Premiere of Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men #AFF28

Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men by Lorien Haynes
23 SHORT FILMS, 21 FEMALE DIRECTORS, 1 MOVIE FEATURE TO SUPPORT SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL ABUSE

Poster design by Anthony Kirk: Homemade, scrapbooking elements using a familiar medium of Polaroid photographs reveal clues by way of a handwritten label nicknaming each guy. “Mr. Jung-Freud” for The Therapist, as well as “Mr. Peter Pan,” “Mr. Some-Guy-Off-The-Telly,” and “Mr. Wouldn’t Know a Nice Guy if He Slapped Me in the Face,” -- just a few of the least harmful men. The names of the directors are embossed onto embossing tape with a DYMO label maker. Anyone who was around from the 1960s-1989 would recognize it.

The film Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men, premiered on October 23 at the 28th Annual Austin Film Festival, offering live and virtual screenings. Congratulations on the premiere to all of the entire team of actors, directors, producers, crew members and composers who volunteered their time to get this film made. The film was made prior to the pandemic and has become much more relevant due to the unfortunate reports of an increase in domestic violence cases occurring during the pandemic while isolating at home. 

It opens with the filmmaker, Lorien Haynes, portraying herself, The Woman, at the point in which she is devastated, beaten, and staggering into the shower with bruises on her shoulder, bleeding from an assault. We’re drawn into wondering what happened and who did this? Her daughter (Clara McGregor) arrives to comfort her. Moments later we see her meet her new therapist. We never see his face, yet, the voice of Alan Cumming is certainly recognizable. He collects information about her history while offering support. She struggles through a traumatized memory to recall the details. Her jacket has a button that reads “I AM SURVIVING”.

Incredibly smooth editing by Matthew Cooke was key in connecting her as the survivor who is telling the story while parts of the individual short films act as flashbacks. The entire film becomes much more cohesive than if the short films were presented as individual vignettes or episodes. 

As a writer and a mother, Haynes is penning a thoughtful diary for her daughter, and offering title pages to aid in creating fluid transitions from one relationship to the next. She allows us the firsthand experience of her journey through each therapy session. 

The stigma of admitting to oneself that you need therapy is tough, so using titles in the diary pages such as, “Reasons to Go Into Therapy” or “Reasons to Not Go Into Therapy” opens the conversation; breaks down the wall. Talking about the problem you don't like talking about is a huge factor in why people avoid finding a therapist.

The diary format also is used to help her daughter learn from her “lessons”. The notation titled “lesson learned” follows the story of each relationship. Each story is heartbreaking, and too often painfully familiar. Hopefully, we learn to never make the same mistake twice. It is condensed in a simple, but memorable phrase. For example, at the conclusion of “Mr. Peter Pan,” it reads, “When a man asks you to babysit, make sure it doesn’t mean him.”

As discovered most often in therapy, a pattern is revealed. She admits to The Therapist, “I know there are some very nice men out there, but I just don’t want to sleep with them.” It is not solely the problem of the guy being a thief, or a bully, or an addict, it is that the men all seem to have one problem in common: that they give up on making the relationship work; it's too much work to fight for the relationship. The Woman is the only one in the relationship making sacrifices for them.

In addition to writing the film, which began first as staged readings in Los Angeles, Haynes chose to play herself. She said in the post-screening Q&A that it was important to make the woman relatable to any woman you could meet on the street. It was her intention to play herself; not adhering to the pressure of aesthetics that actresses go through of maintaining a youthful and thin appearance. She said that The Woman was not supposed to be likable in that way. In this way, she's able to allow herself to be vulnerable. She said that it was important to be as honest and truthful as she could be to remain consistent in character. 

In the pre-recorded Q&A, Haynes described how she found that each film had onset parity -- a 50/50 man to woman ratio. She witnessed female directors and female directors of photography bringing their own vision to create each story. She said that she was accepting of everyone’s vision and allowed them to take control. Saffron Burrows directed the final scenes. Haynes said that Burrows really pushed her hard in that scene to go somewhere that I couldn't have gone without her.  Haynes said that both Jason Isaacs and Saffron Burrows collaborated on writing “Indigo” with her and was the script that went furthest away from what she had originally written. 

"The pathos of it is that she's had so many negative experiences with men that she's not capable of having a positive one," said Haynes. In "Stonebridge" directed by Jodhi May, it was May who had the idea to increase the age difference with Issy Knopfler as The Woman and James Purefoy as Stonebridge, because originally the characters were the same age. "This gives the whole dynamic a very different feel. It was this that helped Haynes see another person's vision of her work. "It was about not being a control freak as a writer... It's tough as a writer to let go into that space because you inhibit your world, you control the world that you write, you have a reason why you're writing something in the first place... In this case, I was very lucky to be close to production and seeing something being written realized."

The experiment of writing this film further encouraged Haynes to keep writing. She said that she has wanted to write films with a social purpose and tell stories relevant to us now. She has gone on to write about climate, immigration, and reproductive rights. Haynes is working on a story about Shakespeare’s women and their story of abuse. This blog writer is looking forward to seeing more stories from all Haynes as well as all of the collaborators on this film.

All of the directors are women who Haynes knew as friends whom she encouraged to direct especially if they had never directed. Each of them has gone on to direct something else almost immediately after making their short film.

Spread the word about this important work and maybe we'll see it play more festivals, or have wider distribution.

View the PSA made during the making of the film.

The list of directors is below and is followed by the list of cast members.
Directed by 

Talia Balsam

Saffron Burrows

Fuschia Sumner...(Olivier)

Lucy Brown ...(Eve)

Gia Carides ...(Duke)

Maryam d'Abo ...(Richardson)

Kate Danson ...(Loudon)

Tara Fitzgerald...(Moody)

Katherine Flynn...(Longfellow)

Amy Gardner ...(Egerton)

Laura Merians Goncalves...(Longfellow)

Lizze Gordon ...(Elm)

Sienna Guillory...(Honiton)

Robin Gurney ...(Tully)

Susannah Harker...(Richardson)

Lorien Haynes ...(Moody and Survivors Story)

Falguni Lakhani...(Adams)

Jodhi May...(Stonebridge)

Amanda Nguyen...(Elm)

Barbara van Schaik...(The Survivors Story)

Cast, who all volunteered their time to fight sexual violence

Jason Isaacs ... Indigo

Eoin Macken ... Adam

James Purefoy ... Stonebridge

Alan Cumming ... The Therapist

Lesley Manville ... The Mother

Sullivan Stapleton ...Icabod

Jonathan Cake ... Oliver

Ben Lawson ... Longfellow

Jonathan Firth ... Egerton

Adam Rayner ... Campbell-Scott

Richard Wilson ... Michael

Alex Désert ... Loudon

Clara McGregor ... The Daughter

Lex Shrapnel ... Tully

Joe Sims ... Moody

Issy Knopfler ... The Woman

Lorien Haynes ... The Woman

Charlie Field ... Richardson

Emmett Carnahan ...Elm

John Power ... Honiton

Lyla Quinn … Young daughter

Richard Odufisan ...Opera Singer 

Sullivan, Stapelton

Travis Leete