INTERVIEW: Director Martha Stephens goes ‘To the Stars’ in northwest Oklahoma
Photo: Kara Hayward stars as Iris Deerborne and Liana Liberato as Maggie Richmond in the drama To the Stars, a Samuel Goldwyn Films release. Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films / Provided by press site with permission.
To the Stars, the new movie written by Shannon Bradley-Colleary and directed by Martha Stephens, tells the story of two teenage girls in rural Oklahoma in the 1960s. One is a conservative farmer’s daughter, and the other is the new girl in town. The two form a friendship, despite the disagreement and oppression they face from their parents and the surrounding community.
Maggie (Liana Liberato) is a lesbian who is dismayed by her parents’ close-mindedness. She hopes that one day they will accept her, but this being the so-called Bible Belt and only the early 1960s, she comes to the realization that she’s stuck in dire circumstances. Iris (Kara Hayward) wants out of this rural town and looks to the horizon, with the hope that one day something or someone will take her way from these doldrums.
The parents of each girl play important factors in the movie as well. They each have their own story of how they ended up in Oklahoma and how their life is faring during these difficult times.
To the Stars, which had a successful run at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, is now being released virtually by Samuel Goldwyn Films. In addition to Liberato and Hayward, the film stars Jordana Spiro, Shea Whigham, Tony Hale and Malin Akerman.
“Typically I write my own scripts, so this is my first venture into working off of someone else’s screenplay,” Stephens said in a recent phone interview. “And what I really liked about it was that it just felt so earnest and tender, and it reminded me of my comfort movies, movies that I watched growing up that I felt drawn to, especially period films made by studios in the early ’90s / late ’80s like Dirty Dancing and My Girl. As a kid, these movies were so much part of the zeitgeist at the time, and something about To the Stars, it’s a little bit of that, which I was attracted to. But it also reminds me of a Douglas Sirk movie, like melodramas from the ’50s. It was those things that appealed to me, plus the setting and the characters and the ensemble nature. Yes, it’s about two teen girls, but it’s really about their parents, and their friends, and their friends’ parents, and the web of this little community and how the women in this community deal with repression, and disappointment, and sexuality and so on.”
Stephens, director of Land Ho!, said this small Oklahoma town in 1961 feels more like the 1950s. There is a lot of conservatism that doesn’t allow teenagers (or adults) to come out as gay or lesbian. Maggie and Iris are stuck in a community defined by its traditional Christian morals, which may lead the audience to question what would happen if these two protagonists were born, say, 50 years later.
“[Today] things are obviously much better in a lot of ways, but also we’re not as far as maybe I wish we were,” the director said. “It’s better than it was, I will say that. I do think Maggie now would hopefully be able to just live her life the way she wanted without interference from her parents, but that still happens in some places. There’s still bizarre thinking that goes on that I don’t understand, but what I really wanted to focus on in the story, yes, Maggie’s dad and Iris’ mom are both very misguided in the way they handle things with their daughters, but it still comes from a place of love. So I don’t know. I didn’t want to get preachy or judgy or anything like that because there are so many shades of gray. There’s so much to it.”
The relationship that forms between Maggie and Iris is key to appreciating the impact and message of To the Stars. For Stephens, she appreciated the fact that these two characters found the best versions of themselves reflected each other. She said that strong friendships for teenage girls are important and necessary.
“I like to think that the movie is hopeful,” she said. “I worked with Shannon on the script. I had notes, and they weren’t major notes. It was mostly like let’s develop this character a little more, or let’s restrain some of the melodrama in this scene. But overall it was great. I think Shannon was just so jazzed to finally have one of her scripts be produced. She’s sold scripts to studios for the last 15 years and stuff, but nothing’s been produced yet. I pitched myself to her and told her my take and the way I wanted to do it visually, and she liked it. And so we were on the same page.”
Bradley-Colleary visited the set a few times and even has a cameo during a school dance scene. Both she and Stephens would talk many times, and the screenwriter became something of a big sister to the director.
“I loved working with her on this and having that collaborative partnership,” Stephens said. “It makes me pause and wonder, hmm, I do love writing, but maybe directing other people’s scripts is for me because I do think you can be objective. You don’t take it as personally if they’re not working because it’s still precious to you, but it’s not precious in the same way, I guess.”
A key character in To the Stars is the rural landscape of Oklahoma. The film was actually shot in the state, and the exact location came only after Stephens and her producer scoped out many different towns and regions. Originally they yearned for a spot in the panhandle, but it would have been too difficult to get the entire cast and crew to the location.
“I wanted to find the most stark, dreamlike location I could find, but unfortunately with some places like that, unless you have a ton of money to throw down, there’s just not the infrastructure to support a film crew and everything,” the director said. “So we ended up shooting as close to that as possible, like northwest Oklahoma in this town called Enid. Oklahoma has a good tax incentive, and it works with this prairie heartland story. Even though we set ourselves up in Enid, we actually shot all over northwest Oklahoma.”
And that feeling of Oklahoman authenticity comes through strong in the film — and in the characters’ hopes and dreams for the future.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
To the Stars, directed by Martha Stephens, is now available digitally from Samuel Goldwyn Films. Click here for more information.
