@Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic
Daddio : New York City. JFK airport. A young woman jumps into the backseat of a yellow taxi, the cabbie throws the vehicle into drive as the two head out into the night toward Manhattan, striking up the most unexpected conversation resulting in a single, epic, remarkable journey.
Director : Christy Hall
Producer : Ro Donnelly, Terry Dougas, Christy Hall, Dakota Johnson, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis
Screenwriter : Christy Hall
Distributor : Sony Pictures Classics
Production Co : TeaTime Pictures
Genre : Drama
Original Language : English
Release Date (Theaters) Jun 28, 2024
Limited Runtime : 1h 41m
@Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic
Q & A with Director Christy Hall and Actor Dakota Johnson
Q : Is it true that you wrote Daddio first as a stage play?
Christy Hall: When I first had the idea of Daddio, I actually saw it as a film, because it just lends itself to the cinematic language. I wanted people to feel like they were eavesdropping on the phone. The ability to be in his point of view, in the rearview, or her point of view. And the lights, that drive is so distinctive. New York City itself is the third character of the film. So I saw it as a film, but for some time I wrote it as a stage piece that never got fully realized. I wrote it as a stage play because I’m a playwright, I come from the theater and I didn’t have a bridge to Hollywood yet. But I truly wanted this to be a movie. It’s almost unfair to say it was ever a theater piece because it never got to be on stage. So this is an original screenplay that at one point was formatted as a stage play.
Q : How did you set about figuring out your character’s arc in a real-time movie?
Dakota Johnson: It was all on the page. Everything that she goes through, which is kind of why I was drawn to this role, she goes through being and becoming so many different people throughout the 90 minutes. Even the relationship that she has with Clark shifts, these power dynamics and the relationship between man and woman go through so many different stages and colors and moments. It was just written, It was truly just all there, so detailed and thoughtful and nuanced.
Q How was rehearsing the movie at Sean Penn’s home?
Dakota Johnson: Sean made his own version of the rearview mirror with some duct tape, a broom, and a handheld mirror. It was so silly, he just sat with his back to me and Christy, we were just there in his living room. That only happened once or twice, then we talked through things mostly. We would read through and just had the words come out and made sure it all flowed well, without excessive rehearsal.
Christy Hall: This isn’t a movie that you want to over-rehearse. You want to save those natural reactions. We did treat it like theater where you sit down, you do what’s called table work, you read through it, you talk through the beats. And still, you want to leave a lot of room for exploration, let the actors embody the characters and the words. I didn’t want them to feel shackled to something we had decided weeks before.
Q : There’s an openness and a vulnerability that you can have with someone who’s a stranger and you’re never going to see them again. How did that shape some of the interactions in the film?
Christy Hall: That’s why I wrote this, why it resonated with me, because some of the most profound experiences you can have as a human being, in terms of human connection, can exist with someone that you don’t know, and that you may never see again, and it might change your life, and it might change their life. I just find it to be something missing a little bit these days. People are very afraid of each other, and very judgmental of each other. I would like people to be more vulnerable with each other. I’ve had the most profound conversations, not only in New York but all over the world. Sometimes it’s easier to open your heart to someone that you don’t know. You can create more of a space of non-judgment. There are no preconceived notions of who you’re supposed to be. There’s no expectation. If you know you’re never going to see them again, you might allow yourself to say things that you would never say to the closest person to you.
@Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic
Q : Your character doesn’t open up everything immediately. Going back to the script, did you find that the writing gave you all of those beats throughout your performance?
Dakota Johnson: Girlie doesn’t know a lot of the things she’s discovering in this cab ride. She’s confronting herself as well as this person. It’s not necessarily that she’s like: “Oh, how much do I tell him?” She’s sort of working it out with this man.
Q : What have been the challenges of writing Sean Penn’s character? How did you make him so fully fleshed out and human?
Christy Hall: Men like this exist, it feels honest to me. I would like that. I allow him to be brash, and I allow him to not always say the right thing. Because he is so raw, is a man who’s made mistakes, he owns his mistakes. That flawed nature of him makes him. He renders himself potentially the only person she could say these things to because he just lets these things fly.
