Nicola Rose
Nicola Rose is an award-winning, New York City-based filmmaker. In 2021, Nicola directed her first feature-length film, Goodbye, Petrushka, a coming-of-age comedy. She also produced the film, together with her producing partner Tierney Boorboor. The film premiered at Dances With Films in Los Angeles in summer 2022.
Prior to that, Nicola directed, produced and/or wrote the shorts Creative Block (2017), In the Land of Moonstones (2018), Gabrielle (2019), and Biff & Me (2020), all of which have won numerous awards on the indie film festival circuit. Most recently, she was invited to show Biff & Me at San Diego Comic-Con International, where she spoke on a panel about the film.
Outside of filmmaking, Nicola has worked as a translator of French, and a freelance casting director, and for a time, a professional puppeteer. She is a graduate of Columbia University and the Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle in Paris.
I really enjoyed your film, Goodbye, Petrushka. I watched it a couple of weeks ago, and it was so heartfelt. I’m not the biggest rom-com girl so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it!
Thank you. I'm surprised how good it came out, actually, because we did it under pretty much every constraint in the book. It was made on a very small budget under COVID circumstances with a skeleton crew, non-union, which was very related to COVID as well. We had every constraint in the book, but it came up pretty amazing, considering, and it’s the first feature film I directed.
That is so amazing. I have a list of questions for you but I feel like we can play it by ear and feel free to improvise. So I actually admittedly don’t really understand the film world—how it works, and what it takes to direct a feature film.
Oh, that makes two of us!
Really! But you’ve made this film, so that seems impossible. Did you write the whole script and direct the whole film, how did you do that? How did you get into all of this?
Let me tell you the breakdown. So I got into film in general, actually, a little later in my life, about seven years ago. It was an evolution that came from having been involved in theater as a kid, and then as a young adult. I was actually a professional puppeteer for a while, like the girl in the movie. And I'm not anymore, but I still have a lot of admiration for people who go and wiggle puppets around for a living and make art out of it. I think it's kind of amazing. So it was something I wanted to put into the story. From acting and puppetry and all that stuff that I left behind, I now work behind the camera, and make other people do the acting.
2015 was when I made my first low budget, actually no-budget, web series project. And then from there, I just kept graduating as much as I could, and trying to make the next project better than the last. So after the web series came my first short film, which was a short film called Creative Block, that actually kind of ended up turning into Goodbye, Petrushka five or six years later.
And then in between those two things, there were three or four other short films. Basically, each time, things got a little better, the production value got a little better, and I got better at directing and editing. And then Petrushka was by far the biggest project that I had taken on—not the biggest project I ever necessarily worked on—but the biggest project that I was at the helm of.
My producing partner Tierney Boorboor had come along recommended to me as somebody I should know, not specifically for this project. Ideally, you should have more than two producers on a film, but it was really just the two of us. I don't think I knew I was going to do this project time, but she was the friend of a friend of somebody I was working with. They were like, “Oh, you know, I think you two would work together really well and you should make a film together.” She was a producer. And I talked to her, and we ended up talking some more.
One of my things I do on the side is casting, like freelance casting for other people's movies. And so Tierney at the time was working on another feature film, which was a horror feature called Hideout. She and the director of that film met up with me, and because I was already somebody she knew, she knew I did casting. And she asked if I like to do casting on that film. And I said, “Oh, well, sure!” And that was how we got to working together and found we worked well together.
And she said to me, having seen my short films, “Oh, are you going to make a feature?” And I was like, “Well, if anybody will give me money to do it!” It was a big “if”, but theoretically, I wanted to. I was actually kind of at the career point where I was like, either I'm going to do a feature, or I'm going to have to pick something else to do because I can't just make shorts forever. Because shorts are a wonderful art form, but they don't make you any money. They don't really get you enough notice to speak of, even if they do amazing. It’s just sort of underground. It's all very hidden. And it's not right, actually, but it's just a very under-known thing, all these short films that are out there, they don't get a lot of press.
Yeah, I see. That makes sense, because I can't remember the last time that I've seen a short film promoted unless it was on Netflix.
