“Hurry Up Tomorrow” is probably going as bleak a movie as you’ll see this 12 months. In it, multi-platinum and Grammy-winning musician The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) stars as a fictional model of himself, spinning a darkish story of the loneliness and ache behind his new album (“Hurry Up Tomorrow”) in addition to a few his early songs, together with the hit “Blinding Lights.”
The story, centering on The Weeknd’s obsessive and disturbing relationship with a fictional paramour (Jenna Ortega), is the polar reverse of what we anticipate from a well-known musician. At a time when most stars (or their estates) make the most of their life and music rights to authorize extremely sanitized film variations of their biography, “Hurry Up Tomorrow” begs the query of why Tesfaye needed to create such a darkish fictional mythology behind his soon-to-be-retired persona of The Weeknd and his music.
“It was objectively dangerous for a pop star to do,” author/director Trey Edward Shults instructed IndieWire, who admitted at first he too had the identical query of why. “There’s no purpose for him to make this film.”
Whereas Shults was on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, he mentioned being very skeptical going into his first assembly with Tesfaye, half-expecting to be handed an album and requested to make a movie to help it. However as an alternative of Tesaye sharing new music (he hadn’t written any but), he instructed Shults the story of dropping his voice in the midst of a large tour. The largest blow, sending the pop star right into a darkish spiral, was when medical doctors instructed Tesfaye his vocal twine issues had been psychological slightly than bodily.
Shults, the son of two therapists, was intrigued.
“I didn’t anticipate to hit it off with The Weeknd,” mentioned Shults with amusing. He was cautious of the unknownable thriller the musician had rigorously crafted round his persona, solely to find, “he simply needed to discover this weak factor and I used to be like, ‘Oh, if that’s a leaping off level, and if all of it stems from one thing psychological, that’s very up my alley.’”
Shults has taken sufficient conferences in Hollywood to take reward of his movies with the required grain of salt, nevertheless it rapidly grew to become clear to him that his 2019 movie “Waves,” a gut-wrenching and unflinching have a look at a suburban household’s sudden violent trauma, had profoundly registered with Tesfaye.
“I may inform he was honest and he actually dug my stuff and he truly instructed me, ‘I need you to make it a Trey film,’” recalled Shults. “At first I laughed at that concept, ‘We’re gonna a film with The Weeknd, that’s gonna be my film? I don’t know.’”
Utilizing the bottom level as a profession jumping-off level, Shults and Tesaye spent hours on the cellphone. Shults started to understand that the film’s narrative would drive Tesfaye’s album, his final as The Weeknd, and never vice versa.
“We simply [had] plenty of cellphone calls, so I may discover out rather a lot about Abel, about his previous, stuff he struggled with,” mentioned Shults. “[The idea was] for me to create a fictional narrative that stems from fact and issues in his previous.”
Whereas the story was rooted in Tesfaye’s actual ache as an artist, the fiction Shults spun was virtually akin to making a Weeknd metaverse: What if, at these lowest factors, his circumstances had been totally different? What if the individuals surrounding him had been totally different? What if he had made totally different decisions? By way of this lens, it wasn’t arduous for Shults’ pure storytelling instincts to take him towards Tesaye’s character spinning uncontrolled.
“I believe we each naturally have drawn from ache in our artwork,” mentioned Shults. “He likes exploring that painful stuff that’s occurred in his previous, and my first film [‘Krisha’] was exploring the addicts in my household. My second film [‘It Comes at Night’], I wrote after my dad died from most cancers.”
Shults described the lengthy cellphone calls as a type of remedy session. The remedy analogy is a Hollywood cliche, utilized by numerous stars or administrators to explain their collaboration with screenwriters in creating a private challenge (see 50 % of most Oscar campaigns, by means of instance), however Shults’ artistic gasoline and course of (which he attributes to rising up in the home of two therapists) have lengthy been grounded within the theories of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.
“I used to be at all times into this film working on this different entire metaphorical Jungian dream evaluation approach, particularly with what Jenna’s character represents,” mentioned Shults. “So, actually, to me, the film opens with the self.”
The opening shot is of Tesfaye’s face trying right into a backstage mirror earlier than a sold-out stadium present. The mirror squarely frames his face, “however then as he’s placing that [concert] apparel on, as he’s placing on the persona of The Weeknd, we’re opening up into 1.85 [aspect ratio], and going into the persona, principally into this faux world. The entire arc of the film is, ‘OK, we’ve seen a style of the self, now let’s put the persona on earlier than we do a deep, surreal dive by the tip of the film into his unconscious and his self.’”
Shults and manufacturing designer Elliott Hostetter labored with Tesfaye’s lighting and stage design workforce to create a wholly new live performance stage for the movie. Tesfaye is the one youngster of Ethiopian immigrants, and each the tower on the heart of the stage and his gown play into his cultural iconography.
“His character is craving for his roots,” defined Shults of the movie’s live performance scenes. “The primary live performance is the persona of The Weeknd and the second live performance is that persona disassembling and falling aside in entrance of everybody.”
The largely experimental movie positive factors its free narrative construction from Tesfaye’s relationship with Ortega’s Ani, brief for the Jungian idea of the Anima. From the beginning, Shults noticed Ortega’s character because the pressure for Tesaye and the movie to construct towards a reckoning.
“It was actually two halves of the entire. If we had been going to comply with the journey of this man who’s not in a wholesome place and out of stability, the aspect that should come into the equation to hopefully discover a stability and a brand new self was Jenna’s character,” mentioned Shults. “ Jungian dream evaluation — I don’t need to spoil the movie with my interpretation, everybody can have their very own — however she’s his anima. His relationship with ladies could be very out of whack, and I believe he’s had a historical past together with his music the place individuals have inferred issues. These two spirits, or one spirit, nonetheless you need have a look at it, have to return to a head and fight to have any likelihood at private development and self-reflection.”
Presumably probably the most shocking reckoning Ani forces — in a scene during which she has The Weeknd’s undivided consideration (to say extra could be a spoiler) — is for the musician to confront his personal lyrics, placing certainly one of The Weeknd’s greatest hits, “Blinding Lights,” in addition to “Gasoline,” on the proverbial sofa.
“I began digging into his music and listening to those lyrics,” mentioned Shults of the shocking scene during which the songs’ lyrics are thematically linked to Tesfaye’s character’s psychological journey. “In hindsight, it’s type of like an epic remedy session that she’s giving him, and actually me analyzing his music and pushing him and serious about this as a probing, thematic factor, and [Abel] was right down to go there and right down to do it.”
A Lionsgate launch, “Hurry Up Tomorrow” is now in theaters.
To listen to Trey Edward Shults’ full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform.