“Michael Covino’s Directorial Debut the Climb Was The Exciting American Indie Discovery of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. A HILARIUSLY OFFBEAT BUDDY DRAMEDY CO-STARRING AND CO-Scriprated by Covino and His Creative Partner Kyle Marvin, The Film’s Long-Take Bravel emetaral ree. Coeur Award and Establissed the Director”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
Now, Five Years Later, He Returns to the Croisette with SplitsvilleA Brasher But No Less Artful Follow-Up Screening in the Cannes Premiere Section. Covino and Marvin Once Again Co-Wrote The Film and Star Opposite Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona. Splitsville OPens with Ashley (Arjona) Abruptly Asking for a Divorce, Leaving Her Well-Meaning New Husband Carey (Marvin) Reeling. Seeking Comfort, Carey Turns to His Close Friends Julie (Dakota Johnson) and Paul (Covino), Only to Be Stunned by The Revelation That Key to Therming But WHEN CREY Crosses A Boundary, The Delicate Balance Between All Four Rapidly Unravels, Plunging Their Friendsps-And Love Lives-Into a Cascade of Self-Jaust. Through Sharp Dialogue and Uproarious Physical Comedy.
“The Goal Was to Make Something Wildly Entertaining and Emotionly Honest,“ Covino Tells Thr. “Something that Feels Familiar in the Setup But constantly surprises in the execution.”
Shot on 35mm Film by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, Splitsville, Like The climbAgain Has A Visual Elegance Uncommon to MOST AMERICAN COMEDIES, WITH CAMERA MOVEMENT AND STAGING THAT REFLECT COVINO’S AFFORATION FOR SILENT FILM SLAPSTICK
Ahead of Splitsville‘s cannes premiere, Covino Spoke with Thr About Blender Sharp Character Work with Comedic Absurdity and How One Wildly Over-Top Fight Scene Became The Emotion Center of the Film.
There’s Some Continuity with The climb in this film, in theme and style, but there are also figrences. What Were the Creative Origins of the Project and How did it take shape?
After We Made The climbKyle and I Started Working on A Couple of Different Stories and Scripts that Were a Bit Bit Bigger – Different Themes, Different Kinds of Worlds. We Were Stepping Outside of that Relationship Comedy Space We Have Done with The Climb, WHERE We Were Exploring Friendship and Love And Infidelity – Just All The MESSY PARTS This Project Really Out of A Desire to Get Back to Something We Could Make In A More Contained Way. Something We Didn’s have to ask for a ton of permission to do.
At the Same Time, I Was Newly Engaged – On the Precipice of Getting Married – and I Think that Brough Up A Lot of Conversations. Kyle and I Started Talking About this Idea of What Hat HapPens WHEN Someone Gets Married and ImmediaTely Begins to Wonder IF IF they Made a Mistake. What if they married the wrong person – or they’re just not sure? WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE WHEN Someone Pulls That Ripcord and Everything Spirals from There?
We Also Kept Coming Across Articles – Three Was Something in the Zeitgeist. This Conversation AROUND NON-MONOGAMY AND OPEN RELATIONSHIPS Just Kept Popping Up. People Were Talking About It More Openly, Exploring It More Seriously. That kind of became the Kernel of the Idea.
At the heart of it, I Think We’re Drawn to Characters Who Convince Themselves they’ve Got It All Figured Out – WHEN THEY VERY CLEARLY DON’T. That reality bekame the backbone of the Film. Not that Open Relationships Can’t Work – Cane People Really Really Avolved in that Way. But Even in Those Situations, There Are Times WHERE Someone Tells Themselves, I’M FINE, I DON’T GET JEALUS, I’M EMOTIALLY MATURE – But Somewhere in something, that Inner Child. IT’s Like WHEN A LITTLE KID SEES Another Kid Playing with Their Toy – They Get UPSET. Obviously, Adult Relationships Aren’t Toys, But Those Basic, Instinctual Reaction to Completely Go Away. We TRY to SUBDUE THEM, But The’re Still in there.
