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| Pools |
American director Sam Hayes' feature début, Pools, follows summer school student Kennedy (Odessa A’zion) whose opportunity to get an economics scholarship hangs in the balance. Instead of studying, the once-model student is distracted. To escape the unrelenting Chicago heat, she assembles a ragtag group of her fellow students for a nighttime pool-hopping escapade in the grounds of the most luxurious homes in town. Meanwhile, air-conditioning repairman Michael (Michael Vlamis) is fired after a customer files a complaint, forcing him to confront his uncertain future.
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| Sam Hayes |
Hayes previously directed the 2019 comedy short, The Business Of Moochery, and also served as consulting producer on Delaney Buffett's feature comedy, Adult Best Friends (2024) and as executive producer on Michael Vlamis' thriller, Crossword (2024).
In conversation with Eye For Film, Hayes discussed the impulse to be silly and the film's unique structure. He also reflected on challenging the coming-of-age cliché to reach a broader audience, and the difficulties of being an indie filmmaker.
Paul Risker: It's the dream of every filmmaker to reach the milestone of a first narrative feature.
Sam Hayes: It is my dream, for sure. You also don't expect how much work and how long it's going to take when you set out. But, of course, if you did expect that, you would probably never do it. So, it's good to be a little naïve and just dive in.
PR: Directors have compared the filmmaking process to childbirth, raising a child, and have even described it as an addictive drug. Storytellers are naturally dramatic people, but what colourful metaphor would you choose to describe the process?
SH: I think it's like a marriage, although I've never been married. It's definitely like a relationship that brings you a lot of joy, but it has its ups and downs. It has its rough patches, misunderstandings, and things that need to be worked out. There is really no replacement for a lot of those parts of the process, other than time.
I guess there are some things that maybe you write in a moment of inspiration, that came to you in a flash, and it never changes throughout the whole story. But there are other things that take hours, days and weeks of ironing out to get it right.
PR: What was the genesis of the idea for Pools, and were you attentive to specific themes or was it a journey of discovery alongside the characters?
SH: Some stories are plot or theme-driven and others are character-driven. Thankfully for me, this one was character-driven. I wrote this five years ago and usually, I have a big concept, and I know where the story's going. This one really started with a free write of a scene around the six-minute mark where Kennedy's in the window having this exchange with Michael, the air-conditioning man who is down on the lawn.
That scene was much longer when I first wrote the script. But it all started with a free write with just those characters, and then the scene of Kennedy on the phone with the principal, which also used to be 20 pages of ridiculous stuff that included more of Michael.
I was picturing Michael from the get-go for that role because he's one of my best buddies. At first, the character of Kennedy was a little vaguer, but once I saw Odessa in someone's Instagram story, I knew she would be perfect for this. Then I met with her and afterwards I started writing with her in mind. So, before meeting with Odessa, I had only done some rough free writing, and I knew the problems that these characters had, but I had no idea how they would solve them. I didn't know where this character-driven story would go until I'd written it.
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| Pools |
PR: One of the things that struck me is that the film is never afraid to be silly. However, that's not to say there aren't moments where the story is grounded in emotional storytelling.
SH: My impulse is to always be silly. If anything, I reined in some of the silliness in the edit to keep the tone intact, and to make sure that the silly moments are always adding to and are irreplaceable to the story.
The farthest out example of that is the scene of Michael with his roommates when he's about to leave to break into the house. We definitely went back and forth on keeping that, but I think it's the funniest scene in the movie. There were a lot of things that we thought were really funny that got laughs at test screenings that we ended up cutting because they ultimately didn't serve the story. But with that one, Michael has such a pivotal role, and especially at the end of the movie. If you don't show a little bit of his world and give him that credence and character development in this intangible way, it just felt the scenes afterwards where he's speaking from his own life experiences fall flat. They weren't as powerful, and so we did need this ridiculous and seemingly unnecessary scene, because it provides this unique window into his world and who he is.
His roommates see through him and say, "You're not the type of guy that's going to go and commit a burglary. What the hell are you doing?" You see the levity in it, and all that is to say it was a delicate balance that took a lot of time in the edit to hone in and make sure that it walks that line well, without throwing the audience too far one way or the other.
PR: Pools has an interesting structure because of the way Michael abruptly disappears for much of the film. It creates the impression that Kennedy and Michael are two fragmented stories, which belong to the same universe but are competing for screen time. In the final act it all comes together, but early on there's even the fear that Pools will wind up a short masquerading as a feature.
SH: I'm glad you pointed out the structure because it's unique. The way it works is that the only character that is present and telling her story through all three acts is Kennedy, the main character. The other characters, the friends on campus, their entire three-act stories are all within the second act. Michael's full three-act structure takes place in the first and third acts. So, his character is set up and when he reappears it's like, 'Okay, they [he and Kennedy] are in a similar situation, and they're going to collide in this house.' And it's meant to be a surprise.
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| Pools |
I got a lot of notes about how Michael disappears from the story for so long. "Can we keep him in the story? Can we keep him in the audience's mind?" I played around with putting different scenes in there and structuring it a little bit differently, where Michael's bar scene is deeper into the movie after they've already done all the pool hopping, or putting his weed smoking scenes a little earlier. Ultimately it was worse because Michael was more spread out through the middle act and was less concentrated in the first and third acts. I thought, 'No. The way this story wants to be told is he's in the first act. Then he disappears, and I hope we completely forget about him. Then he returns and you're, 'Oh, fuck yeah, here he is.'
PR: In life, people have a way of coming in and out of our lives spontaneously, and the film's structure is an echo of this.
SH: There's something left unresolved between Kennedy and Michael, and when they come back together, as he would put it, "robbing the same house," they both have this internal sense that this is meant to be. There's something about this that is just too much of a coincidence.
