Cinema Scholars SXSW 2023 coverage continues with an interview from Pure O writer/director Dillon Tucker. Pure O will celebrate its World Premiere at SXSW on March 13 and will have two additional screenings on March 15 and 16.
Introduction
With all the star-studded screenings and premieres at SXSW, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the festival is also a champion of independent films as well. For an indie filmmaker, being accepted into a major film festival is crucial in getting the film seen by enthusiastic audiences. Hopefully, some interested distributors are among them. But also, screening a film at a festival is a chance to exhibit years of work on a proper big screen with fellow cinephiles. One of the stand-out narrative features at this year’s SXSW is Dillon Tucker’s complex indie charmer, Pure O.
In Pure O, Cooper is a musician and filmmaker. Newly engaged to his college sweetheart and duet partner Emily, the happy couple seem to be living the hip L.A. dream. Like most creatives, Cooper also has a “day job” that pays the bills. As an addiction counselor at a rehabilitation center, he has intense daily interactions with people who need him. However, it is soon revealed that Cooper is dealing with his own recent diagnosis of a form of OCD known as Pure Obsessional. Plagued by a constant cycle of horrific thoughts, Cooper must contend with the debilitating condition while also navigating some pretty serious life stuff along the way.
Aside from all the heaviness, the theme of complex love (in its many forms) is the real core of Pure O. There’s romantic love with a partner. Love through camaraderie with friends and coworkers. And the love of family and extended family. For Cooper, these three elements intertwine and propel his journey through self-realization and learning to first love himself.
Hope Lauren and Daniel Dorr. Photo courtesy of Pure O LLC.
For those who appreciate a learning experience, along with their entertainment Pure O is a fascinating dive into the many facets of OCD disorder way beyond the usual stereotypical behaviors usually depicted. A lot of care is taken in the accuracy of therapy-speak and modalities. With that context in place, Tucker is able to dive into the harsh complexities of dealing with life’s normal trials and tribulations on top of navigating a debilitating condition. For those who resonate with the love story, Tucker offers a bittersweet reminder that everyone is juggling their own issues and life rarely offers the clear-cut resolution we’re all looking for.
Cinema Scholars’ Rebecca Elliott recently had a chance to sit down with writer/director Dillon Tucker ahead of the SXSW premiere of his autobiographical picture. Tucker discusses translating his personal struggles with Pure O to the screen, creating the music to elevate and meld the mingling narratives, and where they got all of Cooper’s amazing T-shirts.
Interview
Rebecca Elliott:
Hi Dillon! First of all, congratulations on getting your film into SXSW.
Dillon Tucker:
Thank you so much.
Rebecca Elliott:
Are you going to be able to come to Austin for the fest?
Dillon Tucker:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was going to ask, I didn’t know if you were in LA. You’re in Austin?
Rebecca Elliott:
I’m in Austin, yeah.
Dillon Tucker:
Oh, how fun. Oh, yeah, I’ll definitely be in town. I’m going to be out for most of the week. I think I’m there the night through the 15th.
Rebecca Elliott:
Nice. Oh, you’re going to have a blast. It’s my favorite week of the year.
Dillon Tucker:
I’ve been once before and I love it. I’m excited!
Rebecca Elliott:
Okay, good. You know how it goes then. It can be intimidating. So, you must be even more excited to be premiering your film there, since you’ve been before?
Dillon Tucker:
I am, absolutely. It’s our first choice festival, so we’re over the moon.
Daniel Dorr. Photo courtesy of Pure O LLC.
Rebecca Elliott:
Hooray! Let’s get into Pure O. You created this detailed, open examination of OCD disorders within the context of a love story. While you touch on the whole array of disorders around OCD, you focus on one in particular, Pure Obsessional. What is your connection to OCD disorders, and why were you compelled to tell this story?
Dillon Tucker:
Oh, well, the film is autobiographical. It’s based on my life maybe seven or eight years ago. I dealt with late-onset OCD, so I had never dealt with any sort of mental health condition. Then right around turning 30, I had some stuff going on. I didn’t know what was going on. After unlocking it and getting into the therapeutic process, I obviously got diagnosed and got through all that.
