Where does a song come from? And how does it happen?
In November 2021, driven back inside to obsess about air particles again thanks to NYC’s Omicron wave, home-viewed footage of Paul McCartney conjuring the riff to “Get Back” seemingly out of thin air became a kind of holy object. Here was proof that the air we breathed wasn’t just a threat to our respiratory health or fodder for lungs on-clocks. There were songs out in it, always and still. Living, even through historically lonely times, could be a process of collecting these moments collectively.
The reality, of course, is that this process is all about labor and exertion. Songwriting, like filmmaking, requires attunement and time, experience and exploration. It isn’t a thing to be magicked. Dandelion, the new film from Nashville-based filmmaker Nicole Riegel, is in part a mediation on the crux of this creative process, managing, as it must, the work of making art and the crisis of making a living while doing so. The title character (played with extraordinary care of attention and gesture by KiKi Lane) plays cavernous Cincinnati hotel lobbies full of smartphone-happy yuppies. She runs away a little bit, falls in with some struggling musicians, falls in love with a rakish twist of tortured poet (Thomas Doherty, practically Byronic), and works at the head-to-wall task of making a song, let alone a dollar. The story, ostensibly only a few hops away from Hollywood’s eternal pharmakon gesture, A Star is Born, is treated with exacting big-picture critique by Riegel. Holler, the filmmaker’s previous film, is obviously gesturing toward the failures of America in the 21st century to provide adequate treatment, education, and care to swaths of its working class. Dandelion, if subject to more sun via Lauren Guiteras’ evocative Badlandsing of the world, is no less a political object. The film inquires not only what the terms for creation are in America, but who gets permission and access to those terms and at what expense. If it is a romantic film, it’s in the way a love song works, full of retractions and revisions and recursions, most kept just out of frame.
I spoke to Nicole over video chat on the occasion of Dandelion’s release through IFC Films. We spoke about putting music on cinema screens, the time and space necessary to write, and how the future of filmmaking is now, for better or worse. Despite the dire stakes for artmaking, in 2024 the filmmaker’s frequent gestures toward her collaborators, as well as the renewable force of the natural world suggest that there are, improbably or otherwise, more songs to sing.
Frank Falisi: I was struck by how similar the ending of Dandelion feels to the ending of Holler: both are these before-the-beginning stories that end with the main character making a leap into the world. Was there always a sense that there’d be a rhyme to their endings?
Nicole Riegel: Yeah, I knew it would be the second part of this Ohio women’s trilogy. I wanted to chart the dreams and desires of three very different women across Ohio, that would make even more sense once you see them all together. I didn’t know that the second installment, Dandelion, would be my next film. There was actually something else I wanted to make, but given the resources that came after Holler, I knew there was no way I could go make that film. When with Dandelion, I could just go do it.
FF: Was it always a story of a musician, this second installment?
NR: It was.
FF: Did you always know what her music would sound like?
NR: I did and I didn’t. I did know that it would be singer/songwriter music. Indie, you know, indie singer/songwriter music that I love, a little folkish. I didn’t know who would play Dandelion, so I didn’t fully know what Dandelion would sound like. She could have been white, she could have been Asian-American, she could have been a queer woman, I had no idea. The plan was always, “here’s this element of surprise based on who’s going to walk in and be best for the role.” And then we’d need to shape it around her a bit. That element of uncertainty is exciting to me.
FF: When did Aaron and Byrce [Dessner] get involved? Was that collaboration always in place?
NR: They were my first creative collaborators on the film. And so they were there long before the cast, the crew, anyone. And we started working on the songs, and then all the songs were demoed before Dandelion or Casey were in place.
FF: Are most of the supporting characters musicians? Local folks?
NR: Yeah, I mean, you have a lot of nonprofessional actors who are musicians. The band, Brother Elsey, they’re a real band out of Detroit, now based in Nashville. I found them one night at The Basement. It was their first time playing a Nashville gig, and I believe they had their equipment stolen, or attempted to be stolen that night. And they were talking about the struggles of their bands — I was like, I love their story. And they played this beautiful song called “Matador,” which used to be in the film, but then it didn’t work in the final version. So I approached them and was like, “Hey I’m making a movie,” and Brady, the lead singer and songwriter, probably thought: “crazy lady.” I remember taking notes on the back of my bar receipt from my beer, notes about their band, about “Matador,” things they were saying. And I still have that receipt to this day. So every time they’re talking, they’re really telling you the story of their band.
