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Writer/director/editor/producer David Lowery talks more about the creative relationship that inspired “Mother Mary” and his need to be so hands on with his work in this extended interview. He also opened up more about making movies in Dallas again and on what he thinks is the best Texas film.
The full transcript of this episode of Texas Standard is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Laura Rice: Hello there. It’s Laura Rice with another Texas Extra Extended and Special Content for our podcast listeners. This is another one in the broad category of arts and culture. It just seems when I’m talking with authors and artists. I have a lot of questions and it’s really hard to make those conversations fit into radio time.
So there’s so much good stuff I still want to share in this extended cut of my interview with writer, director, editor, producer, David Lowry. We get into his need to be so hands-on with his work and we talk more about creative relationships. He also opened up more about making movies in Dallas again, and on what he thinks is the.
Best Texas film and as an extra special treat. Right off the top, you’ll hear a little small talk we were having right before the interview started. Yes, Casey was recording. Enjoy. I have to ask before we get started. Your Uncle Brian ett. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He worked here for years Yes. With me. Amazing.
Yeah. Yeah. And he was always bragging about you, so Oh, yeah. He, yeah. In case you didn’t know this,
David Lowery: he and his, uh, his wife Maureen, were very instrumental in helping me see movies that my parents wouldn’t allow me to see, even though I, I was sort of conning them into renting them for me.
Laura Rice: Oh my gosh.
David Lowery: A lot of things that, like, I wasn’t.
Allowed to see, I wound up seeing at their house and under the auspices of me saying, it’s totally fine. We can rent whatever. My mom loves me.
Laura Rice: Oh yeah. My mom doesn’t care. Exactly. Exactly. So you were, were I see it, was it Yeah. That, that rated our something. Is there one that, that you, that sticks out to you, that you like, remember that you’re like, that one
David Lowery: well
Laura Rice: really changed my life.
David Lowery: Um, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is one of my all time favorite movies. Huge Influence on Mother Mary. I. Knew the movie backwards and forwards through photographs, through books, but I’d never seen it. And they rented that for me for the first time.
Laura Rice: Oh my God.
David Lowery: So that was a, that was a big one. And I remember being at, they lived in Portland at the time and just like watching it three times in a row in their house, uh, while they were at work and having a great time.
Laura Rice: Amazing. Well, I, I, I don’t know. Casey’s recording. That’s an amazing story. Casey, are you recording? It is the Texas Standard. I’m Laura Rice. Long gone are Anne Hathaway’s, bushy teenage eyebrows, and tiny tiara of her princess Diary days. Today she wears a crown of a different sort in the new film. Mother Mary Hathaway is one part of the film of two halves.
The other part is Mikayla Cole, mother Mary is epic and arena filling, and yet a simple story. It’s beautiful. And terrifying sensual, but not overtly. So it’s the kind of story David Lowry wants to tell. He’s a writer and director, also known for the Green Knight and a Ghost Story. David, thank you so much for stopping by the Texas Standard Studios.
David Lowery: Pleasure to be here.
Laura Rice: I have so many questions about this film. It begs the audience to fill in the blanks, but before we get to that, I wanna ask a little bit about you. You brought, you came in wearing this. Pink Dallas hat. You grew up in the Dallas area?
David Lowery: Yeah. I flew in from Dallas this morning and needed a hat to protect myself from the Texas sunshine.
So just grab this one from the airport. But it, it’s pretty representative of me.
Laura Rice: Yeah. How so how did, how did North Texas shape you?
David Lowery: I always think of North Texas as being somewhat like a fairytale, although that’s really only in the winter when everything feels a little bit grimer and darker and grayer and icier.
I am originally from Wisconsin, so cold weather is in my. Veins, but the weird combination of, of the Texas landscape in the winter really kind of calcified in my bones and became part of my personality and, and so I think my, every film I make. Feels like a fairytale and most of ’em are, are fairytales That could only take place in Texas.
Laura Rice: This is interesting because you’ve done a lot of films that have taken you all over the world. That’s mother’s True. Mary is in, in Germany, Pete’s Dragon was in New Zealand. A ghost story was in North Texas. Yeah. But do you, do you see yourself coming back to Texas to tell a a Texas story or, or do you feel like you’re just taking Texas everywhere you go?
David Lowery: I definitely take Texas everywhere I go and I’m sure at some point. Maybe in the near future I’ll have a, a story that’s specifically text and to tell again, but it’s always gonna be a part of me no matter what.
Laura Rice: That’s fascinating. You know, you described it as a fairytale, I think. I think the words I was thinking of were, um, almost, it’s definitely supernatural, right?
