Creator Mary Bronstein and star Rose Byrne stop by THR's studio in Park City to dish all about their film If 'I Had Legs I'd Kick You.' They break down the meaning behind the movie, the difficulties of motherhood and more.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00this script was such a gift and I just will go back to that always. It was extraordinary to
00:05read and then to see what Mary did, how she brought it to the screen. I mean, I knew something
00:12magical was happening, but then when I saw the movie, I was like, oh wow, that's what you were
00:16doing. You're a trickster. There was a lot of trust me, trust me moments. I started writing
00:26this on an iPad and now we're here. But what's interesting about that span of time of working
00:36on one project is that the bulk of those years is trying to get somebody to agree to take the risk to
00:46make the movie. And so it was a really, really a process of not giving up, a lot of no's.
00:57I really deeply believed that I had to make this movie, that I would make this movie. I never
01:01doubted that I wouldn't, but I didn't know how. And what's funny is then when you look back and
01:06now I'm here, it's like, oh, it's great. But during those seven years, there's no external
01:12confirmation that I'm going to be sitting here. And I had to really, it was tenacity at a high
01:21level, at an obnoxious level. But that we got here and then we shot in 27 days.
01:29And then, so it's this funny thing of like seven years, seven years, 27 days.
01:34So that's been the experience.
01:37The past. Yeah.
01:38It's funny, people often ask like, oh, how did you recover after a day of working on this and that?
01:44And when you have children, you come home and they couldn't. And it's like, and that's a gift in a way.
01:51It's very grounding and all those sorts of things. But I love that discussion of like,
01:56and a lot of the talk of what we said, of what we've discussed in rehearsals was like,
01:59who was Linda before this, before this event, before this crisis, before she came in?
02:03Who was this person? And I needed to figure that out through the script,
02:07through like this crisis in the script. But like, who is this person here for that?
02:11And that's something I worked on a lot with Mary and also with my person I work with, my coach.
02:17So it was, that was for me a key in unlocking the behavior now, because it's,
02:23motherhood can reveal you, reveal a lot of aspects of you that you don't like,
02:27that are really not helpful. And that you didn't know about, you didn't know that you had.
02:32And that's something the story really delves into, which I loved.
02:37So you feel like if you had done this, well, before you were another, would he stare at you?
02:42It is, yeah. No, I think it totally. It's, and it's interesting though, chatting to people last
02:54night, people who aren't parents were also saying to me, look, I related to it in this way and that
03:00way. And that's something that's always refreshing to hear that it's like, it's such a specific
03:04retelling of this situation that, as you were saying last night, you know, percentage of
03:08mothers wouldn't have experienced this kind of crisis with a very sick child. And thank God.
03:13And, but the specificity of it then makes it universal. And so anyone in a crisis or a
03:19caretaker in a crisis or anyone at the end of their rope can know the feelings that this movie's
03:25kind of expressing. Yeah. Caretaker burnout, which also comes into play in the therapy sequences.
03:34Every, nobody is capable of helping anybody, even though that's everybody's job is to be,
03:39it's like, I always imagined as the stacking dolls of helpers, but nobody is helping anybody
03:45in the movie because it's gotten to a point where it's beyond that. Like Linda,
03:51nobody can help Linda. Linda has to come to herself. And that's the ending I always describe
03:57as a very hopeful ending because it, she, whether it's going to be true or not, Linda comes to a
04:05place where she can see a different life. The idea of being a mother is that you have, you have,
04:14you've sacrificed something to bring this other being into the world that you've made them in
04:20your body. Now they're a person. And so everything is, everything continues to be for them. And it's
04:26a, it's a sacrifice of, I can't speak for all mothers, but for a lot of women of personhood,
04:32of personal identity, you become somebody's mom, but you weren't always somebody's mom.
04:37And so how to make that balance of being a person that you identify as yourself, but also being a
04:44good enough mother. And I do feel like I have seen some projects come out where, where they're
04:53getting into that. I love for more to be written and directed by women, not particularly interested
04:59in the male point of view of the subject, but that's happening more. And most of what I learned
05:05about being a mother or being a woman or being who I'm supposed to be was, was told to me by men.
05:17And so I think that the more women and not just women, but other voices, underrepresented voices
05:23too. I feel like everyone knows it's time for us to tell our own stories now. We don't want to be
05:29told anymore what, what we are. And that's very important to me. What's a movie that you watch
05:34over and over again, whether for comfort, inspiration. I'm like a Seinfeld girl. I'm so
05:41good. Even if I put that on, or if I see it's like, you know, GBS comedy or something, I'm just like,
05:46that's it. I'm watching this. My daughter just discovered Seinfeld. She's 14. And so I'm now
05:52reliving, but she's showing it to me. Like, I never saw it. She's like, you got to see this
05:57thing with the puffy shirt. It's incredible. And I'm like, I know about the puffy shirt, but anyway,
06:01I'm living through it again, discovering it. And that, yeah, that is comfort. That's like,
06:07that's just like eating a tub of ice cream.