“No Sleep Till”, interview with director Alexandra Simpson and actors Jordan Coley and Brynne Hofbauer

At the 81th Venice Film Festival, Fred Film Radio interviewed director Alexandra Simpson and actors Jordan Coley and Brynne Hofbauer to talk about “No Sleep Till”. A film, featured in competition at International Critics Week, about a hurricane that is threatening the coastal town of Atlantic Beach, Florida.

The genesis of the movie

Is there an image or a particular element Alexandra Simpson started from to make “No Sleep Till”? “I think the one image I had before even writing or anything like this was a person in a house at night with lights on and rain falling. I think that was just something in my head. And then as to where it ended up in the film, I was very inspired by the locations of where we shot themselves”.

Life (and emotions) on set

The film follows multiple characters in the hours leading up to the hurricane’s arrival. Throughout “No Sleep Till” there are more spoken sections and other more silent ones. From this point of view, how were the actors guided by the director? “I met Alexandra where I was working. I was waitressing and she came up to me and we had this whole talk. And I was definitely interested because I did not want to turn that down”, explains Brynne Hofbauer. “And when I first got to the first set, I didn’t realize it was going to be this whole thing. I had no idea what I was getting into. And then I fell in love with it. Everyone became a family. And I really liked playing the character I played because I did grow up in that area. So imagining not being able to stay there or it getting destroyed, that definitely would be something that I wouldn’t want to happen. So I feel like I would have the same reaction that June did in the movie”.

“I remember when Alex reached out to me to do the film, she wanted me to play someone who was sort of like me in a way. I’m a writer and a performer. I do a lot of comedy as well. And so I knew I was going to have to bring that to the part”, remember Jordan Coley. “But I remember being very intimidating because the first day. Alexandra has the scenes written out how she wants them to go, the sort of emotional arc of them. And often she had very specific lines. But she also allowed for us to create the scenes ourselves as well because she wanted it to sound like I would speak it”.

The hurricane as a metaphor?

Is the hurricane a metaphor used by Alexandra Simspon in “No Sleep Till” to talk about the time we are living? “I wouldn’t say metaphor, but a feeling that is common to our uncertainty. We are constantly uncertain. Young generations, but I think everyone because we know climate change and economic collapse. In this town also, it’s changing so much. Like it’s modernizing so fast. All these things are happening around us. And there’s a sort of stagnation that can settle in because what are you going to do? What can you do? So I think that the stagnation and the impossibility to even react was something that I took from what I feel and see. But I don’t know if it was intellectually thought. I didn’t think to myself ‘the hurricane is a metaphor’. It was also just to speak of a place that is constantly vulnerable to hurricanes as well”.

Plot