Taylor Swift on regaining her music using “Secret-Agenty” tactics as a director and one day making a feature – Tribeca Festival
Taylor Swift delivered surprise guests and a surprising acoustic performance of Too good along with a thoughtful half-hour conversation about filmmaking with writer-director Mike Mills at the Tribeca Festival.
After a screening of her short film Too good (set to her elongated version of the song of the same name on the re-recorded version of the album Red published last year), she and Mills covered a number of topics. In addition to diving into the short, they talked about the challenges for female instructors, the ins and outs of the collaboration, and the efforts to dramatize a couple’s “lack of communication.” Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien, who play the main couple in Too goodwere not billed to be part of the afternoon, but they were brought on stage for the latter half of the lecture.
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She quoted John Cassavetes, describing his “secret agent-y” tactic of deliberately withholding information from the cast and crew. She gave a shoutout to a long video Mills directed for “I Am Easy to Find” by The National (whose guitarist, Aaron Dessner, has been a major collaborator with Swift recently), but found an accessible way to do so. “It really inspired me in ways that I can’t possibly exaggerate,” she said. Plus, she added, “We’re both members of Aaron Dessner’s cinematic universe!”
The sold-out audience at the Beacon Theater roared its worship at intervals throughout the 90-minute event. Mills remarked about the concert-like feeling on stage and joked, “I get so depressed when I take up my work and they do not do this,” he said, gesturing toward the audience. Swift then playfully disagreed, asking audiences about Mills’ latest feature film. “Who’s seen come on come on? ” she asked. As they let out a loud and prolonged scream, Mills wondered, “I have an experience out of my body.”
Swift said the pressure to direct, along with many other aspects of her artistic pursuit, was due to the fact that “I was not able to own my work.” While omitting the details, she referred to Scooter Brown’s acquisition and 2020 resale of the Big Machine Label Group, which controlled most of Swift’s master recordings. The transactions meant that Swift was not able to influence how her previous recordings were marketed or packaged. Swiftologists have examined the lyrics on her twin pandemic album, Folklore and Evermorefor allusions to the Braun saga.
The ever-expanding series of “Taylor’s versions” of albums like Red is aimed at regaining her power, a feeling similar to what she experienced behind the camera on Too good. “It was a very hard time for me,” she said of the loss of control over her master’s recordings. “Many of my most difficult moments and moments of extreme grief or loss were transformed into what my life looks like now.”
The conversation did not touch on the real-life conditions that inspired “All Too Well,” but Swift and O’Brien described a scene in the middle of the film where the two main characters fight, but ultimately make up and embrace. While the film’s overall concepts and framework were written and structured, sequences such as the fight were largely improvised.
“We repeat ourselves – we go in circles, you know?” said O’Brien. In a conventional project, he added, such repetitions are often cut down. “But that’s what makes it.” Swift added: “The other person does not hear you say it, so you say it this way. Maybe you say it louder. … You are trying to be heard. That is the lack of communication. “
Mills asked Swift, who has directed several short music videos, if she intended to pursue a feature film. “I would love that,” she said. “It would be so great to write and direct something,” even though it would probably be a project on a human scale akin to Too good. She also acknowledged at a later point in the conversation her “privilege of being able to take a camera herself”, noting that she fully funded the short, something very few new filmmakers (especially women) are unable to do.
As a final twist to an event billed as talk-only, Swift performed “All Too Well,” sang and played acoustic guitar. Earlier, she had noticed that the expanded version had only come to be recorded due to fans’ appetite for it.
When she came to a crucial line – “f – k patriarchy!” – audience singing reached peak volume.
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