The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa, 2023).
If Dustin Guy Defa’s third feature, The Adults, has all the makings of a breakthrough, it does so not solely due to its enthusiastic reception at the Berlinale or its Universal-assisted distribution deal, but because it’s the first of the 45-year-old writer-director’s films to combine his knack for offbeat characterizations with the kind of deeply felt emotion only sporadically seen in his prior work. Unlike many of his more prolific American contemporaries (Alex Ross Perry, Nathan Silver, et al.), Defa’s career has progressed in oddly fitful fashion, with lengthy gaps between features broken up by a number of singular short films that, until now, have best displayed his seriocomic approach to matters of urban millennial angst and alienation. The Adults both extends and expands on these themes in ways that open up Defa’s previously cloistered world of neurotic New Yorkers, eccentric artist types, and emotionally unavailable twentysomethings.
Starring Michael Cera, Hannah Gross, and Sophia Lillis as siblings reconvening at their childhood home in upstate New York five years after the death of their mother, The Adults taps into a universal form of familial estrangement. There’s older brother Eric (Cera), who hasn’t seen his sisters in years, but plans to visit for only one day, until a poker game with old friends convinces him to extend his stay; Rachel (Gross), a recently single radio engineer who’s trying to get the family’s affairs in order despite Eric’s equivocation; and Maggie (Lillis), the youngest of the three, who’s quit college and gone on “digital detox,” much to the unspoken consternation of her elders. Unable to resolve lingering issues or communicate in any meaningful way, the siblings frequently revert to speaking in made-up voices or impromptu dance routines from their childhood, awkwardly enacting old rituals in lieu of saying what’s on their minds. These scenes, among the strangest and most exhilarating in recent cinema, illustrate Defa’s inspired way with actors and deft command of tone. So, too, do the poker scenes, in which Cera’s customary nervous energy is harnessed for maximum comedic tension. With its overcast suburban palette and flair for rhythmic expression—both musically and verbally—The Adults is one of the few American films that can credibly lay claim to the legacy of Hal Hartley.
As Defa, a part-time actor himself, has continued to develop and refine his process, he’s stayed loyal to many of his collaborators, most notably Gross, who’s appeared in more of the director’s films than any other actor. The Adults is their first feature-length collaboration, perhaps accounting for the natural interplay between its performers and its quietly accumulating poignancy. (Cera, while previously only appearing in 2017’s Person to Person, is quickly becoming a key collaborator of Defa, who based much of the Eric character on a combination of himself and his lead actor.) That Defa, in the following conversation with Gross, describes the film as a love story between Eric and his sister Rachel is entirely appropriate, as a similarly heartfelt feeling permeates every image of Gross that Defa’s ever filmed—just as in every exchange between the two, an unmistakable creative bond is truly and deeply felt.
NOTEBOOK: Do you remember when you two first met and how you started working together?
DUSTIN GUY DEFA: We met in Williamsburg for Lydia Hoffman Lydia Hoffman (2013), at a little picnic table by the BQE. I knew about Hannah because of I Used to Be Darker (2013), Matt Porterfield’s movie, which hadn’t even been released at that point. I’m not even sure what year that was.
Gross: That was… 2012.
DEFA: Right, because we shot Lydia Hoffman right before Hurricane Sandy hit.
NOTEBOOK: Hannah, can you talk a little about what makes Dustin unique as a director and what about his process or approach to working with actors appeals to you?
GROSS: Working with Dustin has been very special because I feel like we’ve both been evolving. It’s rare that you get to work with someone intimately enough that you can be aware of the ways in which they’re evolving over time. I think Lydia Hoffman is still one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. At that time, when I was just beginning to understand what the independent film world was; coming from a theater background, Dustin stood out as a director who loves actors, whose films are distinctly character-driven; that’s something very palpable in every film of his that you watch. There’s an underlying love and curiosity, both for the characters he’s creating, which he has a very distinct relationship to, and for the actors that he’s working with. I won’t compare him to anyone specifically, but I will say that this is not common.
NOTEBOOK: Dustin, in an interview about Dramatic Relationships (2016), you described the job of the director as being “a guide.” I’m wondering if you can expand on that, both in general and perhaps specifically as it relates to working with Hannah?