I mean, is it, I I hate I,
David Lowery: this one’s, this one’s hard to, to. Put in a box.
Laura Rice: Yeah,
David Lowery: yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s several boxes that you kind of nest within each other.
Laura Rice: Yeah. I, I, I hate to try to pin an artist down ever, but, but do you see that as a, as a theme, something that people can find from film to film?
David Lowery: Definitely.
Like all of my films have a sense of. I don’t wanna say supernatural, but I would almost say spirituality to them. And they’re not to say they’re religious, but there’s a sense of something beyond the rational world. Even in a film like the Old Man, the Gun about a bank robber, or anybody, saints, which is also about bank robbers.
There’s something that’s just slightly surreal about all of them, that that keeps them, they’re not completely tethered to reality.
Laura Rice: There is something that it, it, it does border on religious. I do think in Mother Mary, certainly. Definitely the title, right? I mean the name this Yeah,
David Lowery: this one. This one. All my, my, my Catholic upbringing is rising to the surface in a big way in this one.
Laura Rice: Yeah. But you don’t, it, it doesn’t necessarily, it’s not ex explained or explored all the way. Um, is that how you want audiences to interact with this movie, to, to have questions, to bring their own ideas to what’s happening?
David Lowery: I think so. I think that the film is. Is very understandable on an emotional level and sometimes emotions are hard to put into words.
So I think audiences will, will feel the truth with in the story very acutely, but they might not be able to explain exactly why it feels so familiar. And I find that creativity, the movie’s about a creative partnership, it’s about the act of creation in so many ways, and creativity is one of those things that everyone understands, but no one knows how to talk about.
This is a movie that is full of dialogue. It’s about characters trying to explain things to one another, but the thing that they can’t quite get across is something that can’t be put into words, and that’s where the supernatural elements start to creep in around the edges because they’re trying to describe something that’s indescribable.
Laura Rice: Hmm. Well, I wanna talk about your, your two halves. Mm-hmm. And, and your casting. Yeah. Because we, we look at these actresses a lot. Can you tell me about why these were the right faces for your film?
David Lowery: That’s a great question. I was at the airport this morning walking through the duty free section, and there’s Anne Hathaway in, uh, Bulgaria.
There’s, she’s in a makeup, like she’s got all these brands in duty free, and I’m seeing her ever all around me and that was something that I wanted to. Audiences to be able to carry into the film with them when they meet Mother Mary. I want them to have a sense of her as, as a celebrity, as someone who has been in the public eye for decades.
And when you cast an actor, you can either, you know, run away from who they actually are, or you can utilize that. And with, with Anne, I knew that. There’s generations of audiences that have grown up with her at this point, and that was gonna benefit our understanding of who Mother Mary is. Beyond that, I wanted someone who could hold their own in a two-hander for two hours, which she absolutely can, and so can Michaela Cole, who I think is.
One of the most gifted writers, performers, directors, I, she is just a legend in the, in the 10 years that I’ve been aware of her as an artist. And when I heard that she had read the script and wanted to meet, not even to talk about being it, just to talk about the script, I was legitimately starstruck. She is a pre, like a force of nature.
She really is. And you see that in the film even when she is. Delivering this incredibly biting monologue, which she has several of you feel this sense of, of the depth of her emotion, what’s causing her to lay into Mother Mary the way that she does you really, she has a way of conveying the inner pain that her character feels in spite of the steely exterior that she projects.
It’s really extraordinary work.
Laura Rice: This film is, is beautiful. I mean, it has, um, it has lights and colors and, and textures. I think textures are, I’m obsessed with texture. Yes. Yeah. It, it really comes out in, in this film. I wonder, um, you know, in this, in this day where we spent a lot of time on, on small screens, does this feel like a very big screen movie to you?
David Lowery: We went out of our way to make it feel like a big screen movie, not just with the pop concert sequences, but even in the scenes where the characters are in this, in this one location. Speaking at great length to one another. We wanted it to feel cinematic. We wanted every image to be rich, to be textured, to feel like you could reach out and touch it.
The fashion aspect of it plays into that as well. This is a movie about. The feel of fabric on skin about creating a dress that you understand what it must feel like to wear that dress. And so all of those things contribute to, um, mis song that was really important for us to not forget about when we’re, you know, on page eight of a dialogue scene.
We have to remember this is a movie that is meant to be seen on a huge screen with as many people coming together as possible to watch it.
Laura Rice: How involved are, are you, I mean, you, you carry the title of, of writer and director also a, a producer on this film. Mm-hmm. I mean, is is this like really, I mean, are you kind of making this controlling Oh, it’s, it’s fingers with my hands.
