How Mary Bronstein’s Personal Crisis Created The Most Distressing Movie Of The Year

Mary Bronstein didn’t know how to describe what she was feeling. The actor-turned-director was sitting on the bathroom floor of a cramped hotel room, binge-eating junk food and drinking cheap wine to escape the reality of being displaced from her home with her ill daughter.

“I had this existential dread, but I didn't know what to call it,” Bronstein tells Inverse. “And I realized I felt like I was disappearing.”

Bronstein had felt like her life was being consumed by being a caretaker for her daughter, and she couldn’t remember anything about who she was before that. And it scared her. “I was starting to dread, ‘What happens after? So she's going to get better. She's definitely going to get better. We're going to go back home. Who am I? What am I then? What is going to take up all my time that this has taken?’”

“I wrote the film from that place of that feeling of having the worst day.”

That feeling became her starting point for her staggering new film, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a surreal psychological thriller starring Rose Byrne as a mother experiencing very much the same thing that Bronstein was. But Byrne’s Linda unravels in a much more spectacular, fittingly cinematic, way. “She turned herself inside out, upside down, every which way to deliver this performance,” Bronstein says proudly. The result is one of the most tense movie experiences of the year: a surreal odyssey through one woman’s breakdown, anchored by a tour de force performance by Byrne.

“I wrote the film from that place of that feeling of having the worst day,” Bronstein says, “where I start to feel like the universe is plotting against me and everything starts piling up.”

Inverse spoke with Bronstein about what happens when things spiral after one very bad day, the inspired casting of Byrne in the lead role, and why If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is secretly a comedy.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

How bad was your worst day? And how did it compare to Linda's?

Pretty bad. I wrote the film from that place of that feeling of having the worst day. I can't name a specific day for you, but when I have a bad day, it's a bad day. I spiral down all the way. And how it compares to Linda is that Linda and I handle stress in sort of the same way: where I start to feel like the universe is plotting against me and everything starts piling up. So there's the main thing that was bad, and then other things keep happening to pile up, and pile up, and pile up, and pile up. And then there's one thing that's the stupidest thing that is the straw that breaks the camel's back, that makes me start to yell and scream. And that certainly happens with Linda and was a feeling I was trying to get at with the film.

Was this based on any specific personal experience or was this more sort of a universal feeling that you drew upon for the scripts?

So the very start of it, the impetus for it is a real-life thing, but then I abstracted it out. So it's by no means an autobiographical film. But I was in a situation where my daughter was very ill and I was displaced from my home and my daughter and I were roommates in this really tiny, tiny motel room. And I felt myself disappearing into the caretaking role. And everything in my being was being poured into getting my daughter better and getting it so that we could get everything better so we could go home. I didn't do the things that Linda did. What I did was at night when the lights would go off, and she was little at the time, so like 8 p.m., it's dark in the hotel room. And I would go into the bathroom and close the door and turn the light on and sit on the floor, and binge-eat junk food and drink cheap wine and do everything I could to escape my reality for a second.

And I realized in that bathroom, doing that one night, that I had this existential dread, but I didn't know what to call it. And I realized I felt like I was disappearing. I was starting to dread, “What happens after? So she's going to get better. She's definitely going to get better. We're going to go back home. Who am I? What am I then? What is going to take up all my time that this has taken?”

I couldn't even remember before. It's like you're just in this moment, you can't imagine the future or remember the past. And that's the emotional place where I started writing the script. I literally started writing it in the bathroom.

This movie feels like such of a piece of the feminine grotesque, and also taps into the innate female experience of holding onto pain internally. But this one adds another layer about motherhood that is not talked about as much.

And also she's not having a normal mother experience in this film, right? That's one of the issues. She's not able to be a regular mother. And for her, that's something that she considers deeply unfair. How come that person over there has a kid that's not sick and gets to just be a regular mother, and I'm in this situation? And it's something that she's sort of stuck on. It's part of her spiraling. But as we learn in the movie, it's connected to trauma that she experienced, that she is running away from for the entirety of the movie until it smacks her in the face.

Because you can't run away from trauma. It will get you. It's inside of you. And to speak to your point of a body horror, it's inside. The horror is not a guy chasing you down the street with a knife, it's inside your own brain. That's existential terror, and that's at the center of the movie.

“There's two ways that our bodies release, and one is laughing and one is crying.”

Rose Byrne is so phenomenal in this movie, she’s just life-changingly good.

Can you believe? Yes, she turned herself inside out, upside down, every which way to deliver this performance. She completely availed herself to me creatively, completely trusted me. And the performance that she gave is a once in a lifetime. I'm biased, but I think one of the best performances I've ever seen an actress turn in. It's incredibly physical, it's incredibly technical, and it's also incredibly emotionally raw. And this is such a rare combination, and I can't imagine anyone else that could have done it but her. And I'm so happy that she's getting the recognition for it.

Can I ask how you came about to casting her? Because she is well mostly known for her comedic roles, but this is such an intense, dramatic, meaty role.

I knew that I needed somebody that understood comedy and was able to execute comedy in a very subtle way. Because the humor in the film is so necessary to keep the film going, and giving those little release moments for the audience. One of the ways that we cope with things being so bad is laughing, is dark humor, gallows humor. When you're uncomfortable, you laugh. There's two ways that our bodies release, and one is laughing and one is crying. So it's like, are you going to laugh or are you going to cry?

I needed somebody who could do that, and do the incredibly emotionally raw performance parts that she does. And there's parts in the film where she's got to get a laugh on the heels of a cry, and she does it. And she was always at the top of my list because I knew that she could do both things. That’s an incredibly rare talent to be able to do that. And man, she took it and just exceeded my expectations.

Is that what also went into the casting of Conan O'Brien as one of the few prominent characters we see outside of her?

Yeah. It's a very small cast, actually, very few people in the film. And Conan man, it is an unconventional choice, but it's a choice that came to me through listening to his podcast. I was listening to his voice, and I've been a fan of his since I was like 14. And I was just thinking, "This voice is so calming to me and so familiar to me. Oh, if he gave me advice, I would take it, right?" It was in the midst of when I was thinking who would play the therapist. It was a really oddball choice for me to tell people about.

But luckily it wasn't shut down. I got the script to him and he was like, "Look, I've never done this before. I don't know if I can do this. I want to do it this." He loved the script, and he's like, "I want to do this... But if it ends up that I suck, you could fire me at any time. It's OK, we'll still be friends." And I was like, "You're not going to suck. You're going to be able to do it." And he also worked very hard with me, and he is legit in this role. He's so good.

“The movie definitely poses more questions than it gives answers.”

The film is so claustrophobic and embedded in Linda's experience to the point that we're always in intense close-ups. But it also keeps us at bay, like we never see her daughter's face until the end, we never see her husband until the end. Did you ever consider giving more detail about the illness her daughter was suffering, or traumatic incident that sent Linda down this spiral? Or was it always going to be a mystery?

No, I always wanted to be in that moment. I wanted the movie to have no exposition. I wanted the viewer to have the experience of being dropped into a situation that's already happening, and you have to catch up a little bit. Because as a viewer, when movies do that, I love that experience. And the movie definitely poses more questions than it gives answers. And it doesn't hold the audience's hand, and it doesn't pander to them.

I love the idea that the symbolism in this movie and the abstract aspects of this movie, different viewers can have different answers. And none of them can be wrong. They can't be wrong, because it's what you're coming with your own experience into the movie.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is playing in New York and Los Angeles now. It opens wide on Oct. 24.