DEFA: The further along I go, the deeper I get into my process and the further I get into the idea of collaboration. I’m trying to be as specific as I can as a filmmaker, and I’m trying to have a “vision” of some sort, so I guess I am guiding people toward that. But I also find myself letting go a lot more. I let other people guide things. I don’t necessarily let things get out of my control, but the collaboration becomes about me being guided as well, by almost everybody who is working on a movie—especially The Adults, which was probably the most collaborative.
In all the films [Hannah and I] had done, everything was happening so fast, and those characters are much less defined, so until now I feel like we hadn’t really been able to work on another character together. With this movie, I… I was about to say that I was guiding Hannah into an acceptance of being emotional in some kind of way, but at the same time I think she was doing the same thing for me. There was this amazing emotional safety net between us.
Lydia Hoffman Lydia Hoffman (Dustin Guy Defa, 2013).
NOTEBOOK: Dustin, you’ve spoken in the past about the difficulty you’ve faced getting feature-length films off the ground, and, indeed, there’s been lengthy gaps between each of your features. How did the funding and development of The Adults differ from your previous projects, if at all? I couldn’t help but notice the Universal logo at the beginning of the film…
DEFA: My first feature, Bad Fever (2012), was made for not much money at all—it was friends and family money. But Person to Person and The Adults were very similar setups. The projects went through the agencies of some of the actors, and through the agencies, which have financing divisions, we were able to get the money. But in terms of budget, this movie is only slightly more than Person to Person. So there was no difference in feeling, [it wasn't] like I was jumping into a different situation, with a studio or something. I think the length of time between the features has been about the same, and that’s many years. In between the features are a whole bunch of projects that don’t get made—just false starts. I’m trying to narrow the gap, but it’s quite hard. I feel a certain responsibility when spending money, and knowing that it’s hard to find money ends up slowing things down.
NOTEBOOK: It’s funny, I always assumed, what with the gaps between features, that you were primarily interested in making shorts. But that’s clearly not the case.
DEFA: The more I made the shorts, the more I liked the short form. I’m still very interested in it, but I haven’t made one in a while. I think the last one was Editing (2021)—which reminds me, Hannah, you do have a character in Editing!
GROSS: Yeah! [Laughs.]
DEFA: Wow, we really do have a whole catalog. But yeah, features are really the dream, and where I want to be working. It ties into the idea of collaboration, too. Shorts are so brief, you don’t really have a chance to go too deep.
NOTEBOOK: I’m curious if the reception of Person to Person affected your approach to The Adults at all?
DEFA: It did. One way or another, after making that film I didn’t feel like I ended up in a position to make something bigger. I’m very ambitious and I want to make bigger movies, and that hasn’t necessarily happened. I’m still working in an intimate place. The production of Person to Person was such an intense thing. Making a movie on that budget, with that many characters, in that many locations, in New York—my mind while making that movie was in ten different places at all times. There was no real chance to go deeper with the actors. Plus, it was an ensemble, so one week we would have one cast, and the next week we’d have a whole new cast. So we just didn’t have that opportunity.
The Adults, in terms of the production itself, and probably even the writing too, was a sort of response to that experience—an attempt to make something more intimately, in which I could go deeper with the actors, and then create a production that was completely dedicated to a calm, more focused atmosphere.
NOTEBOOK: More than with your other features, it feels as if the characters in The Adults were written for these specific actors, or at least for Hannah and Michael. I can’t imagine many other people playing either part.
DEFA: It was definitely written for Michael. I wrote the first draft with him in mind. Pretty quickly after I wrote it and started talking to Michael, we began talking about Hannah and he and I became pretty excited by the idea of casting her. That said, the second draft of the script is almost completely different from the first—I want to say maybe 90 percent different. I did a complete overhaul based on a conversation with Michael and Hannah. By then it was the three of us making the movie together. So it was written for them, but eventually it became that it had to be them, based on how the work evolved and how Michael, Hannah, and Sophia interacted. Through that it became something really special, and better than anything I was writing.
GROSS: Consciously or not, something Dustin did brilliantly to establish a dynamic between the three of us was through the use of music—the songs that the characters created as children. Michael wrote the music to the lyrics that Dustin wrote, and we had to spend time rehearsing the songs in order for them to authentically feel twenty years old. I think by nature of the role falling to Michael, who’s the eldest sibling, and him being the one to drive those song rehearsals, it very naturally created a sibling dynamic.