And I’m so proud of them, since they’re signed with a major agency. They’ve signed with a big label, they have A&R, they have their managers, they have their deal in place. They’re doing nationwide tours, touring Canada. So I’ve been there to see their beginning to now, in just two years. And then there’s Grace Kaiser in the film, who was also in Holler. This is our second movie together, and she plays herself in this movie, and sings the songs you hear over the ending credits. That’s Grace. New York-born and raised actress, met here when she was 19 and auditioned for Holler, and we just hit it off. I can’t imagine making a movie without Grace, just a fantastic person to work with, and human being.
FF: How separate are fiction and “real” elements (and performances) when you set out to make these films? How helpful are “narrative feature” and “documentary” to you, as descriptors?
NR: It’s a little bit of both. I don’t think it’ll be that way with every one of my films, but with this one, you have the story of struggling musicians. So if you see, you know, Tom Hardy playing a struggling musician… that’s going to be a little hard to buy. Or, you know, Harry Styles, Adele. I wanted a real, struggling band because I’ve never been in a struggling band. I knew anything they came up with was going to be better than anything I could ever write. And Brady came up with my favorite line in the whole movie, which is, “Music is a way of living.” I love it so much, and he just sort of spat that out. He’d improv everything he said around the fire, always different. And then when he said that, I was like, “you have to keep saying that.” Because it really is. Just like filmmaking. Like, I have a choice. We all have the choice to just stop and quit. But you can’t. It is a lifestyle. We can all go do things that’ll bring us a lot more money than this.
FF: On the subject of famous actors in stories about struggling artists: did you have any tropes of the sort of traditional “singer/songwriter story” that you wanted to be extra aware of, either in avoiding or even including?
NR: Yeah, I wanted to fit it into the familiar narrative that everyone knew, but I wanted to flip it on its head, sort of where we’re in Dandelion’s prequel years. The ending of Dandelion is the beginning. The struggle is my concern. That’s what I wanted to make a movie about. I didn’t want like, at the end of 90 minutes like, A Star is Born. For me, I wanted a voice to be born. And she’s just owning the end, in her pink lace suit, in her boots, with her band. She’s found a venue that’s in her hometown. And even though it’s just, like, 15 people in a bar, it feels like a big show. And that’s her beginning. I do think for Dandelion there’s more struggle, and I also think she’ll go on to be very successful, on her terms and in mainstream terms. Like, that’s just as someone who’s spent years with these characters: that’s where I think she goes. But that’s not for the audience. It’s meant to be left uncertain.
FF: A lot of these movies, I mean, they’re very white and very male, but they’re also largely concerned with back halves: Kris Kristofferson, Robert Duvall, Jeff Bridges. And when we do get beginnings, it’s the biopic model, cradle-to-grave, star stuff. How much did KiKi becoming Dandelion change the impact that character has on these traditions?
NR: I loved her in If Beale Street Could Talk. She does these nonverbal things very well. Like the camera really loves KiKi Layne. And I think she’s very capable of carrying this, having this great interiority to her, which I needed. And during the casting process, I needed tapes from all of these women. And she didn’t have the biggest voice on the tapes, but she had a very pretty voice, a storytelling voice. What I mean by that is that I felt she was talking to me. There was something very intimate in her voice. I wanted a storyteller voice, I didn’t want the diva voice for Dandelion.
And when I did consider it, I was like, “okay, the voice I’m drawn to is a Black voice. I am not a Black woman.” We already had all of the music, so we had to change some of these songs for her perspective. And we didn’t really have a lot of time to do it; we had like, less than a week. But we managed to pull it off. And then it was working in Thomas [Doherty]: how does his voice fit with her voice? They had a wonderful vocal coach, Fiora [Cutler], who they worked with, who was really responsible for blending their voices together. Duetting’s really hard, so hats off to her and the two of them for figuring out how to make that work.
FF: Duetting is hard, because it’s hard to show how close those voices can be. Can you talk a little about working with Lauren Guiteras, your cinematographer? Especially these sequences of wilderness, when Dandelion and Casey are sort of falling into both the landscape and each other.
NR: I wanted it to feel patient, and patience is hard to experience. I’m sure for a lot of people, it’s hard to watch. But Dandelion is someone who’s wanting this overnight success. She wants 20 years overnight. And when she goes online, everyone’s having these meteoric rises, except her, and they’re doing it in ways she’s not comfortable doing. To me — not to get too Emersonian with you — but when you go to a place like the Badlands, when you go out in the natural world… it took millions of years for all that beauty to form, beauty that keeps people coming back to see it every single year. People travel from all over the world to see these gorgeous national parks, things that took millions of years to form, and that are lasting. But in society, we want that overnight. And so I wanted to put Dandelion in an environment like the Badlands, or Custer [State] Park, to say, “right now you need to just get very quiet, quiet your mind, get very still with yourself.” I mean, all of that’s unspoken. I know there are people who need that spoken, but I can’t bring myself to say what I just said to you in dialogue. You get it or you don’t.
FF: Do you think Dandelion gets it?
NR: I think she gets it when she’s in the Badlands, when she gets in the Badlands and she just sings that song that she’s been trying to crack throughout the film. It’s like being off the path, being present and not being in the grind, unlocks it. When we’re out in the Badlands, you know, there’s all these different paths she can take. And the way KiKi plays the moment, she looks around and she just — and I didn’t plan this part — she just darts down one. Isn’t that kind of what we do in life? Like we sit forever making pro/con lists, examining the best path, the one that’s going to give us everything we want. But at the end of the day, in life, whether you’re an artist or not, you just start walking. And if that doesn’t work, you go back and you try a different path.
FF: That sequence where Dandelion and Casey really work that song, try to crack it, approach it from every angle… does filmmaking feel like that to you, like the way songwriting is depicted here?
NR: Yes it does. I’m mostly a very analog person. I write a lot by hand. It just gets the good stuff out; I don’t know why, it just does. I’m constantly changing things, rearranging them, rewriting them. I have to feel it. I have to, like, really be out in the natural world. It’s how I create. It could be any season, I just need to be away from people. I need to be out in the woods; I love the woods. When I’m there, that’s when the really good stuff comes to me. Writing is often me just sitting. It looks very boring. It’s just me sitting and thinking and arranging things in my head. Like, 80% of it is me sitting, thinking, going on a long walk. And then when I come back, the other 20% is just typing it all out. It feels like a dam is about to break if I don’t write it down. It feels like I’m going to lose an arm or something. It’s very intense when it needs to be written down. Like, I’ve been known to cancel important events, not show up for things. When that’s about to happen, the most important thing is like, “okay, I need to go back and get it out.” It’s very urgent.
FF: It’s so interesting to hear you describe what writing for you looks and feels like because it feels like a lot of images of Ruth (from Holler) and Dandelion here is just them watching the world.
NR: That was my sales pitch for the movie: we’re going to watch people watch the world. And it’ll break box office records.
FF: It should! I just think movies are about people watching people. And I don’t mean to belabor that, but it feels like that looking is what’s missing from so many films, whether those are or aren’t these kinds of stories about people up against systems that don’t exist to accommodate them, that actively work against them.
NR: It’s interesting you use the word “systems,” because in the beginning of Dandelion, when you’re seeing the Cincinnati cityscape, there’s all these shots of the world and it’s just banks. You see Fountain Square, you see the banks. It’s art versus commerce. Money is king, money is value. If you don’t have money, you’re worthless, you don’t matter. That’s all that matters. Who cares if you’re talented? You don’t have money. You don’t make people money. That’s so ingrained in us as American artists: how much money do you make for me? I mean, sorry to be so crass, but that’s truly what it is. Or, you make a ton of money, and everyone tells you you’re talented, and you’re not. Imagine how much that’s got to fuck with your head.