Right, exactly. They exist sort of as almost like showpieces. People put them in festivals, and you gather your street cred as a good director among festivals, and among other film people, but you can't really make a career on them, unfortunately, because they're really hard to do. They act as as stepping stones or monkey bars, or whatever kind of metaphor you wish to use, to get you to the next thing. Anyway, I do know somebody who right out of the gate, her very first film that she ever made was a feature. And that's incredible. Nobody does that. But she managed to find her investors.
So it’s more like you have to build up from some smaller projects.
Yeah, that's why I did all those shorts. Yeah. Like this, and this, and this, going up stepwise.
I feel like being a director is such an incredibly exciting choice of life and career.
It is, although in between, basically, for two years in between each project, it's extremely boring or stressful. You're basically just doing like a lot of paperwork of preparation as a producer. And then you all of a sudden get to direct something and it's fast and exciting.
So there's a lot of downtime in between?
Yeah, a ton of downtime while you're gathering your investment. But anyway, so Tierney and I spoke on the phone about this project, and right around the time COVID happened in 2020, that was when we got together and decided to make this film happen.
Right around March 2020, the beginning of the pandemic?
Around March 2020 was when we first said, “Yeah, let's see if we can get people to invest in this and get it to happen.” I think she had time on her hands to read it, and that was kind of what set everything else in motion.
Wow, the timing of that is so interesting. So Petrushka, let’s talk about it: after watching it I felt that it was so personal to you. It felt in a way like I had known you because I watched the film. I wanted to know: what percentage of it was actually taken from your real life?
Oh yeah, people are always curious. I think about well, at least half of it. I you know, this number has changed depending on kind of how I'm feeling at that moment. But so, I have said different percentages, but I feel like at least half of it, because a lot of the circumstances are taken from my life. But the thing about doing that is that a lot of people make films based on their lives, and we should write what we know. And we should derive things from what we're most familiar with, because they're going to be the most specific and the most heartfelt. But beyond a certain point, I think it's dangerous because we start just sort of, you know, I don't want to say navel gazing, but there's a point beyond which it's so self reflective that it’s not interesting to anybody else anymore. You know, I was trying not to run into that if possible.
I felt like there was a good balance, because I wasn't sure how much was fact and how much was fiction. You know, there were some things that seemed really outlandish, outrageous, but then it was a blend between the outlandish and then the completely plausible.
Thank you, I appreciate that, because I wanted it to sort of keep the viewer never quite knowing if what they're seeing is objective. Did it really happen? Or is this just what Claire thinks happened? We never know for sure. I don't even really know for sure. So, it is a bit of a question. So to tell you the truth, the basic facts that are true, are that I did live in France as a as a student, and I did my master's degree there. I also did part of my bachelor's degree there. I did both. And I did work as a puppeteer when I was younger. And all the characters in the film are are based on real people, but the situations are mostly fabricated or semi-fabricated. However, if there's something in the film that seems particularly outlandish, like '“Oh, my God, that's way over the top. That never happened,” it probably did happen! You'd have to tell me a specific one, and I can tell you yes or no.
That's so funny. Oh, like the whole super-mean French family, did that happen?
Yeah, that happened! That's the one that people think oh, my God, you just created like weird, wacky villains that have no relation to reality. I'm always explaining to people that no, that actually happened. There have been people that are like, “Oh, my God, you must totally hate the French.” And it’s like no, I consider myself part French, at least at heart, and I speak French fluently, and I spend every day speaking French. Most of my friends are French. This is a real family I knew.
It happened, and that’s life, and this was your experience.
There's there's very little there that's exaggerated. I mean, circumstances have changed. In real life maybe they had a boy and a girl, rather than two girls. There are details that are made up, I don't think the little girls jumped up and down saying, “dirty b****!” I don't think that ever happened. At least if it did, I was not there. But, you know, the business with getting spit on by a little kid, it happened exactly as shown. That's what people think, “Oh, come on. That didn't happen.” Chances are, if it seems like it didn't, it did.
So the dream of France, the romanticized version, I feel like I also had that dream. In high school I learned French and I was very into French culture. And I felt like there was such a hope of, you know, maybe someday I can move to France, that whole thing. I didn’t ever do it because I think things in the US are always tying me here.