NOTEBOOK: Dustin, do you have siblings? I’m curious because this is arguably your only film other than Family Nightmare (2011) that feels potentially personal, or at least rooted in relationships or family dynamics that you’re familiar with.
DEFA: I do think those are my two most consciously personal films. Bad Fever is personal, too, but maybe less consciously. I have a sister, and an adopted brother who I didn’t grow up with. But my sister and I grew up together. This movie is 100 percent inspired by having such an incredible, intense relationship with her. She was my best friend when we were young. It’s strange, I feel like the moment I got a girlfriend my childhood instantly went out the door. My sister’s younger than me, so the door sort of closed on her when that happened. She still had childhood experiences with her friends, but I was, speaking of guides, sort of like a guide to an imaginative world for us. I definitely talked to Michael about that. I imagined something similar happening between these characters—specifically with Eric, that he was the one who maybe shut off the world. I don’t think it’s nostalgia, but I do have a sadness related to those close relationships with other human beings in which imagination is allowed to take over. It happens when you’re making a movie, but that’s not life necessarily. It’s quite hard to let the real world just drop away. Some of this movie is about dealing with the sadness of knowing that that sort of relationship can’t happen again.
The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: Has your writing process changed at all over the years? And I’m wondering if working in short form so often has helped you develop any specific skill as it relates to writing, directing, or editing that you can point to as an advancement between Bad Fever and The Adults?
DEFA: Yeah, that’s why I made so many shorts. It really does help you—it’s exercising, it’s figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. I do feel like I’ve gotten continually better as a writer, but the process has also been different according to the project. My intention is always to deepen myself as a writer and as a filmmaker and get closer to an emotional core, as well as to an understanding of the characters and the story.
NOTEBOOK: This may be a small thing, but I noticed that this is the first film you’ve co-edited since Bad Fever, rather than edited on your own.
DEFA: Editing a short film is like nothing compared to editing a feature. It’s just so easy in comparison. David Lowery edited Bad Fever; I did some of it, but I learned so much from watching him edit. Still, when I edited Person to Person, it was really hard for me. I know other people can do it, but I really feel like I shouldn’t be the one editing my own features. But in this instance, Michael Taylor, who’s been around the block and worked on so many films—he did the assembly, and then we worked on it together for three weeks, and then he came in for another week, and then I did the rest of it. But I still ended up in a situation where I was too alone. Hopefully on the next feature I’m not even credited as an editor. That would be the dream.
NOTEBOOK: Sophia Lillis is new to your world, and has up to now mostly worked in genre-type films. How did you come to cast her?
DEFA: Let’s see, I saw her in It (2017), which I didn’t like. [Laughs.] But I remembered her! There is the thing, like, This person is a good actor or actress, but I’m more interested in a person’s natural self. I’ll watch interviews with actors to see how they are. I like nice people. With Sophia, I was more interested in her interviews than her previous films. She seemed terrific. And we were lucky. She was the only one we went to for this character.
NOTEBOOK: Hannah, what were your impressions of Rachel when reading the script? You’ve tended to play quite idiosyncratic characters for Dustin, but Rachel is for the most part very stoic, almost cold. But at the same time she arguably undergoes the most dramatic emotional arc of all the characters.
GROSS: Working with Dustin is such a relief. It’s rare for me to work on a film with actual scenes. [Laughs.] I’m not sure if this is what Dustin was referring to when he spoke about being a guide, but the guidance he provides begins with the script. It’s so clear and available. It feels very much like a container, or a blueprint, but it comes with such distinct clarity that you already feel taken care of. It’s very exciting and much different than being handed something more opaque or enigmatic, in which you’re expected—and usually it’s unspoken—to bring something of yourself to it. That’s just the adoration of naturalism. But to be given a script in which the character is defined, and defined through dialogue and not through image descriptions, is rare. But I did feel very nervous, which I think came from being asked to bring forward an emotional honesty that certainly resonated with me in a way that I’m also not used to. That level of vulnerability is very scary.
It’s so important to have a director like Dustin in which you can feel taken care of, and feel as though someone is with you, and experiencing it with you. Working with Dustin, I just have a level of familiarity that I don’t have with other people, and that really helps. I’ve actually never asked you this, Dustin, but I’ve always been curious: before Lydia Hoffman, had you acted in other people’s projects?
