In Waves, the camera pirouettes with Tyler’s incessant mood swings: the highs are high ( Outkast! A$AP Rocky! Cruising beaches with your girlfriend!), but the lows are downright traumatic. “We found the universal truth amongst us, and made that come alive in the script.” Then once I got the script, we got into the specificity of the language, the things that young people would say, and the slang I heard from my younger sisters.” They then swapped stories about their fathers. Harrison Jr recalls, “Trey texted me about my romantic relationships, my relationship with my father and sister, and my experience of being a black male growing up in the South. You could barely chop wood in Night.” So Harrison Jr, of course, took the more challenging role, and the whole film – the script, the casting, everything – revolved around his version of Tyler, the character. According to Harrison Jr, Shults phrased it as: “There’s a wrestler in the first half, or a boyfriend in the second half. On the press tour for It Comes at Night, Shults offered Harrison Jr the choice of two roles. But beneath Tyler’s bravado is a more sensitive side – the clue being a dyed haircut that mimics the album cover of Blonde. In Waves, Harrison Jr gets to carry swagger and extra muscles: Tyler adores driving while blasting Tame Impala, he’s on the wrestling team, and he’s dating the coolest girl at school, Alexis ( Euphoria’s Alexa Demie). In Shults’ grief-stricken horror It Comes at Night, Harrison Jr depicted an introverted, sexually frustrated kid who’s isolated in the woods. Then I was like, ‘But it’s a really special movie.’” I don’t know what it was that made me so sad. Not just because the movie is heartbreaking, but it’s so strange to have an intimate experience with a group of people over a summer and then to watch it on screen. And then for the next three days, I was really depressed. “I was so shocked,” Russell recalls of her first viewing. If they’re jetlagged, it doesn’t show they speak passionately about the film as if it were a real event that happened in their lives. Shults and the main cast of Waves are over for the London Film Festival when I meet them separately in various hotel rooms. “Those songs were so instrumental in my life. I was listening to those albums and dreaming about making this movie” – Trey Edward Shults Frank approves of everything – for a really low rate.’ I was like, ‘How did that happen?!’” He’s not going to approve of five songs.’ Then all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘Never mind. “With Frank (Ocean), his team was like, ‘It’s not going to happen. “You just send shit into the ether,” the 31-year-old director explains. Shults personally wrote letters to Kid Cudi, Thom Yorke, Tyler, the Creator and everyone on his dream playlist. I was listening to those albums and dreaming about making this movie.” “They came out when we were making It Comes at Night. “Those songs were so instrumental in my life,” Shults says of Ocean’s Endless and Blonde. Then, like Chungking Express, the drama tonally flips midway, spending the second hour with Tyler’s sensitive sister, Emily, as depicted by Taylor Russell in a breakthrough performance. In the first half, the protagonist is Tyler, an 18-year-old wrestler played by Kelvin Harrison Jr ( Mudbound, Luce). Just as Ocean eschews verse/chorus/verse arrangements, Waves doesn’t follow a three-act template. Above all, it’s Frank Ocean whose spirit permeates Waves, from the poignant needle drops – “Mitsubishi Sony”, “Seigfried”, “Florida”, “Rushes” – to the story structure itself.
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