That's my problem right now, is that I've been back to France many times, but I've been living here again (in the US) permanently since 2012, and just going back to France once a year. And I have to say it's a very imperfect situation, I've never been happy with that solution. It feels like a compromise. And almost like as if I've given up in a way. But you talk about things that tie you here, and there's always something that is tying me here. In my case, it's because I can't work in France without going to some extreme effort and changing everything about what I do, what my professional goals are, what my field even is. You know, if I were a very, very famous top of the line movie director and wanted to move there and make films, I'm sure that would be different. As it is, it's something that I do that, at this point in my life doesn't constitute all my income. In France, if you're moving there as an immigrant, you pretty much have to have one job that is of an obvious societal function and prove that. So it would be giving up. I mean, people would say, “That's ridiculous, it doesn't mean giving up your movie career.” But it does if I want to make money from it.
I see. So in the US, maybe this is a dumb question, but how do you make money for movies in the US?Is it that you go to festivals and you build a buzz around the movie, or something along those lines?
Nobody fully understands it. That can be the beginning, you’re onto it. Basically, if you were to go to a festival, which, festivals don't pay you anything. But if you were to go to a festival, or maybe if you win a huge cash prize at one of the very top festivals, that would be something. I think I’ve won a grand total of $100 from festivals or something, which was, I think, one monetary prize from a very lovely festival in Queens, New York, they give me a check. But usually what usually what will happen is, let's say that you go to a very good top of the line festival and your film wins, or it may not even have to win a prize, but it gets a lot of notice there. A distributor picks you up, and you get what they call an MG or minimum guarantee for your film, that can make you money. And then if the film does really well in distribution and a mix of online sales and then sales to theaters and stuff, yes, you can make a lot of money from that. I mean in an ideal world make a lot of money. Otherwise you can potentially make some money. So yes, the other way that you can make money doing movies is simply as a freelancer, if you're working on other people's movies, doing things like, “Oh, I'll do your casting.” People who work in post production make a good amount of freelance money.
Casting is you sitting behind and doing screen tests and choosing who you think would be good for the role, right?
Exactly. And that's something that I don't I'm not looking to do that as a profession. I'm not looking to be a casting director. But it's a gig that I've fallen into over the years that I happen to really like. It's something that when you're making your own movies, you kind of have to want to do. I mean, there are people who outsource the casting of their own movie to other people and say, “Okay, you find some good people for me,” but I'm not somebody who does that.
So for Petrushka, you probably did the casting for it and chose every person that would be in there.
Yeah, that's all my hands.
Yes, nice, I loved the person you cast as Julia, she was so much fun.
She’s something else, yeah, Casey Landman, she had very recently at the time graduated from NYU, and she sent him this tape. Oh my god, she just got that character like 1,000%. And comedy is so hard, harder than anything else. And I think nobody else—not nobody else, there were others who were fantastic, I remember a few others who were fantastic—but she just understood exactly what I was going for. It's like, “Oh, she got the joke. She got the joke!” Because there were people who tried to do that as though it was dead serious. Yeah, to me, you know, it was a bad warning sign. Like, no, no, no, don't take —I don't mean it seriously!
I had questions about the colors in your film, the color grading and if you had control over that. I just felt like there was intention in those choices to give your film a certain aesthetic quality. Both the colors and the music felt really special.
Yes. So in both of those cases, I was back behind the scenes, making decisions and choosing stuff. But there were people who are actual technicians in those fields who were, you know, in the case of color, we had a colorist Brett Reader who lives in England, actually, the power of technology, your colorist doesn't have to be where you are at all. And so basically, here's this guy across the sea, whom you're FaceTiming with, and he's coloring your film and saying, “Does this work? Okay, no, does this work?” Until you find a balance that you both like.
Basically, with color, my producer and I would show him, or give him sort of a palette that we were looking for, or examples from other films, images from other films and say, “Okay, here's the sort of thing that we're after in terms of coloring.” Also the DP, the director of photography, was instrumental in deciding how to shoot things, how to light things. His name is Omar Torres, the guy who shot the film. And so between him and us and, and Brett, we were all responsible for sort of choosing this color palette. Although this is not typically the way it's done, this reflects the extent to which It was a low budget movie, my producer and I were actually the ones who chose the colors in terms of like, clothing and things like that. And then our art director Eric Fick was the guy who basically led the charge together with his team on deciding how everything was going to be colored around everybody, everything that you see in terms of the set. And then our colorist is the one who changes everything to kind of its final form.
