From directorMax Winkler, the indie dramaFlowerfollows rebellious 17-year-old Erica Vandross (Zoey Deutch, in a truly stand-out performance), who lives with her single mom (Kathryn Hahn) and her mom’s new boyfriend, Bob (Tim Heidecker), in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. When they’re not at school, Erica and her best friends, Kala (Dylan Gelula) and Claudine (Maya Eshet), get in plenty of trouble as self-proclaimed vigilantes, so when Bob’s unstable son, Luke (Joey Morgan), arrives from rehab to live with the family, they all decide to expose the dark secret of a high school teacher (Adam Scott), which ends in a way that none of them could have imagined.
At the film’s press day, held at The Spare Room gaming parlor and cocktail lounge in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Collider got the opportunity to sit down with actress Zoey Deutch and filmmaker Max Winkler, who talked about why they were both so passionate aboutFlower, wanting to make Erica relatable, what they enjoyed about their partnership and working together, putting everything into this film, and that they’d like to work together again.
Collider: With the story you’re telling and the subject matter you’re exploring, it seems as though there could have been endless ways that this could have gone wrong and been a much more exploitative film than it ultimately turned out to be.
MAX WINKLER: We weren’t interested in that. That would not have been what we were interested in.
ZOEY DEUTCH: There is no reward without risk, and this was definitely a risk for Max and for me. We put our whole hearts and souls into it. The most important element of this whole process was how much I trusted Max. I think he is an incredible director with an incredibly bright future. He is, by far, the funniest person I know and also, by far, the best listener I know. He also goes to more therapy than anyone I’ve ever met, which maybe sounds like a backhanded compliment, but he has a different therapist for each day and I really respect that. I have a lot of gratitude for this movie and the process. With every single independent movie, the director and the actor go, “This movie was as grassroots and personal as it gets! It was so small!,” and I’m gonna do the same damn thing. We made this movie in 16 days.
WINKLER: For half a million dollars.
DEUTCH: We both practically got second mortgages on our homes, to make this work. We felt so strongly about this film. I love Erica and I love her put-on male bravado, her fragility, and her frustrating nature. I think she can be so frustrating, and I love that about her because that’s fun to delve into.
And it’s very human!
DEUTCH: Right?! Humans are frustrating!
WINKLER: And very 17 years old.
DEUTCH: Yeah, I got to pull from my personal experience of being frustrated, as a teenager, and bring frustrating to other people.
Max, on the surface, it seems like there’s no way that you’d identify with a story like this, about this character.
WINKLER: I did, actually, a lot.
What was it that you found yourself so strongly connected to?
WINKLER: I was a real fuck-up, as a kid, and I got into lots of trouble doing what I thought was the right thing, but it ended up being misguided. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, so that was very personal to me. I related to the character a lot. The thing I liked the most about the script was that it wasn’t a male lead. In all of these great ‘80s movies that we watched and pulled from, it’s always a male lead and the girl is always the object of desire who, if they go through their trial by fire, they get at the end, with the exception of John Hughes movies, obviously, and I’m sure there are others I wasn’t watching and references. But, I think John Hughes wrote women and teenagers better than anyone.
DEUTCH: Also, this is the type of part that, if played by a man, is morally ambiguous, and if played by a woman, it could potentially be lacking redeeming characteristics or qualities, or be potentially unlikeable, which is the devil word. What’s interesting for me is that, when I’m looking at parts, I’m not looking at whether they’re unlikeable, I’m looking for whether they’re relatable. I don’t give a fuck about unlikeable. That doesn’t mean anything to me. What I give a fuck about it unrelatable. She’s very relatable. She is so afraid of getting hurt that she is willing to hurt someone so badly, before they have any opportunity to harm her. That is really relatable. People are really afraid of love and pain and abandonment. These are all universal themes that everybody has to deal with, at one point in their life or another.
Erica is an interesting character because she’s manipulative, but she doesn’t feel calculating in her manipulation. It seems more like it comes out of loyalty and to achieve the end result that she’s looking for.
DEUTCH: That’s interesting.
WINKLER: That’s good. The majority of the movie is these three girls and her stepbrother, plotting this sting against a guy that she has conflicted feelings about, but really the heart of the movie is in that moment where she tells the stepbrother, “I believe you,” and you see him so shocked that someone believes him. That’s where the loyalty comes in. If Erica is loyal to you, she’s a ride or die, but I also think she is dealing with these massive feelings of abandonment, so it gets complicated.
Did you ever have trouble finding the right ending?
