In Conversation: Director Ian Ebright and the Cast of ‘The Way We Speak’
by Karen Reyes
“I strolled through the market hoping to be seen. Strangers connecting by kindness and warmth. In search of humanity. Eyes that express life. But no one noticed me.” The Way We Speak (2024) is writer-director Ian Ebright’s first feature-length film. Starring Patrick Fabian as Simon (an up-and-coming essayist on atheism and futurism), Kailey Rhodes as Sarah (a best-selling Christian author), and Diana Coconubo as Claire (a renowned doctor and Simon’s ill wife), the film explores the universal, often overwhelming, human desire to be seen and acknowledged during hectic times.
We’re thrown into Simon’s world as he refuses to leave the spotlight following his best friend George’s death. While dealing with unresolved grief, Simon pursues his intense need to win a debate with Sarah on the existence or absence of God at a prestigious thought leader conference—a topic that we quickly realize camouflages the real question they argue over: who is the better person?
Between shared anecdotes and silly on-set happenings, I had the chance to hear from the director and cast about the inspiration for this complicated story, the detailed performances, and the best bits of filming a feature-length film in only 18 days.
You’ve written and directed three shorts in the past, so The Way We Speak is your first feature-length film. It touches on big topics like grief and the human need for recognition. What was the process of taking on a bigger project and why did you choose the God vs. no God debate as the vehicle for telling a longer story?
EBRIGHT: It was challenging because I also had to wear the producer hat. When you’re low budget, you don’t get to transition off of producer into writer-director as early as you would like. I kept making shorts as a response to longer-form stuff that couldn’t get made so my vision was based on short films. And I tried to do myself some favors in the writing of this by having reoccurring locations, but it felt exponentially harder in a way that isn’t just to claim that longer running time. A lot of my short films had like two locations. This had about a dozen. So, it was challenging but by the time these three [the lead actors] were in Portland, I was starting to feel tingly in a good way like, “Oh, right! This is fun at some point! It’s not just admin work and trying to wrangle a restaurant to let us film there.”
God vs. no God was based on the inspirations that I had. I really like the documentary Best of Enemies which had Gore Vidal on the left versus William Buckley on the right. As someone who wanted to play with some of the themes that the end of that movie is suggesting, and being that … there’s enough direct politics available at our fingertips and that I’m pretty acutely aware of the stuff I don’t want to watch … [I knew] I didn’t want to make an overtly political film, [so] I thought that religion was a really nice parallel and one that I could pretty easily write credibly given my past.
The details in the characters’ body language and the intimate nature of almost every shot caught my attention. Especially when Simon and Sarah were on stage, the shots felt personal despite being in an auditorium with an audience. Was the detail in their body language written into them or was it a product of how you each chose to play your characters?
EBRIGHT: Part of that was deliberate. My adage with our director of photography, AJ Marson was, “Let’s not do our grandfather’s earnest drama,” and so we were literally talking about films like Bladerunner. Like, let’s go the opposite way from the sweaty guy with the typewriter scratching his dandruff-ridden hair and do atmospheric and immersive. So, knowing you can never play any card in any story twice, we kind of had our own three-act structure for the visual progression of the debate so that, ideally, we would start off almost TV broadcast-like and then as the stakes got higher by the third one, we’re way up in Patrick and Kailey’s business.
Then also deserving of credit in pulling off what you said, is our editor Robert Schafer who was Francis Ford Coppola’s editor. [He] was editing Megalopolis—the most expensive indie that’s out there right now at $120 million—and ours which was an ultra-low budget film and he did such an incredible job of honing the cadence and the breaths and creating this rhythm that I could have never anticipated to write in the script.
And of course, the elephant in the room is that you have actors, in the case of the debate, like Patrick and Kailey. We’re going out to the audience to Ayanna Berkshire who plays Annette, and of course Diana who plays Claire … It’s less about the words and more about these dynamics. The intent was that, that would be juicier than just God or no God.
RHODES: It’s really cool that AJ was all up in our faces at the podiums, but if you’re in a real auditorium, the closest person to you is like 12 feet away and down or 50 feet away and up. They’re not going to catch those little ticks, those little cutting eyes to Patrick, Patrick’s busy fingers on the podium. They’re not going to catch [how] Sarah laughs to herself. Everybody in the audience might miss that and you can only just go off of what they’re saying, but this camera gives you this proximity, this intimacy that really elevates the stakes. I don’t even think that it’s happening with the audience knowing that device is being used, but it’s heightening the dramatic irony so much.
Claire and Sarah could totally fall into their respective tropes as a Christian author and the protagonist’s sick wife, but your characters are written and played in a much more complex way. The scene after dinner when Sarah and Claire walk together comes to mind because you could sense an unspoken understanding between them. Could you both talk about your interpretations of that dynamic and why it was important to play the characters the way you did?
RHODES: I’m really glad you asked this question because I don’t even know if Di, you and I have talked about this. I don’t even know if Ian and I have talked about this … My personal take is that she [Sarah] doesn’t want children and Claire doesn’t have children … and Sarah is this faith-based author and Claire is this fact-driven doctor. And I feel like Sarah has this kindred moment of really feeling seen and understood by this woman that is not in her church. Sarah reveals that she’s not super in-respect with her own husband and I know that Claire can see that about Sarah and can identify with that because we just left her drunk-ass husband. [laughs] So, it’s this weird, very quick kindredness where I can also see Sarah getting in her hotel room and having a vulnerability hangover. Like, “This isn’t the kind of woman I’m supposed to run to. We didn’t pray together.”
