Actor Clayne Crawford, a familiar face from Rectify and Lethal Weapon, stars in The Killing of Two Lovers, from writer-director Robert Machoian. I was lucky enough to see the film when it made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, and after a long wait and a release delay earlier this year, this film is finally coming out, arriving in theaters and on demand this Friday, May 14th.
The Killing of Two Lovers is a poignant and affecting drama, one that purposely subverts its title and offers a compelling portrait of what it means to separate from someone. Less is more here, and filming in a tiny Utah town helps to convey what it feels like to be in a place where everyone knows everyone else and there’s little escape to be found to anywhere with anonymity.
I was thrilled to be able to speak with Crawford and Machoian about the process of making this film and the fact that it was such a terrific experience that they’re already working on two more projects together.
Q: Where did the idea come from?
Robert Machoian: The idea started to originate with my wife and I coming up on twenty years of marriage. We have five children and a lot of people our age or friends of ours at this time were doing the opposite. They were starting to separate, starting to divide things up, and I, to be honest, was very paranoid about it. I kept being like, we got to do something, I don’t want that to happen, and Rebecca was like, no, we’re fine, don’t worry about it. I started to do a lot more research, and I came upon these articles that talked about what they call the drift in a marriage, where you’re talking about your children more than talking to each other and really, your relationship is beginning to be defined by that.
You have to be proactive, because the two areas where divorce happens the most is the first two years and the first year the kids leave the house. I was in this state of paranoia, and she was so very casual about it, and that really began to kind of spin this idea. At the time, Clayne and I had been trying to make films together for about ten years, and he called me one day, and was like, look, I’ve got some money, and you have equipment. Let’s stop waiting for permission, and can we just make something? Can you write something that we can make?
And I had a short, which was the date sequence in the film, that I had written, I was thinking the same thing, hoping that Clayne and I could just make a short together. We’ve been wanting to work together for ten years and I started to worry, what if we don’t even like our work ethics? This buildup to a movie where we just fought the whole time and then never spoke again. So I sent him the short, and he loved it and was like, can you expand that to a feature? And so I started to write it out to a feature.
Q: What drew you to this project and this role?
Clayne Crawford: Robert and I met at Sundance in 2009. We both had projects up there. I had been watching Robert make films for nothing with his kids. All of his films had his kids or his dad in them, and these things are going to Sundance, and some of them he was shooting on his phone. I just couldn’t understand. I thought he was on the smartest guys I’ve ever met and we just couldn’t get anyone in Hollywood to catch on. So I said, look, I’ll give you, say, we got $50,000 and we got twelve days, so that’s more money than you’ve ever had, and that’s double the time you’ve ever had. Let’s just see what we can come up with, and he goes, look, I’ve got the script.
He sent me the drift and it was essentially the scene at the end of the film where the dad goes to pick up the kids and the boyfriend comes right out.
We were questioning masculinity and fathers and so forth. I said, this is amazing, but we can’t shoot a short. We have to have a feature. So that was August, he had the script in October, and it was just perfect. He had written it in this little town called Kanosh. His buddy had a writing studio and he was with one of the locals in this town of 350. And he said, I’m writing this film about this husband and wife and they’re separated, but I would love if they lived in really close proximity so that they’re aware of one another’s existence at all times and the decisions they are making, which makes it extremely painful, right?
And the guy goes, well, that’s Susan’s house there and the yellow house right there, that’s Dave, and Dave and Susan, they’ve been broken up for two years. So, he’s like, holy cow. This town is kind of this film. So, he called me after I read the script and he goes, we have to shoot it here. As far as what drew me to the character, I was drawn to Robert first as a filmmaker, and I just knew that he told beautiful stories with characters that just came from a very honest place. And when I read David, as a father I it was very easy for me to connect to that character.
Q: David, of course, has so much anger that he bottles up and that just comes out at some point. How did you internalize that and channel that into your performance?
CC: I mean, look, my wife will tell you, I had some anger issues before I turned forty, so finding frustration was quite easy. And again, playing a dad, I don’t know if you’re a father, but for me, literally, with all the clichés, my life changed when I had kids. I didn’t understand my own self-worth and the world around me. It truly was like the goggles got lifted. To not have those guys in my daily routine, I can understand how you lose your grasp on reality and you begin to lose sight of what defines a positive decision.
I think that’s what was interesting about the script. Robert, through his research, found that when you love something so much and you begin to lose it, you just act out of character. The rage was very easy to understand. I cannot imagine quote on quote some dude raising my children. That to me is just such a difficult thing to wrap my mind around. And I know that families are divorcing all day everyday and it’s done really well. I don’t think I could be a weekend dad. I would be willing to do all the therapy in the world if my wife for some reason felt that she couldn’t do this. It would be super challenging and require a lot of help from outside people that also care about you.
Q: This film’s title is very dark and indicates something very violent. I’m curious how you think the title works for the film and if people go in with the right expectations.
CC: I think that’s what you want to do. Robert and I come from a place where we wish there were no trailers. And if there were trailers, they have to be within a thirty-second window. I personally, that’s why I love festivals. I go to festivals because I don’t know what I’m going to get. I just have these titles and I get to create these films in my head, and then I’m always completely thrown off after the first ten minutes. I think we’re certainly playing with the audience a little bit and expectations, but in reality David is killing two lovers, and I think that’s kind of how you define two people that are fresh in a relationship, and the touch and the smells are all new and exciting. I think David is someone disrupting that. We always laugh, because if the film has been told from Sepi’s perspective, how would we have received it?
