By MARY BETH McANDREWS
In the first act of Izabel Pakzad’s feature film debut FIND YOUR FRIENDS, a group of young women drives through the California desert, swapping sex stories about horrific hook-ups and repulsive boyfriends. They laugh despite the dark reality of their experiences, and Chloe Cherry’s Lola asks Helena Howard’s Amber if she has any stories to share. When Amber says she doesn’t have any funny stories, Lola replies, “Your story doesn’t have to be funny. All of our stories were tragic.”
This line cuts right to the core of what Pakzad is interrogating with her first feature. Underneath the clouds of weed smoke, bottles of liquor, and thumping bass, there is an inherent tragedy to how young women are expected to act around men. FIND YOUR FRIENDS isn’t just a film about vapid young women getting hunted in the desert. It’s a film about women trying to find themselves through a haze of insecurity, naivety, drugs, and fear.
RUE MORGUE spoke with Pakzad about that fateful line as well as the true events that inspired her script, crafting complex female characters and the inherent horrors of trying to exist in the world as a woman.
I love how bold this movie is. Were you ever nervous about that, or were you always of the mindset, “I’m doing this all or nothing,” when you first started writing the project?
I always had that mentality of “I’m all or nothing, let’s go, let’s do it. I’m not afraid. I want to make this movie, and I think this is an important story to tell.” And I also think very bold films make an impact. I didn’t want to be down the middle. I didn’t want to just be lost in the sauce. I really wanted to go for it. And whether the response is negative or positive, we’ll see, but I’m proud of it.
FIND YOUR FRIENDS hits so many emotions that I think a lot of women have experienced in our lives. That’s bolstered by the film’s script and how naturalistic these friends feel. What was it like to work with the cast to make this feel like an actual friend group?
Director Izabel Pakzad
It’s funny because I barely got time with the girls to bond before filming, so I was a little bit nervous. But I felt like I had my own time with each of them before. So I was able to talk with everyone about why these characters are the way they are and what the kind of dynamic is between them, because it was loosely, obviously, very loosely inspired by me and my group of friends in this crazy trip we took to Joshua Tree. But that sort of camaraderie and that openness amongst women, I feel like I really tried to get specific with that. And I also gave each of the girls, “Here, this may not be in the script, but this is the backstory on Maddie. This is the backstory on Lola.” I did get really specific with them, and I felt like that really worked because when we got on set, these girls knew the characters, even though they didn’t know each other super well, and they hadn’t bonded yet in that way. But they came in with a clear point of view, and it made everything just work. So all of them showed up in a way that felt really, I don’t know, just felt natural and organic.
That’s so cool. Well, because at the beginning of the party scene, they’re all just twerking and singing and smoking together. And I love how, again, they feel so friendly and real. Was there a lot of improv at all, or was it all scripted?
I would say almost everything is scripted that’s in the movie. I think there are little things here and there, especially in the party scene, that people are saying just to create some space and an atmosphere. And I think that there was some improv there for sure. When the girls get to the house, that is not improv, though. All that stuff is scripted.
Cool! Something that I’ve read you talking about a little bit is the complexities of these women. These are really complicated women, even though you don’t give us a lot of backstory. I think the way you write these characters as so imperfect but so lovable is amazing. What was it like crafting them in the writing process? I know that this is loosely based on, obviously, your own friends.
Yeah, it’s interesting. Obviously, it was loosely inspired by things and people, but I remember me and my friends are very bold and unapologetic in the way we talk about our sex stories and all that. I feel like I never see that in the movies with young women, especially. I feel like we never create space for that. And I was intentional, and I definitely did intentionally push it to the extremes. I was like, “I want to go there.” I want to show the most extreme version of this kind of conversation when we’re talking about the sex stories in the car or whatever.
