Related Images is a column in which filmmakers invite readers behind the scenes, into their sketchbooks, or otherwise through the looking glass to learn more about their creative processes.
Rachel Walden's Lemon Tree is now showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries.
Gordon Rocks (The Son). Photograph by Eli Freireich.
Several years before I made Lemon Tree, my mother encouraged me to ask my grandfather about “the road trip he took with the orange tree." She said that it would make a great short film. This is the transcription of J. L. Burgess (a.k.a. Papa)—one of the best storytellers I have ever met—telling me that story, which I worked into an outline/beat sheet that would later become Lemon Tree. I decided not to work from a formal script, so we made the entire film off that outline. People always ask me where the lemon tree is in the movie. This is where it came from.
From left: Rachel Walden (screenwriter, director) and Charlie Robinson (The Father). Photography by Eli Freireich.
If you’ve watched the film—and I guess this is a spoiler alert, so maybe quit reading here if you haven’t—the orange tree was eventually changed to a lemon tree and then, probably only three or four days out from the shoot, we changed it to a bunny. We had always planned to change the title, but never did. So, it’s Lemon Tree.
The best part of making Lemon Tree was the people who helped me do it. The story is accompanied by moments with a few (not all) of them.
Hunter Zimny (director of photography). Photograph by Eli Freireich.
Papa: The year was about 1956. We had gone to Florida for Christmas, and uh…I can’t remember…Daytona…somewhere in Florida. We didn’t go as far as Miami. Well, we mighta went all the way down there. I just can’t remember. Cause I was probably…twelve. Probably twelve by then.
But everybody was—we were getting ready to come back and—well, no, we weren’t getting ready to come back, either. We had just really got there, and we were getting some different things and Freddy, he got…I forget what he got that he wanted to get. Little souvenir-like things down there. And then Wanda, she got some kinda shell or somethin’.
Emily Costantino (Apple Stand Girl and costume designer). Photograph by Eli Freileich.
Well, I saw this little plant that was a little orange tree, and it was about a foot, maybe a foot and a half tall, and a pretty little orange on it. Looked about the size of a small tangerine. It was in a little pot where we could plant it and just let it grow on.
Well, we had it in the backseat because with all the luggage and all we couldn’t store it ’cause we was afraid it would get crushed or somethin’. So I guarded it and sat in the back with it. Kinda kept it over to the side takin’ care of it and all.
Well, in the meantime Daddy had gotten with Johnny Young down there—somewhere we’d met—and he’d started drinkin’. And course he wasn’t drinkin’ when we went down there or we woulda never left. But once he started...then that was it.
Leyla Nuritova (The Diner Waitress). Photograph by Eli Freileich.
He was just startin’ to get real obnoxious and all, so we were gonna come back. Mama, she was mad, and she said, “Well we’re just gonna go on back home.” So we started back—back to North Carolina—and Daddy he was just rantin’ and all in the front seat, and Mama told him, said, “Well hold on, why don’t you just get in the back and let the kids get on up here.” ’Cause he was just really getting irate.
Freddy was taking up for him, so they were kinda together. Daddy had got out to go to the bathroom—pee on the side of the road at night—and Mom was gonna go off and leave him. Pretending to. And Freddy of course thought she was, and he was all upset about that.
Alanna Murray (production designer). Photograph by Eli Freileich.
But anyway, then Daddy crawled back in the car, and he got in the back, and Wanda and Freddy and Mama and all—and me—were up in the front seat. Well he wallered around the back and I forget how long it was, but she drove all night, and it was dark when we got home.
We still had the Christmas lights there at the old house that Oscar Hicks had put up. Had ’em lit and all cause he knew we were comin’ back.
From left: Katie Mlinek (first assistant camera) and John Patterson (loader). Photography by Eli Freileich.
We got back, and we started getting all our stuff out, and first thing I wanted to do was get my little orange tree. And lo and behold there it was: just a little stalk. No leaves on it, no orange on it or nothin’. And I was just terrified. I was so upset about it. But that was the little scourge of it. My little orange tree didn’t make it back home for Christmas.
Mom: What year was it?
Papa: Bout 1955, ’56. Can’t remember exactly, but we were all still together. You know, Wanda hadn’t gone off to college or anything yet, so I’d say it was around 1955. Best I can remember.
Miranda La Prelle (production assistant). Photograph by Eli Freileich.
Me: So, you were twelve, and then how old were Freddy and Wanda?
Papa: Well, Freddy…if I was 12, he woulda been 14. Wanda woulda been 16 or 17—in high school. Freddy and I were still in secondary school.
From left: Ian Berman (sound mixer), Hunter Zimny (director of photography), and Conner Schuurmans (gaffer). Photograph by Eli Freileich.
Me: And who was Johnny? The guy you said your dad was drinking with?
Papa: Johnny—that was my first cousin. Daddy’s sister’s son. He was pretty influential in a lot of business in Cherokee. He started businesses. He would get drunk and lose it. They lost their house. And then he got another business and started back again. And then it’d happen again. ’Cause he was really just a bad alcoholic.
Not pictured: Pauline Chalamet, Luca Balser, Eli Freireich, Chad Tennies, Mac Grant, Kiara Garcia, Trae Hawkins, Robin Channing, Jordan Alexander, Josh Jason, Conor Fay, Cyrus Blaze, Rhys Raskin, Lily Sondik, Neil Sauvage, Lily & Bennett Givens, Elias Tejada, Kian Benjamin, David Patillo, Bobby Peretti, Marcus Dembinksi, James Ronkko