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| I Live Here Now |
Director Julie Pacino's début feature, I Live Here Now, stars Lucy Fry as Rose, a struggling actress who discovers she's pregnant. However, Rose had been told she was infertile due to childhood trauma. This unwanted pregnancy collides with an opportunity to sign with Cindy Abrams (Cara Seymour), a top talent agent in Los Angeles. And to make matters worse, her lover Travis (Matt Rife) refuses to stand up to his domineering mother (Sheryl Lee), who appears set to deprive Rose of autonomy over her own body when she decides to abort the pregnancy.
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| I Live Here Now Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
Pacino's short films tackle a diverse range of subjects, from reckoning with one's dark past and lost souls seeking belonging in Abracadabra, to grief in To See The Day, and what it's like to be an assistant on a porn shoot in Hard Work. Fry's credits include the episodic series Wolf Creek and Godfather Of Harlem, as well as David Ayer's Bright, Greg McLean's The Darkness and Mark Waters' Vampire Academy.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Pacino and Fry discussed a shared journey of discovery, crafting a surreal and dreamlike experience, and internalising the hero's struggle.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Paul Risker: How would you describe the experience of making I Live Here Now?
Julie Pacino: In short, 'healing'. Honestly, it was an intense process, and it's obviously an incredibly personal movie. Lucy and I collaborated closely on it and there were a lot of ups and downs. We both learned a lot about ourselves, and it was really cool to have one another through that experience. But ultimately, at this point, a week away from showing I Live Here Now, the big takeaway is healing through the movie and through our art.
Lucy Fry: Yeah, you couldn't have said it any better, and to heal, things have to be intense. And this process was intense for a good reason.
PR: When you describe the tight collaboration the two of you shared, was this mostly during pre-production and production?
JP: The screenplay wasn't all on the page and when I was casting the role, it was important to me to find a creative partner to help me uncover some truths that the script was calling for. And so, Lucy was integral in the writing process. Once she came on board, we crafted the role together. Even in our first call, which was just a general meeting, she had notes, and I loved that.
LF: I said, "I don't usually do this, but I have ideas." Then, I proceeded to tell Julie what I thought about everything that was already there, which I loved. I also told her how I thought it could grow in a way that spoke to me. And Julie's collaborative response excited me and was what made me want to do the movie. I thought, 'Wow, this is going to be an interesting process of growth with us working together.'
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| I Live Here Now Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
PR: There came a moment where I felt I was living or experiencing the film from inside the character's imagination. Does the surreal and puzzle-box nature of a film like this have to be built by slowly exposing the warped layers as the story unfolds?
LF: In the sense of her getting lost in what you could call her imagination or subconscious, there was an escalation that I had to go through as an actor in the process of filming to make that realistic, because it is such a surreal story. So, I knew for this to work, I was going to have to really go into her subconscious.
In week one, it was more on the surface level, making choices about what she was dealing with. Then, in week two, it was starting to slip down into doing a lot of work with dreams and the unconscious, as well as meditating to get to that very deep place. By week three, time had slowed down. An hour felt like a day, and I was in a completely different head space than I'd been at any other time in my life. I had to allow that dreamscape to essentially come to life and feel real for me.
JP: What was so great about casting Lucy was she was on board for that journey. But even from the script stage and the technical story space, it was important that the first act be as grounded as possible but also funny, because I really made this movie for an audience. And it's almost a way to disarm them in the first act.
Obviously, it's still surreal, but at least it has some familiar things we can latch onto. And we always knew from the beginning that as abstract as the film becomes, as long as the audience is able to connect with Rose and hold on to her, they would trust us on this journey and stick it out, because in the end, it's making a point.
I like what you said about how it unfolds because that's by design, right? We want the audience to understand the world before the plane takes off and gets to crazy town.
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| I Live Here Now Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
PR: The Wizard Of Oz appears to have been a possible influence, but at the same time, the film plays with the idea of dream logic. I'm thinking about that brief moment when you first wake up and a dream seems to make sense, until it doesn't.
JP: I love that, and yeah, we've had that experience showing it to people too, where it resonates with you and then when you try to put words to it, it can get a little complex. And what's so fun about the language of cinema is often there are no words needed — it's just an experience.
But, yeah, the dream logic is a thing. Every line of dialogue, every moment is really intentional in that dream logic type of way, where it does have an influence on what Rose is discovering about herself. But I love The Wizard Of Oz reference — that's one of my favourite movies of all time.
PR: One of the striking aspects of the film is the presentation of women's duplicitous nature, and how women hurt other women. And Rose's unplanned pregnancy and struggle for autonomy over her own body gives the story a political edge.
JP: The unplanned pregnancy aspect of this film is really a catalyst for Rose to reconnect with her body. And the process of deciding whether she wants to do this is the process the film covers with respect to abortion — I really wanted to paint a picture of how challenging that can be.
LF: What you said is the catalyst for Rose to meet the parts of herself that she needs to face in order to have autonomy over her body. And bodily autonomy is the main theme of the film that resonates with me — pregnancy and that decision was used as a device for Rose to face that autonomy in herself.
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| I Live Here Now Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
Our film internalises these duplicitous or maybe darker relationships that women can have, and those things we internalise, like shame. Madeline Brewer's character holds a lot of those aspects that, externally, you'd feel ashamed of. In this story, it's about how we hold these things that are negative deep inside of us and some of these things are not necessarily true. And it's like a quest. Is there a way for a woman to exist, without all of these aspects that she's internalised, that have banished her from her body?
PR: I Live Here Now is an internalised version of the hero's journey, but it also has shades of the Rocky character, who spoke about battling oneself.
JP: And the circular nature of fighting with yourself and having to relearn the same thing. Rose gets caught up in that in the second act, and she just keeps waking up in this nightmare. And each time, it gets more and more fractured until she's got nowhere else to go, and she has to go even deeper within herself to that basement and core. So, yeah, absolutely, the hero's journey and plus one for Rocky.
I Live Here Now premiered at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival.