It just kind of excited me to do that and to flip the final girl trope. And I was talking about this a little bit the other day, but Larry Clark’s Kids was such an inspiration in crafting some of these scenes. Obviously, Harmony [Korine] wrote the script, but the movie is so bold, and there’s that scene where they’re talking about their sex stories. I remember watching that scene and being like, “Whoa, that’s crazy.” But also, I loved it because it feels relatable in some way. And we don’t get to see that often. So I was inspired by movies like that.
That was part of how I was crafting the characters. And also just the complicated female friendships and what that all means, how confusing that is, and how we have the ingrained way of thinking about things, and we project that onto each other. I really tried to make sure that was specific, too, because especially in a party bubble, it’s hard to find ourselves. It’s hard to have boundaries. So I really just tried to make it so that some of the girls were almost blissfully unaware of how naive they were about this ingrained mentality. And then, obviously, Amber is breaking out of this trance. So it’s so layered. I could talk about that question for so long. [Laughs]
I think one of my favorite lines is in the car, after telling the sex stories, when Lola says, “[Your story] doesn’t have to be funny. All of our stories were tragic.” That line captures the absolute hell of the experience of living as a woman; you have to laugh to keep from crying. And that’s this whole movie in one line. It seems like a passing line, but it’s so indicative of what this movie is getting at, especially regarding how we all feel like we have to act around men. That line hits especially hard.
I’m so happy you said that. I literally was just talking about that with Chloe [Cherry] at the premiere. We were talking about how that line says everything. And the fact that they’re laughing it off, too. She’s like, “It’s funny. Our story is so funny.” But she’s laughing, and they just continue on. That’s exactly the essence and the statement of the film. That line is powerful, actually. So thank you for noticing it.
It’s so powerful because they’re all borderline assault stories. All we ever talk about is how we are assaulted, and we have to laugh it off. Bella Thorne’s character, Lavinia, at one point says, “It’s happened to me, and I didn’t make it all my friends’ problems.” I really love how you’re having those conversations so honestly in this kind of movie. It’s just a really cool thing, and it sounds bad to say cool, but to see that discussed in FIND YOUR FRIENDS is cool. I hate saying that, but…
No, no, I agree! That’s really why I made the movie. It’s how these women deal with being women in the world, and deal with it in very different ways. And that’s really what’s interesting. Some people just kind of suck it up and suppress their instincts and keep going or keep partying.
There’s also this thing: I went to a crazy college, and I can definitely relate to this. That’s sort of what I’m trying to put in this movie a little bit too, which is this idea that we have to degrade ourselves to fit in and be a part of the party and go hard and take the shots and go crazy. And weirdly, that’s rewarded. I mean, at least where I went to school, that was rewarded. That was the way to be cool, and you don’t even understand that’s what’s happening until after the fact; you’re like, “Wait, I didn’t even like doing that that much. Why was I doing that?” It’s weirdly how you learn how to socialize.
Especially since alcohol is such a big part of our culture. I mean, I know it’s more than alcohol, but drinking – God, you get to college, and immediately it’s like, “All right, how many shots can you take and how much can you drink?”
Go hard or go home. It’s the mentality!
It’s exhausting. So, I was curious what it was specifically like to work with Helena Howard, because I loved her in Madeline’s Madeline. Her performance in that was so beautiful, so it was cool to see her in this role. I know you said that you didn’t have a lot of time to prep and work with everyone, but I was curious what it was like collaborating with her on Amber’s character.
She’s a creative genius. She’s a raw talent. I feel like she’s so instinctual. She’s so in the moment. We talked a lot about the character, and we went deep with it. We had a lot of conversations, but she really brought her A game because there were some things that we didn’t talk about that were just in the moment. She’s so nuanced, and the little facial expressions, they all make Amber “Amber,” and it doesn’t go unnoticed. You really feel everything from her point of view. I had such a positive experience working with her genuinely. I could tell I needed to let her run with it a little bit. My instinct was telling me to let her do her thing, and that’s the best way to work sometimes.
Every person’s different. Every relationship is different, but I trusted her with this. I felt like she really understands. She’s a very hard worker. So, honestly, so positive because I love Madeline’s Madeline, too. I was like, “Oh my God, she’s so good.”