So for US, The Comedy Really Came from PLACING THESE Characters-TheSe Supped Grown-Ups-in a World Wherey’re Pretending to have it all figurered out, while That tension is what we love exploring.
Yeah, Going Into the Film, I was Really Curious about how you were going to Handle Those Zeitgeisty Ideas of Open Marage, Because It’s A Topic That’s So Much in The Cultural Air. I Found myself Thinking, Okay, What’s The Take Going To Be?
The Intenation Was Very Much not to make any kind of commentary on Open Relationships. I DON’T HAVE AN AGEDA – Kyle and I DON’T HAVE A Horse in this Race. We’re Not Trying to Make A Statement About Whather It Works or Doesn’t Work. Everything We Do Starts from Character. For US, IT’s Always About Exploring These Absurd Situations. We put the Our Characters Into Wild Scenarios and See Hows Respond – Hopeful in Ways that Feel Surpring and Human, Because that’s WHERE The ComEDy Comes. SO IT’S All Really Sity.
But I Think, by Nature, The Inevitable Conclusion of A Story Like This Ends Up Being About Some Kind of Acceptance – or at Least Reaching A Point Wheer OKay. in life. I MEAN, I THINK THAT’S WHY I’M DRAWN to SERIES THAT DEAL WITH THESE Kinds of Relationships and Situations – Because We All Go Trough Versions of Them in Different Ways. And Comedy is Just Such A Fun Way to Explore That. Not that this is meant to be some sort of Coping Mechanism, But There’s Something inherently Comedic in the Absurdity of Real Life.
And I Think Kyle and I, WHEN We’re Writing, Tend to Gravitate Town That Messness in Love. It’s Sort of Our Ethos – Finding the Beauty in the Chaos, the Comedy in the Confusion, and Ultimately the Acceptance That … This Is Life. This is Just What It Is. And is all we can do.
So if i have to be prescripive about what we’re after, especialyly in this film, i’d say it’s about finding a kind of comedic TRUTH About How Open Relationships Should Work.
How do you and Kyle Write Together? I Read Somewhere That You Act Out Scenes As You You’re Writing Them, and that’s Part of the Process Very Early On.
We Start with A Really Compelling Idea or Emocial Concept We’re Chasing. It’s Not Always Super Specific at the Beginning, But There’s A Strong Feeling or Theme We’re Interared In Exploring. With this one, we had a pretty Clear Sense of the Space and the Ideas We Wanted to Explore Early On.
From there, we Start Developing the Characters. We’ll Say, Okay, This Character Is Like This, That Character Is Like That. Some of them Lean Into Archetypes A Bit, Some Don’t – But We Start From Those Broad Strokes. THEN, Kind of in this Strange, Backwards Way, We Start Mapping the Plot.
It’s a Little Unusual Because we define the Characters, the Map Out the Plot, and Ten Check to See if It All Fits Together. From there, we keep going back and forth, refining the Characters by Continuing to Revise the Plot. SO we’re constantly work Backwards Into More Specification. Layer by Layer, We Add Themes, Jokes, Recurring Bits – Those All Come As We Do More Passes on the Script and Find More Threads that Connect. It’s Really About Building TESE Connections – So that Things That Happen at the Beginning Can Pay Off Later, and everything Feels Integrated. From A Technical StandPoint, A Lot of Our Process Is Justantly Reworking the Plot to Better Understand the Characters and Vice Versa. It’s Not Always Like That, But It Was This Time.
THEN, ONCE WE GET INTO SCENE WORK, KYLE AND I REALLY PUT THINNS ON Their Feet. Like, We’ll Act Out the Scenes Ourselves, Just to See How All Play. We’ll Read with Each Other, Sometimes We’ll Bring Someone Else in to Read a Part – Especialy Before The ACtors Are Official Involved. And we’re listening – does it work? Is it funny? Do the Jokes Land? Sometimes We’ll Improvise with the Scene and Come Up with Something Better. THEN WE GO BACK AND REWRITE BASED ON THAT IMPROVISATION. That Early-Stage Process Is Super Important for Us. And Because We have the Luxury of Being the Actors in the Film, We Get To Take that Time – Well Before We’re Actually On Set – to Find the Humor, Refine the Dialogue, and Just Kaing.