WINKLER: No, because it was in the original draft of the script that I read and it felt, to me, like she almost regained her innocence and lost that burden, through these crazy circumstances that take place. The original writer, Alex [McAulay], wrote that beautifully.
You guys seem like you were much more than just a director and actor working with each other, and that you had a partnership on this. What did you most enjoy about working together?
WINKLER: We should have a studio that Zoey should run.
DEUTCH: No, we’ll run it together.
WINKLER: We were partners, on this whole thing, so if Zoey didn’t feel like a line was authentic to the character or that the wardrobe didn’t work, she said so. Our wardrobe designer, Michelle Thompson, is incredible. She did it all with a few hundred dollars.
DEUTCH: And a blowtorch and some string.
WINKLER: I brought Zoey what I thought was gonna be her outfit for the first scene in the movie, which was her in the cop car, and it was overalls with high white tube socks and Timberlands. It’s basically what she wears throughout the whole movie, but she was like, “I don’t think I should wear that.” I just thought it looked cool and felt like that character, but Zoey was like, “Whenever my character is involved in a transaction, it is completely asexual. There’s nothing sexy about it. It’s completely a transaction and me exerting control and getting what I need out of this person. I will never use my body to sell that.” I thought that was so brilliant. It was the quintessential conversation that we would have about everything, and why I surrounded myself with as many women as possible, in the making of this. I knew that would be the most authentic way to eliminate any instinct I had, that was coming from the male point of view.
DEUTCH: To others, it might have seemed combative or argumentative or crazy, but when we were talking to each other, it was always coming from a place of making the best movie we could make. It was coming from no ego.
WINKLER: No one was difficult.
DEUTCH: We weren’t trying to one-up each other. We were really trying our best to make the best movie that we could make together. When you’re making a movie in such a little amount of time, preparation and pre-production is everything. We had almost twice as much time together, one-on-one, really delving into every detail, whether small, big, important or possibly not important, to really got on the same page about everything, for a month before we started shooting, every day. I think that was key. Most importantly, what made it so special was how amazing Max is at listening and how open and receptive he is to everyone’s opinion. I was really in awe of that. That’s something I could really learn. He’s a great listener. I think we’re all learning to be better listeners, right now.
WINKLER: It’s helpful, when you’re making a movie. I don’t presume to have all of the answers, especially for a movie about a 17-year-old girl. I relate to it greatly, but there are just fundamental differences in the genders. I think it’s good for people to make movies that are not exactly about themselves and to put yourself in other people’s narratives, as long as you do it respectfully and you do it the right way. We were clear on every decision, [Zoey] and I. There was no bullshit and no filter. I wasn’t afraid of hurting her feelings, and I know she wasn’t afraid of hurting mine. We never took anything personally. When you’re shooting a movie in 16 days, there’s no time.
DEUTCH: There’s no time for hurt feelings!
WINKLER: I find her work ethic not something I’ve found anywhere else. I find her work ethic humbling and it made everyone else better.
How do you follow up something like this, that you’re clearly so passionate about?
WINKLER: It’s hard! We’re both working on exerting patience without being precious.
DEUTCH: You couldn’t be asking a more appropriate question! We’re working on patience and the strength and wisdom to know . . .
WINKLER: . . . that when you make your choice, it’s the right one.
DEUTCH: It really pays off, when you’re super-duper passionate, instead of just working for work’s sake.
WINKLER: We’ve done both, and we’re significantly worse at the latter.
DEUTCH: What are you talking about?! I have never played a one-dimensional female character in a male-driven comedy! Me?! Never!
Zoey, does that make you want to be more involved in the projects you do?
DEUTCH: I am. I’m producing a movie right now, that I’m gonna star in, and I produced a movie that I have coming out in June. The truth is that I really enjoy being a part of every process and I like having some semblance of control. I think it’s hard for me to not engage, in that way, when I really care. This was a good learning experience. I didn’t ask for that producing credit, so I didn’t get it, but that’s also a learning experience. It’s part of this bigger conversation we’re all having. I think a lot of women are taught to hope, rather than to expect or ask, and I should have asked. It’s all a learning process, but I have genuine gratitude to [Max] and this process and everything that I learned, along the way.
WINKLER: I feel that way, too.
DEUTCH: Can you tell him to hire me again?
WINKLER: I’m going to!
DEUTCH: I wanna be your Michael Shannon! I wanna be in all your movies!
WINKLER: I have to believe you’d take on a much smaller part. Michael Shannon will just show up and do a scene, and then bounce.
DEUTCH: So will I! But, it has to be a good small part. I mean it!
