"Tully," based on the O'Henry Prize winning story by Tom McNeal, tells the story of young heartbreaker Tully Coates, as he enters a summer that will forever change his life. The film was shot on 35mm, on location in Nebraska, Iowa and Massachusetts, and is Hilary Birmingham's feature debut.

HILARY BIRMINGHAM, DIRECTOR / WRITER / PRODUCER

How did you decide to adapt this story?

Realizing that I wanted to make the story "What Happened To Tully" into a film was sort of like falling in love all of a sudden with someone I had known for a long time but somehow overlooked; I read the story years before I realized it would be my first film, but its staying power over the intervening years is really what convinced me that it was strong enough to translate onto the screen. The story is about certain strong moments of realization and clarity that hit us as we are discovering who we are in the world - and making the film provided me personally with several of those moments along the way.

I first read Tom McNeal's short story after grad school in a borrowed copy of the O'Henry Prize Winning Stories from 1992. I loved it and kept recommending it to friends. It's a great read; McNeal has a beautiful way of drawing characters and creating a sense of place that's intensely visual. The story kind of sneaks up on you - the writing mirroring the slow rising discoveries that the main character makes about himself and his father - it's very straightforward and then suddenly you discover, along with characters, that there is much more going on under the surface. What I loved about the story was simply the way it made me feel. McNeal taps into something essential and true that is at the core of growing up; the story evokes such strong memories of that thresh hold between youth and adulthood when your heart first guides you to something true and undeniable about who you are and what you want to be. I made a xerox copy that I tucked into my journal and carried it around with me for the next few years as I moved from one apartment to another.
I worked in film in New York in various capacities beginning in 1991. Starting as a production assistant on features, I moved to a stint as a story editor at a feature development company before landing in documentary as Associate Producer for Barbara Kopple. Along the way, I collected a few stories, including TULLY that I thought would make good features. It wasn't until I had decided to take a break from filmmaking that I met a screenwriter, (Matt Drake), in Budapest of all places, who reminded me of McNeal's story and inspired me to begin trying to produce it. Deciding to direct was another story altogether - I didn't even consider that until a year into the adaptation. Initially, I had only intended to produce.

What was your approach to filming?

Part of the reason I chose this story was because of its setting, which I thought offered a rich palette for exploring an emotional transformation and which would allow me to get away from the typical urban setting.

The film is about a Tully's awakening to the hidden strength of the people around him and his own strong feelings about what he wants. I wanted to emphasize the beauty of rural life rather than the hardships and to discover the passion beneath such a difficult, labor intensive and risky life. Modern farmers are faced with many of the hardships farmers have faced for hundreds of years and they really have to fight to carry on their way of life. The people who live that life are incredibly strong and interesting.

I chose a naturalistic approach to the film, forgoing the gritty approach that has become typical of films that take place on farms, but we did try as much as possibly to shoot in indirect light. I wanted the film to convey the spaciousness of the place and hopefully allow the audience to feel they were breathing the same air as the characters.

We kept the camera neutral for the most part and went hand-held for a series of scenes when things fall off kilter for Tully. Since we had mostly day exteriors with a relatively small crew and a fairly tight schedule it was a challenge to use the light to our advantage and not get trapped into a harsher look in scenes that called for a gentler feel. John Foster, Director of Photography, and I coordinated with our fantastic 1st Assitant Director, Chip Signore, who created a schedule that allowed us to use the harsher mid-day light for the scenes like the confrontation in the pen where it actually added to the tension we were trying to create. John did a wonderful job creating a warm look to capture the feeling of the last lazy summer days we all have before we become full-time working adults.
We were also committed to using the landscape and the space as much as possible. In the editing we used a lot of two shots because I wanted to attach the pace of the film to its setting and to allow the actors' work to be revealed more organically. We had a few great strokes of luck that helped us too. Before we started shooting, it rained for about 10 days straight. We basically had no cover sets since most of the film is exterior, so this caused a grave sense of dread. Then on the morning we started shooting, the sun broke through and stayed that way for the rest of the time. We had plenty of light and gorgeous green country to work with.

What were some of the trickier elements of production?

We had plenty of challenges in shooting - sharing "air time" with a remote control air tournament that happened to be taking place during a key scene, losing a key scene because of a Tornado watch, but the best story is probably about the cows.

One of the greatest challenges of the shoot was the scene in the cow field. I wanted this scene to feel spacious and cozy at the same time. The idea for this scene was plucked from a documentary called "The Farmer's Wife," in which a farmer drives his truck into his herd late at night to check up on them after a lightening storm. There was a wonderful, secure feeling as the truck pressed through those big, soft, sleepy animals and I imagined that this might be the kind of feeling a parent would want to give their child. It was perfect for the kind of childhood memory I wanted for Tully, the film's main character.

Preparing for and shooting the scene was an adventure for everyone on the crew. As a low budget film, we couldn't afford to hire "trained" animals or even experienced film animal wranglers so from the beginning of production we were scheming as to how we would get our cows to comply with my "vision" for the scene. The goal was to get the cows to allow us the truck to drive into the herd and then to get the cows to gather round the truck during the scene. All this had to happen at night while the whole crew was in the field and a huge 10k light blasted down on the poor sleepy bovines.

It was an important scene for the film, and we had the whole crew thinking about it along with Rich Hansen, the farmer whose field and cows we were using. Finally, about a week before the cow night, my assistant Amy Romeo and prop master Bucky Moss came up with a brilliant plan which involved training the cows to respond to the truck. "Operation Pavlov's Cow" began immediately and each night for the next week Amy and Bucky drove the truck into the field and fed the cows off the hood of the truck. The cows got so accostumed to their feedings that on the night of the shoot we actually had to work to keep them away from the truck when we weren't shooting.

The actual shoot in the field had other hazards we hadn't exactly anticipated, including dodging cowpies in the dark to greater and lesser success depending on who you asked on the crew. I hadn't thought too much about the fact that everyone outside the truck (which was the set for the scene) was basically going to be communing with the cows the whole night. Cows are big animals. Just one is large, but two together are giant and not a little scary for city folk.

On the night we shot, I walked into the field just as it was getting dark with Laura Kendall, our script supervisor. When we passed through the gate, the cows were across the field meandering around, but as we headed over to join John Foster (D.P.) and Scott Miller (gaffer) on the other side of the field, we noticed that the cows were coming over to "greet" us. This seemed sweet until they got closer and picked up a little speed. We tried to take a wider path to avoid being surrounded by the herd, but they corrected and came rumbling at us even faster when they felt us trying to avoid them. Perhaps cows have the same anxiety detector as dogs; they are definitely sharper than they look. The cows started closing in. We could feel their breath snorting on our necks as they began to overtake us. I was sure we were going to get trampled and I was genuinely terrified - as if we were being chased by wild beasts instead of a bunch of lazy fat cows. We were so panicked, Laura and I both started laughing hysterically. The laughter seemed to calm the cows to our great relief. It was one of my favorite moments of the shoot. By the end of the night, I was at peace with the cows and actually did a little cow directing - coaxing them into place