Nightbitch with Marielle Heller and Ritesh Batra (Ep. 515)

The Director’s Cut - A DGA Podcast

Directors Guild of America

Tv & Film

4.6 • 806 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2024

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Director Marielle Heller discusses her new film, Nightbitch, with fellow Director Ritesh Batra in a Q&A at the DGA theater in New York. In the conversation, she discusses her unique approach to casting the child Actors in search of a more authentic onscreen relationship with their parents, finding filming locations that say a lot about her characters without delving into their backgrounds within the film’s story, and how she sought to achieve a deliberate level of ambiguity through her deconstruction of the traditional motherhood myth. Based on the novel by Rachel Yoder, the film tells the story of a woman who has paused her career to be a stay-at-home mom for her new baby. As she becomes increasingly overburdened with the stress of her new responsibilities, her maternal instincts begin to manifest in canine form. See photos and a summary of this event below: https://dga.org/Events/2025/January2025/Nightbitch_QnA_1124

Transcript

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0:00.0	It was a really chaotic day. It was a huge scene. And I remember this moment in the middle of all
0:04.5	that hubbub that the actor who played the server was like, can I just ask a question? Why can't I hear
0:09.9	her when she asks me for the kale salad? And I was like, oh, your ears are not tuned to hear
0:16.3	women over 40. And that's how he responded. But so that's how my directions ended up being with this
0:22.8	movie. I had an answer for everything. It was all true. There was a reason behind everything. It just
0:27.3	might not be the sort of logic that the real world operates in.
0:53.6	... Hello and welcome back to the Director's Cut, brought to by the Director's Guild of America. In this episode, a mother becomes convinced she has canine capabilities and director
1:00.0	Mario Heller's comedy, Night Bitch.
1:03.0	Based on the novel by Rachel Yoder, the film tells the story of a woman who has paused
1:08.0	her career to be a stay-at-home mom for her new baby.
1:13.8	As she becomes increasingly overburdened with the stress of her new responsibilities,
1:16.3	her maternal instincts begin to manifest in canine form.
1:21.5	In addition to Nightbitch,
1:23.5	Heller's other directorial credits
1:25.1	include the feature films, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and Can You Ever Forgive Me, and episodes of the television series casual and transparent.
1:34.8	She was nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement and First Time
1:39.2	Feature Film for 2015's The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and was also nominated for the Variety Talk News Sports Specials Award
1:47.1	for 2020's What the Constitution Means to Me.
1:52.0	Following a screening of the film at the DGA Theater in New York,
1:55.8	Heller spoke with director Ritesh Batra about filming Nightbitch.
2:00.7	Listen on for their spoiler-filled conversation.
2:03.6	Hi, friends.
	...

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