Director Ian Ebright’s film “The Way We Speak” will be featured in the Eastern Oregon Film Festival in October.

Editor’s note: Ian Ebright’s film will be featured in the Eastern Oregon Film Festival Oct. 17-19 in La Grande. For details and festival passes, visit eofilmfest.com.

I wanna start with talking about the process of touring with a film. We live in a small town, and even though there are two local film festivals, I’m sure a lot of folks aren’t really familiar with what it’s like touring as an indie filmmaker. So I guess my first question is: how long have you been touring with the film?

We started in April with the Florida Film Festival, and we had two other festivals that we were proud to be a part of in the same month. And then it’s been kind of, like, all quiet on the western front since. We had one in Georgia, the Macon Festival in August, and then all of a sudden, our fall is very crowded. So I believe we have five festivals in September and Eastern Oregon is looking like our Oregon premier, and that’s the only one we know of in October. So, that makes it about our tenth. And they’re all domestic, which I’m not super surprised about, although a little disappointed. But, you know, when you make a dialogue-heavy film, you kind of know that you limit your international chances. But, yeah, it’s about our tenth or so.

So five in September is a lot. Are you attending in person for all of these, or are you just, you know, having the film be there, or are cast and crew attending? What’s it like in terms of attendance?

We’ve had so much going on that we’re hoping the plan sticks, But it’s been, like, you know, water heaters exploding downstairs and flooded basements and stuff. I will say the plan as of today is that my wife, who is the one of the producers on the film, and I are gonna go to New York to Soho International, to do the Q and A.

And then we’re doing a kind of a team approach. So Kailey Rhodes who plays Sarah, Simon’s antagonist in the film, represented the film at Make It Home last month. And then next week is a crowded one. The idea is, let me see if I can get them all: we have the opening night film at El Tasso Film Festival in Texas. And Molly Vendettuoli, who’s our producer, will rep us there that night. One or two nights after, we’re playing our first of two screens at Harbor. I’m hoping to be there for that. And then, Ayanna, who plays Annette in the film, is going to co lead the Q and A with me.

She’ll be here at the first and then taking over the second because I’m gonna fly to Albuquerque to join Patrick, our lead, at the Albuquerque Film Music Festival. And there’s the Foot Candle Film Festival in North Carolina. Diana, who plays Claire, is gonna go rep us at that. And then I’m hoping to be at Eastern Oregon. So that’s the plan. We’re trying to spread it around, and I think that’s me going to, like, three or four or six, something like that in that month-and-a-half range. But, you know, we’re also taking it a day at a time because of sore throats and so much going on.

If I may ask, that’s a lot of travel for a lot of different people. Is it the festivals themselves who are offering those accommodations and flying you out and/or lodging you? Or do you have some sort of budget? I’m asking questions as one who doesn’t know anything about film festivals.

I think that we are a weird scenario, because our film is privately funded. And, the answer to your question about festivals and things, and I won’t say which ones because it’s probably best that I don’t: let me see…I guess there’s none that are doing flights. Although, we have been to some that gave us sort of stipends for both [travel and lodging].

There’s one coming up, that’s gonna do that. But, usually, these days, it seems like the best you go for is lodging. So there’s one of them I’ll be going to with flights not covered, but they offer lodging.

Now, Patrick, being our lead and a name: I won’t get into those details, but festivals usually are quicker to provide kind of the full A to Z for someone like that because it’s kind of a bigger deal. You know, I’m nobody, nobody knows who I am. So it’s like, “Oh, yeah. You should come if you can.” But I’d say it’s about, you know, every other or every third festival, they throw us something related to travel. Usually not the flights; those are astronomical. But, you know, some lodging help or something like that. And then what’s more rare is that they’ll offer a screening fee. Okay. A couple hundred thousand dollars or something. And it’s all helpful.

And to the other part of your question: This is coming out of a privately funded film’s pretty modest marketing budget. So it’s part of the rationale for spreading love around. You know, Kailey happened to be in Georgia, and things like that. I’m from Washington. So it’s like, you know, thankfully, Gig Harbor and Eastern Oregon are not super daunting. But, you know, with New York’s, we’re gonna take a hit in the pocketbook getting out there.

So then so then what is the motivation? In terms of there being a physical presence at the screening, what is it you hope to offer? What do you hope your producers, your actors can offer, in being there live in person? I mean, obviously, there’s the networking aspect of it. But what do y’all bring to the screening that the film, speaking for itself, does not?