DEFA: I acted when I was young, but nothing professional before that.
GROSS: When you started acting, were those jobs in part research for you when you began to direct?
DEFA: No. I mean, I like acting, and I think it’s good for a director to act, if possible—it really helps.
GROSS: It’s so helpful. There’s just a language barrier you can’t cross if someone who’s directing you has no idea what the experience is like.
DEFA: Actually, now that I think about it, before Bad Fever I did act in something and it was truly one of the worst—just an extremely negative and psychologically damaging experience. From that I really learned how vulnerable and lost actors can be if the director is not there to direct, or help, or be supportive. It’s very easy to get into a very terrible place, a place that’s also about yourself, because acting is about yourself.
I do want to say, as it relates to The Adults, that I had the intention of being as emotionally close to the characters as possible. It became a question of, can I stay and not back away from the emotional part? I think we had discussions about this, about being scared and not backing away.
GROSS: There are still moments in which I feel that I did back away. It was just so unfamiliar. That unfamiliarity is scary because it feels like you’re out of control. I didn’t expect the emotional weight, the undercurrent, to feel so visceral, even from the first read of the script. The writing was very relatable; it felt like it was touching on something. But it didn’t become nameable until we had the conversations. Those were the backbone of going into the shoot.
The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: Let’s talk about the impressions. Were these specific voices (Moopie-Moopie, Wug-Wug, Tina from the Valley) noted in the script, or did you work with the actors to figure out what impressions they were able to do?
DEFA: The words were written, but I think the only character that had a description was Charles. I think it said something like, “C3P0 and Prince Charles”—like, he’s somewhere in that arena. [Laughs.] I think there was something about the names of the characters that probably helped the actors figure out the voices. The Hoagie Sandwich Lady, or Moopie-Moopie—those names come with something. But I allowed the actors to figure the characters out, and then soft auditioned them. I just listened and we tried to go with the ones that felt correct. I think Hannah and Sophia developed Moopie-Moopie and Wug-Wug a little more, while Michael was off doing his own little thing.
GROSS: Yeah, we had Moopie-Moopie and Wug-Wug hangouts during the shoot.
NOTEBOOK: This idea of sibling characters using a private form of communication as a way of articulating things they otherwise aren’t able to isn’t necessarily new, but it’s presented in the film in a way that I don’t think I’ve seen before.
DEFA: It’s like they’re putting on old coats, or dead skin—the family skeleton or something. These are two people who can’t communicate with each other, who really are not telling each other the truth, who don’t know how to tell each other the truth—and either don’t know how to express that they don’t like each other, or don’t know how to express that they love each other. So instead they put on these old coats.
NOTEBOOK: Handled incorrectly, these scenes, particularly the climatic backyard party sequence, could really go off the rails. How did you find the right balance in terms of length and sustaining humorous tension without tipping too far into an off-putting kind of awkwardness?
DEFA: That backyard scene became like a funeral—they’re taking these childhood characters and basically burning them. But they’re also weaponizing them, doing things with them that they hadn’t before, starting with swearing. Which may not be hostile in a real argument, but in this instance, by putting on a sort of childhood mask, it becomes that much more hostile. So there’s a truth telling going on, but also a sort of release, and a hostility—it’s all those things happening at once. It’s a very quiet movie—there’s a lot of non-communication. Sometimes you don’t even know that the characters are feeling an underlying discomfort with each other, or an underlying real love. But it is there and it’s always building. Here, though, it’s actually coming out and being expressed. We built the scene for all of those purposes.
NOTEBOOK: Hannah, how did you feel about the voices and what was it like for you having to stretch beyond a typical performance style?
GROSS: It’s pretty funny workshopping voices. Moopie-Moopie was the most elusive; I’m not sure I had it until right up to when we started shooting. Maybe because that’s the most staid character, I’m not sure. I had a great time doing the voices. I don’t remember it being particularly challenging.
DEFA: It was as an exercise, though, to not lose your voice.
GROSS: Yeah, there was the concern that the Moopie-Moopie voice, because of the pitch, would leave some people dissatisfied or cause walkouts or something. [Laughs.]
NOTEBOOK: Dustin, can you talk about working with your new cinematographer, Tim Curtin? His previous work with Jonas Carpignano is very different pictorially than how your films typically look.
