Pat Mills, director of Don't Talk to Irene, stands on the red carpet at TIFF’s program announcement on Aug. 9 , 2017.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
After nine years in the making, Pat Mills finally got to premiere his love letter to Geena Davis, the optimistic and endearing Don't Talk to Irene. The director's second film (after 2014's Guidance) debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and stars newcomer Michelle McLeod as our titular Irene. A fat wannabe cheerleader who is bullied at school, Irene finds her resolve by confiding in a poster of dear Geena. This poster, plastered to Irene's bedroom ceiling and featuring Davis in the baseball movie to end all baseball movies A League of Their Own, talks back.
The Academy Award winner known for her roles in Beetlejuice, The Accidental Tourist, and Thelma & Louise only appears on screen in one dream sequence, but Davis's distinct voice is a constant throughout the empowering, body-positive film.
In an interview during TIFF, Mills recalls first seeing Davis in Thelma & Louise. "It was such a different movie about really flawed people. Her character was a bit naive, and she makes mistakes. And she had this big character arc – she had this bad-ass inside that had to be released, and I kind of felt like I related to that," said the director, who first broke into the industry as a child actor on the Canadian sketch comedy show You Can't Do That on Television in the 1980s.
Mills wrote his icon into the script from the very start, and when it was eventually sent to Davis, the director added a personal letter, hoping that this intimate plea might persuade her to sign onto the project. Soon after, Mills got news that he should expect a call from Davis.
"I just waited by the phone. I felt like Betty in an Archie comic, just waiting for Archie to call," Mills said. "Geena said that she found the script really funny, and she said something like 'I feel like John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich. Like, I kinda have to do this, don't I?'"
Incredibly wholesome next to the Spike Jonze film, Don't Talk to Irene sees its protagonist sent to a retirement home to complete community service when she gets suspended from school. Irene quickly befriends the lonely seniors and finds an unlikely squad to realize her cheer-leading dreams.
Shot in Hamilton ("I think it was a tax credit reason" Mills explains), Don't Talk to Irene is set in a fictional town that Davis's voiceover describes as the "most insignificant geographical location in North America." "My producer was based out of [Hamilton], and it just had the right aesthetic. A small town that's kind of run down in parts. But Hamilton has some beautiful parts too, so it's kind of surprising," Mills said diplomatically.
The movie has been a long time coming. In 2008, Mills won Telefilm's Pitch This program with just the film's premise. The completed script later won Best Comedy Screenplay at the 2013 Austin Film Festival. Telefilm was initially wary of funding Don't Talk to Irene because it was a large budget (by Canadian standards) for an unknown director's first feature film. They suggested Mills start with something smaller. "When I wasn't writing Irene I would go off and work on this other script where I could get a bit darker if I wanted," Mills said of Guidance, a comedy he wrote, directed and acted in. The film played at TIFF in 2014, quickly got U.S. distribution, and thereby soothed Telefilm's nerves.
Don't Talk to Irene trades in sensitive subject matter such as body shaming and self-esteem, topics that could come off as moralizing or condescending in the wrong hands. As an outspoken feminist and founder of The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the actor was highly attuned to this possibility. Consequently, Davis had "really good questions about the script" recalls Mills, specifically about how he planned to handle the performances of the seniors. "I talked about getting a lot of senior actors who had done a lot of theatre. I didn't want them to be like, shticky, or too broad. And I think that she liked that."
You would think that getting Davis to sign onto the movie would have been the hardest part, but it was in fact casting the perfect Irene. Mills explains that they "pushed [back] the shoot two or three times because we couldn't find our Irene. We looked everywhere. All across Canada, all across the U.S." Casting proved so frustrating because "the movie's lead is not someone who is typically encouraged to become an actor, just simply based on something like body type, so we really had to dig deep."
"We had a casting director out West, out East, and locally. We watched tons of tapes. We would e-mail body-positive blogs to post our casting call. We even saw people from Europe" explains the director. But as soon as Mills saw McLeod's self tape he knew he'd found his lead. He wanted the Peterborough, Ont.-born McLeod to nail her audition so he recommended she watch a holy trinity of hilarious female-driven comedies made up of Welcome to the Dollhouse, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, and Election to have a feel for the tone.
When asked how old his lead is in real life, Mills responds with a wry smile: "I'm not gonna tell ya." Still baby-faced, McLeod graduated from the University of Guelph before going on to Humber College for their Acting for Film and Television program.
"She's playing younger than she is, obviously. But she's a confident, strong person dealing with material that's about being bullied as a teenager," Mills explains. "She knows she's awesome." He adds that McLeod was able to access some painful memories but had a distance from it that many young actors who auditioned didn't yet. The director is certain that the role of Irene "would have been too real" for someone still working through issues of self-esteem.
McLeod as Irene is absolutely loveable. Her character's sweet cluelessness doesn't come off as anything but innocent. Nor does the film feel like the work of a patronizing director interloping in the psyche of a young girl. Instead, McLeod taps into the indomitable spirit of a girl who, guided by the all powerful Davis, can see beyond the hellscape of high school to the version of herself she dreams of becoming. Irene's unlikely alliance with the ultra-glam gender-bending Tesh (Andy Reid) helps both of them shine like small-town diamonds hidden in plain sight. Although the supporting cast didn't have a lot to work with in the script to fill out their characters, Reid and Kids in the Hall alum Scott Thompson perform their parts to the hilt.
It is clear that the film's tenderness is an extension of Mills himself. His experience as a child actor working in television has informed his vision as a director. "I want to create a really safe environment for my actors," he explains. "I know what it's like feeling young and vulnerable. You're scared and not everyone is professional around you. I remember when I was a child actor I was bullied on set, sometimes by the crew," recalls the filmmaker. "I just want people to feel safe because I haven't always. I want to create an environment on set where actors can actually just give, and not feel judged."