As their crazy banter quickly unfolds, they're bonding and realising that they're kindred spirits. They have this connection where they are in the same scenario in life in one way or another. Then we have this montage where they totally lose themselves in the night by taking a load off. He's just lost his job, and he's about to rob a house. She's about to get kicked out of school, and she doesn't know what to do with her life, and she hates herself right now. So, they have to have that wild goofiness to let their guards down, in order to earn the heavy conversations at the end. It's like they now trust each other because they have totally let their guards down and can naturally have a deep conversation.
PR: Given the film's heavier undertones, its silliness is an extension of humorous defence mechanisms to deal with life's darker and challenging experiences.
SH: That's how grief is; that's how life is. Things come in waves. In maybe the heaviest or darkest times, that might set you up to go on the wildest escape to try to lose or find yourself or get out of your own head. So, those things go hand-in-hand.
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| Pools |
PR: Returning to the structure, the film starts off fast and wild and then slows down to accommodate the thoughtful themes and reflections on the emotional lives of the characters. There's a deliberate tempo and rhythmic flow, but it never completely disconnects from that original spirited vibe.
SH: Again, that's something that came with a lot of time in the edit and feeling it out. There were two different times when I thought I was done with this film. Then, I had more time with it because we had the strikes, and we had the worst film market in history for indie films. So, I kept returning to it and finding ways to get that rhythm to feel better. This only came with time and now it feels really good. And I agree that there's a rhythmic musical element that fits the themes of the film.
To speak to it more thematically and story-wise, it starts out wacky and goofy because that's the outer shell. Then we start to break through that as the story unfolds, and it becomes a little more spiritual and a little deeper. And as the characters get drunk, the truth comes out of how they're really feeling and why they're on this journey. Hopefully it gets a little bit dark and then swings back up at the end into more levity.
PR: Pools is about the final moment before the characters have to step out of adolescence and into the adult world. While the film pinpoints this moment, it's generally not so precise in our memories. So, there's a nostalgia element to the film, but for the younger generation who are living through this experience, it'll resonate differently.
SH: We just premiered at TIFF Next Wave, which is TIFF's Festival for Gen Z films. All the films are curated by the TIFF staff with a committee of high school students that have to watch, discuss and approve all the films. They brought in Pools, and it sold out really fast, because everybody wants to see Odessa lead her own movie, and she does such a good job.
A lot of people came up to us afterwards, and we got a lot of great Letterbox'd reviews that showed it really resonated with people that feel like they're in the same place in their life as Kennedy is in the movie. But coming of age is not something that's just relegated to the end of high school anymore, as most movies have portrayed it. Coming-of-age goes all the way through college and into your twenties and even into your thirties. So, I'm hoping a lot of people can relate to it.
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| Pools |
To speak to the nostalgic element, one thing I found interesting was how the tradition of pool hopping is not as common anymore. Some people have said, "Oh, yeah, I've done that" and others have asked, "What's that?"
When I was making this movie and talking to the people in the area that are in their fifties and sixties, for every single one of them, pool hopping was some of their fondest memories. Looking back to a time before security cameras and the number of lawsuits that we see today, it used to be an extremely common summer tradition. So maybe we'll bring it back.
PR: Alongside subverting the cliché of the coming-of-age narrative, you also make no attempt to communicate a single message. Instead, the story is about how we must all find our own path.
SH: There's something a little different for every character in the film as to how they find themselves. For Michael, when he's asked why he's ashamed if this is really what he wants to do, he starts talking about it and realises he's not. He loves that he has the ability to live in the moment doing what he wants to do, and if he ever wants to change, he can start over and be who he wants to be. He's untethered from the expectations that are holding Kennedy back from being who she wants to be.
At the opposite end, you have the character of Blake (Tyler Alvarez), who is so afraid that he's missing out, that he goes on this crazy adventure that's way outside his comfort zone. But he learns so much from it and really loses himself. In the end, he realises he wants to be a doctor, and he doesn't have a backup plan. This is what he wants, and he's at peace with that.
So, it's about everybody finding what they really want outside what other people expect and what they themselves feel they should do.
PR: Picking up on your point about the difficult film market for indie films, what are your thoughts on where indie cinema is at the moment?
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| Pools |
SH: It's really tough right now. You have to prove your own film in the market and find your own audience. I'm hearing about very few minimum guarantees of companies paying a bunch of money up front to own a film, put ad dollars behind it and bring it to the world. It's only the biggest films with the biggest actors that seem to be getting that, and so, you really have to find your audience. Our actors are already a big deal and, in fact, Tiff Next Wave proved that. It sold out faster than any screening that they've had in quite some time, I'm told. That's because of our actors — people want to see Odessa and Mason [Gooding].
The people that are running the companies are a little bit older, and they don't realise that these actors are in demand, and movies like this are also in demand. People look at this movie, and it's a coming-of-age. They say, "Well, how do we sell that? It's not horror; it's not action — I can't cleanly fit it into a genre. It's kind of a comedy drama — what is this thing?" I feel the opposite. It's different and that's why people are going to want to watch it because it doesn't fit cleanly into one of these preexisting boxes.
There's just a huge disconnect right now between the indie filmmaker and the distributor. There are consequences of what happened with the strikes and Covid. So, there's not a lot of money to be spent on taking big risks on indie films, because you are ultimately taking a risk with any indie film.
You've just got to find your own way and work with the best companies that you can. But ultimately, as an indie filmmaker, chances are you're going to have to row the boat yourself.
Pools won the 2024 SXSW Sydney audience award and had its North American Premiere at the 2025 TIFF Next Wave Film Festival.