Yeah.
David Lowery: Lemme clean my throat. It’s. Not a problem, but it’s definitely something I’m working on. I am, I am a little bit of a control freak. I edited the film as well. When we’re on set, I am, you know, working with my cinematographers to pick out the lenses, to pick out the, you know, we’re I storyboard the entire thing multiple times and then.
You also have to follow the whims that present themselves to you when you’re on set or when you’re in prep. There are so many aspects of this movie that we didn’t plan on things that through circumstance or through creative inspiration we just happened upon on the day, and now feel inseparable from the original intent that led us to make this movie.
So, it’s a little bit of both, but I certainly, you know, I would still be working on it. If I could, because I just, I, you can’t pry these things from me,
Laura Rice: and, and I think I, I read something. This was like a three or how long ago process
David Lowery: It, we, you know, three years ago we were about to start shooting. And the shoot was always broken into two legs, but one, you know, there were some strikes in 2023 in this industry.
Yeah. And so we had a little bit of a delay, and then I just spent a long time editing. I really was lucky that I was able to take the time to just, you know. Make the movie, show it to people, cut it again, just really trying to refine it because it is such a specific movie, it’s really hard to pin down, and I really was grateful to have the time to do that.
Laura Rice: Well, speaking of not being able to pin it down, I think I used the word sensual in the mm-hmm. In the introduction. I read some, someone else said, psychosexual, trying
David Lowery: to figure out what that means exactly.
Laura Rice: Well, you did see that too, but the thing is, is there’s nothing. Sexual about the movie. Really? I mean, exactly.
But, but what is that, that we’re getting and, and it’s, it’s just the, it’s the closeness of the camera. It’s intimacy. Yeah.
David Lowery: It’s a, it’s a very intimate movie about people who have a very close relationship and their relationship is a creative one. A creative partnership can be just as passionate and intense and sensual.
Although not in the traditional ways as a romantic relationship, and it was really important for me, to me, that the film represents that and that it has that sense of, of connection between the characters that goes beyond just the physical touch. It’s really interesting. They don’t touch one another for most of the movie, and then when they do it actually, when at a very key point, they do make physical contact and it and it, and it registers.
It’s something that for. Almost, you know, 90 minutes we’ve been seeing them, you know, at arm’s length and all of a sudden they’re close together and it’s a very quotidian moment. There’s nothing truly special about it, but just seeing that touch and knowing what it’s for and what it represents after everything we’ve been through up to that point, it’s a, it’s a really shattering moment.
Laura Rice: Well, it’s interesting that this is a, is a story about a creative relationship when we just also talked about how much you do on your own with films. Yes. Were you drawing on anything from your own experiences at Win 10 telling this story or?
David Lowery: All of my films are autobiographical to some extent. This one.
Maybe a little bit more than normal because it’s not set in medieval England. Mm-hmm. But, but it is, it’s certainly drawing on, you know, relationships I’ve had on conversations I’ve had, both with others and with myself. And it’s also just, uh, it’s my attempt to capture the creative process in on film. I really was trying to distill what it’s like to work with someone to make something.
Pop music became sort of the perfect metaphor for that. Also, I just really love Taylor Swift and wanted to make a movie that sort of captured the feeling that I get when I listen to reputation. But there the idea of that sort of symbiotic dialectical. Chemical process that leads to the creation of work of art.
That’s what I was trying to tap into and I’ve got, you know, as much experience as I’ve got at this point to draw from. I’ve got the experience of my friends and collaborators and, and the amazing thing is when I’ve shown it to people who I don’t know or who I don’t, you know, I don’t know their backstory, their biography.
And they’re able to say that it perfectly captures something that they’ve been through with a friend of their own or in their own creative journeys, and that makes me think that it’s tapping into something deeper and more common than the specificity that I was able to bring to it. I.
Laura Rice: Tell me about, um, I guess I wanna take you back a little bit away from digging deep into the film.
Yeah. And, and tell me a little bit about, uh, I guess, I guess Texas as a, as a place to make film. I think a lot of focus is on Austin and, and when it comes to Texas film making. Yeah. But, but you have the, have the Dallas perspective too. What do you, how would you describe how that’s evolved over the years?
David Lowery: It’s interesting. I moved to Dallas when I was seven or eight years old, and it was right. The, I would say the apex of Oliver Stone coming to Dallas to make movies. And so I moved there with the sense that this was, I was coming to a place where one could make films and as I got a little bit older, Wes Anderson was making bottle rocket.
Mm-hmm. There were movies being made. It was really exciting. I think my first time on a set was actually, I was an extra in any given Sunday, the Oliver Stone movie that shot in 99.
