SXSW 2023 – A Conversation with ‘Cora Bora’ Screenwriter Rhianon Jones
Rhianon Jones recently spoke with Script about tapping into her vulnerability on the page, collaborating with director Hannah Pearl Utt and composer Miya Folick, creating distinctive characters and writing dialogue.
Cora senses her open relationship is on the rocks. When the struggling musician and messy millennial goes home to Portland to win her girlfriend back, she realizes it’s much more than her love life that needs salvaging.
Cora Bora is a revelation in terms of character voice and character development. For those creatives that straddle multiple creative endeavors, like screenwriter and filmmaker Rianon Jones, who is also a musician, it seems easier to collect an arsenal of stories and characters along your way, but tough going in really tapping into the vulnerability. As Rhianon quips in this interview, 'It does help to collaborate with like-minded people...' in terms of helping you discover the dramatic heart of your story on the page.
Rhianon is no stranger to the film and music business. She's spent years in the Portland music scene, experiencing firsthand the fast life of Rock and Roll. She soon "retired" from playing live music to becoming a filmmaker, having studied film and honed her craft at the American Film Institute. Since then, she's written and produced indie films under her production banner Neon Heart Productions which focuses on helping first and second-time female filmmakers in the low-budget realm.
During my time at SXSW, I had the grand pleasure of sitting down with Rhianon and her producing partner Tristan Scott-Behrends as they enjoyed mocktails and cheese crackers and chat about their new indie film, tapping into her vulnerability on the page, collaborating with director Hannah Pearl Utt and composer Miya Folick, creating distinctive characters and writing dialogue. Plus, she shares some tips and tricks of the trade - worth taking note of.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
Sadie Dean: How did you land on this story idea?
Rhianon Jones: I forget that what was on the cover of the script is not in the movie, but on the cover of the script, it says, ‘Based on the true story of a Tinder date I went on with this guy once.’ [laughs] And it is - I met this wonderful free spirit guy on Tinder back in my single days, who told me of this sort of ill-fated, open relationship and just trying to navigate that, and the circumstances. I know a couple of people, male, and females that are similarly inclined, very open and loving, and handle relationships in a very different way from what I was used to, but I very much admired it. And I was like, this story is so epic, I gotta tell it. So that was sort of the basic nugget of the idea. And that was quite a while ago.
I have a tendency to sit down and write 50 pages of something and then be like, ‘What am I doing?’ [laughs] What was this supposed to be about? And then going back and kind of being like, ‘OK, I got the character. I know this person.’ People I know and love in my life, all conglomerated into one person. And I have the kind of idea of where I want it to go. But then there's all the stuff that makes it worth watching for other people.
The human touches and a lot of the humanity in Cora Bora comes in part from partnering with Hannah pretty early on, because she has a writer background. She's a little bit more dramatic than I am, which I actually really like, but I think I'm a little shy to write that stuff for myself. The initial draft was a little more straight-up comedy, but I knew with Hannah I was like, I'm actually really excited to have the opportunity to like go a little deeper, but I need someone to push me. And she was like, ‘I love it. Let's go a little deeper.’ And so we were just spitballing ideas and stuff. And you know, there's a little bit of a dramatic twist that you get in the end…
I lived in Portland. I was a musician, but not even as cool as the Cora character in the movie [laughs] I lived that life for a while. And it was a really difficult time. When you're in an artistic community full of young people, especially particularly that rock and roll scene at that time, you've got a lot of sort of lost souls. There's a lot of depression, there's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of being on the road and like 10 people I knew died within a couple of years - people from the scene, some closer friends, some people I knew peripherally and I was just like, ‘I feel like this life is gonna kill me.’ I got kind of scared. And I started looking at the factors that had brought me into that world and why I felt like why the rock scene was important to me and why it was like my family and I quit doing drugs and tried to move on. But it was kind of a wake-up call for me. I was in a couple of car accidents on tour and stuff and had other friends who had gotten in pretty serious car accidents on tour. It's kind of a dangerous world and thought about the things that keep us there. I know I stayed too long in a place that wasn't right for me anymore. And that's sort of where she's at as a character, as well.