DEFA: I didn’t know Tim before, but I knew Carpignano’s films, which I think were all shot on 16mm. But I looked at one other movie Tim had made, which he shot on the Alexa, and I could tell that he had the chops. With 16mm, the film stock will do a lot of the work—it’s going to look good regardless. Whereas with the Alexa, you have to work to make it look good. For this film, we talked a lot about warmth, and how the cinematography shouldn’t get in the way of the performances, while also allowing for an emotional way to get into the movie.
NOTEBOOK: Hannah, I rarely hear actors talk about their experiences with cinematographers. Is there anything unique to your working relationship with cameramen, whether in this film or others that you’ve worked on?
GROSS: Yeah, there’s a weird ingrained hierarchical dynamic on sets. It’s just not talked about. But as an actor, why wouldn’t you have a relationship with the person operating the camera? So it’s nice when those protocols are ignored. Like with a director, having a relationship with the person watching you makes things much easier, and more enjoyable.
DEFA: I have a question, Hannah, to circle back to something that sort of ties into this. When you were talking about the emotional thing, you said you would sometimes back off. I’m wondering if you feel like it was fear that made you back off? Eric and Rachel have a relationship that really worked perfectly for a certain kind of dynamic between you and Michael, in terms of acting. I feel like there was a part of Eric/Michael that you felt emotion toward, but you couldn’t access it until the right moment. It seems to work scene-wise, and for the arc of the movie—to me it all worked out perfectly. I know you said you sometimes backed off, but I also think there was a non-allowance of it in some kind of way, because of the situation with Eric and Rachel. I’m not saying I did it—the movie had a life of its own in some kind of way, and I just kept making sure it was allowed to be itself.
GROSS: But you did do it, because you scheduled it very intentionally. We shot the last scenes of the movie on the last day. That’s what we ended the film on. Most of the time scenes aren’t scheduled the way that you want them to be—it just isn’t practical, for economical reasons. That’s another thing that isn’t really thought of. Scheduling is such an act of care! [Laughs.]
NOTEBOOK: Dustin, can you talk about building the specifics of Michael and Sophia’s characters, particularly Eric’s obsession with poker?
DEFA: Eric is definitely inspired by me and inspired by Michael. Part of making this movie and creating this character was for me about myself, and the times in my life—guilty times in my life—where I prioritized capitalism, or money, or sometimes even comfortability, over people, the people who should be important in my life. I’m getting better and better as I go, but I think it is a common disease to prioritize money over people. Michael and I both play poker, so that’s where the idea came from, but poker was also the perfect way to express that idea. I’ve literally prioritized poker over people. And even more importantly, it became about the times when opportunities have arisen to show love for people, or to take the time to care for people, and you fail to seize the opportunity, because of an addiction, or just the modern capitalist way of life. Within that are the particulars of Eric, his power dynamic, how he needs to stay in control, the backstory of him being king of this imagined world, but now not being king anymore, and also no longer holding power over his sisters.
I still think about this movie as a love story between Eric and Rachel, but we also talked about it being a divorce story, with Maggie being the child caught between the two parents. She is significantly younger, and once the sort of divorce happens between Eric and Rachel, it’s very upsetting for her, and difficult for her to manage. If you just looked at the script, Maggie might come off as not that complex. I tried to not write it that way, but I think we found the right person in Sophia to elevate the character and add some much needed depth to Maggie, who is the emotional link and, to use that word again, guide, between Eric and Rachel.
NOTEBOOK: We’ve spoken a lot about the film’s emotional dimension, something that’s been mostly absent from your prior films. Do you feel that working with many of the same actors from project to project—and in particular Hannah, as your most frequent collaborator—has allowed you to open up new avenues in your work?
DEFA: As I get older and grow as a human being, I get more emotional and more attuned to my feelings. When I made Bad Fever, that was my emotional state—sort of stunted, a person not in touch with their emotions. With The Adults, I set out to make an emotional movie, but I didn’t know how much more emotional it would become as I thought more and more about my sister. But I think it was through Hannah, and our discussions about Rachel, that led to the emotional place where the film needed to go. I think we were both in the right place, and we knew each other enough to not be too afraid, to not back off, and to keep going. The new film I’m working on now might not seem as personal as The Adults, but I don’t think something has to be personal to get really, truly emotionally attached.