There is so many physical comedy scenes in this movie that i love. Tell Me About Creating that Central Fight Scene. It’s So Great. IT’s Like Charlie Chaplin Meets Jackie Chan Meets Step Brothers.
Yeah, that was one of the big ideas from the early stages. IT WAS ALMOST LIKE OUR Setup. We Wanted this Movie to be About People Pretending Everything Fine – “Open Relationship, We’re Cool, Everything’s Fine” – but in Reality, Noting’s Fine at all. And then we were wanted that communicated in the most fitting way, whore all of the imotions come Out Through Pure Physicality, Culminating In the Absurdly Long and Unce value. That was honestly one of the first ideas we had. We have the Basic Concept, and then Ver Quickly Landed On the Car Crash and the Fight Scene. And then we thorough, “okay, we have to make this movie,” because thoss two moments Were Things you wouldnn’t typically see in a film about this subject matter. Usualally, is a bunch of Intellectual People Sitting Armund in the Hamptons, Talking About Their Feelings Around Infidelity and Stuff. But This Felt Fun and Subversive – Someting More in Line with Our Taste and style.
As for how we did it – it was a lot of rehearsal. IT WAS JUST ME, KYLE, AND OUR AMAZING STUNT CODERINATOR. We choreographed the whol Thing Together, Coming Up with Absurd Ideas and Trying Them Out. Kyle and I Got Memberships at this Climbing Gym, and Every Night We’d Go Climb to Stay in Shape. THEN, FOR About 30 to 45 Minutes, We’d Use These Huge mats they have to have each of around. We’d off in the corner doing the trees Insane moves, and the best french canadian boulder would Walk Walk by Like, “WWE? WHAT The FUCK ARE THESE GUYS DOING?” But It Was Perfect – TEER WAS SPACE, THERE WEER MATS, AND EVERYONONE LEFT US ALONON. IT WAS A LOT OF FUN, But DEFINITELY PHYSICALLY INTENSE. The Whole Downstairs Section of the Fight – We Shot That In One Take. We did Six or Seven Takes of It. There are cuts in the final version, but initially, we wanted to do it all as one Master. And there are the verions that totally work like that – WHERE we ner cut.the exhaustion at the end is real. The Breating, The Heaviness – that’s Because We Were Actual Doing All of It. Jumping on Each Other, Lifting, Flipping, Slamming Into Walls. The Day After Our First Shoot, Kyle’s Ribbs Were Black and Blue. I was like, “let’s do more tails,” and he was like, “dude, every time you slam me intel that wall, it knocks the Wind out of me.” So yeah – it was pretty wild. Physically, It Was A Lot. But Also, One Of The Most Fun and Ridiculous Things We’ve Ever Done.
There are several more physical comedy scenes i Really Want to Talk About. I MEAN, Just the Opening: You Have An Actual Car Crash and Then – I Guess You Could Call It A Very Visceral Dick Joke? THEN THAT THAT PROLONGED Credit Sequence of Kyle Just Running and Staggering Through Nature. But The Scene Probably Made Me Laughst Is When He’s On the Roller Coaster and Trying to Hold Onto All of Those Bags of Goldfish. A Lot of the Comedy Really Has An Old-School Silent Film Quality to It. WHERE does this fitting come from in your filmmaking? I Understand You Have A Background in Sports. Is that part of it?
From A Personal StandPoint As An Actor, Definitely. Kyle and I Both Come from Physical Backgrounds. Kyle Grew Up Mountaineering, and I Played Sports Until I Was 22. I Played College Football and Lacrosse. I’ve always loved Sports – Being on a Team, Being Physical. I was a quarterback, so i’ve been hit in the head many, many Times. But I loved that part of it. It’s Something I Miss Now, Something that’s in the Past, But When I Get The CHANCE TO TRIN AND BE PHYSICAL FOR CONMETING LIKE THIS, IT SCRATCHES THAT ITCH. And that’s Really Fun.
