Giving audiences a doorway into your film
Via a cat named Lemon
I shared a link to my film about Saul Leiter with a producer the other day, and their first reaction was: “Oh I love the cat in it!”.
“That Lemon, she was a terror,” I said, and smiled. Whilst inside thinking ‘infuriating’.
All that time spent trying to make a nuanced, layered portrait of an artist struggling with their legacy, the meaning of photography, and what to value in life - and the first thought is ‘I love the cat’??
But whilst my tendency is to bristle at something like this, I think I might have been missing the point. People need a way into the film. Something to connect to and find themselves in.
When the film came out in Japan, they gave Lemon a lot of attention. They made her part of the poster (below), asked me to send extra deleted scenes where Lemon was biting my legs, and it felt like every 3rd question at the Q&As was about her.
I used to see that as a funny, quirky tale of releasing the film in Japan. But now I see it as their doorway into the film. Saul was such an idiosyncratic, harsh old man that Lemon became a way-in for some Japanese audience. It softened him and made him relatable.
When I’m thinking about who I might cast in a project (both fiction and non-fiction); when I’m writing a new character; or researching a new story, I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that an audience might connect with the people at the heart of the story. However strange or different their world might be - what are the entry points that we might start caring about them? What brings them closer to us, and makes us feel that we could be walking in their shoes?
And I don’t only mean in the character traits they might have, or the universal journey they might be on. I mean ‘what details of their life give us a shortcut to connection’?
Of course, you don’t want to bend any detail so far as to make it accessible in ways that aren’t reflective of the film as a whole. Or introduce ideas that feel cynically added.
But if you can create, or highlight, a detail that feels truthful to the character, and gives audience an access point that can help them empathise, connect and feel deeply invested in the film, then you have to do it.
And you just have to accept that it might be the first thing they tell you they loved about the film.