In the first five minutes of Krisha — director Trey Edward Shults’ first feature — it becomes clear the film is eerily real. The moment the titular character Krisha (played by Krisha Fairchild, who is also Shults’ aunt) walks into her family’s home for Thanksgiving, there’s a sense of reality so nuanced it’s hard to place what makes it so authentic. This reality, in part, comes from the fact that Shults cast his family in the movie to depict a personal story they all lived through — that being the challenge of maintaining a harmonious familial relationship with an addict.
As the movie continues, the anger, frustration, and disasters that come with living with an addict all come to the fore. And for anyone who has experienced this themselves, it’s a terrifyingly real experience to watch, one that’s emotionally disturbing yet beautiful, thanks to Shults’ cinematic handling of the material. Most families who suffer from a fraught relationship with an addict, or are the addict themselves, keep this problem a secret, one not even discussed amongst the family. Shults’ and Fairchild’s family not only outs themselves, but puts the issue on public display.
We met with Shults and Fairchild to talk about the death of their cousin and niece, respectively, who inspired the film, and the challenges of filming something so true to life.
Breaking The Anonymity
Fairchild: It feels real because it was. It was based on something that our family went through with people that we love.
Trey Edward Shults: A very similar event happened with my cousin where she relapsed at a family reunion and then she OD’d a month later and passed away. I was definitely processing that.
Fairchild: My niece was 39 and had three lovely kids and lost her life to drugs after fighting a real good battle against them for a long time. When these things happened in our family, instead of ignoring or denying them, Trey wrote this script and we all committed to work on the project together because we know that there are other people out there that are living through this in silence.
Shults: My mom’s a therapist, my mom and my stepdad. I think I would be a wreck without them as parents and they’re all about, “You gotta talk about stuff, you gotta keep it open, you gotta let the demons come out, you gotta confront them or that stuff just builds up.” Just growing up with that, that’s always been my motto. So, when it comes to me making a movie, I think that’s what I naturally gravitate to.
Fairchild: When she passed within two months after that holiday, Trey just closed himself off and wrote it. None of us were surprised. All of us were willing to go to this place to do this and revisit this in her honor because she fought a good fight her whole life against this and we feel like we’re honoring her by doing this story. So, it was the easiest thing for all of us to say yes.
Casting The Family
Shults: I was writing it for Krisha, number one, because she’s my aunt and I always wanted to write her a great role. She’s a great actress. But beyond that, I always had a fantasy that my family would star in my first movie.
Fairchild: Trey wrote it and created the universe in which this happens and cast us as, not ourselves, but the other people. But we still had been in the room where these things had been going on.
Shults: As I was writing it, I thought certain things would be much more special and ring that much more true if they were really doing it. If it’s really my grandma in there, if it’s really these two sisters in the script sharing this moment, but they’re real sisters in real life who can really relate to this stuff. It could have been a disaster, though. I had a strong feeling that we were going to hopefully make something special.
Fairchild: It was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done and it was the easiest thing that I’ve ever done. I had absolutely lived through those moments, I had been the observer of their mental processes. I had watched the thoughts flicker across the face of the person I loved and I knew that the next thing that happened would be them reaching for a needle or a bottle. And I knew it. I had seen it. I had watched it. As a natural born actor, it comes easily to me, emotion comes easily to me.
Shults: I don’t fancy myself an actor. I entertained having my friends do it, but at the end of the day, I made my mom do it, my grandma do it, Krisha do it, my other aunt do it, I just thought it was wrong to not have me do it, too. And on top of that, I look like them.
Fairchild: A lot of moviemaking can get lost in the politics of it and people are in their trailers and they’re isolated. We didn’t have that. We had meals family style. We were giving each other shoulder rubs. And it was like a family taking on a hard thing. That helped me a lot.