My answer is a little existential. Like, if you catch me on the wrong day, I’ll say, I don’t often don’t know what it’s for. I think film festivals are getting a little, I would say this: there’s sort of a cottage industry that’s grown up where you can kind of just spend exorbitant amounts of money, which is usually false to the filmmaker. You know? And some of these people who do this kind of thing indefinitely, and I’m like, I don’t know where the money is coming from. I would guess a trust, because there’s no kind of return. But in the best case scenario, it’s marketing. And like, you know, honestly, it’s travel, just getting to get away and kind of, like, you know, flood the tanks and, like, have a refresh.

And it’s sort of, like, something about showing up: if the festival stepped for us, then it’s our way of stepping toward them. To kind of, like, appreciate the official selection by being there to, like, make it a really good Q and A versus, like, doing it virtually and things like that. So, yeah, marketing. And there’s the pipe dream of, you know, in the networking, you meet someone who’s like, hey: Let me write you a check for your next film. I think that those things are that sort of carrot on the stick that’s always there for filmmakers. I have some friends that it did happen to.

But I think across the board, all those things are a lot more rare. So it’s a question mark, because it’s a lot on, I think, the model, everything. You know, it’s streaming. Any number of anecdotes that we hear about: the burden falls to the artist.

And in terms of what the festivals give or what we get out of it, it’s not always as quantifiable, but I hope that’s an answer.

And you mentioned streaming. I know that, at least at one point, “The Way We Speak” was available to rent on Vimeo or to purchase. When people can rent something, why should people come to the film festival, when they can, you know, drop a few bucks and see it at home in the comfort of their home? What would be your pitch to folks to come out to the festival?

I will say that I appreciate either one. And I will say that the price will be about the same. I mean, we’re talking about, like, you know, a dollar-or-few difference. But the way that we’re trying to pitch it, as a production, as a team, is that if they come out, they get it on the big screen: we’ve got an amazing looking and sounding film. They’re gonna likely get myself or Patrick or one of the people sort of in the upper echelons of our team to do a Q and A.

And they get the festival experience, and then it’s all those appreciated things that actually also matter, which is supporting indie film at the same time as supporting a local film festival. And it’s the opportunity for them to have hometown pride and, like, rather than meeting new people, maybe you see people that you interact with all the time as neighbors, but it’s in a new context. So it’s an opportunity for community. And I’ll say that the composers, those did the cinematography and the sound mix and design and the acting, like, we’re an indie low budget film, but we really need this thing to be seen on a big a screen as possible. So I think it’s a much more immersive experience at a film festival, and we cap that off with the chance to not only do a Q and A, but hang around and just chat with people if they wanna chat about it.

Maybe people are feeling wrung out, and it’s Friday, and they had this is a week from hell with work. So like, we appreciate you running out on VOD and just keeping it casual. But, yeah, those options for the more immersive thing are there with the festival.

Well, speaking of chatting about the film, I’d like to start doing that. I guess my first question will inform my future questions. In the writing of the initial first draft and then when you later picked it up to make it, for “The Way We Speak” were you — are you — theist, atheist?

Great question. I think it’s more fun if I don’t answer that. I think it’s because my actual answer would probably surprise people, but I think this is probably the best answer just so people don’t go looking to bone it up and down on those things.

Because at the center of the film is a debate, a literal debate, between atheism and theism. So it’s interesting from a writing perspective because you are writing both sides. And obviously one can be sympathetic to both sides. But what is it like writing for a character, whether that was Sarah or whether that was Simon, what is it like writing a character who emphatically believes something that you don’t?

Honestly, it was kind of therapeutic. I mean, there’s the first level of that answer, which is, like, I’m a trained screenwriter. And I say that not to, like, blow too much smoke for myself, but that, like, I study under, you know, someone whose book is taught, he teaches at Pixar, and I work at the craft of writing. And one of the adages that, you know, I think is sort of essentially universally true is to make anything interesting, you have to give your antagonist the best possible argument. And I don’t think the film has a universal antagonist. Simon certainly has an antagonist: Sarah, the young Christian author, who represents a foil to his plans. But Sarah is not an antagonist to the audience at large.

And so that first thing was a huge challenge regardless of my faith or non faith affiliation. It was like, I need to write really credibly, otherwise I’m not being a good screenwriter. The second level of that is, I think I’m a pretty ambidextrous person in terms of my own experience. I will say this part: Regardless of where I am today, I was born and raised, in what would you call it? A conservative, fundamentalist, Christian upbringing. And so I have a lot of experience in this, and then the film is based on, or partially inspired by, a play called “Best of Enemies,” which is Gore Vidal versus Lynette Buckley, left versus right. And I didn’t have the stomach to make that film because, politically, I think we’re so oversaturated that I didn’t wanna watch a political film, and I don’t think a lot of people do. But I was like, the next closest parallel, I think, and this is the idea for the film, is religion, because in the same way that we hold our politics very earnestly, people’s faith or non faith affiliations — we feel strongly about those, and I thought I could write credibly about that.

So, the first level was the screenwriting. Like, okay. This is the challenge: I gotta hide my own biases or worldviews and try to represent both of these arguments. But the second was that based on my own trajectory and upbringing, I think this would probably be true of a lot of writers of, like, I waffle. What troubles me most is certainty. I’m a person who kind of lives with an open handed, sort of lowercase embrace of my own ambidextrous doubts, and it kind of waffles for me. And I think that that helps me write both of those. And then, sincerely, there are pieces of both of those arguments that make a lot of sense to me. And depending on the day and my own internal constitution, or what’s happening in the world at large, how much it grieves me, those things can be really challenged. You know? Like, on a Tuesday, I’m like, oh, certainly, it must be this. And by Thursday, I’m like, really, though?

So, it was kinda therapeutic, because I lost a lot of family writing this. And, you know, death is a filter for challenging what has value and it challenges what you believe. So I kinda felt it was the strange safe place for me to not only try to be right by those characters, but to explore maybe some of my own beliefs that maybe are changing.

There’s definitely a lot of doubt in this film. There’s a lot of nuance and messiness, and I think that’s one of my favorite things about it: there is no character in this film, aside from maybe the emcee who is just there to emcee (though his performance is lovely), there is no character in this film where at no point I go, “I don’t like that. I think you made the wrong call there.” Obviously, the ratio is different from person to person. Simon clearly has an arc. He is at a very different place at the beginning. Again, you clearly have studied screenplay structure. That is very evident in watching this film. It’s a tightly scripted piece.

That’s nice to hear. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever written.

There are also characters, like Claire, who is, as she says, wanting to be at peace. And whether or not she has an arc, if there is one, the line is a lot smoother. She is more of a steadfast presence in the film. And was there any urge to create a bigger arc for her? Or were you comfortable in letting her, you know, just be comfortable in where she is and let her be essentially the straight man to Simon’s doubt and waffling?

Great question and really good insight. I’m glad that the film landed for you like that. That’s really encouraging. We worked hard to do something along those lines. My answer is more or less your second option in that, I mean, the best language I have used for it is, and this wasn’t evident to me right away: I think Claire and Annette are lighthouse characters, in what is kind of the storm of the cautionary tale.

And through a lot of conversations with those actors, I hope that there are glimpses of humanity in them too because we didn’t want them to be sort of coming up on the mountain bestowing perfection. But I agree with you, that Claire and Annette, too, that there’s a lot more grace and confidence. And I thought that juxtaposition would be appropriate to sort of earn the cautionary tale aspects toward the end when you have two sides of the same coin, in my opinion, which is Simon and Sarah, which is: regardless of their very different beliefs, I think that they are becoming afraid for very similar reasons. And that, as you really nicely said, it’s almost like Claire, although she described herself as an atheist, is just having kind of a zen physical moment where it’s just sort of this…

Buddhist non-attachment?

Yeah. Totally. There’s something in there that, you know and she even described herself because we thought it was interesting. You know, she’s like she just closed it too.

She’s like, you know, I’m an atheist, but [Simon’s atheism] is weird. His and mine are just very different. Somatically, it was just a drama, and I liked having these two self-professed atheists who have real different trajectories to them.

And, yeah, it felt better to keep her limited in screen time, as we see Simon and Sarah evolve.

And lighthouse characters is the word for it. And how did it serve the screenplay to keep their roles, you know, smaller, so that Simon’s could could take center stage? I wanted more of them because I like them so much. I just want more of Annette and Claire. I really like their characterizations. I really love their performances. And I came away, you know, when they made decisions that I, you know, disagreed with, that I thought were maybe maybe not the right call, I wanted to see more private moments of them, coming to those decisions and re-evaluating them later on.

With Annette, we essentially get the “misdeeds of men” line and the speech: those are where she’s revealing how she feels. And Annette is an interesting character because she’s not just representing herself. She’s also representing an institution. And so how did you balance the, portraying Annette as human and portraying Annette as, for lack of a better term, the man?

Well, a lot of that is credit to Ayanna. When Ayanna, who plays Annette, came in for the audition, I knew that I was, and I rewrote this thing to death, but I was still really nervous about the scene of her character’s outro.

