‘Good One’ Ending and Twist Explained by Director India Donaldson

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for “Good One,” in theaters now.

From first-time feature director India Donaldson, “Good One” is a breezy dramedy about three people on a backpacking trip. Until, suddenly, it isn’t.

Lily Collias, in her second feature role, plays the 17-year-old Sam, who goes camping with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros), and his bumbling friend Matt (Danny McCarthy). After her dad goes to bed, Sam has a heart-to-heart with Matt, who is going through a divorce, in a 13-minute campfire scene that culminates with Matt suggesting that Sam come into his tent to keep him warm.

It’s a disturbing and crafty twist an hour into the film, a moment of profound betrayal that paints a quietly world-shattering revelation all over Collias’ face. What follows is an exploration of familial trust, flawed parents and the bounds of forgiveness.

After premiering at Sundance, “Good One” was picked up by Metrograph Pictures as its first acquisition, as the New York cinema expands into distribution. The film will open in theaters in L.A. and New York on Aug. 9, with a wide release planned in the following weeks.

“People talk about how big movies need to be seen in a movie theater, but I sort of feel the opposite,” Donaldson says. “You can’t really experience the quiet of an intimate film unless you’re in a movie theater.”

Donaldson chatted with Variety ahead of “Good One’s” theatrical release to discuss the process of making an indie in the elements and break down its pivotal scene.

What is the hardest part about making a debut film besides getting funding?

Hm… I’m like, “Obviously the money.” Well, money is connected to getting people to trust you, and when you haven’t made a feature film before it’s that much harder to get people to trust you. It’s equally hard, for me, to trust yourself. I had so many moments of self-doubt along the way. To make a film, you have to keep barreling forward and shut that voice out. For me, the vigilance of keeping that voice out was the hardest part.

“Good One” hinges on a climactic moment between a teenager and her dad’s friend. Is that where the idea for the film started?

It’s hard to locate the very first kernel. The way ideas form in my head is there is a swirling of things, and then ideas settle together in groupings. I was interested in a character who is conditioned to please others and act in service to others. I was interested in a teenager [protagonist]. And I was interested in a subtle moment where the audience is betrayed by a character they’ve come to trust. 

I imagine this is the type of film that, when you’re scripting it, you have no idea if it’s going to work. Because of the nature of the story, it relies so much on the performances, and capturing subtle moments on the characters’ faces.

I always knew that the success of the film would hinge on casting the right people. That comes back to my gut, following my instinct about people and the potential for their collaboration and with me. We also whittled the form down into its finished form as we went, and part of that was the dialogue and how the actors interpreted the characters. You discover things along the way once these amazing actors become the characters. The scene where Sam confronts her father, when I look back at my script for that, there is so much more dialogue than what ended up in the film. It was a much longer scene. I learned to let things go that felt important in the scripting process that then become totally irrelevant once you see it on camera.

What did shooting that scene look like in practice?

James Le Gros was looking at the script and suddenly suggested that some of the dialogue was not necessary. Even more of it got cut out in the edit, but he circled the line, “Let’s just have a nice day,” and said, “That’s what the whole scene is.” He was so right. Outside of what she was saying to him, that was the most important moment, and it immediately illuminated for me how irrelevant some of the more direct things he was saying were.

While these movies share basically nothing else in common, “Good One” reminded me of the Peacock comedy “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain” in that both films take place almost entirely outdoors, and they both center on three people hiking. When I interviewed Paul Briganti, the director of “Foggy Mountain,” he said filming in nature poses a lot of unexpected challenges, and that he had to deal with hornet nests, ticks, snakes and 100-degree weather. Did you have similar obstacles?

Paul and I need to form a support group for people who have shot movies outdoors. There was a constant threat of something disrupting the delicate schedule. We had no wiggle room. The actors were about to go on strike the day after we were supposed to wrap. We couldn’t lose a day to weather. We had a thunderstorm one day and couldn’t shoot. We got what we could shooting inside of the tents on the porch of the Airbnb where we were staying. We did our best to keep moving forward at all costs, but I knew we would have to adapt to whatever happened, and I just hoped it wasn’t something so massive that we’d have to cancel the shoot. A little rain, a little thunderstorm, a little bear sighting, we could adapt in ways that narrowed our focus and made the process more specific. OK, it rained. It’s going to be wet in the scene, and that gives it a kind of damp, sad quality that now I think is totally crucial to the tone.

The movie turns when Matt makes a pass at Sam after her dad goes to bed, essentially inviting his friend’s teenage daughter into his tent to keep him warm. How did you strike the subtlety of the moment? A less confident filmmaker might have made the transgression more extreme.

I just lean into what I find satisfying. A more subtle moment allows you to see more complexity. A simpler, quieter moment allows for more layers and perspectives to be revealed, where a more aggressive note would have flattened the complexity or made Matt a more one-dimensional, villainous character. I adore that character. However the audience feels about him, I have empathy for him. Part of the reason that scene happens so late in the movie is I want to provide the opportunity for the audience to get to know him and trust him, and feel disappointed in him in the way that Sam might.

After the transgression occurs, did you feel a responsibility as a filmmaker to maintain a sense of empathy for Matt?

Where my empathy comes from for Matt, and how I depicted his presence in the last third of the movie, is that we say goodbye to him. He gets ejected from the story in a way, but really he ejects himself. He makes himself smaller and more invisible, which is connected to his shame and all of the feelings in the aftermath.

And then you have the greater betrayal of the film, which is Sam’s dad’s indifference, or unwillingness to confront Matt. It speaks to the character being conflict-avoidant, but might it also speak to a broader idea that men tend to side with other men in these sorts of instances?

There’s a certain universality to the dynamics of the story that does broaden it. For me, I’m just living in the specificity of these characters and this relationship. Thank you for saying that is the bigger betrayal, because for me it is too. That moment that you realize, “Oh, my parent is a flawed human being who, in this moment, is in denial or can’t face this difficult thing I’m saying — or doesn’t have the confidence in himself to listen to me.” That is more the broader thing that I was speaking to — the universal disappointment we all have at a certain point in our parents. It’s OK, our parents are human beings, too, and I think we as human beings rarely say the right thing in the moment. How things play out in the movie, I imagine maybe in 10 years Sam and her dad will have a more productive conversation about the weekend, but it wasn’t going to happen on that day.

How do you interpret the final moments of the film, when Sam’s dad begs her to drive and hands her the car key?

To me, there are multiple readings. He’s like, “You drive. You have the control.” It’s the peace offering. “Just take it. It’s the best I can do.” But it’s also selfish. He’s tired. He’s been walking all day. He doesn’t actually want to drive. It’s a convenient peace offering for him. It’s a peace offering on his own terms. It’s also that it will be just them up front, and Matt will be in the back. It’s all of those things. It’s complex. He is a person in that moment who knows that he said the wrong thing and doesn’t know how to fix it. He’s grasping at some resolution.

And she locks the two men outside of the car for a moment, letting them bask in their discomfort. But there is now blowout fight, no big confrontation between them.

In the short term, it’s easier to forget and push aside than it is to really live in conflict and confront things that are difficult. An alternative I’ve imagined is that their friendship just expires and fizzles and they lose touch, but they never talk about what happened.