Laura Rice: Oh
David Lowery: wow. When I was in high school and. I always loved the idea of staying there and making films there. Now, not, not every movie that I make or that I want to make can be set there, but I loved the idea of it being a place where films could get made, where you could just, rather than moving to New York or LA or even Austin, I love Austin.
No shade. No shade on Austin. But I like being somewhere familiar. I like being able to go home, go home at the end of the day, and sleep in my own bed and, and to make movies in the same landscape that. Inspired me when I was growing up. So it’s something I, I, it’s hard for me to say how it’s evolved. I’ve certainly been following all of the developments with the Texas Film Commission.
I sponsor a grant with the Austin Film Society that gives money to filmmakers from North Texas to try to encourage them to, to tell stories in their own backyard, and certainly with Taylor Sheridan right now, north Texas, a pretty, I was actually budgeting a movie to shoot in Dallas and. There was no crew available.
Oh, wow. Which is an incredible, that’s like what? It’s so nice to have that be a problem for the first time in a long time.
Laura Rice: Yeah. We’re actually doing a, finishing up a, uh, like a March Madness style bracket. Okay. Yeah. Of the best Texas film.
David Lowery: Yeah.
Laura Rice: If you had to pick, what would you, what would you pick the best Texas film?
David Lowery: Well, that’s a real tall order to pick off the top of my head. For some reason Tinder mercies is coming to my mind right away. Mm-hmm. And I’m specifically choosing that one because it’s a North Texas movie. Yeah. It was Waxahatchee and I love seeing North Texas represented on film because it’s where I grew up.
Robocop is not set in Texas, but is intrinsically Texas to me because it was shot in Dallas and it’s currently sort of a, uh, hot button subject because Dallas City Hall is. Probably about to get torn down, which is not only an architectural landmark, but also one of the key locations of Robocop. Oh, wow.
And that’s a great tragedy in my mind because that was where the climactic battle with Ed 2 0 9 took place. What a, I mean, there’s, there’s so many. I’m gonna stick with Tinder Mercies. I think Tinder Mercies is a quintessential Texas movie.
Laura Rice: That’s beautiful. And, and in And Robert Duvall’s
David Lowery: memory. Robert Duvall.
Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent.
Laura Rice: The final two. We’re down to, according to Texas standard listeners Giant.
David Lowery: Mm-hmm.
Laura Rice: And no country for old men. Two sort of epics,
David Lowery: right? Yeah. I would if pressed to choose between the two.
Oh, that’s tough.
Laura Rice: It
David Lowery: is. That’s really tough.
Laura Rice: Right.
David Lowery: I would probably go with, they’re both Marfa movies too.
Laura Rice: Yeah, and it was two Austin movies in the T in the final four. Was it quite a setup? I’ll give you, I’ll give you a minute to think. Yeah, let, let me, it was quite a setup. It was Dazed and Confused versus Giant, unfair and Office Space versus No Country for Old Men.
Right. Which are, they’re all great. Movies, but they’re so different. And so the Epics, the epics beat out the comedies in this case, but,
David Lowery: Hmm. Office space and no Country for Old Men, both Star Stephen Roots. So there was, wow, very nice commonality there. But I would probably, yeah, I would probably say that No Country for Old Men in its way is more representative of Texas.
Um, although know office space definitely represents parts of Dallas that I know very well, and I’m gonna go with no Country for Old Men. I. I Giant’s incredible. Giant’s, great. But something about no country, no country for old men really captures. The here and now of Texas, even though it’s set in the eighties.
So I will throw my ballot in its direction.
Laura Rice: I love it. It’s good. The best bad guy ever, I think.
David Lowery: Oh, completely. Completely. So also, I happen to have seen it more recently. I watch that movie. It’s one of the most perfectly constructed movies, so I usually watch it in prep for every movie I make just to see like.
How are they putting dialogue scenes together? How do they cover these scenes? It’s, it’s a real masterclass.
Laura Rice: You are, you are a, a studious filmmaker, I feel. Does that feel fair? I mean,
David Lowery: I am a movie buff. Yeah. I would say that. And then out of that comes a certain attention to, you know, the academic side of learning from the movies that I watch.
But I am at my happiest watching films, second happiest talking about them, and I feel like I make movies. So that can be a part of the conversation. I’m sort of like sneaking in through a very awkward door.
Laura Rice: I love that. David Lowry is a writer and director. He spent his formative years in North Texas and his new film is Mother Mary in theaters April 17th.
David, thank you again.
David Lowery: Thank you so much.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