I realized I had never heard of this, and the average sufferer that has this thing typically suffers in silence for sometimes seven, or eight years. As you’ve seen in the film, talk therapy just exacerbates it and makes it worse. So, a lot of people just keep getting stuck in talk therapy and they don’t know what’s going on, and there are no physical things that alert you to it. So, just after going through that process and getting a handle on it, my life’s in a different place, and it’s just a story that’s obviously incredibly personal to me.
But I just wanted to get this out there to just let people know exactly what this looks like, and what it really is. I’m a filmmaker first and foremost, and I just started thinking about it. I honestly really did my research and I couldn’t really think of one film that was out there that just had a true, accurate depiction of what OCD was. Everything was, As Good As It Gets, Monk, or the quirky detective character.
There was nothing that I saw that I felt really accurately represented my community on screen. So, yeah. First and foremost, I just wanted to do something that was an honest depiction of what it looked like. Then obviously I wanted to be more universal than that, and reach a wider audience, so I crafted a story in the mind of my own experience.
Rebecca Elliott:
Write about what you know, and in this case, you have, I guess for better or worse, a lot of knowledge about this subject.
Dillon Tucker:
Sure.
Rebecca Elliott:
In the film, of course, there’s a lot of therapy speak, but there are also certain protocols and even treatment modalities depicted. Did you have consultants for the technical stuff? How did you keep it real?
Dillon Tucker:
Obviously, not only my own experience…I mean, I’ve been in the groups and I’ve been around all the different…I mean, it’s not like I’ve suffered from every form of OCD that gets depicted in the film. But I’ve been in groups with everybody that’s done all these things and tried all of these therapeutic things that you do to treat it. So, a lot of it was my own experience, my own research. Then I did consult my own therapist and a therapeutic team that read the script. Before I went into production, I did consult that world and tried to get as much feedback as possible.
Rebecca Elliott:
Well, it definitely shows. It just seems incredibly accurate, but of course, you take a lot of care with it as well, which I appreciate.
Dillon Tucker:
Well, a big part of that too, why it feels so real is that I intentionally mixed in actors and non-actors into the casting. In the OCD group, there are real-life patients. I play a little part, I play one of the patients! But there are also other people in the group that are real-life patients. At the rehab, there are real-life counselors. So, I mixed that in intentionally, to try to give it that feel.
Landry Bender. Photo courtesy of Pure O LLC.
Rebecca Elliott:
There’s definitely an authentic feel. Thinking about it, this film actually has a triple narrative. Because you have Cooper and his work life, Cooper and his love life, and then Cooper and his extended family life. Which is very important to him and comes into play. How do you weave together those three narratives and balance them? Was this always the way the story was going to go, or did you have multiple versions?
Dillon Tucker:
I love that you noticed that. No. It was very intentional, and that was something that was a structure that was there from the beginning for me. I mean, the theme of the movie for me is just that we all need the help of other people. So I wanted to not only show the mental health experience through the lead characters’ experience of it, but I wanted to show his world. I wanted to show how mental health affects everybody around the person as they experience it, and that so much focus tends to be on the individual.
But mental health, I mean, I’ve had so many people who’ve seen the film who talk about…who have never had OCD, but there’s some sort of connection in there for everybody. They’re like, “Oh, I know somebody. My nephew was just in rehab.” There are just so many things in the film that is touched upon where, again, I wanted it to be about OCD, but…
First and foremost, I’m a filmmaker and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I wanted it to just be a universal story. I tend to always deal in universal themes, so I didn’t want people to just walk out of it and say like, “Oh, that was a really great educational lesson on OCD.” I wanted it to have something for everybody. Also, that’s just the nature of OCD and mental health in general, is that it affects everybody.
