[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “The Invite.”]
The source material for director Olivia Wilde’s new film “The Invite” has undergone several adaptations. Cesc Gay first wrote and directed the Spanish-language play “The Neighbors Upstairs,” which he then adapted into the 2020 film “Sentimental.” And in the following five years, Gay’s source material has been adapted into five different films, shot in five different languages and countries: Italy, Switzerland, France, South Korea, and now the U.S.
“I thought any story that has been adapted by different cultures in this way must have a kind of root to it that feels very universal, and it turns out relationships are difficult in every language,” said Wilde while a guest on this week’s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “And I think that what drew me to it as a director was the idea that there was a chance to make a version of this that felt specific to not only an English-speaking audience, but to this cast, who all personalized it, and really continued the adaptation through the workshopping process.”
As IndieWire previously reported, screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormick’s worked on a new draft of “The Invite” — after Wilde and her co-stars Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton, and Seth Rogen were attached — by taking part in a two-week, improvisational rehearsal process that allowed the actors to discover and breathe life into the characters. That improv continued into the 23-day shoot of the one-location film, which was shot chronologically to allow further character discovery throughout production, while providing the safety of moving linearly through the story.
“The end of the film was something that Seth [Rogen] and I workshopped up until the last minute,” said Wilde. “Because the end is different than the original movie, and very different from our script.”
Joe (Rogen) and Angela’s (Wilde) fraught marriage is forever changed by their evening spent with the more sexually adventurous and emotionally open couple, Hawk (Norton) and Piña (Cruz). In Gay’s Spanish-language “Sentimental,” the couple stays together, whereas Rogen and Wilde’s characters have seemingly reached the decision that their marriage is over.
“The Invite” ends with an emotionally resonant and somewhat ambiguous scene of Joe playing the piano — a painful reminder of his failure to maintain a career as a professional musician — which he had refused to touch for years. The idea for that ending came from Jones and McCormack watching “Sentimental” for the first time, and McCormack’s incorrect assumption of what was going to happen in Gay’s film.
“We were watching the original, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, he’s going to go play the piano at the end, and it’s going to destroy me. And she’s going to hear it from the other room, and what does it mean?’” said McCormack at a recent post-screening Q&A for WGA members in New York.
During the Q&A, the screenwriters discussed how a theme guiding their adaptation was “how being an adult is reconciling who you actually are with who you wanted to be,” and that Joe and music became the specific vessel to explore “the idea of somebody whose life has become the aftermath of the life that they wanted to have.”
Therefore, the themes, structure, and narrative devices of the ending were in place in the scriptwriting phase, but how it would actually play out on screen was something Wilde said changed significantly through production.
Explained Wilde, “One important way it evolved is that we stripped away a lot of the dialogue that, while really well-written, was clearly unnecessary for two characters who we realized at that point had been so verbose, so constantly, almost manically, combative with chatter.”
In the final film, Joe and Angela don’t discuss if they will separate after Hawk and Piña leave. The little dialogue they do have is about the smaller logistics — where each will sleep tonight, what to do about the summer rental house — of separating.
“They’ve made a decision,” said Wilde of scenes immediately after the upstairs neighbors have left. “It was silence that would communicate the kind of shell-shocked realization of the enormity of what [Seth and I’s characters] had just decided to do. And it felt very honest to us, and it only became clear once we had shot the rest of the film. So it’s one of those decisions, again, where in a rehearsal space in prep, I don’t think it was possible to be clear about that.”
Wilde points to the late-in-the-movie scene where Piña takes on the role of therapist, pointing out how Joe and Angela each blame the other for their own unhappiness, breeding anger she believed was likely unreconilable. That Piña’s insights land with such resonant clarity on set was the only way Wilde and Rogen knew they could end the movie the way they did.
“Because we had shot everything else, we knew that there was nothing else that needed to be said,” explained Wilde. “And I’m so grateful for that because I just feel that [was] a creative risk; it felt very risky to me.”
Why did it feel so risky to Wilde? “I fear silence in general, but particularly when making films, it’s sometimes the hardest thing. I’m always tempted, ‘Okay, we should put some more music in. We should add some lines, something’s got to happen.’ But the ability to be quiet and to trust that the audience is listening is something that I’ve learned quite a lot about through this process.”
While Wilde is clear that Joe and Angela have made a decision about their future, this approach of letting the audience interpret for themselves what is happening with the characters as Angela silently joins Joe at the piano, also “allows for it to be intentionally ambiguous.”
That ending – and the process by which Wilde and team discovered it – are prime examples of why, as IndieWire previously reported, Wilde is convinced “The Invite” could never have been a studio film.
“I can only imagine the battle I would’ve had at a studio about that ending,” said Wilde.
“The Invite” opened in New York and Los Angeles last week and expands to San Francisco, Washington, DC, Boston, Austin, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal on July 3, then expands nationwide on July 10.
To hear Wildes‘s full interview make sure you subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
