should play Ellie!” We’re like, “Yeah, OK,” and then we get to the table read and there were Travis and Katherine. This movie was willed into being.

Taylor: The table read fired on such a level where the movie just came to life and I think it was in part that Nick offered up his personal story at the beginning, and we casually mentioned that it was fully financed.

Nick: We rose the stakes!

I identified with Sam and Ellie – feeling confused, lost, and making stupid decisions. I was wondering if everyone on the set was reliving their teenage years.

Nick: That’s what was so good about this experience, it brought that out of people. I didn’t want the movie to feel nostalgic, per say. I wanted it to be like a memory. I feel like “nostalgia” has a very rose-colored sentimentality to it, and I didn’t want the movie to be that, but more like…

…like a reverie.

Nick: Yeah and people brought a lot of their experiences to the set in that way. It was really special.

I was curious about the knocking-down-DVDs ritual at the movie rental place on Sam’s last day, is that an actual thing? 

Nick: Hollywood Video is closed and my manager is no longer there so I’m not getting anyone in trouble but, yes, it was a ritual. I got to run down and knock down a bunch of DVDs on my last day.

Nancy: Our art department was like, “You get one take cause we’re not redressing this whole set!”

Taylor: Travis just went to town.

Nick: It was so funny…

Taylor: Yeah, he loved it.

I could tell! I wanna do that! I loved the music in the movie, especially the song Sam sings. I was so excited at the end when Sam picked up his guitar to sing it again.

Nick: The first time I screened it to get some feedback everybody was like, “How do I get that song?” I need to give credit to our soundtrack composer, Mitchell Owens, and Rob Lowry, our music supervisor. I sent Mitchell a library of music that inspired me – things I wrote as a teenager and music that inspired me at that age. He came back with the most beautiful score.

My good friend, Griffin, and I wrote the song together. A portion of it is something he wrote in 2007. I saw him perform it and I reached out to him to ask if he still had that song and he was like, “I’ve gotta get my old MacBook out!” A year ago we met up for coffee and listened to it together. We collaborated and wrote the lyrics and music and that’s what’s in the movie.

Nancy: Another favorite moment of ours while producing this movie was when Travis just casually goes, “I mean, I sing.” And we were like, “What do you mean you sing?!”

And amazingly so!

Nick: He did it live on set in a single take!

What?! Was that the first time that Katherine (Ellie) heard it?

Nick: Yeah. Actually, the first time that she goes into his bedroom is the first time she sees it – by choice. I always talk about this movie as being about how we discover people and what that feels like. I just love that moment because she’s really discovering Sam’s character.

And he does, too?

Nancy: Yeah. I love when he goes into her bedroom. That’s one of my favorite moments.

Taylor: Our production did an incredible job on those two rooms. Sam’s room is actually a garage that wasn’t outfitted at all. Everything in those rooms the Art department brought and built from the ground up.

Nick: I can’t say enough about the crew. They were given the impossible task of making this very complicated recording studio that also doubles as a teenage bedroom, and they did such an incredible job.

Taylor: Everyone down to the hair & makeup department were just incredible. They’ve worked on a ton of sets and they said that the dynamic of this movie set was very unique. The actors brought their talents and sensibilities, and the crew gelled in such a fantastic way. We became a family and we all still hang out. It’s such a special experience.

Tell me about the title.

Nick: When I was thinking about how I wanted the movie to feel, I didn’t know that Sam would say what he does near the end. I just love that phrase. It felt very evocative to me.  Saying goodbye to people is hard. No relationship is going to end as neatly as you hope and the only thing you can do is say, “Tell me you’ll be good to yourself. Tell me you’ll be happy.”

I love it.

Nick: I wanted to say…as a young film director, the best producers are the protectors of story. These guys did a fantastic job of filling that. A lot of times on set, they would remind me and be like, “That’s what you wanted, right?” That’s my idea of a good producer – somebody who’ll constantly remind you of that first meeting you had when you said, “This is my dream movie and this is how I wanna make it.”

Nancy: Nick was so true to himself as a filmmaker, but willing to adapt and make it work in a way that was always authentic to the story. It’s a dream to be working with someone who never gave us pushback and was trusting about things that were not always fun to deliver. We’d say, “I’m sorry but this is what needs to happen,” and Nick was immediately like, “OK. I’m on it.” He’d snap into gear and strip things down to what they needed to be at their core. That was really important and we cannot thank him enough for being willing to do that.

Nick: I always felt like I was in the best hands, even with all the crazy changes. Like, the grad night scene was gonna be on a yacht, then at a school before it became a park. I literally went to the park on the day we chose it and re-wrote the scene there.

