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 Ashley Judd stars in Come Early Morning, which marks the writing and directing debut of Golden Globe-nominated actress Joey Lauren Adams (The Break-Up, Chasing Amy). The Roadside Attractions film tells the story of Lucy (Ashley Judd), a hard-working, 30-something Southern woman whose personal life has been reduced to a spiral of late nights and one-night stands. When Lucy meets Cal (Jeffrey Donovan), a newcomer to town, she is finally forced to confront her fears as he challenges her to accept a more meaningful relationship. Lucy soon realizes that she must decide whether to push Cal away, or face the demons that have left her incapable of intimacy and growth. If coming to grips with why she keeps repeating this pattern isn't enough, Lucy also begins to realize that she needs to get in touch with her familial past and, more importantly, with the person she has become, and she begins a spiritual journey toward love and redemption that takes her to an entirely unexpected and original place.
Passionate about the project, both Adams and Judd got together to talk to MediaBlvd Magazine about the difficulty of relationships, facing your own fears, and what it’s like to be a woman working in Hollywood.
MediaBlvd. Magazine> Joey, did you face a lot of opposition in making this because people didn’t expect you to be a writer and director?
Joey Lauren Adams> Yeah. When we first sent the script out, I think there were people who definitely took meetings with me just to see if I really wrote it. The last person they expected to connect them with a screenplay was the comedic, blonde actress with the funny voice. No one was jumping up and saying, “Yeah, let me give you money.” I had never held a camera of any kind in my hand, I had not directed, I didn’t have a short, I didn’t go to film school. There weren’t a lot of people jumping up and down to back me.
MediaBlvd.> So, where did that sudden urge come from then?
Joey> It was really gradual. At the time, I was just unhappy, for a lot of reasons. There were days that I literally had no reason to get out of bed. It was so destructive for me. I think, ultimately, looking back now, acting wasn’t satisfying me 100%. Chasing Amy was an amazing role, but then, after that, I went and did Big Daddy. You’re either the girlfriend or you’re the best friend. I wasn’t getting the Nicole Kidman roles. There’s not a lot of roles out there to get, and I wasn’t reading scripts. It’s a weird place to be because everyone’s constantly telling you how lucky you are that you’re an actress. You go home to Arkansas and people treat you differently, and you should be so happy. I really started writing just to have something to get out of bed for and be excited about. I didn’t have a lot of confidence, and I didn’t know if anything would happen, but I was just thinking, “What would I open up and read? My God, I have to do this movie. I’m passionate about this.” You read so many bad scripts, and a lot of them end up going straight to video, and you’re just like, “How did they get the money to make this movie?” It’s just unreal. You get a script and you immediately go to your role. I’ve gotten to where I’ll immediately go to my character and read that to see if I even want to bother reading the script. You read, “Her fine, white ass . . .,” and you’re like, “Oh, my God!”
MediaBlvd.> How much of this story was autobiographical?
Joey> It’s more emotionally autobiographical. I wrote the script seven years ago now, and it was things that I was dealing with, at the time. My relationship with my father is pretty non-existent. The film is receiving some criticism because not enough happens, but my dad didn’t molest me and I don’t have a problem with heroin. My life isn’t that dramatic. My dad really loves me, he just can’t talk on the phone. He’s too crippled and shy, and that’s almost harder. He’s there and he loves me, and I try and try, it’s just impossible to have a relationship. That’s definitely affected my relationships with men. Because we don’t talk, I never felt like a guy would be interested in anything I have to say. My dad would hold me as a kid and tickle my ribs, and that sort of stuff, so once I hit puberty, it became a physical thing for me with men. That was the only way I felt like I could really connect somehow and work to get past that. But, I wasn’t in Arkansas. And, I’ve had two-year relationships. I wasn’t as extreme as Lucy.
 MediaBlvd.> Joey, a lot of people might assume that a film that is written and directed by a woman, starring a woman, and that is a woman’s story, that it would be one-sided and the male characters would be one-dimensional and bad, but this film is not like that. Was that because you were trying to be truthful?Joey> It’s just honest. I don’t think all men are shits. Lucy is pretty awful to Cal, but he understands it. Even though she meets Cal and she wants to have something intimate with him, she just doesn’t know how and flips out. I’ve never had a man come into my life and lived happily ever after. You have to do the work. I like that the guy doesn’t sleep with her when she’s drunk. It’s almost more humiliating, but I think it’s more humiliating because it is more real.
MediaBlvd.> Did you ever want to play the role of Lucy yourself?
Joey> The original idea was to act in it. I was never one of those people who thought, “What I really want to do is direct.” It never occurred to me. It was just that, once I finished the script, it had become so personal and I worked really hard. I really tried to stay honest and true to what my experience was, and do a portrayal of the South that wasn’t a spectacle, but was just honest. Once I finished it and we started talking to directors, we obviously weren’t going to get Bruce Beresford or Michael Apted, or someone I would have wanted to come in and direct it ‘cause it was just too small and personal. The directors they were talking to, rightfully so, were people who had done a lot of music videos and were trying to break into film. I figured out that I’m a control freak. I couldn’t stand the idea of someone else interpreting it. I just kept having this image of being on set and the director saying to one of the actors, “Why don’t you say one of those funny country sayings?,” and thinking that would be really cute. That would have been hell. And, the music and locations became really important to me. I really wanted it to be filmed in Arkansas. I wanted to be involved with the edit. That’s what the director does. Once I decided to direct, for awhile I was going to both direct and act in it. Then, we had a meeting with the line producer and she started talking, and I thought, “You know what? I better pick one or the other,” so I decided to direct.
MediaBlvd.> Are you hooked now?