And when Annette came into the audition, nailed it, and played it as, like, kinda multifaceted and human with some sort of confident jokiness. Everyone else was playing it like a superintendent, it was like, “oh, I’m bored.” So and then Ayanna intrinsically knew that we’re not gonna do the Starship Enterprise, where everyone’s buttoned up. It has to be a person, because this could already be, like, a hard to access environment for the audience. Right?

But then the other thing was she was like, “yeah. I don’t like this thing that you’re doing here.” And that could have easily cost her the audition with other directors where it’s like she went into the audition challenging my script, and I love the risk that she took to make that bet. But, specifically, what she didn’t know, is that was exactly what I needed, which was a collaborative partner, and we had really long and vulnerable conversations, to find how to walk that tightrope, making sure this is not finger wagging. And one of my few thoughts as the writing director was, “Ayanna, I think that the story is where it belongs, in your outro: that speech is derived from character. Like, that our northern or guiding star is what your character would say.”

And I love what you said, B. One thing that felt really interesting to me is, I think everybody’s trapped in this film. And so why we get a little less of Claire and Annette, I don’t know if this answers it, but, you know, it’s just a long weekend for Claire. So they’re in another city; it’s not easy for her to leave. So while she may seem to some too forgiving, there’s also that reality of, like, we’re not gonna get on a flight without him.

And she’s really in her own health. And similarly to your really apt point, it was interesting that, you know, we have that banner behind Annette at that soiree at the beginning, and we get a sense that she’s the first president of her kind.

And if you look closely, it’s a stream of photos of white dudes. So I thought that was really interesting: it’s like, you are a custodian of this thing that you wanna improve, and yet you’re babysitting two creeps that are sort of soiling its reputation. And I like the drama of that. Of, how do you represent this thing and represent yourself when you still gotta go out on stage, and the last thing I’ll say is there’s a little bit of that trap too at the dinner scene, which I really like because: Claire does conferences. And if it were just her and Simon, we saw where that was going. It was, you know, I’m gonna go home because you’re relaxing into your drinking. But then suddenly, she’s across from someone she doesn’t know. And so, again, this trapped thing of, like, they’re all sort of on stage in some way and sort of and I thought that, again, the drama, that was interesting.

You mentioned in the press kit, of trying to avoid tropes, specifically with, I believe it was Annette and Sarah. What were the tropes you’re trying to avoid, and how do you think you did that?

The obvious answer is: a friend of mine.

I think that there will be a portion of the audience that goes in believing that the film is out to get the straight white guy. We’re all aware as filmmakers of what the climate that we’re submitting this film into is like, and how our thoughts about it are radically divided. Okay. So we know that, and we don’t wanna be so neutral, so Switzerland that we avoid saying anything. But we also, again, driving from character feels right — we don’t wanna go out and preach. I think preaching in art shortens the shelf life of art. And so, in particular, again, with that outro, and I think with both Annette and Diane, I knew if we weren’t careful with a scene, it would be the, “I knew it all along” scene for, straight white dudes of which I’m one, you know, who would be like, “I knew I smelled something fishy about this, and there it is.”

So we tried to avoid that. And I think the answer was in humanizing. And we gave them a couple of moments to be petty and territorial.

I think the most successful stories are where I don’t either like or dislike characters, but I’m kind of drawn to the story because they’re human. I can relate to all these people. I mean, speaking only for myself, I’m not pristine, you know, even on my best day. So it was conversations with her, and the most obvious stuff was, let’s be careful with that outro.

And then, Sarah, as the young best selling Christian author: so that right there sounds like a Saturday Night Lights skit.

We’ve seen, seen both things, and I don’t really like either — I’ve seen stuff made by Christians for Christians, and it’s like, you’re not being sincere. This is not a documentary. This is just red meat for the home team.

Sure. Like, we have a film in theaters which is purportedly valorizing Reagan and at the same time allows him no nuance whatsoever.

Perfect. You’re right on it. Yeah. And it’s like you can smell his agenda on the way. So it was not only not throwing red meat to that, but, actually, we tried to have fun frustrating that. And it’s not the false equivalence of, you know, good people on both sides. We didn’t wanna do that either because I think that’s dangerous.

I think the film has a strong point of view, and it has a lot to say, but we really wanted to emerge as, if we’re lucky, we did our job and everybody that watched, whether they liked characters or disagreed, would tell us that they were people. And I think because Simon gets the most screen time, that didn’t feel like such a challenge. It’s the people who don’t have as much real estate like Claire. Really, the women who we needed to focus on. And I think, you know, it is it’s kind of the women’s film in a weird way,

No. It definitely is.