I was really resistant to visiting that trauma and do mention that I used air quotes.
[She definitely used air quotes]
Rhianon: But Hannah's much more comfortable and rightfully so. That's really actually what I loved about her previous film - she went there. I haven't seen a really dramatic comedy in a while. And it's so nice when dealing with big things. Meg [Stalter] was a revelation, because everyone knows her as this completely off-the-wall, wonderful, quirky character. And she went there, all the way. She has the dramatic, the heart. She’s a theater kid if you talk to her, and one of the most ridiculously nice people I've ever met in my life, which is kind of funny to have her play bit of an asshole character. [laughs] Some of the things that seemed great about the writing, definitely were part of the collaboration between Hannah and what Meg brought to the role as well.
Sadie: Yeah, there’s that vulnerability. Which for most, is tough to dig into.
Rhianon: It's easier to cover up your brokenness with other broken people. But the music is something to focus on. And I don't want everyone to leave the music scene, because I love music. [laughs] I remember when I did quit drinking, and when I did leave the scene, people were like, ‘Yeah, I wish I could change.’ Everyone's like, ‘We see people graduating. We love you. Good luck in LA.’ I go back and I visit, you know, they're all everyone's rooting for each other, to make it work out whether they want to stay in the scene or not.
Sadie: Did you have songs and lyrics already written, ready to go for the film?
Rhianon: Actually a few of the songs were songs I used to play just by myself not in any my bands, that were a little bit more like slightly humorous versions of - really going to date myself here - but like Belle and Sebastian. I had a few things in the script that were just lyrics. And then we needed a few more songs as well. There's a song specifically about Portland that actually always has been kind of a funny song. So, we put that in there and then worked with Miya Folick, amazing musician, unbelievable - the first time I heard her take on my songs, I was like, ‘Wow someone can really make things good. And really good at their job.’ [laughs]
So, if I was in a band with Miya, I’d maybe be the second bass player and I’d write some lyrics and she would make it into an amazing song. Some of the music in it is just straight up Miya songs. And some of its her adaptations of what I did. None of the musicality exists from me. It's some lyrics and stuff. Even with that, Hannah, Miya and I workshopped them together. Hanna's like, ‘This song, what are we trying to say?’ I was like, ‘Well, she's grateful to have met this friend on the plane.’ And she's like, ‘grateful friend.’ They sort of honed it down to something that worked musically and got the story across. A lot of it was kind of geared towards the final songs being like, she's not going to be fixed overnight, but she can accept help from new people.
Sadie: It's her grief process.
Rhianon: Exactly.
Sadie: Another great layer about this film are the characters and their voices – all distinctly and uniquely their own. What’s your process in tackling dialogue?
Rhianon: Yeah, thank you. I think that's the hardest thing. And then when you write your first draft of something, like my first couple of little mumblecore movies, people are like, ‘Oh, so they're all the same person. And they're all you.’ And I'm like, ‘No, one of them is guy,’ and they’re like ‘it's you wearing like a hat.’ I'm like, ‘Oh, OK, all right.’ [laughs] I was like, 25 on my first $5,000 indie film. Part of it was just the, there's no one like Cora, you can't really have two of those people in your life. And then, because it's sort of set up as a triangle with her and her girlfriend and her girlfriend's new love interest, there was already sort of this perfect triad.
But we also got really lucky with the cast. When JoJo [T. Gibbs] came in, and there were times with the Justine character and the Riley character where it was like, are we confusing what they're upset about but once we had the cast, and they were so perfect, the chemistry was there and so opposite of each other, it became really clear why everyone liked each other, and why everyone didn't like each other. So I have to give a lot of credit to our casting director Kate [Geller].