Shults: Krisha was upstairs in my room. She doesn’t drink, but she was putting alcohol on her lips just to get the feeling and listening to Bob Dylan and pacing around the room, and we’re just waiting trying to have a pleasant dinner before she comes in and goes freakin’ nuts. It was terrifying. And the first time we shot [the altercation], it didn’t go well because I was so scared I didn’t even move, and it was my mom and Krisha going crazy at each other. Then we kept doing it and getting into it more and finally I got into it. It was really fun and weird to shoot.
Fairchild: For me, as an acting challenge, it was infused with so much good and so much support that I actually didn’t see it as that big of a challenge. When I look at it now and I watch the finished work, I realize, wow, I really took on a lot, but I had my team right there.
Shults: The opening, it’s a single take that starts with Krisha in her car and continues inside the house. Just from a technical standpoint, I come in the take at the end of that. The first half, I’m outside, sweating, following the camera guys, looking at my monitor, and then I grab grocery bags and go inside the take, so I don’t even know 100 percent how it turned out. We couldn’t play stuff back with volume. We could just play it back and watch it. But it felt good and my DP [Drew Daniels] is great and has a good sense of things, and if he looked excited, it means it went well.
Fairchild: Robyn is my baby sister and we’re like soul mates. We always have been. We’ve always been a real special connection to each other. So, for me to make her cry, for me to yell at her and be violent with her was the hardest thing about it, and for her also. And so the scenes that we do together, where our hearts are not speaking, our pain and the addiction of my character are speaking… but some of those scenes are the most rewarding, too, when we were crying together.
Shults: The final movie is 70 percent scripted, 30 percent improvised and every day we would shoot what we had to get in the script and different actors would be in different rooms collaborating and creating scenes. Everything with the uncle, Doyle (Bill Wise) and Krisha on the porch is all improvised, all him. And Krisha’s just genuinely responding. He’s spitting out incredible lines like, “I eat leather and shit saddle. I am Superman,” [Laughs.] Where do you come up with this? That stuff was incredible and surprising. Everything with my grandma [Billie Fairchild] was pretty much surprising. And then little moments, whatever it is. Krisha surprising me, my mom shocking me with how great she is, and it was a really beautiful way to work. Best week of my life.
Grandmother In A Fog
Fairchild: Robin and Trey and I were three of the people in the family that did not have those issues, but we were all helpers and people who were compassionate and wanted to help the people in our family. My mother was a late-onset alcoholic. She’s in a fog now inside of her head, that’s how she lives. She’s 92 and she lives inside a fog in her head from drinking.
Shults: She doesn’t know she’s in a movie. She didn’t know she was in a movie at the time, which is interesting. I know she would be incredibly happy. She was a big supporter of me. She’d be reading a magazine or something and say, “You’ll be making movies one day.”
Fairchild: She had no awareness there was a movie going on. She knew that she was with her family and she was being introduced to these people who were smiling and hugging and she went with it. She looks for the joy in life on her good days. And on her bad days, she does what people who have that dark part of them do and that is she wishes that death would come along pretty soon.
Shults: If she knew she was a star in a movie that played Cannes and traveled the world, she’d be over the moon.
Fairchild: Somebody wise once said to me, “We die the way we live.” And our mother was the most giving, loving, amazing, wonderful, wonderful human being to us. And she didn’t start drinking until later in her life and that’s when we suddenly realized that she was different. She was a different person when she was drinking. The person she is now just loves people and is very giving.
Shults: My personal favorite scenes in the movie involve [my grandma] and I think some really beautiful stuff happened. The main scene where she comes to the house for the first time and meets the family, the DP was hiding behind the front door with a bunch of boxes and we brought her out and literally introduced her to the family. I discovered we could keep doing it if you let her take enough time and rest in between to forget about everything.
Fairchild: We felt that we were able to give her some really good days. It was like a party. She felt like she was going to a party every time she came to the set. What a gift to give someone who has basically warehoused themselves in a mind that won’t work. We had her at a party where she was the guest of honor.
