According to 2023 Hamptons Film Festival correspondent and HE friendo Bill McCuddy, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the co-director of Nyad, doesn’t believe in directorial authority, at least as far as her relationship with her lead actors is concerned.
She and her co-director husband Jimmy Chin were apparently more into the idea of allowing their Nyad costars, Jodie Foster or Annette Bening, to take charge on the acting and go wherever their instincts lead them, regardless of any possible directorial viewpoints.
“I would never tell Jodie Foster or Annette Bening what to do,” Vasarhelyi said during some kind of post-screening q & a. “But they are the difference between fiction and non-fiction. The emotional story, the instincts, the craftmanship are very similar. You just have a lot more resources in fiction.”
I immediately wrote McCuddy and asked, “Did Vasarhelyi actually say this?”
Can anyone in the HE community imagine David Fincher saying, “I would never tell Jodie Foster or Annette Benning what to do”?
What is Vasarhelyi, some kind of pushover or kiss-ass?
Nobody did double backflips over Nyad in Telluride, I can tell you. It was respected but no one was going “oooh! oooh! oooh!”