COCONUBO: Yeah, I think they’re sort of holding up a mirror to each other. Like that moment where Simon quickly moves his hand away from Claire’s and we see that Sarah catches that. We’ve all, I don’t know, been there. It’s very relatable and I think the trap is to be two fighting females, but the fact that they can relate to each other and have those really intimate moments I think—I mean, it’s really the writing and the way that Kailey and I quickly bonded just as human beings, as actors doing this thing in these 18 days, that the relationship developed in that way.
RHODES: That was also my first day filming. That was my first scene!
EBRIGHT: Oh, that’s right! And we lost the very expensive light that was supposed to light the scene, so it’s much darker and moodier than it was supposed to be and actually looks better this way.
RHODES: It’s perfect! It’s the first time I’ve done a walk and talk. We all know as actors that those are staples—never done one. And I had just met Di that day, but knowing deeply that the person that Sarah would want is Claire and so there was a guarded yearning.
Simon is an incredibly fascinating character. As unlikeable and frustrating as he is, you kind of can’t help but relate to him. We see him go through an inner struggle as he copes with George’s death and Claire’s illness. What was the most challenging and satisfying thing about writing, directing, and playing Simon?
FABIAN: I want to circle back to the main ladies in the film because they prop me up both as an actor and as a character. It was a real joy and real pleasure to bounce things off them. The way Ian has written them and the way the ladies have played them, it’s great because Simon is not getting back what he wants or what he expects from either of these ladies, but he desperately needs the approval of both of them. His ego is driven by approval which is why he finds himself disregarding the moment [and] the memory of George to drive on to this thing. He says to Claire, “I’m doing this for you!” It’s such a fucking bowl of shit, right? He’s doing it for himself. And even when they call him on it … he refuses to see. It isn’t until after the fact … that there’s a moment of reflection, which is what I love about the film. It ends in a reflection of both him and Sarah sort of being broken a bit and putting the pieces back together and not sure where we’re heading out to and I think that sensation anybody can relate to, either writ small in their life or writ large.
EBRIGHT: I’m glad to hear you say that he’s frustrating and complicated and he’s a lot and then to hear you say, “But we can’t help but relate to him”—by far the hardest thing. In the writing, too. Even when it’s still chalk outlines and I’m trying to make it a framework … it was hard to find enough of those moments without invalidating the cautionary tale. In my opinion, these two characters are in some ways two sides of the same coin. And for this whole thing to work we have to watch them get worse, so balancing getting worse with moments of humanity that don’t invalidate the fact that his weaknesses are coming out was really hard.
And the most rewarding was absolutely casting Patrick Fabian and collaborating, but the most honest answer to your question is just watching him get it. And I don’t have a great example but whatever the ideal is, you both get the ideal, and it’s somehow different and better. That was the experience for me. I genuinely believe actors quickly know these characters better than any writer. And watching him improve what I wrote was really, really fun. I also have to say I like cringe. I think there are moments in this—especially the dinner scene and in the back of the restaurant after—where it’s really awkward and some of the test audiences were like, “Cut it” and we were like, “We’re not cutting it down at all. We need to sit in this.” It’s the only time he has a conversation with another man and he’s drunk. We want to hear what he thinks when women aren’t around. He’s not trying to win someone’s favor so he can just kind of spill … It’s not funny until we’re past the point of being annoyed. You just have to way outlast everyone’s tolerance and then it gets funny and Patrick innately has that timing.
And finally, I want to ask what each of your favorite scenes are and why?
RHODES: I love the scene where Simon is trying to talk to George in his dreamland. He’s got the beer and he’s like, “George, answer me.” I feel like what I see in this film is a man who lost a mentor and he’s not handling it well. He’s not behaving in a way that would make George proud and he knows it and it makes him hate himself more which makes him act worse. And the moment where he’s not in front of women and he’s not in front of someone he’s trying to impress and he’s not in front of someone he thinks is lower status, he thinks he’s with George and I think it’s the first time that we see Simon just feel at peace and safe inside himself—and you play it so beautifully, Patrick.
FABIAN: Thank you, thank you. I like the ladies’ scene—the walk and talk—for the same reasons that you identified. I like a lot of me, no doubt about it, but there’s a lot of me, there’s a lot of Simon and it’s a respite. It’s a rare thing to see two women really talking like that without these giant agendas going on and I think it’s fascinating because of that, which just speaks to the fact that we don’t have enough of that.
COCONUBO: I almost forgot about this scene. It’s when Claire confronts Sarah behind stage and it’s so subtle and it’s a short scene, like you could blink and forget about it or miss it, but there’s so much underbelly and it almost feels like Claire is shaming Sarah in a way.
FABIAN: Oh, you draw a line on her, man!? You’re stone cold!
RHODES: I think correctly, Sarah betrayed Claire, not Simon—and we were supposed to be good! We were supposed to be sweet! And it’s painful, it’s girl-on-girl crime!
EBRIGHT: Mine is the backstage—we called it a bit of a 2016 Trump vs. Hillary debate—where Simon’s encroaching on Sarah, just way up in her space and won’t move and [he’s] being a toddler. All the nonverbal stuff of that backstage moment between Terence and Annette and the looks between Annette and Sarah. I love the washiness and the music and the color and the unspoken drama of that spilling out into Annette’s outro because we were so aware of all the ways that that scene could be after-school special. Ayanna Berkshire, who plays Annette, gets a ton of credit for working with me on the dialogue … I’m relieved and in love with that scene because for me, it doesn’t fall into those traps of “Oh good, here’s the part where we’re all going to get chided as the after-school special.” I think we avoid that.
The Way We Speak is out now in the US and Canada.