Shults: That altercation [scene] is the first time Krisha comes down to the dining room before the very final time. We had two cameras rolling on that. That kind of stuff, it was more of a documentary. It was the total opposite style of ways we shoot other things that are long takes, rehearsed, and have to be choreographed and everything. This was just like, “Let’s see what happens.” We had a general idea. We had a camera hidden in the corner that no one was operating and another one filming Krisha and my mom and we did that scene a lot of times because it was hard to get this balance that wasn’t overkill, that felt right to us. And usually my grandma didn’t care, she paid no mind, she’s just like, whatever. One take, I think something rang true in the performances for her, but she thought it was reality for a moment and said, “Krisha, come back.” That was a heartbreaking moment.
Fairchild: The reason we kept our own names was really so simple. My mother’s kind of dementia, she has enough hold on reality that she realizes when someone’s lying to her or when something’s wrong. So, Trey wanted her to be completely comfortable with us just calling each other by our own names so that it would not show in her eyes that we were lying to her.
Inspiring An Audience
Fairchild: Anybody who’s ever had addiction, or alcoholism in their family, understands that it’s a rollercoaster, it’s a ride that you’re on with them because you love them. Then other times you have to tough love them and have to push them away because they’re damaging you.
Shults: We premiered at SXSW and no one had seen the final cut but me. And my family was there, my friends were there, we were just crying and happy and it was a beautiful day. Beautiful experience. Therapeutic for me, I think it was for all of us.
Fairchild: If one addict or alcoholic who has caused this kind of drama in their family of origin walks into a meeting as a result of this, then I think we’ve done a really good job. I think people get a lot of solace from seeing that they’re not alone.
Shults: I didn’t know if people would like it. I just lost perspective with it and then we premiered and, for first time, I got to see it with other people and I felt like an audience member again, and I felt proud of it again. There was a general energy that people loved it and were moved by it and then afterwards, so many people came up to me affected by it and moved by it, and it was so touching.
Fairchild: Maybe people will see this and will not feel as hopeless because they’ll see that our family loved our way through it and we’re able to out ourselves about this in a loving way. And I don’t say this because I think we did some phenomenal job or anything, but I think it’s an important movie psychologically for families who are not sure how to protect themselves and not sure how to help the person that they’re trying to help to find their way home.
Shults: It’s a tough movie, but I think it’d be great for families in any kind of similar relation to it to watch the movie together and talk about it. I don’t know if it will happen, but I hope so.
Fairchild: When the movie was over, it was as if there was a line over each of our heads that said, “All ex-addicts, line up here to talk to Krisha,” “All parents who have had to tough love someone in their family, line up here to talk to Robyn,” “All parents who lost their person against all odds, line up here to cry with Vicky [Victoria Fairchild]” and we had people hugging us on the street. People resonate. This is a not a little subject.
Shults: As I continue to travel with the movie, it’s incredible, new beautiful things happen. We were in Iceland with it, and this sweet girl who worked at the festival told me she had no idea what the movie was, and her mom was asking for movies to see and she said, “I don’t know, this one seems interesting.” So, her mom saw our movie and then she called her crying out of the blue and she’s like, “Mom, what’s wrong, what’s going on?” She said, “I’m sorry, I just saw this movie and don’t want people to see that I’m crying,” and she said she was incredibly moved by it and she felt things that I know that I’m doing as a filmmaker, but I’m hoping audiences aren’t going to notice as much, especially general audiences. Like the way we’re playing with aspect ratios and shifting our visual strategy throughout the film. And then she said to her daughter, “It just felt like the images and the screen was changing with the character.” That’s beautiful to me just to have some random person see your movie and be moved by that. That is incredibly humbling and that’s what I live for.
Fairchild: I don’t say enjoy because it’s not like, oh, wow, you’ll really have a good time. Experience it is what I say to people who are about to watch it. Just experience it. This movie is a different kind of ride.
Krisha opens in limited release today before expanding nationally. For more, here’s our review.
