LA Film Festival: Interview – Director Eva Vives On Creating All About Nina And Why StandUp Was The Perfect Outlet For Trauma

Eva Vives is no stranger to filmmaking. She has written and produced short films for years, but with All About Nina, Vives makes her feature-length debut. In the film, Nina moves from NYC to LA to escape a toxic and abusive relationship. Nina is also a standup comic and her routine serves as a way for her to mask the pain, trauma and rage inside from everything that has happened to her.

It’s a story of bravery, of a woman who in the era of the #MeToo movement and the events of this week with Dr. Christine Ford bravely testifying about her story of sexual assault, is timely and relevant in a world where there is heightened awareness. Nina too, tells her story.

Something good comes along in her life when she meets Rafe (Common) the perfect man who knows how to have a good time and treat her right. But it’s Nina’s journey, as she learns to be happy and follow that path, that is most inspiring and makes All About Nina such a striking, important and funny film to watch.

I caught up with Vives to learn more about the journey to All About Nina.

Let’s start with talking about how close to the heart All About Nina is to you?

It happened because it was very much my own story with the exception of the fact that I never did stand up. It was the sadder parts sadly and it’s my own personal story as disguised by a comedian and it turned into an hour and a half as opposed to twelve years of recovery or however long it took me to think about it this way. I always knew I wanted to talk about it. When I was in my 20s recovering from this, I never wanted to be thought of as a victim or as someone who didn’t have any power because of course, that’s what happens when you go through that kind of trauma. It was something that I had in mind for her, someone who was strong and someone who had her shit together. Once I thought of her that way, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if she were a comedian?” because I like that juxtaposition of her she would present on stand and give her the chance to present herself and also see what’s going on in her life.

When I moved to New York when I was 18, I always loved watching it, reading about it and it was something that gave me a lot of solace over the years as well. There are a lot of dark and fucked up comedians that bring all of that. I just felt at home there and it was very comfortable for me.

I found the opening drew me right in, when she’s in New York doing her routine. Talk about setting up that scene.

It’s so interesting that you bring it up because that was one of the hardest scenes to cut. The script used to open with a fairly long stand up scene that was about five minutes. The idea, which was also the first piece of comedy that I wrote about it, was this idea that she would think that it’s a very hard time for men right now and riff off of that idea and this whole thing that men could accomplish if they weren’t busy trying to fuck women and the other way around of how much we would accomplish if we weren’t busy trying to defend ourselves. I started going that way and there was a whole other bit that I loved about masturbation and getting to know oneself and what you like sexually. Even though Mary was so great when we started cutting it, some things were taking too long and some things weren’t matching. Somewhere in the edit room, I had two great women editors working with me and we threw things back and forth and we just came up with this idea of having this one-shot that I had done of her. She’s from New York, coming into the club and I liked that it introduced what it’s like to be a comedian because they really live by night.

In the end, it took a long time to get there and sadly we had to lose a lot of the comedy, but I think it sets up the mood and the scene really well.

You crafted such a great character in Rafe. He’s Mr. Perfect. Let’s talk about that date scene.

Awwww. Did it bother you that he left in the first place?

No. It didn’t. It really didn’t because of everything that is happening.

Oh good. I tried to invert a lot of the tropes of the stereotypical stuff that then gets turned on its head. There’s the ball-busting comedian but then you find out about the trauma she’s had in her life and there’s a lot more emotion there.

With Lake, there’s the similar thing there where you think she’s this LA spiritual bimbo but then you realize there’s a lot more depth to it and she knows what she’s talking about.

With Nina, her M.O with men is to not trust them. He would be someone who would come off as someone who is very used to playing women but then you find out he’s the opposite. I was trying to subvert the thing of her being the main character and him being seen as what is traditionally the female character. He’s there to be admired and loved and perfect, but Common and I did talk about giving him a couple of flaws and making sure he felt a little bit real. His ghosting and his inability to show up in certain circumstances, I think was fairly realistic. I think it’s such a testament to Common because he’s such a likable human being, the way he played it, men fall in love with him, women fall in love with him. He’s so sweet. I like that both men and women respond to this.

Mary is superb.

She was tremendous.

She brought her character to life and gave her so much heart.

I’m thanking my lucky stars that they both agreed to work with me on this. So much of it is instinctual when you’re thinking about who can do it. There’s no right or wrong answer, it’s about who you think is good for you. I sent her the script and she responded to it, and she liked it enough to have a meeting with me. So much of that is about do we see the character the same way? If you don’t then I think it’s going to be harder to make something magical. If she had seen Nina as someone who was weepier or sadder, I wouldn’t have known how to help her with that, so much of it is magic where you see things the same way. Once that’s established it’s much easier to say, “Great, take it away and I’ll be here to make sure we’re all doing ok.” I give them a lot of freedom and in return, I got great performances back and it felt so special. I felt very protective of them actually.

Let’s talk about the tone of the film, the whole production design and cinematography aspect of it. What conversations did you have to create that?

The head of departments and the people who collaborate with you on films are so important. I think that’s always true, but even more so in independent films because there’s not a lot of time and not a lot of money. You’re going really fast and so often the first things that go are those positions. In terms of cinematography, Thomas Scott Stanton who is my gentle giant of cinematography is lovely. Really the first big decision we made was to shoot with anamorphic lenses because it’s an ingrained look into the film. It’s not usually the way independent films and comedies are shot either. It was important to me that it had that cinematic look and Thomas was into it as well. Fosse and his film Lenny in general was a big reference for us. Because I’ve lived the comedy scene in New York, it can be very dark and I love that in movies, Lenny goes dark in the interiors and that was something we did. We talked about contrasting LA and New York. In New York, we always see her in small spaces and things are constrained. In LA scenes, there’s more space, more light and it mirrors her journey as she opens up. It was great to work with really allies and to be able to work at times when there was a lot of improv. Sometimes, I’d say “let’s do this” and he was always there and never holding me back which is huge for a production this fast.

Again with production design, when you don’t have a ton of money to throw at things. Kelly Fallon worked on it and I loved working with her. She got the boldness of Nina. I said, “Do you think she would paint one wall in her apartment ?” and she was the one who came up with doing that wall with the peacocks on it. I actually did that in New York when I was really depressed, I just painted a wall. Kelly asked what I thought of that wall and I loved it. Things like that were great. We also put a lot of red in the film which is a big comedy color. We did things like the red boots and things that were a collaboration between production design and cinematography.

You talked about your shooting schedule. What was it on this?

We had 21 days to shoot this which is not a lot. We had 95 scenes which is a lot and Mary is in every one of those. Just to make it harder and impossible. We shot on location everywhere. We shot in a lot of comedy clubs which meant we had a hard out because they need to have their shows at night which meant we had to be out of there by 6pm. That shortened our day. So all the comedy we’re shooting were often shot at 7am.

We shot at the Laugh Factory and I was so happy we got to use it. We also shot in a few other clubs. Speaking of production design, our gaffer built all the lightbulb sets that you see in the one towards the end when she’s talking about wanting her man to be sensitive. Again, that was inspired by Lenny and it’s much more cinematic than shooting her up against a brick wall.

We had to shoot it first, so that meant all the stand up was done at 7am. I used a lot of friends who were in comedy if they would do some stand up to warm up the room. After you hear it 3 or 4 times, you’re not necessarily always laughing so I’d have comedians come in and do other stuff. It was fun. You learn to do jokes at 6am somehow.