Taylor: I feel like our team was always on the same page and we had each other’s back. I think a lot of our job as producers is to learn the names of our department heads and our crew, get to know them personally and ask, “How can we support you in a way that makes you successful in your expertise?” Then, trust them to take the ball and run with it. We were always surprised ‘cause they’re so gifted and so talented. It was a dream.

Wow. It sounds magical!

Nick: It is! Going back to the music, I think Rob Lowry put the idea in my head, but our philosophy with the music was always this: if 27-year-old Sam could soundtrack his teenage life, what would it sound like? That’s sort of what we wanted the music to feel like.

It’s beautiful.

Taylor: Mitchell killed it. We had a lot of temp music placed, some pretty popular songs that were great, but he captured everything that Nick wanted while taking it to the next level.

Nick: There’s some great music that’s not in the movie so hopefully, when we get distributed and get a soundtrack out there, we can put some of that stuff out there.

Nancy: The music was wonderful but I think it’s so important that Nick maintained the quiet moments. The dialogue was so naturalistic and beautifully written. I think it was very confident of Nick to make the decisions to let that be. It’s a testament to him, as an artist.

Nick: Thank you. We had great people at Wildfire Sonic Magic who were so trusting and nice. When you’re a sound designer, you wanna design, but my instinct was to strip things down, feel the room, and lean into the dialogue; believe in what they’re saying and kinda pull everything else back. Hopefully, that comes across.

It does. I think that’s one of the reasons why the movie is so alive. It sounds like it’s been alive since its inception. It’s very much a living movie.

Taylor: Absolutely.

Nick: Totally.

One thing that I noticed with the editing is that at some of the scene changes, the vocals comes in a few seconds earlier.

Nick: Our editor, Javier Alvarez –who is fantastic– pitched me the idea based off of my initial instinct to make the movie feel like a memory. The first time we tried it is when Ellie tells Sam to wake up and we just loved it. It felt so right and evocative.

Taylor: We were trying to go for efficient editing and making sure that the story held together well, but I think, in some ways, it solidifies Ellie’s role from Sam’s point-of-view as sort of this mystical, magical, unicorn girl. I think she’s the girl that teenagers are gonna fall in love with.

Nick: She’s very much a composite character of a lot of girls I was friends with when I was in high school. I feel like there is a lack of dimensional, believable teenage girls in movies who row their own boats and have actual arcs outside of the male’s journey. I wanted to make her character authentic and someone teenage girls could watch and go, “That’s me. I see myself in that person.” As someone who was raised in a house full of complicated, dynamic women, it’s important to me that my female characters have those qualities as well.

That’s one of the reasons I was drawn to Ellie – her character is so realistic. The scene where Sam is outside his work with his best friend and Ellie comes up to them just like, “Hey guys!”

Nick: So nonchalant like, “Nothing’s happening here.” When you’re a teenager, you make most decisions based on pure emotion or angst, and I wanted the movie to represent that, because that part of us goes away. A perfect example of this is when Ellie says to Sam, “I wish we met when we’re 27-years-old, when we have everything figured out.” You’re not gonna have everything figured out at 27, but when you’re 18, you think that’s gonna happen. It’s very earnest and hopeful, and I often miss feeling the way I did back then.

I’m a big advocate of mental health and destigmatizing it so those themes always pop out to me. I wanted to talk a little bit about that –Sam’s father’s suicide and his mom’s depression–  I don’t think it’s ever really…

Nick: It’s not addressed but it’s implied.

I appreciate the realness of those circumstances and how you’re not pointing a finger at them. Whenever I see realistic representations, real life situations it just…THANK YOU.

Nick: I’m so glad. You’re one of the first people to have brought that up. Representation of those issues is important to me. Like many of us, I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression. I spent many nights in the ER as a teenager thinking I was dying, but was really having a panic attack.  It can be very scary, and even scarier to talk about because of stigma.

I just had one on Monday. It sucked.

Nick: Yeah, it’s the worst thing imaginable. I didn’t want to comment heavily on suicide, per say, but I wanted to be emotionally truthful to my experience. My father didn’t commit suicide, but someone close to me did around the time I started writing the script, and I spent a lot of time trying to understand it. When you’re left in the wake of that…there’s a big gray area.  Answers don’t come easy.

I think when you’re dealing with grief, particularly with your family, it can be really painful to show them how you truly feel for some reason. That was my own experience with my mom and figuring out our lives after my dad passed away in high school. To get to that place where Sam and Janis (Sam’s mom played by Michelle Forbes) are in the garage with all of his dad’s stuff, finally speaking their truth – that takes a lot of work and a lot of courage on the part of both people, and I wanted the movie to ultimately be about that bittersweet journey.

Right, and sometimes it takes time or maybe it doesn’t happen at all. I appreciate that the story also shows that life goes on and that after something like that, you’re gonna be OK.