Max Walker-Silverman, writer-director, returned to a central question during writing and filming “A Love Song:”Is the loss of a loved one worth it?
“At the same time that I was falling in love to some of those around me, they were in various ways falling out of it, whether that was by death, or divorce, or all the many ways that our lives can be changed,”Walker-Silverman stated.
“A Love Song”Faye is a solo traveler who visits a remote camp ground. She awaits Tito’s visit, who will take her on a journey through the West.
Walker-Silverman was captivated by Dale Dickey’s performance and wrote the film to portray him as his protagonist. “Picturing her in this role just gave me a huge amount of confidence to allow the silence of the world to play a part in it, because I knew that she had the ability to ground this character and a past and in a reality without having to explain it to the world,” Walker-Silverman said.
Walker-Silverman was asked, “Who the hell can share a screen with an actor like Dale Dickey?”Walker-Silverman was able to trust Wes Studi’s casting of Tito from a shortlist. “leave as much unsaid as it is, and to trust [Dickey and Studi] to fill the characters with everything that [he] wanted out of them.”
“They both come from quiet places from Tennessee and Oklahoma, respectively. They both loved and lost. They’re that age, I’m not,” Walker-Silverman said. “And I’ve felt great to trust them to do that, and to work those things out themselves.”
Their interactions with Tito and Faye are filled with sadness as they reminisce on their youth. The film celebrates the shared experience of losing a child and a lifetime apart. “different expressions of love”You can be alone.
“It’s about two characters who, in their own way, begin this story alone, and in their own way, leave it alone, but their relationship to that solitude is changed completely, and their lives are going to change completely,” Walker-Silverman said.
Filmed in southwest Colorado, about half an hour from the home of Walker-Silverman’s childhood, he recalls fishing crawdads as well as swimming in the park where they reunite in this film. “It was no struggle to imagine these characters’ childhood memories of that place, since I had plenty of my own,”Walker-Silverman “There’s a story ultimately about like people… choosing to be there and choosing to seek out beauty even if their relationship to it is unsure.”
Mirroring Walker-Silverman’s own upbringing that was surrounded by a “mix of hippies… rednecks, and all the other strange people who wash up in strange place,” the film incorporates these colorful characters in a group of siblings who want to improve the view of their father’s burial site.
“It does seem important to pay a tribute to the quirky characters who are not only able to exist in the right backroads places, but are able to be sort of cherished,” Walker-Silverman said. “My life has certainly been made much richer by all the strange sort of folks who spring up in these places, or who wash up there.
At the end of the film, Faye receives Tito’s photograph in the mail, a sign that confirms there is a future for both her and him. This tangible memory is what proves that something very real occurred between them. “huge step”For “a character who avoided photos and avoided memories and avoided experience for a very long time,”According to Walker-Silverman
As for whether the two cross paths again, Walker-Silverman said he likes believing that they’re going to “be part of each other’s lives, maybe just through letters.”
“It’s going to be a happier life than it was coming into the movie,”He concluded.
“A Love Song”The film will make its theatrical debut on July 29, 2009.