Watch the honorees in conversation at the Santa Fe International Film Festival Inspiration for a great storyline can come from anywhere — whether that be a classic work of literature or a great pop song. It’s become somewhat of a bit for “Blue Film” writer-director Elliott Tuttle to include a reference to Lana Del Rey’s music in his screenplays. He’d written three (as yet unproduced) screenplays before his feature debut about a fetish camboy who agrees to spend the night with an anonymous client, who turns out to be tied to his past.
Each time, Del Rey released new music while he was working. For the climax of “Blue Film,” Tuttle borrows a line from Del Rey’s 2023 track “The Grants.” As the older man reflects on the memories he and the sex worker have made of each other, he says, “I’m gonna take mine of you with me.” (Del Rey dropped “There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard,” which featured “The Grants,” while he wrote “Blue Film.”) “It’s so funny because I really did not ever think that anyone would clock that. But then I also made a movie for gay guys, so I should have realized that someone would,” Tuttle quipped, making the theater full of film festival attendees laugh.
Recently, he continued, a Del Rey fan account noticed the homage. While adapting John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” into a Netflix limited series, Zoe Kazan found herself listening to a ton of Olivia Rodrigo, and she kept the Perfume Genius song “Jason” on repeat. And it’s a little weird, which I always thought ‘Is God Is’ is a few clicks left of center.” Harris continued, “The summer I wrote the bulk of the play, I was listening to ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ on repeat. … It’s very vivid.
There’s a revenge narrative inside of that video, so the muscle of that is certainly in the spirit of the film.” When writing “Tony,” the untraditional origin story about Anthony Bourdain’s early years working in Provincetown before becoming the celebrity chef, writing duo Todd Bartels and Lou Howe only used his memoir “Kitchen Confidential” as a jumping-off point. It’s called the Colony Tap, which is a place that can only exist in Massachusetts. It’s sort of Celtics and Red Sox and maritime flotsam and jetsam, and sort of the bones of fishermen past,” Bartels said.
There’s something of an “osmosis,” he explained, about letting a location get into your bones like that. Todd worked in a fancy French restaurant when he was in high school,” Howe said. That drew us into Bourdain, but it also made it feel so much more universal.
For her adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic, Reid looked to Sally Rooney’s works and referenced another popular rom-com franchise. The panel took place the day before the movie, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, would open in theaters.
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