Wow. So when you're actually directing do you sit in a director's chair? And everyone is like moving around you and you're making decisions, telling people what to do, is that how it goes?
I'm usually sitting on the floor, I don't have a chair, usually. Or I'm usually standing behind the camera next to the camera man or woman, and usually telling people you know, basically, okay, relax. My first thing always is to tell them to relax or to settle; I always say ready, settle, action. I don't want them to be remotely tense about what they're doing. Because if they're comfortable, if they're relaxed, if they're playful, they're going to do their best work. Always. And so, I kind of just try to stay as relaxed and be as out of the way as I can, which is very hard for me, because I'm not a relaxed or calm person. I'm actually extremely tense, but my job is to make sure that my actors feel their best and that they do their best possible. So I kind of just sit just out of the frame. I don't want to call myself a cheerleader, it's not that but I'm there for support. And then see what needs tweaking, and then say, “Okay, here's how I want to do this. Here's how we all want to do this differently this time, try this.” And, you know, it depends on the actor, and it depends on the scenario, how much direction you actually need to give them. Do you need to say, “Okay, try it like this,” and then you do the line for them and see what they get? Or do you actually just give them a an approximation and say, okay, you know, “this time more jealous,” you know, some adjective? Depends, it’s always different.
Well, I feel like I'm learning a lot about the whole process of it just from this one conversation.
This was not my first time directing, but it was my first time directing something of this scope. So I learned a great deal myself, if I can pass it on, so much the better!
So the film itself, I felt like it was very unique and emotionally honest. Thinking about it today, it was just such a feeling you evoked. A vibe. It reminded me of certain periods in my own life and what it felt like to be growing up, to do certain “adult” things for the first time, to explore the world.
Thank you, that’s what you want, that’s what you want people to feel like.
I wanted to remind everybody of something that happened in their own lives, you know, the best compliment, or set of compliments from different people, I feel like if I were to sort of amalgamate them all into one set of feedback, or one big, big feedback item that I've gotten from people is, “Oh, my gosh, that reminds me of when I was young or younger,” or, you know, traveling, or, I fell in love with this person or thing or, you know, if somebody has a specific memory that they feel like it's bringing back then the movie is doing its job. Because that's way apart from any consideration of, you know, there are people, for example, who have been tasked with reviewing it, who feel the need to mention, well, “it is a low budget movie.” Of course it is. Of course it is. But that means that you're not really—you shouldn't be distracted by that. Actually, it's not a low budget movie in such a way that it's actually going to take you out of the story. Are there massive special effects? I would say not, in the sense that there are none. It's not meant to blow you away with how much it cost. It's meant it's it's meant to remind you of something that was really important to you.
Exactly. Yeah, it doesn't need all the special effects. Those can even be a kind of distraction from the center of the film.
Yeah, we were using the budget, maxing out every dollar for what we were trying to do. And I think we achieved that; what we were trying to do was different.
Yeah. Who do you feel inspired by? It could be not even not even a director anything related to film. It could just be anyone that you find inspiring.
Yeah, of course. So well, I do go back to directors because with film, the directors that I'm probably most inspired by are Wes Anderson, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet who did Amélie, and Céline Sciamma, but after those three, I tend to go to films rather than directors.
What are the top films that you love?
There's another one, which is called The Double life of Veronique, which is by a Polish director called Krzysztof Kieslowski. He passed away, but he did this film in the early 90s, and it was actually one of my models for Petrushka. Not that you'll actually look at it and say, “Oh, I see, she was driving it from this,” as matter of fact, you'll see that Amélie was derived from that. But it does have a sort of other-worldliness. I mean, in in a sadder and somewhat creepier way than Petrushka does. But it has to do with basically you're seeing things through the lens of this young woman, and you're never quite sure if you're seeing reality, or you're never quite sure if you're seeing objectivity, or if you're seeing things through her point of view, which is something that I always really like experimenting with in stories. And also, there's puppetry. And so you know, you can look at that, and you can kind of see where the line is.
And after that, there are movies that movies that I find really moving not because they're like, moving in the sense that we think of, “Oh, this was emotionally powerful,” but they're moving because they're so funny and they're so well-timed. One of the ones this is probably not what people expect, but one of the ones I always come back to for that is Addams Family Values, because it is just so silly. And this silliness is so perfectly timed. It's just beautifully done. Some of that's editing, but a lot of it is actor timing.
Very nice. I will check out both of those! That’s so funny, I feel like I was getting major Wes Anderson vibes in Petrushka.
Yes, it’s how I like to set up things.
Yes, it was that.
And a lot of the time it's not even on purpose. It's just like, I do it. And then I realized, oh, yeah, okay, this is probably why. I was probably thinking of this thing. But I try not to be very conscious of anything, I try just to sort of think from the back of my brain if that makes any sense.
That makes sense, it does.
Otherwise, I think things show up a little too awkwardly. And, you know, it's kind of like, there are things that come off as cringey. And it's because they are cringey. Like, basically, it's that aspect of life that I'm purposely evoking, and so people will remark on it and say, “Oh, my God, there's so much cringe in this trailer!” and like, yeah. Glad you noticed! That was the point! Or, “There's so much cringe in this film.” Yeah. It is literally full of it! Because I'm not sitting there thinking about, “What would look best?” I'm literally trying to convey these embarrassing feelings that we have, you know, especially as a girl growing up in a really messy and sort of unfortunate and not always, entirely, what's the word I'm looking for? She doesn't always do things in a way that has perfect optics.
She lets herself—the optics are sometimes bad, she lets herself be over-inspired by men and sort of pushed around by her first boyfriend, because she's really inexperienced, and she's really innocent. And through modern optics that can look slightly unfeminist, I think, and at the same time, somebody who was talking to me about film put it really well. They said, “It's story of a girl who's looking for somebody only to find out the person she's actually looking for is herself.”
I’m like yeah, that’s what it is. But she had to go through all the men to get there. She can't just be like, “I don’t need men!” That’s not how, unless you don’t like men, which is a whole other thing, that’s not how you start out. You probably start out because the biological imperative is, you know, we're looking for a person of the sex or gender that we like, and if the individuals we come across don't happen to work out, that's another thing. We eventually realize we're looking for ourselves and whether or not we are partnered, I think, you know, that is something we come to eventually. “Oh, I'm looking for myself.” Maybe you have a great partner, but that person isn't supposed to provide like literally everything you need. I mean, like in life. So that's something that I'm dealing with in my personal life too, always, not just when I was Claire's age, but like I'm 10 or 12 years older than her, and I'm still dealing with that. Definitely haven’t got it figured out.
I think for me too, there’s something where it’s like, “You can always give yourself what you need,” pretty much, most of it, but then in relationships, there’s a balance, we need other people so much but a lot of it comes from inside too.
It’s tricky because we do need other people. A lot of the movie is about that too, because if Claire and Thibaut hadn’t met, there’s a lot that she wouldn’t have figured out. And he needed to meet her—he really needed to meet her. But he also kind of threw it away, so that’s his choice.
You portrayed the not-fairytale ending, I liked it because it was real.
All of these people are based on real people, to a large extent, but they went off in their own direction, largely because the people who play them are very good and they they give so much of themselves. Thomas Vieljeux, the actor who played Thibaut, actually played Thibaut in the short film that became Goodbye, Petrushka as well. So I've been working with him for a really long time. I remember when we were in pre-production for the film, for Petrushka, not for the short. He was concerned, he said, “You know, I feel like I'm making Thiabut be too much like me.” I remember being like, “No, but you're doing exactly the right thing.” It’s not what’s on the page. There’s stuff on the page, but ultimately, it should be at least 50% you, if I have to put a number on it. It shouldn't be just whatever I wrote down. I mean, if that was the case, I could have just gotten a cartoonist to draw it up. Actors, I would think, get into acting because they want to channel characters through themselves, rather than just leave themselves behind completely. You can't be somebody else. You can only infuse somebody else with you.
I was thinking about that too, like what makes an actor a good actor? What is the distinguishing factor?
I think it’s empathy.
That’s a good answer.
I mean, like, that's just off the top of my head. That's the thing that I've noticed the most, and especially with actors that are playing really bad people or assholes: the ones who do that best, whether they’re just playing a jerk or, a loony, or a serial killer, it doesn't matter what the degree of badness is, but they do it best if that person behind the actor is just a really empathetic person, because they can see into the character.