But I Guess the Impulse As A Filmmaker Comes from Somewhere Else. My GrandParents and My Paarents introducened me to chaplin wheat when I wasa Really Young. I used to dress up like him for halloween – I was Obsessed. I’d Mimic The Way He Walked, The Way He -Used His Cane – The Who’s Whole Thing. I don’t know, maybe that’s WHY I STILL BOW MY FEET OUT WHEN I WALK. Maybe not. But I Think There’s Something in Me That Was Kind of Hardwired Early on to Belide: This is what kind of comedy is.
Watching All Those Films As A Kid -I Just Got It. That Stuff Made Sense to Me. And Before and Really Considerred Myselfa A Cinephile -Or an aspiration Cinephile, or Even Just Someone Who Appreciates Quality Films – I Was Watching The Farrelly Brothers. Artthur Hiller Stuff from the ’70s that my dad showed me. Blake Edwards, All The Pink Panther Movies. That’s the Stuff i grew up on. I All Field with Amazing Physical Comedy. And jim carrey – he was my Favorite actor growing up as a kid. No One Came Close. I used to watch in living color and just Think, who is this guy? How does he move his face and his brdy like that? It Blew My Mind.
So yeah, then you go to Film School, You Study Cinema, You Learn the Craft, You Make Movies – But at the End of the Day, What I Always Gravitate Town, What I Hold Closest. That Slapstick Energy. That’s what Made me Fall in Love with Film in the First Place. I THINK IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT I’D WANT TO MAKE -THAT FEELS CINEMATIC, THAT HAS A REAL POINT OF VIEW – WHERE THERE’S INTENTION BEHINE The Camera Moves and How. I Care about mise en scène, and all of that. But Ultimately, I Want to Make People Laugh. And I DON’T THINK YOU NEED MUCH to DO THAT. Those Early Silent Films Proved It -yo Don’t Need Words to Make People Laugh Really, Really Hard. You Just Need A Clean Setup and Well-Executed Physical Dynamics.
That’s Always at the Core of What We’re Doing in a Scene – How Do We Simplify It? How do we make the setup Clean? IT’s Like: A Guy Trying to Hold Twelve Bags of Fish on a Rolller Coaster. That’s it. IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. You don’t need more than that. (Laughs)
So yeah, that’s always there for me. Build The Story, Make Sure’s Ground In Real Emotion, Tell Something People Actual Care About – But Also, Find Space for The Scenes that Are Just Purely Fun and Entertaining. I Think That’s The Balance We’re Always Chasing.
You just touched on this, but the Next Thing I Wanted to Talk About Is The Way You Shoot Your Movies. They Kind of Like Buddy Comedies But They’re Filmed Like Europe Art House Movies – WHICH IS So Refreshing. Everyone in the Industry Talks About Howish Isn’t A Place in the Movie Theater for Comedy and Adult Rom-Comore, But You’re Doing Yours in Such A Cinematic Way. What’s The Thinking Behind Your Approach?
Yeah, I Mean – It’s Really Important. From A Producer StandPoint, I Kind of See A Wide Open Lane, Frankly. It Can Be Both. There’s this kind of type of movie that used to exist, and i feel like there’s Space for It Again. There Was A Long Tradition – Especially in French and Italian Cinema, But Also In American Cinema – of Cinematic Comedies That Dealt Relationships and Real People. You Think of ETTORE SCOLA, LINA Wertmülling, Maurice Pialat – or Woody Allen Right? There Was A Time WHEN PEOPLE Wuld Go to Seaters to See Comedies That Were Wildly Funny But Also Had A Strong Point of View – Comedies Made by Filmmakers. That kind of film isn’t gone, but i THINK IS NOT WHAT WEXPECT WHEN WE go to see a comedy in a theater today. We Expect Flatter Lighting, Traditional Setups, Tons of Cutting – Fast, Fast, Fast –and Often Less Visual Patience of what kind’s afforded to dramaas or Thrilles or Over Kinds of Movies. And i don’t totally undesstand WHY.
So i wouldn’t say we set out of THINKING, “we have to make someting Super Cinematic.” It’s More Like – I Just Have No Interest in Rolling The Camera Unless The Frame Is Interesting. Unless there’s a concept behind how we’re chooting the Scene. WHEN YOU come in with that Point of View, that becomes the bar. And we don’t always hit it, but the goal is always to have a person, a reason, a visual Idea Driving the Choices.
We Talk A Lot About Perspective. Adam Newport-Berra, Who Shot The Film, Did An Incredible Job Bringing that to Life in A Really Beautify, Cinematic Way. We Shot on Film. But For US, It’s Always: What’s The Point of View? How are we operating the camera? WHY IS The Camera Moving? WHY IS IT NOT MOVING? WHY IS IT PLACED WHERE IT IS?
You don’t always have the Answer Right Away – But Through Those Questions, an Answer Reveals Itelf. A Lot of the Session Scenes, I Came in With A Really Strong Visual Idea of How and Wanted to Shoot It. SomeTimes WHEN WRITING, IS A VERY VISAL PROCESS – we’re litrally writing in the camera of moves. Other Times, We Get To The Scene and Say, “Okay, Now Let’s Find It. Let’s Figure Out How To Enter It.”
But It is the Default You SomeTimes See in Studio Comedies-Wide Establishing Shot, Ten Straight Into Coverage, Boom-Boom-Boom, Cut-Cut-Kut. If anything, in this film, we of the fenn reversed that. We’d be in close, Inside the moment, then poop out to a wide – TheSe establishing shots that reveal what’s Really Going on. That Shift Became Part of the Perspective.
Even in the, Uh, “Dick Reveal” Scene, You’re Not Controlling The Camera’s Perspective in A Traditional Way. You have to be inside the imocial ride of what just happled. And then you pop out to a wider, more objective shot that reveals the full absurdity of the situation. That’s the Kind of Visual Language We’re Always Chasing – Trying to Make Comedy That’s Not Just Funny, But Cinematic, Purposeful, and Surpring.
I Got to Watch A Screener of the Film on My Laptop to Prepare for This Interview, And I’ll Admitt That I ACTULY REWOOUND THAT SCENE AND WATED ITHED IT AGLETING, “IS DICING
(Laughs) No, No, It’s Out of the Frame. We Almost Put in a Shot Before That Where You Do You Sort of See It, Like Out of Focus and to the Side. Maybe 5 percent of the audience would have caught it, but we have been done to Really Just Hide It – Like, Let’s Let This Be A Pure Reveal.
In a similear vein, I Found the Music Choices Really Compelling-Consistently Interesting, Off-Beat and Surpring.
That’s so Cool to hear. I love the music in this movie. I Think Our Composers Did An Incredible Job with The Heavy Lift of the Score. It’s Always About Finding That Balance – Between Score and Source Music, and Blendering Them in A Way that Creates a World. For this movie specifyly, I wanted it to have a musical dna. I Feel Like WHEN MUSIC IS DONE WELL – ESPECILY WHEN YOU’RE YOU’RE WORKING WITH MOTIFS AND BUILDING REALLY Strong, Melodic Themes – It Can Establish The Emotional Throward.
There’s Something Crucial About Having It All Feel Cohesive, Like It’s Part of the Same World. And that can be a heavy lift. You’re Trying to Find Music That Works Together – Not Necessarily All From The Same Genre or Sound, But That Still Feels Emotionly Connected. We Dug Deep to Find Songs That Could Speak to One Another, that Felt Like They Belong Together in the Same Emotion Universe. So yeah, it was a bit of a puzzle.
