Christy Hall Shares How Dakota Johnson Helped Snag Sean Penn for Her Filmmaking Debut ‘Daddio’
27.06.2024 - 19:07
/ variety.com
Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards and Features Editor Christy Hall was a playwright living in New York City — which means she had several side jobs, including walking dogs and bartending. “There’s a great quote saying, ‘you can make a killing in theater, but you can’t make a living,’” she notes. She had always dreamed of working in film and television, but it never felt completely realistic to her.
Today, Hall is the writer-director of “Daddio,” an acclaimed two-hander starring Sean Penn as a taxi driver named Clark and Dakota Johnson as his passenger, known only as Girlie.
The film is both a love letter to New York and a reminder of the importance of human connection set almost entirely inside a cab ride from JFK Airport to Manhattan. The two strangers reveal secrets, offer encouragement and display both humor and vulnerability over the course of the film, which was shot in just 16 days. After a festival run, “Daddio” hits theaters June 28.
Hall spoke to Variety about her circuitous journey to the big screen, full of as many twists and turns as the cab ride into the city. Daddio was originally written as a screenplay — then a play — that “changed my life.”
When Hall first had the idea for “Daddio,” she saw it as a film. “You want to be able to see her on the phone and feel the claustrophobia of the cab and feel this very distinctive drive,” she reasons.
“But as a playwright living in New York, I thought, I don’t know how to make movies. So, I formatted it as a stage play with the thought that one day I could make it into a movie.”
Only problem was, nobody wanted to produce it. Tired of working day jobs and worrying about health insurance, Hall began to consider shifting away from writing.
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