And I think with the debates, we felt clever that the real debate is not the debate on stage. The real debate of the film is what happens at the bench at the beginning, with Simon saying “this is a competition,” to which Claire says, basically, “no. It’s not.” And I think, in my opinion, by the end of the film she wins the debate. And so the women do this handing around of, and ultimately, the informing of this very, very crusty dude.

So I think it was not only their, in particular with Claire and Annette, their limited real estate, but the kind of incendiary quality having Sarah being a young, best-selling Christian author: let’s not be fighters, and let’s also not make them a Saturday Night Live skit.

I’ll finally move on to Simon now. And, again, the portions of this film that really got me invested were Claire, Sarah, and Annette’s. And I think they are the bulk of the film. And there is also the trope of, you know, the — I mean, you’ve noted that your work has been compared to Sorkin, and this is clearly another well-spoken, straight white guy who is ultimately shown to be needing taken down a peg. How does Simon stand out from that pack of, you know, I’ll just say Sorkin stock protagonists?

I mean, hopefully, in the same way that I was giving credit as an answer to one of your previous questions: what Patrick is doing. I think it’s a multifaceted performance. And the screenplay is multifaceted by design, but when I watch it, there’s a — what’s the phrase? I go back and forth on him, and I think that’s where we want the audience more or less to be. And, hopefully, that’s an answer to the Sorkin thing of, maybe he’s been accused of the roles servicing the story, that they’re just sort of like, here to satisfy this device that needs to move at a certain way. You know? That they just need to occupy that space.

And, hopefully, we’re a little different both from the the screenplay itself to the collaboration with these great actors, is that we’re all really focused on, you know, meat on the bone in terms of multifaceted persons as we are, you know, the “gotcha” he makes himself in certain scenes. There was almost a specific talk about how we subvert that in the next scene. So if he’s really getting kinda gross and petty in the second debate, then we make him tender almost like a trapped little boy when he’s laying on his wife’s lap in the next scene. So that, as the audience, we’re never really sure of our footing with him, even though we have this range of reactions to them.

And I guess my answer is that there’s more meat on the bone than just, you know, characters that are in service of plots. But it’s hard too. You know? It’s so funny. Everyone’s association is not only different on the day they watch it, but in five years.

So that was, you know, again, like, our North Star of, not that we wanna future proof this, but like, we would like this thing to just be a capital-S story. And if we see any chance of this thing being interesting today, let alone in five years, I think it’s we find the drama and we turn the screws and we make sure that these characters are people even if they totally suck.

And, Simon does, on several occasions, suck.

Yes. And one more thing that we did was test audiences. I hate it. I’m too sensitive, but we do it every time. I made three short films before this. And I get angry. I don’t like it. It’s the cliche of, like, sharing your child with someone or whatever and then being like, “I don’t know. I don’t like the face.”

But it’s always really valuable. We hear things back, and as much as I’m depressed for two weeks after, in particular, things emerged about Simon — and we try to populate those test screenings with people that I’m close to and then representing a broad cross section. So it’s not just, like, you know, a bunch of dudes like me, because that’s gonna be a pretty shallow reading on the film — that cross section, actually, to your exact point, told us that Simon was coming on way too hot.

And off the feedback of the feedback screening, we went in to specifically take out a couple moments where it was just, let’s remove our response of his. And there’s two that I can think of in particular where we have him sit quietly and stare at a painting canvas rather than offer this little digging joke to his wife. We called it our ‘softening Simon’ tour.

And I never thought we were gonna be doing that, but that was, like, the consistent feedback from the feedback screening. And we had, you know, before the final cut, went in and really tried to find these breaths where we could just see him being hurt or surprised or feeling betrayed or something other than having the quickie saying off the tip of his tongue because that really runs the risk of being worn out.

Yeah. And apologies for going back to Sorkin, but this film did remind me a lot of “Steve Jobs.” Like, even in the opening, with, the “let’s walk into the building, shall we?” And we get this long tracking shot behind the scenes of this event, and I’m just like, “okay. I’m watching this movie again.” And I love “Steve Jobs,” but that film is a movie where everyone always has the exact perfect response. And there’s a space that needs to be had for that, for the “All About Eve”s where everyone has the exact right line to throw back. And so I admire that you took some of those out then.

That’s so nice to hear, and I really appreciate you watching the film and for your insight and questions. It’s refreshing when someone engages with the film and comes prepared.

I mean, I’m a film critic: that’s my gig. I love the medium, and when a film presents a messy picture, I get to dissect.

I love that. That makes me so happy.