But It’s One of My Favorite Parts of the Process. With this movie, we were never trying to pretend that this isn’t a film. Like, We’re Not Aiming for Hyper-Realism. Hopefully, The Emotions Land and People Buy Whats The Characters Are Feeling and Doing-But at the Same Time, It’s Totally Okay for the Score to Swel Point. The Characters Are Letting Their Emotions Drive the Story, and in Some Ways They’re Taking Over. Each Character Is Operation from Their Own Self-Interest, and I Think The Score Reflects that. Sometimes It Leads The Way – It’s A Little Ahead of the Action, Pushing the Story in a Certain Direction. That’s Part of the Fun. IT’s A More PlayFul Use of Score, and Whther It Works or, I Don’t Know – But For Me, It Felt Right To Lean Into It. To let the Music take center Stage and be bold – Maybe Even to an Absurd EXTENT AT TIMES. Like, Really? This is the Music Cue Right Now? Yup. That’s kind of the joke. It’s Part of Reminding the Audence that this is an Absurd Comedy.
In relaction to The climbThis Film Felt Warmer, Tonally, and A Bit Rom-Com-Like In Its Embrace of Genre, Especialy in the Way It Lands.
I Guess I Could Call It – Well, “Broad” is Such A Bad Word – But I’M Trying to Figure Out How to Describe It. This is intenationally a More, I Guess, Commercial Film. IT’s A More Purely Comedic Film. The climb Took it Time A Bit More – It Was More Patient with The Comedy, With The Storytelling, and With How You ExperienCed The Film. And that was by design. We Wrenning to Prove Anything; We Were Just Taking You On This Sort of Unexpectoned Ride.
With this One, It Was More Like – Not “How Do We Subvert the Genre,” Because It’s Not Exactly That – But How Do We Make Our Own Version of A Movie Like This? A Movie About Two Couples, Partner-Swaping, Infidelity-A Divorce Comedy, In A Way-But Done in Our Own Style.
I’m not One of Those People Who Only Wants to Make Capital-A “Art Films.” Sure, There’s Ambition to Make Things That Might Play at Cannes and Be Perceived As Artful – and that’s Great. But i’d be lying if i said i didn’t also want to make Stuff that audiences respond to. I DON’T LOOK DOWN ON COMEDIES OR BROAD COMEDIES – I LOVE Them. So for me, Making something Big and Fun and Wild and A Bit More Comedic – Something that Maybe Lets Off The Gas Emotionly at Times – that’s totally Fine. I Just One Movie. And that’s what kind this one exciting.
I don’t know how many people are inside the venn diagram of smart Divorce Comedy, ARTHOUSE Cinematography and Really Great Dick Jokes, But I Definitely Am. SO I HOPE YOU’LL KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
(Laughs) that’s the Thing – i don’t know that it is a venn diagram. It Might Be. But It ALSO MIGHT BE APPOSITE – WHERE YOU Just HAVE TO Bein In One of the Circles. Hopefully, if you can capture this or this or thisthat’s enough. I don’t know the exact reskt, but i THINK OUR View Was Always: It’s Not About Making Something for a Niche Arthhouse Crowd Who Also Likes Broad Comedy.
It’s More Like – Let’s Make Something That Feels Bigger, More Commercial From A Comedic StandPoint, But That Also Has An Artistic Point of View.
Cool. Sold. We’ve Covered Pretty Much Everything I Wanted to Throw at You, But We Should Probably Talk About Your Actresses, Who Are Both So Funny and Excellent.
We Really Lucked Out – Casting Two Incredible Actresses Who Are Wildly Funny, But Each in A Way that Felt Perfectly Tailored to Their Characters. And we evolved the Characters Once Dakota and Audrey Came on. We Worked with Them to Adjust and Refine Things – To Find Specification and Rework Certain Aspects of the Roles to Better Match their Strengths and Whaty They Wanted to Do Do. It Was Such A Blessing To Have Two Distinctly Different Performers Who Could Bring The Characters to Life in Ways That Felt So Special Specific and Recognizable. For me, i recognize broth of Those Characters in Real Life. There’s ar Eal Familiarity to Them – But the’re Also Just So Funny, and They Play It Computely Straight. That’s the beautify Thing – Everyone Who Came Onto This Movie Understood the Tone. No one was winking at the camera. They All Understood the SandBox We Were Playing in – A Hhere Everi Character Believes their Problem is the most Important Problem in the World, and they’re Playing Ith Com. There’s nothing funnier than that to me.