
“Dance With Me, Ben” | Grace Glowicki, Dead Lover

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why?
I have been trying to pinpoint a single day of Dead Lover to answer this question…but the truth is, specific days are almost impossible for me to remember. It’s just a smattering of random memorable moments! The days from which they came are lost in my memory….probably due to the lack of sleep.
So, because I can’t think of a single day, I will pinpoint a single memory. I have no clue what day of shooting it was, maybe in the middle? But what I do remember was that it was one of the days or hours when I didn’t have to act, so unusually I could actually really watch the film unfolding—which became such a treat amongst the longer stretches of the movie when I was directing and watching from inside the character in the scene. (We also chose to shoot without a monitor, so even when I was acting, there was no watching playback or anything like that.
Anyways, it is one of these rare moments when I actually get to watch these very smart and talented collaborators of ours work—and we’re about to shoot this filler footage of Ben Petrie twirling around in a nightgown in slow motion (which ended up being key footage used multiple times in the movie) which we last minute decided to get because Courtney Mitchell (costume designer to end all costume designers) had a strong gut feeling that we hadn’t gotten enough footage of the lavender nightgown, a narratively key costume piece.
So I’m watching our DP Rhayne Vermette get her bolex (or maybe it was the SR3? I can’t remember because we mixed footage, shooting on both cameras) and Ben’s there ready to twirl around in his lavender nightgown…and then a hush starts to fall on the set as we’re all getting ready for a take…and it’s completely quiet for a moment…and then I hear Rhayne say, “Dance with me, Ben,” followed immediately by the sound of film coursing through her camera.
And then I watched—from outside of the scene—the two of them “dancing.” Him literally twirling and swishing around, and her moving her camera, capturing him on film, with Courtney on the sidelines, watching the scene with relief, knowing that the nightgown was getting its needed moment in the spotlight. It was a beautiful meta scene, and I just felt so cool to be working with and watching these very smart weirdos.
I dunno, it was a beautiful moment. Probably better if I could show you?
See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.