I love that she doesn’t judge him, but he doesn’t judge her either. He’s like: “Yeah, he’s married. Do you want some gum?” Because he is that way, it makes him the safest place to be extremely real and raw with someone. Let’s talk about the guy on the phone: if you watched him walk down the street, he’s probably in a perfect suit.
He’s probably beautifully manicured and he would probably have a lot of wish fulfillment around him. And then look at Sean Penn’s character, Clark. He’s rough around the edges. He’s blue-collar. He doesn’t give a shit. Well, which of the two men is more honest? Which of the two men is more authentic? In some ways, they’re both behaving badly, but one owns it and the other is hiding it. So, that’s just an interesting conversation to have.
Q : Christy gave you a lot of autonomy in terms of the costuming, even the detail of the nails that she had was something that you came up with. How did you tap into what you felt were the important details for her?
Dakota Johnson: The nails were very immediate for me. Especially because there is a whole world on her phone. I wanted that to be stylized. Even down to little things, her little heart earrings and that amazing blonde wig that I love so much. I said to Christy: “This is what I’m thinking.” She’s like: “That is not what I was thinking.” But she did trust me with it, which was amazing, and I was very grateful for that. I feel like those little details bring you into this person’s mind and her world.
Q : Another beautiful small detail is the money plan that he has for good luck and fortune…
Dakota Johnson: Every time we shot that, it broke my heart. It moved me to actual tears when we filmed that. I think it was the most tender part of the whole movie.
Christy Hall: Being a writer-director, it’s a very humbling thing because you write this story, you’re extremely intentional and detailed about it, but then you’re inviting all these incredibly talented people to surround your idea. To help you manifest it into reality. You build a little sandbox which is the script. And then you invite people to come in the sandbox and play with you. It’s the role of the director to keep a very strong vision of what it is and what it is not. But then it is a collaboration.
We’re doing it together. We’re doing it as a family. I did not do this by myself. Kristi Zea, our incredible production designer, found a photo of a taxi driver who kept a real live plant in his cab. And she said: “Do you think Clark has a plant? What kind of plant do you think it is? And I said: “Well, he talks so much about money, wouldn’t it be interesting if he had a money plant?” What a beautiful detail about this man who has a house in Jackson Heights, maybe a mortgage on it. It’s a lot of stress. And so then for him to be tenderly keeping this money plant, it says a lot about where this person is in his life.
@Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic
Q : Was it difficult filming so many sequences and scenes where she’s having text message conversations? Figuring out the pacing and the rhythm, the responses that she’s having emotionally?
Dakota Johnson: It felt very organic. There are some messages that she’s sending that are very quick responses and then there are some where she’s questioning herself. And then the reactions that she has to the text are very quiet and for herself.
Q : You shot Daddio with this new technology of projections, it was on a soundstage with the vehicle there and with these screens with projection on the side. How was it working that way?
Christy Hall: This was a very indie movie. We had a very limited time and we had a limited budget. So we had to be smart about how we could pull this off. We shot this in 16 days. If we used the trailer car, that would have been all-night shootings. It would have been grueling and difficult. On the other hand, the blue screen wouldn’t have been as authentic for our taste. We wanted something that felt raw and real.
We started researching this technology: It’s incredible what you can do now that it’s these big LED panels. You throw it out in the cab and it gives an immersive experience to the cast. Sean was driving and you could see the road out in front of him. It gave it a feeling of time and place, which was extremely important. We could see what it was going to look like, the soft light was engaging with the environment.
It just gave it a texture, a depth, because the background and foreground are all filtering through the lens at the same time. All that information is being captured by the camera so it just gives it a feeling of reality. To be clear, the airport or the drop-off was shot on location. All the exterior of the cab was shot from JFK to Hell’s Kitchen. Everything interior in the cab was shot on a soundstage with this technology. We’re the first straight drama to utilize this technology throughout the whole film.
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Here’s the trailer of Daddio: