Image credit: Tori Time
Kennedy has one day to get her shit together or get kicked out of school for good. Instead of buckling down, she rallies a ragtag crew for a midnight pool-hopping adventure through the lavish estates of her college town. But under the surface, Kennedy is searching for answers to the questions tearing her up inside in the wake of her father’s death. As the secrets spill, this wild escape becomes a cathartic journey of self-discovery.
Pools is a coming-of-age story in the vein of John Hughes’ movies Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club. It’s Sam Hayes’s debut feature film, screening at this year’s SXSW Sydney.
Franca Lafosse: The characters in Pools are so intricate and have such great chemistry. Since you wrote and directed it, I’m wondering how much of that dynamic was already in the writing and how much, if anything, emerged with the actors when you were directing? Did the script change much?
Sam Hayes: When it felt right, yes! On set I would make sure to get the script basically just as written first, to make sure to keep the story and tone all intact, and then once we had it, let the actors riff on it.
Franca: Right, because your background is in writing, isn’t it?
Sam: I’m a writer first and foremost, yes. I started in fiction, so the writing is really important to me. Even, like, certain words that come back… you know, like an actor uses a word in the beginning of the movie that then comes back at the end of the movie. Those sorts of book-end moments are important to me. So, if the actor changes the line a little bit I’d be like ‘you can change the other words, but just make sure you say this word’.
Franca: Of course, like the “unclear” motif, I loved how Kennedy kept using ‘it’s unclear’.
Sam: Yeah, exactly, that’s one example. Or even the line, ‘everything happens for a reason’. It’s one of the first lines she says in the movie, and she says it all tongue-and-cheek, not even believing it, just fucking with Miss Lewis. But then at the end, Michael says ‘did you ever think maybe there’s nothing wrong with you, maybe it’s all happening for a reason?’. And hopefully that hits. It’s meant to tie it back, even though it’s subtle and maybe you would never notice it. But it’s important to me.
Franca: Absolutely. I also saw that Odessa A’zion, who plays Kennedy, was an executive producer of the film.
Sam: Yeah, Odessa was absolutely instrumental to the whole process. I met with Odessa before I wrote the full script. And then I wrote it for her. So she was involved from the very beginning, the movie would not have been made without her. It’s very much her movie.
And then Michael Vlamis, the air conditioning man, is one of my best friends. We’ve been doing videos since we met 10 years ago, like we were doing dumb videos for a $50 budget, you know? So, I wrote that role for him from the beginning too, and Michael as a person inspired the character in many ways. And then the other role that I wrote specifically for an actor was for Tyler Alvarez, the role of Blake. And I actually didn’t know him, I had a connection to him, so I knew I could meet up with him, but I just really loved his work in this one show called American Vandal and I felt like he was so perfect for this character that I had in mind. I started writing it with him in mind. And then eventually, he read it and thankfully he vibed with it and jumped on board. So yeah, I mean the actors, I think really make it. They all did such a good job. They embodied those roles and brought them to life better than I could have imagined. They all brought so much to the table.
Franca: So, does the process change when you’re writing something with an actor in mind?
Sam: I think it’s nothing I could put my finger on, but it does just give you a clear feeling of who this character is, that hopefully resonates with the actor more than it would have if it was just written, you know, without thinking of them.
Franca: Right… and, since you mentioned Odessa being involved from the beginning, I wanted to ask you about the music, because it plays such a key role in film. Both her original songs, but also Cody Fry’s composition, it’s key to setting the tone and comedic style of the film. Were those collaborations happening early on as well?
Sam: I grew up with Cody, in that area where the film is set. We didn’t grow up in the town of Lake Forest, but a couple of towns away in the North Shore of Chicago. I remember him messaging me when I was on set shooting and being like ‘Yo dude, I’d love to compose this!’, and at that point he had never composed for a movie before. But he’s a brilliant composer, he was already a very successful musician, like this guy plays every instrument, he can literally conduct an orchestra. And he knew the feeling of that area that we shot in, like the John Hughes land – that’s where he shot all his movies too – and he knew me, so I could work with him really easily and really well. So, we ended up bringing him on board. Even though we could have hired a composer who’d done a bunch of movies already. But we went with him. And then two weeks later, he was nominated for a Grammy! So yeah, he did an amazing job.
And then with Odessa, you know… the movie to me, as much as there is a huge emphasis on music, when I was first writing the script it wasn’t necessarily built around that. The music is meant to represent any sort of alternative life path that you want to take, that maybe your contemporaries don’t think is wise or don’t approve of, whether that’s being an air-conditioning man or being a musician, or being an artist. So, when I first started writing the script, I didn’t know what that side plot would be for that character, I just knew it would be something in the arts.
Then I met Odessa and found out that she was actually a budding really talented musician that was, at the time, in the same sort of place as the character of Kennedy with that side of her. Like, she had this incredible raw talent in music, but she didn’t really show it or tell it to anybody, right?
So then I wrote it with her in mind to perform and have music be “the thing”. And then she wrote that custom song for the film. I think she just knocked it out of the park, she did amazing.
Franca: That’s so cool, I love that! And you can tell how organically all of that of came together in the film. So, was this your first time directing?
Sam: It was, yeah. I directed some shorts, but first feature. And I wrote it to direct it. I was like, this is one that I want to see through.
Franca: Wow, and are you a big advocate for working with people who you know, who you’ve grown up with and have already collaborated with?
Sam: Absolutely, you have to work with people that you love because you’re gonna be stuck in the trenches together for years. You know, with Pools, from first draft to where we’re at now… it’s been five years. I’ve been working on it for a long time because there was the writing, then assembling the team around it, then there’s raising money, continuing to build the team and then waiting to shoot but not being able to because of COVID… and then finally shooting, then tons of editing and post and color and music and sound. Man.
Franca: Were there any horror stories of, you know, someone testing positive on set?
Sam: Thankfully not. One of my producers tested positive just before the shoot, thankfully, so he didn’t get anybody else sick. He just took his time off and came back, and it was fine.
Franca: Well, – before COVID came up – I was going to ask you: if you were to do the whole process again, is there one thing that you would change or you would do differently?
Sam: I mean… I don’t know if this is a thing that people can do but, like, the schedule of a movie set is just so intense. At least in the States, it’s 12-hour days, five days a week, and then two days off. And those 12-hour days, because you’re shooting and you have limited time, they often go overtime.
With Pools, we had an incredible crew – everyone was so hard working, and passionate, and a lot of people got to step into bigger roles than they had done before, so they were really passionate about it and did a great job… but we still had to go overtime a lot. And half of the shoot was night shoots, like 6PM to 6AM, so then we’d end up going till 8AM!
So, I’m kind of wondering: would it be possible to do a movie where it’s four days a week at 12 hours, and then three days off instead of two days? Because two days off isn’t really enough time to have a full rest, recover from the intense work and prepare for the next week.
And you really need to do both of those, especially if you’re a department head or director or producer or acting in the film. So I would look into that the next time.
Franca: Especially because you were both the writer and director, did you find it hard to balance both roles?
Sam: Well, for me the divide was more between producer and writer/director. Because I was producing this the whole time, right up until about a week before the shoot. And then I had to tell my other producers that I couldn’t, you know, be making calls to the location and all this stuff anymore because I had to do the shot list and prepare for directing on set. It was nuts, so yeah, those are very different parts of the brain for me. And I like both of them, but that’s the tough switch. I had to turn [producing brain] off for the shoot, and then turn it back on after.
Franca: Well, it seems like you did a great job. One last question for you, what’s a film that really influenced you when you were starting out, any films that you remember having big impact on you?
Sam: Ohh, yeah, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Oh, and definitely another one that had a huge impact on me was The Graduate. That’s probably my favourite film. Those are also the two biggest influences for this film, for sure. The Breakfast Club too, but more so those.
Franca: Amazing, thanks for chatting with us today, and all the best at the premiere!
Sam’s film POOLS will be playing this Friday 18th October 6pm at Palace Central Cinemas, as part of the SXSW Sydney Screen Festival.
Sam Hayes is a writer and director from Chicago, currently living in Los Angeles. He began his career in fiction, with a novel titled The Weather Man, published by Amazon White Glove in 2017. His focus then shifted to film, writing scripts for Fuzzy Door Productions, Broken Road Entertainment, and more. Sam wrote and directed POOLS, starring Odessa A’zion and Mason Gooding, which will premiere at SXSW Sydney 2024, and is expected to be released in the summer of 2025. He also helped produce Tribeca Festival 2024 feature Adult Best Friends from Delaney Buffet, and Michael Vlamis’s Crossword, which is premiering at Austin Film Festival 2024. Next up, Sam is producing Matt Johnson’s next film, Early Bird, writing an Alan Watts biopic in collaboration with the estate, and is in development on Halloween comedy Costumes Required and several other projects he is writing and directing. He is represented by Bash Naran at WME.