RM: I always try and think about titles in the context of, how can it inform the audience in part of the storytelling as opposed to being either ominous or really overtly direct. I thought, in a way, metaphorically, two lovers are going to die in this movie, and there’s a little bit of ambiguity as to directly who it is, because there’s an aspect where it’s all of them really. But I thought it would set up the stakes, it would help the danger aspect, and the film does open without shying away from how dangerous this movie could be. I knew I wanted love in it because the film in the end is really about love and the complicated aspects of love. That’s how it came together. But you were at the premiere where the guy was like, two people didn’t die, what the heck? I was like, well, they did, just not in the literal way.
Q: I remember at the premiere that Clayne had these formidable co-stars who seemed to really revere him. Clayne, what can you can say about your adult co-stars and also your really talented child costars?
CC: Look, first of all, Robert’s kids, I’ve known his children since they were babies, most of them, same with my kids. Knowing that they were going to play my boys was quite easy, and they’re such little pros. Robert and I would catch Arri, who is the oldest, he wears the unicorn uniform, and Boo, who’s the middle, they would be working with Jonah at all times because Jonah couldn’t read at the time that we made the film. He was like four. So they were always giving him his lines and rehearsing with him. The whole team, we went into this little town of 350. So the town itself is about a mile in diameter. There’s not a lot of distractions. There’s only one mercantile and we would all walk there and get our sandwiches. And then we would just go to the set and all these old houses and in the street.
We had a golf cart that the kids were usually driving us around in. Sepi and Chris and I, and the boys, we would just time everything out, we would just rehearse, rehearse, rehearse so that there was no improv to get in the way. We stuck to the material and we knew what the structure of each scene was, and that Robert was creating these windows into these individuals’ lives and we wanted to be able to live honestly within that that world. I was grateful to have Sepi and Chris come on, and Robert’s father Bruce and the boys, and I was grateful that everyone bought into what it was that we were trying to do. That was incredible.
Q: Robert, what inspired you to cast your own family members, and did the experience play out like you thought it would?
RM: My boys had been in a collaborative film I made called God Bless the Child with Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, and they really liked that experience. My youngest, Jonah, who plays the youngest in the movie, he was only a year and a half. The kids will tell stories and he won’t even really remember. He gets kind of pissed and he’s like, can we do another movie I can remember? So I wrote this short called The Minors that my dad and the boys are in for them, and it’s just a great little film about them being in a band together. They really enjoyed the experience, and it ended up going to Sundance. They got to go to Sundance and to participate in that, and the boys just loved it. And so when I was talking about working on another film, they were like, you got to put me in it.
So I knew going into it they would play a role in the film. We wanted actors and Clayne is more connected to that world, so he reached out to Libby Goldstein who had cast him in Rectify and said, hey, can you find someone, sent pictures of my kids and that’s where he we ended up with Sepideh Moafi, who just had an amazing energy. And really dived in. I was very excited how open and willing she was. And then Chris Coy, who Clayne had worked with on Lethal Weapon and knew. He just brings it every single time and we really needed that. And so they all came out. I don’t know if they totally knew what they were getting into. I know that Chris comes from I think Kentucky, from a small town. And Clayne comes from a small town. So we all understood the small-town aspect of it, but it was, I mean, it’s 350 people and it’s thirty minutes to an hour from a big city. So it was a real commitment, and I appreciated that.
Q: I know there was a lot said about the film being shot in Utah and then premiering at Sundance. What was that experience like?
RM: Well, of course, it was a dream. I’ve had shorts go to Sundance, but always a dream to have a feature there. I grew up in California and but I write mainly to where I live. I like to write about the community or the type of people that exist in my world. The first collaborative feature I did with Rodrgio Ojeda-Beck was shot in King City in California, where I grew up, and the second one, God Bless the Child, was shot in Davis. And so, when I started to write The Killing of Two Lovers, I knew it would take place in Utah. I knew I wanted it to take place in a small town, which would make this struggle different than a major city.
Q: What do you both have coming up next?
CC: Robert and I are in post right now on our new film. We shot our second feature during COVID, which came with its own challenges. But we’re very excited. It’s called The Integrity of Joseph Chambers, and again, questioning male masculinity and expectations and how we’ve become accustomed to perceiving certain things in our culture. And we’re working on our third project right now in script and just trying to get the material ready. So, yeah, very exciting, and we’re very grateful to have people that have now, after The Killing of Two Lovers, stepped into our lives, to help support our creative vision, and it’s very exciting.
RM: We shot The Integrity of Joseph Chambers in November, which is very difficult obviously via COVID and making sure that we were safe and limited cast. We are in the editing process on that which is very exciting. I just yesterday talked to the sound guys, and of course, the sound is very important in The Killing of Two Lovers. And it will be very important in this one, so we’re really finding, how can we take what happened in The Killing of Two Lovers and just push it a little bit farther? I have a script that I’m finishing and rewriting called I Love You Now and Forever which is a film about a couple put in a hard spot. It’s actually a kind of influenced by Jeremy Davis, who plays the guy who’s working on his car in The Killing of Two Lovers and talks about having a hole in the back if he needs it. It’s a little bit influenced by him, but yeah, I’m currently working on that.
Though Clayne and Robert might tell you not to, you can watch the trailer for the film below:
The Killing of Two Lovers debuts in theaters and on demand on Friday, May 14th.