Krisha Fairchild is the kind of person who shrieks with infectious laughter as she tells you that one of her index fingers was recently bitten off by a nasty-ass dog. Of course, she probably wasnt laughing about it at the time 40 years after earning her first professional credit, the actress was only weeks away from shooting the role of a lifetime when she reached in to break a fight between her pit bull mix and her neighbors comparatively petite terrier. Suddenly left with a cylinder of gauze where her right pointer used to be, the sexagenarian star-in-the-making called her nephew, filmmaker Trey Edward Shults, and told him that she couldnt play the part that hed written for her.
The 27-year-old writer/director/editor/producer of Krisha, however, wasnt going to let a little thing like distress over a partially missing digit stop his movie. On the contrary, he felt that Fairchilds injury was only going to make it better. Obviously I didnt want my beautiful aunt to lose her finger I love her! Shults explains. But the filmmaker in me was thinking Yes! Thats perfect for her character.'
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It was also perfect for his highly autobiographical portrait of addiction that would rather examine raw wounds under a microscope than pretend that they arent still bleeding. Taking write what you know to the next level, Krisha not only digs up a tragic episode from Shults recent family history it stars the actual people who survived it. Shot on a shoestring budget over the course of nine days at his moms house in Texas and almost entirely cast with the directors blood relatives , the drama is such an unflinchingly honest exploration that it feels like watching someone perform a public autopsy of their family tree. He was basically outing the skeletons in our closet, Fairchild says, but we all knew that it might help.
What they didnt know was how many people would see it. Thanks to Shults unflinching vision and Fairchilds searing performance, Krisha has become an unlikely indie sensation, winning both the jury and audience prizes at the 2015 SXSW film festival, landing a spot at Cannes, receiving the Independent Spirit Award for the years best film shot for under $500,000, and earning its director a two-picture deal from A24. Not bad for a home movie.
And despite what the title of the movie might suggest, Krisha isnt playing herself, but rather a thinly veiled version of her late niece, Nica (Shults cousin). A longtime drug addict, Nica died of an overdose in the winter of 2012, two months after a memorably painful family reunion. I didnt want to look at her or talk to her, Shults confesses when asked about the fateful get-together. It felt like a slow-motion train wreck.
It wasnt the first time that someone in the family had been lost or endangered due to substance abuse, but Shults was determined to make sure that it was the last time that he allowed himself to deny what was happening. He began writing Krisha two months after Nicas death, and leveraging his experience as a film loader on two still-unreleased Terrence Malick projects (Voyage of Time and Weightless) attempted to shoot the film later that year. It didnt work out: I had an ego problem back then, Shults grimaces. I was a stupid fucking kid and totally threw that away. But hecouldnt let it go. He cut the abandoned feature into a short, and then, after the death of his estranged father (an alcoholic who had fallen off the wagon), summoned the courage to give it another shot.
This time, he was ready.
Reimagining that day as a cataclysmic Thanksgiving dinner, Shults used Krisha as a means of forcing himself confront the tragedy he couldnt bear to see before it was too late. Told from the title characters POV, the intensely subjective drama is like looking through the eye of a Category 5 hurricane as it blows through an unsuspecting house. Everybody means well, but its impossible to convey the things they need to say to each other over the cacophony of the storm thats raging around them. You are heartbreak incarnate, someone says to Krisha, and the film could be described the same way.
Fairchild, who lives in Mexico with a partner whos been sober for more than two decades, was eager to make a film that might encourage people to talk about the silent epidemic that has affected so many of her loved ones. Addiction is a big elephant in American living rooms, she says from experience. People tend to cover for the family and friends theyre concerned about losing they dont talk about it.
Fortunately, Shults was able to enlist his familys help without too much trepidation. My moms a therapist, he explains. I would be a mess without her. Shes all about bringing that stuff out and processing it. (In fact, Robyn Fairchild was so committed to the cause that she agreed to act in the film, reprising her real-life role as Krishas sister.)
The openness of his family doesnt mean that they were impervious to the weight of what they were trying to do, and it was inevitable that certain scenes would blur the line between pretending and reliving. It was particularly difficult for Nicas mother, who acts in the film alongside the rest of the family. She started crying in the middle of a shot, the director remembers, and that was real. We had to stop and take a break because certain stuff with her hit so close to home. But things like that would happen and wed just regroup and do it again. We were all on the same page.
Fairchild, who was asked to carry so much of the film on her shoulders, echoes that sense of solidarity: We felt that we could bring empathy and comfort to families going through these things; had I thought there were giant holes in the script, I still would have said yes.
The daughter of a late-in-life alcoholic, Fairchild was eager to share the tragic wisdom that shes accrued over the years. Her mother cameos in the film as the familys matriarch, though shes now too senile to understand that she was starring in a devastating scene in which Krisha realizes that shes missed her chance to make amends. Its a radical bit of role-playing. Im way less judgmental now than I was before we made the movie, the actress candidly admits. I used to be judge-y about self-pity when I heard it in the voices of people I loved. When I climbed inside of the other Krisha, I couldnt judge that anymore, because I completely understood why she was going to explode if she didnt cling to one of those behaviors. It doesnt make them healthy, and it doesnt make them right choices, but we should have empathy for these people.
Fairchild, now more than four decades into her sporadic acting career, has never been more grateful for her family, or more excited for her future. Shes already fielded several offers to play villainous characters and rejected them all. The rejuvenated actress has no interest in wasting time on stock parts, and shes definitely not going to let a missing finger (which she insists is much more gnarly-looking now), keep her from missing opportunities. Im old! I have maybe 10 years at best left to act. So Im saying bring it. If you have a character thats multi-dimensional, that speaks well for women as survivors, and women who look real, just bring it.
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