So much of the treatment, I mean, those resources for family members that are in the film are real. So much of the literature you get when you’re going through OCD is to give to other people around you. You’re supposed to give it to all your loved ones. Because one of the big compulsions is reassurance. You’re reaching out to all of your friends and your loved ones that you know most, and asking for all this reassurance. That ends up making it worse. But it’s a very human thing to want to give that reassurance. I just wanted to show it from all angles, not just the individual, but an ensemble look at mental health.
Rebecca Elliott:
The music in Pure O is so lovely and integral to the story. It doesn’t feel like it’s just added on, because like, “Oh, we have the song, I have to add it here.” I mean, everything is so organic and fluid. You wrote and performed a lot of the music, so, of course, I have to know, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did you have the script or the songs first? How was it incorporating your music into your film world?
Dillon Tucker:
The whole story was completely organic. So, as I said, it was from my life, whatever, eight years ago or something like that. But I intentionally used the music from that period. So, the songs that are used in the film are organic to what that relationship was, to where I was at that time. I was going for hyper-realism with the film. So it was baked into the first draft of the script. To think about exactly the songs that we’re doing. Obviously, it’s such a romantic film, and it’s based on a relationship. So I wanted to focus on the duets that I was performing. Yeah, they’re actually performed by myself. Yeah. I did that…Well, there’s a little bit in there that’s performed by the lead actress. But I wanted to use the actual recordings. I thought there was something to that. The whole project in itself is a little bit meta.
We just leaned into that and were like, “Let’s just embrace it. It is what it is.” I agree with you, a lot of times music and films, when you have characters that are musicians and songwriters, it can feel a little forced or something like that. But that’s what these characters’ lives were around that time. They were out and they were playing shows and they were touring and playing music. So, I knew that was a big part of not just the character, but the relationship. So, yeah. That’s why I decided to use those and then have the lead actors lip-sync to the vocal performances.
Rebecca Elliott:
Then Hope [Lauren] did do that one song too, right?
Dillon Tucker:
Yeah. She does have that one cover of one of my songs that she performs.
Rebecca Elliott:
Yeah. It’s so beautiful. I loved it.
Dillon Tucker:
Oh, yeah. She was phenomenal.
Landry Bender. Photo courtesy of Pure O LLC.
Rebecca Elliott:
Yeah. Speaking of your casting. Such amazing performances from your leads, Hope Lauren and Daniel Dorr.
Dillon Tucker:
That’s correct.
Rebecca Elliott:
So great. But I also love, love, love, that you seem to give space and opportunity to your supporting cast to really shine. Which not a lot of productions do. This was a really strong ensemble cast too. Especially, the one scene with Clint James in the group therapy. He has that laughing, crying thing going on, and I was so torn up by that scene. Can you talk about working with this incredible cast? You mentioned some of whom are actual friends or patients, people with OCD, but also giving them that space to find those moments.
Dillon Tucker:
First of all, I love that you brought up that scene because it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie too. He just absolutely crushes that scene, and I loved it. Across the board, people bring that scene up. Yeah. I mean, I come from an acting background, that’s my wheelhouse. I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and I’ve been an actor for about 20 years. So, I just got really fortunate. I cast the film myself. And as I went to cast it, I just really just started compiling a list of just who are the most talented people I know. Regardless of who’s right for what. Just, who are the most talented people that I know. Then I started individually just going through and thinking about who would plug in where.
From the beginning, I wanted to take this ensemble approach, and give space. I wanted to show all these people around and to show what they’re experiencing. To not just have the supporting cast stories always be about what’s going on with the lead character. And have everything driven back. I wanted them to have their own experience that the lead character was witnessing. So, then you could go back and you could see how that was affecting him. Because again, the theme of the movie is that we all need help from other people. And as broken as the main character is, and how he’s trying to fix himself, he’s also fixing other people.
We get so much out of that as human beings. It’s amazing how many people in the rehab space, or in the therapeutic space, are going through their own thing and they’re helping other people. There’s this weird symbiosis that happens, of helping other people. They’re broken, but then seeing them helps you. So, I wanted to take the time to sit in that and to not just… It would’ve been so easy to just keep cutting back to the main character and seeing what it’s doing him.