On the page, they're in really different places in their lives. And in a way the two most similar characters are actually Riley and Cora, because they're both struggling - Riley is kind of new to this world and this type of relationship, but they're inherently very different people.
Sadie: What inspired you to make the transition from musician to filmmaker?
Rhianon: I did study film in college. I've been chastised for saying this before, but I'm just gonna say it because we're filmmakers - we're film people - it's the best fucking job - you get to write and it's photography. It's art. It's set decorating. It's musical art. I've made sculptures for films, it's acting, it's directing. It's as much of you as you want in there. And it's a collaboration as much as you want. It's the ultimate privilege to have this job. And I'm very lucky that in my life, my path has actually, as long as it took me to get here, it's actually relatively straightforward. Part of why the other half of what we do with Neon Heart, our company is to try to spread that experience to more people. But it is nice to every once in a while to be back on the other side of it, where it's our own artistic thing.
Sadie: Yeah, remembering why you loved it in the first place, right?
Rhianon: Yeah, I mean, the music - performing and communicating - when I write a song, trying to get a feeling or thought and idea and story across to somebody else, painters do it, healers do it, it's this basic communication, this connection, I think that has always been very rewarding for me. My life partner, he's like, ‘I don't want to talk to anybody.’ [laughs] He's very self-contained – I’m the complete opposite. I need to connect with as many people as possible. So, finding ways to do that when you write something whether it's a song or movie that resonates with people, it's a body high. You're like, ‘Oh my god, I'm not alone. They're not alone. They have me, I have them.’ That’s the creative process I think for a lot of people.
Sadie: Advice for first-time filmmakers who have a story that is personal to them but is unsure about tackling that vulnerability head-on onto the page.
Rhianon: Find a Hannah who's willing to do that! [laughs] It does help to collaborate with like-minded people, it did take time - I've been doing this for 20 years. I didn't just walk in and find my Hannah right away or Tristan [Scott-Behrends] who brought us together and have the vision for that. It does take time.
But I think story-wise, I'm gonna put my producer hat on for a second - because doing something makeable giving you a chance to actually hone your craft, because doing something small, but finding those moments - when I watch a film, I'll look for that one moment where there's a hesitation or something you're like, ‘Oh!’ I'm not a fan of Love Actually, but when Emma Thompson opens the CD, I'm like, ‘That's a short right there!’ Finding those moments that you find in your life with people, and collecting them, and having them there in your toolbox to create these stories, without actually stealing someone else's life story, but it's basically you've got a skeleton, and you're putting on the different pieces from all the things, all your experiences in your life.
And if something's not working in your skin, this is my little trick that I learned - when you have two versions of a joke, and they're both so great, you can’t just have them sitting there making the same joke, I'm gonna take one and put it at the end of the script, just copy and paste. Put it at the end of your script. That way, it's physically still in your script. Letting go of stuff is so hard. And so, I found that was my little psychological trick where it's still technically on the page, it's just at the end over the end credits, we could have them doing alternate takes. But it definitely helped me learn to cut down.
Cora Bora had its world premiere in the SXSW Narrative Spotlight on March 12, 2023.
Sadie Dean is the Editor of Script Magazine and writes the screenwriting column, Take Two, for Writer’s Digest print magazine. She is also the co-host of the Reckless Creatives podcast. Sadie is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, and received her Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from The American Film Institute. She has been serving the screenwriting community for nearly a decade by providing resources, contests, consulting, events, and education for writers across the globe. Sadie is an accomplished writer herself, in which she has been optioned, written on spec, and has had her work produced. Additionally, she was a 2nd rounder in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and has been nominated for The Humanitas Prize for a TV spec with her writing partner. Sadie has also served as a Script Supervisor on projects for WB, TBS and AwesomenessTV, as well as many independent productions. She has also produced music videos, short films and a feature documentary. Sadie is also a proud member of Women in Film.
Follow Sadie and her musings on Twitter @SadieKDean
