Awards Daily talks to writer/director Dave Meyers about bringing Jennifer Lopez’s vision to life in This is Me. . .Now.
It had been a minute since writer/director Dave Meyers had worked with Jennifer Lopez; the last music video they collaborated on was 2002’s “All I Have.”
“It was a bit of a reunion and fun to resync with our adult selves,” says Meyers. “The last time we worked together was our young 20s’ versions of ourselves. I thought it was really fascinating, and looking back 20 years is what birthed the concept of [This is Me. . .Now] in a way.”
As they caught up on the last two decades in that initial reunion, Lopez played the This is Me. . .Now record for Meyers to show the headspace she was in. After an open and honest chat that Meyers said moved him, he came back a week later and had written a loose version of what became the movie.
“She imprinted on it immediately, and then she placed the songs. It was this really beautiful synergy, and from that point, we locked arms and started writing the script together. Ultimately, what I responded to was she was in a place where she wanted to be vulnerable and transparent with the audience about her life, being that her life is discussed so often in so many places. I thought it was an interesting moment for her and an interesting moment to be part of with her.”
An experimental long-form music project wasn’t just something that Lopez was interested in—it had long been something Meyers sought to do, too.
“I’ve been a big fan of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Across the Universe (from Julie Taymor), and a couple other abstract musical films. I’ve always pitched it to artists, and it took this long. Jen got it like that. Some things are just meant for the moment. A lot of times in music videos, you don’t have a robust movie star as a singer, so I really enjoyed taking full advantage of her to be in the moment as an actress. That makes the video a little more elevated and theatrical than a typical music video.”
Meyers points to a quote from Robert Zemeckis that served as an inspiration, that film is a combination of “truth and spectacle.” He says there’s a very strong truth here that lets him get spectacle-y.
“Jen brought the real story, and I just dressed it up with a crazy adventure of abstract excitement. To make a bombastic thrill ride out of the subject of love intrigued me—and made me nervous, too.”
A mix of practical and special effects, the scene for the song “Hearts and Flowers” sets the tone for the film, with Lopez’s heart represented as a steampunk-esque factory pumping out flowers even though her center is reaching dangerously low levels of love. The crew had started filming this shortly after Lopez decided to self-fund the project after being unable to secure studio funding.
“She said, ‘You better make Hearts and Flowers fucking amazing, Dave!’ I had already felt that it needed to be amazing. When the effects started rolling in and I could see we had something huge here, I could see it in her eyes. It wasn’t just making a movie star happy with their movie; it was also making the person whose life it’s about happy. And she was funding it!”
Plus, there was also a making-of documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, being filmed by Jason Bergh and his crew at the same time
“The two go nice hand in hand,” says Meyers. “I’m used to doc crews on set, but it’s a little bit different to have a doc crew at lunch while she’s having an emotional moment. That Jane Fonda thing that made the edit. I thought, is the camera supposed to be here? But it was amazing in the movie [the doc]. I think that’s what’s such a rare treat from both [the doc and the movie]. One is a formalized poem of how she feels, and the other is the truth of what it took to do that. Both are orbiting her in the moment.”
Speaking of Jane Fonda, Meyers says that the scene with the celebrity zodiac signs, from Post Malone to Keke Palmer to Kim Petras, was one of the more complicated sequences to do because none of the signs were actually in the same room together—even though they seem like they are interacting with each other.
“The zodiac scene was probably the most difficult scene to put together because we shot the actors over three months. Keke Palmer was the last one we shot, so she really just had fun with it. We had rewritten the zodiac conversation over time, so hanging onto it as a cohesive narrative was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve done.”
Meyers really had to adapt and pivot throughout the filming process, and one of the best adaptations is the finale. The Singin’ In the Rain homage at the end wasn’t the original ending, but Lopez’s exuberance sealed the deal.
“That scene was born in Jen’s mind, and her performance made it the ending. Leading in, that scene was really just a transition from one to another, and that’s how it was even on the shoot. When we shot it, she channeled this happiness and she danced until her shoes fell apart. She was shivering between takes, but she was there to murder that scene. It was a special moment. In general, the larger crew was trusting the process, but it was that scene when even the dolly grip, after we cut and wrapped, said, ‘This was special.’ We moved it to the end because it felt right.”
This is Me…Now is streaming on Amazon Prime.