I just wanted to try something different. I wanted to let the audience almost get a POV as if they were Cooper, and to sit with what he was experiencing. So hopefully, when that all affects the lead character at the end, you’ve experienced what he’s experienced along the way. So, that was a conscious approach to the editing style. It’s all easy to be cohesive because I edited the film as well. So, all of these ideas were able to just live in my own brain and be cohesive.
Rebecca Elliott:
Yeah. It’s kind of meta that the therapists are also receiving therapy from the people they’re helping.
Dillon Tucker:
Yes.
Rebecca Elliott:
There was a moment in the movie when he was dealing with a challenging patient. And it’s like, he can talk nice to everyone else, but he can’t talk nice to himself.
Dillon Tucker:
Isn’t that the truth though, Rebecca? Don’t we all do that?
Rebecca Elliott:
Exactly, exactly.
Dillon Tucker:
We can all give advice to other people, but I mean, I do prescribe to that? That most of the time if we listen to the advice we’re giving to other people, a lot of times there are a lot of things that we need to hear ourselves. So, that was definitely something I kept in mind as well.
Hope Lauren and Daniel Dorr. Photo courtesy of Pure O LLC.
Rebecca Elliott:
I also really connected with the dialogue in this film. It seems really natural. Was all of that on the page, or was there room for input and improv from your players?
Dillon Tucker:
Almost all of it’s on the page. I’m a writer first and foremost, so it’s pretty much all on the page. But there are specific times…like a lot of the stuff with Hope and Daniel. I like to do a lot of structured improv in and out of scenes. So, there’s not much in the middle of scenes. But there are certain character moments where they’re brushing their teeth, and there are things like that. The everyday ins and outs of things. But even then, it’s mostly on the page. But I wanted to give it as natural a feel as possible. Not that I do this with every film, but I definitely wanted to…The approach to my directing style for the actors was that I wanted them to be wary of acting in this film. I wanted them to bring as much of themselves as possible to their characters.
So, I just wanted them to lend their character name to themselves for a little while. I wanted to do that across the board with everybody because we were going for such a sense of naturalism. There were times that if they wanted to try things, or be open to things, I let them do different takes with certain things, and we’d just…I’d piece it together in the editing room. So, it’s a mixture, but I would say that over 90% of it was written word on the page.
Rebecca Elliott:
Okay, my last question is totally silly, but Cooper has so many cool T-shirts in that movie! I need to know about all these T-shirts and your costume designer, and I need to know how many of them you kept.
Dillon Tucker:
Well, I am the costume designer. I just didn’t take the credit. But here we go. Honestly, a lot of them, they’re just my shirts.
Rebecca Elliott:
Nice.
Dillon Tucker:
A mixture. I really wanted to…Obviously, the lead character is a version of myself, but I really wanted Daniel to bring as much of himself as possible. He and Hope are a real-life couple, so I cast that on purpose. So, yeah. Literally, the wardrobe was a mixture of me going over to Daniel’s house with a carload of clothes that are my clothes. So, his jacket, the hat, the shirts, they’re mostly my shirts. Then a mixture of Daniel’s as well.
I just wanted him to feel as comfortable as possible. He wanted to bring as much of himself, and so I pushed him to bring as much of himself. But I said, “Well, take as much of my clothing as you need to feel like a different person.” But that was the approach that we took consciously. It’s also a very LA movie, so I wanted to… I think there are plenty of little LA nuggets in there. Being from LA, I love watching LA movies. I love when you see all the little things Angelenos know.
Rebecca Elliott:
How fun!
Dillon Tucker:
I love that. I love that you picked up on that. That’s great.
Rebecca Elliott:
Well, thank you so much for talking Pure O with me today. I hope you have a wonderful festival, and maybe I’ll see you around!
Dillon Tucker:
Thank you, Rebecca.
Pure O will celebrate its World Premiere at SXSW on March 13 and will have two additional screenings on March 15 and 16. The full schedule can be found here. In the meantime, enjoy this recently released clip from Pure O.
