Thelma avoids those potential pitfalls and parody, instead offering original and funny take on aging.
June Squibb stars as the eponymous hero, the victim of scam when someone pretending to be her grandson (Fred Hechinger) asks for $10,000 to help free him from jail, a common real life phone scam.
(The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the San Diego FBI recovered over $3 million lost by elderly victims of similar scams)
When the cops prove no help, Thelma resolves to get the money back on her own, commandeering a scooter and accomplice (Ben, played by Richard Roundtree in his final role)
The indie distributor is now launching Thelma as its largest theatrical release to date.
Your real-life grandmother Thelma is now 104
An early version had him actually taken in some way, and she had to get him back. It was crazy and it didn’t quite work. But there was something in the idea of her getting duped and having to get revenge.
The conceit became she sends the money and decides she needs to get it back. The simplicity of that and that fact that it’s not major leap from reality. Then I started having a lot of fun just trying to take very real traits and characteristics and behaviors that I see in my grandma and funnel them through the action genre in as low-key way as possible.
Tone was just always really on my mind. The idea of what excited me about Thelma, beyond concept, was trying to take it seriously. My grandma is naturally funny. There’s so many things about the matter of fact-ness of the way she moves through the world. The way she’s able to chuckle at things, and also kind of marvel at things and also called bullshit on other things, which comes with being a certain age. I wanted to bring that sensibility to the movie.
I was very protective of the tone because it’s very easy to tip into broad and silly and feel like we’re punching down. It’s also very easy to get really sentimental or heavy because these things are serious. It was always my asking, Would my grandma say this? And how would she say this? Or, have I heard her say this?
So much of the movie is about the temptation to do that, wishing you could control somebody’s actions. It’s a debate I’ve often had with myself and my family and grandma. So much of her sense of self is drawn from usefulness. She has always been on top of things, proactive, and pushing past her limits and getting hurt.
That type of personality is often the type of person who lives that long, despite the bumps and bruises along the way. It’s somebody who’s willing to push themselves 10 percent past what they should be doing. The notion of autonomy and holding on to your sense of self at an age when other things start to slip away was just something I’ve been thinking about a lot, while also being honest about it. She’s saying, “There are other 104-year-olds who are doing more than me.” And, I’m like, “Who?”
I always wanted it to be June, she always felt like the only person for the part. It was pretty hard to imagine anybody else.
She has a great mix of grit and vulnerability and humor and can be really funny in organic way. She also really reminds me of my grandma; it’s a gumption. I was lucky though in that my friend Beanie Feldstein has known her forever. She had just done a movie with June. Beanie generously shared it with June, and then June read it, and we got on a call in half an hour, where she just asked me some questions. She was like, “Okay. I’ll do it. I’m in.”
It came during production. We shot two versions of those scenes, one with Tom on TVs and newspapers, and one with replaceable green box. It was surprisingly smooth. Nicky Weinstock, who’s the producer, was at the same agency as Cruise and has some pals in common there. We ended up sending the scene in the script to give him a little context and then clip of the table read. We got his sign off and then we went to Paramount, which made things a lot easier there.
Creating tension through low-stakes moments?
Stunt coordination?
Stunts in this movie are different than in your average movie. We had great stunt double, Heidi, for June and our stunt coordinator Ryan Sturs did a wonderful job.
But June did a lot more than we thought she was going to do. She did a lot of scooter driving. We were trying to find a way if we could rig the scooter and pull it through the hallways, but she wanted to do it. It was definitely the ethos of the movie: she’s doing it herself. She is leaping up on beds and rolling over the mattresses. “Bed roll” is something she loves to say, and I don’t know if that was a stunt term, but it is now. There is a long walking shot when she is on her way to the post office. That was one of the nerve wracking things to shoot.
It was our Tom Cruise running shot, her hustling down the sidewalk, not a stunt.
I hope they’ll appreciate her resilience and ability to do things we never thought someone her age could do. The way June did this movie and so many stunts and led the pack and made us all have to match her. I hope people find relatable and inspiring not to count old people out.