It’s like that thing that people always say in relationships about how empaths end up with narcissists, because they're doing the feeling for that person, basically. And that's why, whenever you see somebody who plays an amazing bad guy, that's probably a really good guy, if they're playing the bad guy well. And I'm sure that this doesn’t always hold true, there's plenty of bad guys that do great at playing bad guys.
Actually, the litmus test for this was when we had people send an audition tapes to play the part of Professor Steve. The vast majority of Professor Steve is like this way over-the-top silly character. He's pompous and self-righteous and ridiculous and has no clue. You know, no self self perception at all. He’s this self-aggrandizing windbag. And so what got was a lot of tapes from guys who took that extremely seriously and did not realize it was a joke! And it was a blatant joke. And I don't want to assume anything about who these people are, but it felt to me like we had devised a genius test for sussing out sociopaths.
Just like— “Oh my god! Oh my god! We found all the humorless sociopaths!” And then, you know, the last few people and certainly, you know, Dhane Ross, who ended up playing the part, whom I consider a good friend now, he’s just the most thoughtful and empathetic sort. So is Thomas, and certainly so is Lizzie who plays Claire, she's just like, all feeling flowing outward. She’s literally what you see on the screen, there is no difference except the puppets and the specific people that she's with. Yeah, otherwise, that's just her. And as a director, that's what you want. That's like, the best, I think the greatest achievement that you can have is to have made your actors feel so comfortable that they can just be themselves mixed with their characters on screen, and that that shines through that way. It's like, thank God, I must have really made them feel good. Because they're able to just play.
Do you feel like your experience as a woman in this role is different than what a man's might be?
I definitely do. And I think it's something that's very subtle, but I think that I get condescended to a great deal for two things, I don't think that they're things that people necessarily realize that they're reacting to. But I do notice that, for instance, when I work with a male producer, that people tend to give the male producer information that they don't give me, they tend to be very straight with him in a way that they are not with me. I find him wonderful to have on board for these reasons, among others, but I'm thinking of a specific person I work with. But I noticed even with my female producer that I work with, I think she faces some things that are not so nice as well, I'm certain of it, but she's much older than I am. And I think people tend to take her more seriously for that as well.
I'm actually 34 going to be 35 in spring, but I look really, really young, which is not to say, hey, go me. It’s to say, I do look young for my age. So there's a mix of oh, hey, I'm sort of over-animated. So there's this thing that happens, where I'm not gonna like change the way I am, but I think it’s a mix. Being a woman is the biggest one, being or looking really young as another one, because people assume inexperience rather than just a youthful look. What that results in is a sort of, I would never say microaggression, except with people who are actually bad people, I don't ever really feel that. I think the thing that just sort of subtly, naturally happens, is that people don't really deal with me in a very professional way, unless they just are good people who would already, or professional people.
Recently I had a call with somebody who I had called up for information on production thing. And this person basically just wanted to slightly undermine, and destabilize and say, “Well, why don't you know this? Why don't you know this other thing? Why don't you?” and I said to my male producing partner, “Hey, you know, get on the phone to answer these questions that I couldn't answer because they're your department, not mine.” And I said, “He's gonna behave completely different with you than me.” And sure enough, he got back on. He was like, “Yeah, he was great!” and I was like, “I knew it! I knew it.”
I think it would be safe to say there is a scenario that repeats itself all the time. There are people who identify as things other than what I identify as whom I'm sure face way, way worse daily crap than I do. This is, at worst an annoyance.
Yeah actually I thought about that today because I also look young. And I think people often, you know, they're just like, “Oh, you're like a kid, you don’t know, you can’t know things.”
That’s why sometimes I just like to do phone calls. Sometimes I I prefer to do phone over Zoom at first because I don't sound as young as I look. It was one of the reasons that acting agents didn't really want to deal with me when I was a much younger person doing acting is because I sounded like I was 45 and looked like I was 15. Like, you don't know what the hell to do with me. Maybe, maybe X? I don't know, that might be an idea? I would say, you know, the, the entertainment industry, those who gatekeepe are not always wonderfully creative, shall we say? When are they ever—that's why they're gatekeepers, but I'm trying to change that.
Thanks so much for speaking with me! It’s been a pleasure.
Stream Goodbye, Petrushka on Amazon Prime (free with Prime) or free on Tubi.