She’s perfect for FIND YOUR FRIENDS, too. Amber really needs to have this raw, vulnerable side, but you need to buy the fact that she’s going to turn at some point and go to these lengths and do all these insane things. That’s a very hard balance to find in an actor who’s capable of bringing all those elements to the table, and she really did all of that.
I love how much of this movie is in close-up and how much we are focused on faces. I think I read in another interview that you wanted to emulate the claustrophobia of parties and that kind of intimacy. And I also think it really helps you get into their headspace and makes the drug trip scenes feel even more disorienting. Were the close-ups always something you pictured? Or was that something you and your DP [Tim Curtin] came to together through the process?
I knew that was what I wanted to do from the beginning. I had seen a movie that a friend of mine named Ryan [Zacarias] made. He produced these movies called The Ciambra, A Chiara and Mediterranea, which are smaller movies that went to Cannes. I forgot which one I watched first, but I watched it, and I was like, “Who’s your DP? I’m freaking out right now.” And [Ryan] was like, “Oh, Tim, all those movies are shot on film. They’re filmed handheld, with real families, not actors.” And you can tell Tim is moving the camera on instinct essentially because all these scenes, I mean, obviously, I found more of this out later, but all these scenes, they weren’t scripted. These were real people. So they just got a camera up and just started running with it. And I was like, “Oh, I really want that for my movie.”
But it’s funny because I was actually acting and producing in a movie that was shooting in a couple of months, and I told my director, “We need to get Tim.” And it was funny because it was partially me wanting Tim for my movie, and also trying to get him on our side for this other movie. But Tim, he ended up DPing the other movie, the one I acted in first. So it’s funny, I got to work with him as an actor and a producer first.
Oh, that’s so neat.
I know! And then so I was like, “Oh, I love him. He’s so respectful. He’s so nice. And I just think he’s so fucking good.” Then I told him, obviously, when we were shooting the previous movie, I was like, “I need you to do my movie.” So we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, even before the movie was greenlit. I was like, “I really want this handheld feeling. I really want it to feel gritty. I want to feel claustrophobic. I want to feel like we’re with Amber, especially when we’re at the party.” That was always the vision. I just wanted to feel like how it feels in real life. And I feel like that handheld kind of frenetic thing gives it that, “Oh wow, we’re at this party. We’re on this drug trip with them” feeling.
Yeah, not found footage because I’m a found footage person, but I like that use of the handheld is almost like that shaky cam technique.
Oh, I love it. I think it’s so rock and roll and cool. I also think it just obviously worked for the movie, and that’s exactly what I wanted. But no, I’m obsessed.
Wait, when did you write this? How long have you been working on this movie?
I think I want to say it’s about six years now, maybe seven.
So that’s even crazier to have it out in the world now.
Oh my God. It was the real-life incident, the writing of the feature film, and then COVID happened, and then the short film I used as a proof of concept. But then it just took me, obviously, a long time to raise the money. So it’s been a long journey. It’s kind of crazy to think about it. It’s so exciting. It’s emotional too. It’s like you’re having a kid finally. You know what I mean? I’ve been pregnant for six years!
It’s insane. And I cannot wait to see what else you make. Do you want to keep directing? Is it something that you’ve enjoyed?
Oh, for sure. I loved it. I’m already cooking the next thing. I’m excited about it. I don’t want to jinx it or say anything about it because I’m still on a draft. But I’m hoping I can get it done soon and then just go make it. I’m ready to get on a set. I’m like, “I need to go back!”
Do you want to stay within the genre space?
I think the next one will be a little less genre, but it’ll still have a thriller element. I love the genre, I really do. But the next one, when I was writing it, I almost wanted to make it more genre, and then it just didn’t work out. Then I was like, “OK, I’m not going to force it. I’m just going to go with the story I want to tell and see what happens.”
FIND YOUR FRIENDS is now playing on Shudder.
