After rupturing her Achilles tendon in summer 2016, Alex O Eaton spent five months bedridden in her parents’ home in Nashville, where she grew up. She’d never taken a screenwriting class, at least not officially. She did, however, spend two years as Jonah Hill’s assistant, and worked closely with him on developing a screenplay that eventually became the Hill-directed Mid ’90s, which is set for release this year. Eaton calls the experience “kind of this beautiful crash course.” She’d had an idea swimming in her mind for years, and partly to stave off stir-craziness, she decided to try her hand at a script.Â
Mountain Rest, the film Eaton wrote that summer, is a tense, imagistic drama with an almost somnambulant rhythm and a honeyed, incandescent glow thanks to director of photography Ashley Connor. (Connor also shot this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post.) Eaton says Connor read the script while flying on an airplane, then fell asleep — and when she woke up, she’d dreamed the whole movie.
Frankie (Kate Lyn Sheil) and her teenage daughter Clara (Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer) head to her family’s mountain cabin to visit Frankie’s mother, Ethel (a wounded, acidic turn by industry vet Frances Conroy). Frankie hasn’t seen or talked to her mother in 16 years. Ethel is a former actress who’s constructed a kind of parallel reality for herself in which her long-gone Hollywood days are forever present. She lives with a much younger man named Bascolm (Shawn Hatosy), whose motivations seem murky at times. The cabin and its surrounding landscape seem to come alive around the characters, who try to work through resentments, newly stirring emotions and the suffocating weight of secrets. On the night of a big costume party, Ethel delivers a caustic, rambling speech to her guests before Bascolm finally sends them home with a weary thank-you.
Mountain Rest — showing as part of the New Directors Competition — makes its world premiere at the Nashville International Film Festival on May 12 and will screen again on May 17. Eaton spoke to the Scene by phone from New York.
Can you talk about how the idea for the script came together?
The idea for the script I’ve kind of had in my head since 2009. My parents went to a kind of funeral party for a friend of theirs. Since then, I’ve been pretty fascinated with the idea. ... I mean, how I’ve been taught about death, and how I feel like most Americans, at least, think about death [is] as always a bad thing — and this woman really embraced her death in a way that I felt was so beautiful. And my parents’ experience at this party was just unlike anything I had ever been told about. She really wanted to go out in blazing glory, and I just thought that was so great.
When did you start putting your production team together, and how did that happen?
I finished the script that summer, and then I went back to New York and I didn’t really touch it. Then a friend of mine who is an executive producer on the movie, he read it and offered to show it to his manager, and his manager is now my manager. ... And once it started, it snowballed out of control — in a good way [laughs]. ... I had my producer by May of last year, and then I got together with Lora Criner in Nashville, who is my line producer, and we started building out our production team. Then we shot it in August of last year, so it was a very quick turnaround.
And it’s all shot on location in North Carolina?
Blue Ridge Mountains. Shooting at the cabin was a very crucial thing to me. It’s like a character to me. The house and that landscape, I’m so connected to. ... So much of the art that’s there was painted by [my dad’s] grandparents, my great-grandparents. There’s a portrait in the living room where it’s a woman with a dog, and that’s my grandmother. And then there’s a portrait behind Ethel’s head when she’s giving that speech, and that’s a portrait of my dad. ... Normally there’s no cell service and no internet, and during prep when I was working with my art department and my cinematographer, like, we were really just there, doing it. No one was on Instagram, you know? We really had to just become completely immersed in our surroundings. Which was special. ... I’ve talked to people who are on sets where the second that someone calls “cut,” everybody takes out their phones. ... It felt like everybody wanted the best for the movie, and it was very communal. ... I had multiple people come up to me and say that they’ve never worked on a film set like that.
Natalia Dyer also has roots in Nashville. Did you know her before the production?
No. I had never met her. I didn’t know that she was from Nashville. I met her in New York. ... When I met her, it was just kind of an instant connection. ... She’s just so sweet and ready to do anything, and her performance is really strong.
Nashville being sort of a small town, did you end up knowing the same people or having any overlap?
Yeah, we did. ... She’s younger than me, but we still know some of the same people, and her dad lives in Berry Hill, where my dad’s [recording] studio is. ... Every time I go back [to Nashville], I’m like, “I don’t know anyone anymore!” ... But I mean, so much of the crew was Nashville-born and bred. It felt like a big Nashville production, even though we didn’t shoot in Nashville.
Right. And the music.
All of it. Natural Child, Savoy Motel, Lionlimb, which — Stewart Bronaugh, this guy I went to high school with, him and this guy Josh Jaeger — they were in Angel Olsen’s band for four years. She actually makes a cameo in the movie, as Cleopatra. ... And then my dad [Robin Eaton] did the score, so it’s a lot of Nashville.
Question about Ethel’s character: Is her story based on anyone real?
Very loosely, yeah [laughs]. I haven’t actually decided if I’m gonna reveal that [laughs].
There were things about her story that sounded familiar. I thought maybe Sondra Locke.
It’s not Sondra Locke, but it’s so funny you said that, because ... I was looking at her to play that part.
She’s from Tennessee, she’s with a much younger man, and she was sort of exiled from Hollywood.
Yes! I mean, I think it’s maybe a more common story than people realize. Yeah, no, it’s not her. Sorry, this is so odd. ... It’s based on a family friend who was an actress, but she’s no longer with us.Â
How does it feel to be premiering in your hometown?
I’m so thrilled. I already know I’m gonna cry the second that I’m there. ... My grandmother actually passed away during the making of the movie. ... It was very sudden, so my whole family was dealing with that, and that was really hard. But it almost was very cathartic to be making a movie about a grandmother dying, and having my grandmother die, and being in a place that my other grandmother’s ashes are scattered. It all was very beautiful and organic. ... I’m excited for my family to see it, and my friends, and my grandmother’s friends to be able to see it — I dedicated it to her. And it just makes a lot of sense to have its homecoming there.