But with Dandelion, you see those shots tilted up at the banks. And the final one you go to is Dandelion tiny in the frame, behind her the giant bridge. There was a reason the visual language is like that. That’s what it means to be a musician today. Did your music stream a lot? Did it perform? If not, we won’t release your album. We’ll just throw it away. You’re there with movies now. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen that with movies until now. I’ve never seen a studio not release movies because they thought it wouldn’t make money. You have all of these bottom lines. It used to be, even 10 years ago, a balance of art and commerce, right? Like, it does take money in America for art to be made. People can’t just continue to invest millions of dollars and not make a dime. They’ll go dry, they’ll go broke. They do have to make money, they have to figure that out. But today, we just have more and more bottom-line guys running these companies, being put in as heads of these companies. And they only care about making money, whether they say it or not. And Dandelion’s a film that’s trying to get at that.
FF: It’s sort of inherently “more romantic” than Holler, just because it has the lyricism of its music. But the systemic analysis is consistent, especially in terms of Hark in Holler and Casey here. They’re bad guys, but they’re not the problem.
NR: Yeah, they’re not the problem. In Holler, who has access to education, and in Dandelion, it’s who has access to the arts. Whether it’s the arts or education, there’s so much money tied up in them. When money’s the point of these things, we lose so much. Other countries have figured out the arts and education. Why haven’t we? What I’m saying isn’t radical at all. Everything I’m saying right now literally happens on a daily basis around the world and everyone’s fine. Arts education and the arts are funded in other countries. And it’s because those governments believe that the arts and filmmaking and education are essential to an informed, educated electorate. They believe that it helps us as a country to have the arts, to have writers, to have critics, to have film directors, to have painters, to have educated people who want to be educated in that way. We are better as a country when we all have those things, and they shouldn’t be our money-makers.
And so you have governments in Europe that fund filmmakers, the UK, Australia, they have government funds set aside for filmmakers to access. And there, and when you get those, they’re grants, it’s free money. So the movies don’t cost as much money, therefore they don’t have to make — and they’re not expected to make — tons of money because those governments believe these filmmakers are essential to a way of life.
FF: How much would that change the way you make movies?
NR: It would change everything. I mean, I would still have to work to get resources. But I think I’d make better films. I think I would, as much as I love my films, I would make them with a certain amount of freedom, whereas here, in the back of my mind, I have some bottom line. That would be amazing. I wouldn’t deal with that mental block that all artists deal with, to make money, make money, make money or nothing. Like that’s there for every one of us, not just film directors, but that’s there for all of us. I think without that, there would be something unlocked in us. I think I would take more risks. I mean, I already do, but I think I would take even more. No one’s asked me that before. It’s a good question. I really think it would change a lot for the better.
FF: There’s also this intervention of social media into the artmaking process. That’s a little bit of that pressure in this movie — Dandelion scrolling her more successful peers’ socials — but it’s like we’re feeding a two-headed monster now, making money and making attention.
NR: I mean, in Dandelion she scrolls past an article where this guy’s being called a genius and compared to Elliot Smith. By the way, the guy pictured in that article is the sound guy on our movie, Jon Jost, from Cincinnati, who agreed to do a photo shoot of himself. I said, “I want you to go be a cool young hipster guy who would be on the cover page of Pitchfork and declared a genius.” And he got to work. He’s a very, very, very amazing musician. But he went out and did a photo shoot and texted me the photos he did, letting his true genius shine. And we had the best time. And so that’s him. Because I love Elliot Smith, but I’ve seen that article so many times, the 22 year-old wunderkind guy who’s this young, straight, white guy who’s such a genius. The next so-and-so of film directors. When’s the last time you saw a woman in the directing chair have that kind of article written about her?
FF: I love the portraits in the film, this Do the Right Thing moment where she goes into the music store and there’s just these black-and-white photos of guys all around.
NR: Yeah, and I love those guys, by the way. Those guys are my three of my favorite all-time musicians. It’s not their fault. It’s the world we live in, you know. I know what it’s like to not see yourself on a wall. And we talk today about #MeToo and Time’s Up and Black Lives Matter, all in terms of this very loud racism and sexism. Or we talk about assault and safety, harassment. I think it needs to be moved to a place that also includes this very quiet racism and quiet sexism too, and that’s what the movie is all about: the quiet aspects of marginalization.
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