Joey> I am, absolutely. I loved it. I don’t know if I could direct something I didn’t write because it’s really hard, but I’m hoping that, next time, it will be easier. I’ve got my cinematographer. I had an amazing editor. The crew was great. The acting was great. I got lucky with the actors. My experience was pretty good. Finding the money was hell. The five years of that was awful. But, I’m comfortable on a set, so it was a language I understand. Walking on the set was a relief, for me. Pre-production was a nightmare. I didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing.
MediaBlvd.> Did you ever think about giving up?
Joey> Yeah, I almost gave up four years into trying to get the money, but I had a friend who convinced me not to. The script had become immature to me because it was old by then, so I did a rewrite on it and then got new producers, and had really let go of wanting to do the role. I had so many people telling me, “It’s just not meant to be,” and you just want to take their head and shove it into a concrete curb until they bleed a lot. But, it’s true. It wasn’t meant to be. I did the rewrite, decided not to act, and got Julie Yorn and Holly Wiersma on board. That was in November and, in January, Ashley’s agent read the script, in February we met, and we were making the movie. It all came together so easily.
MediaBlvd.> Ashley, why do you think your character has such a problem with intimacy?
Ashley Judd> I don’t think that healthy relationships have been modeled, at all, for Lucy. If we look at Lucy’s grandmother, who she goes to see, she’s very faithful to the memory of a husband who cheated on her chronically, so that’s not necessarily hitting the jackpot, in terms of modeling healthy behavior. And then, of course, her dad is an isolated, uncommunicative, lonely alcoholic. I don’t see Lucy as having an abundance of mentors in her life. Thank goodness, there’s someone at work. Mentors are really important to me, in my life, and I have a committee comprised of brilliant older women. I will run everything in my life by them, and they’re very gracious, reliable and responsive, and they answer immediately. They are my role models, and I know to do that with other women, in my life, who are my contemporaries and who are coming up behind me.
MediaBlvd.> Why do you think women, in general, seem to have such a problem with intimacy?
Ashley> I think that really unhealthy and low self-esteem are factors, and there is that sense of self-loathing and unworthiness that makes some of us incapable of receiving love, even when it’s right there in front of us.
Joey> I agree. It’s a skill set. It’s not like you can wake up and realize, “Oh, I want intimacy,” and then it happens that day. It requires a skill set, and if you don’t have that, how do you get it?
Ashley> Lucy is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. My friend Samantha’s mom will talk about boyfriends like the tester pancake -- that there’s a really healthy way to date, experiment, practice and learn skills -- and say, “Well, that was a pretty good pancake, but not the best one. There’s going to be something further in the batch that’s really the better pancake for me.” I think it’s that way with relationships as well. Lucy is in that rut where she can’t get passed doing the same tester pancake, over and over again.
MediaBlvd.> Were you able relate to that?
Ashley> Doing the same thing over and over again? Absolutely! That is the definition of insanity. That’s what Lucy was doing with going to the bar, and with the men. Thank goodness that wasn’t the particular area where I did the same thing over and over, and expected different results. It’s about do it more and do it faster, instead of completely backing up and saying, “Something is not working. The process is broken. I need to find a different process.”
MediaBlvd.> Why do you think Lucy feels she needs alcohol to deal with things?
Ashley> I think that alcohol is just an outer symptom of an inner problem. There’s alcohol, cigarettes and men. It’s all about trying to fill up that hole inside and finding some kind of an answer that, for the majority of the film, is really eluding Lucy.
Joey> It’s numbing. In Lucy’s head, she’s so funny, and she’s not that funny. In her head, she thinks she is connecting when she’s like that. She’s able to relax and, for her, that’s the closest to being connected to a man that she can feel.
MediaBlvd.> What do you think is the overall message that people who are dating can take away from watching this film?
Ashley> No one is going to fill you up. It’s an inside job. No person, place or thing can possibly take care of that lonely place inside. And, you can’t really borrow someone else’s God either. You have to find a God of your own understanding.
MediaBlvd.> Are you in a pretty rough place when you’re doing a movie like this, or can you just turn it off and on?
Ashley> I think I can really turn it on and off, but there is a level of my consciousness that stays pretty open to the character, and I can tap into it easily. For example, on Bug, which I shot after this movie, there was a certain piece of music -- and the movie is very extreme and wacked out and paranoid schizophrenic with extremely bizarre behaviors, on the part of the character -- and if I started to listen to it, I was just blown wide open. It was like the portal to the character. And, I can no longer listen to that music. I listened to it on a plane recently and I thought, “This isn’t good for me,” ‘cause it took me way, way down. I like working that way. It worked really well on Come Early Morning because the shoot was short and my character was pretty much working on consecutive days, so I could just be in a flow, but still go home at night and take care of myself or go for a walk. I enjoyed life, but never got very far away from what I needed to access for Lucy.
MediaBlvd.> Ashley, can you talk about what it was like for you to have to spear that frog in the film, being as big an animal lover as you are?
Ashley> That scene was fun because it was a beautiful location on the Arkansas River, but I didn’t really enjoy spearing the frog. Karmically, I was very troubled by that. If I see an animal on the side of the road that’s been hit, I stop and I take care of the animal’s remains in a way that feels very respectful. To repeatedly spear an already dead animal was really challenging to my value system, and I partially dislocated my shoulder, as a result. It was just partially dislocated, so it’s not like I didn’t have movement, but I knew something was wrong. In Arkansas, there is an incredible ayurvedic chiropractor, and she was kind enough to come over to my house before I went to set. I’ll do anything for my director and do anything to tell the story, but it was a defilement. But, the plastic ones that were proposed were not even suggestive of a frog. They were these plastic objects that had vaguely froglike features painted onto them, so there really wasn’t a choice.
MediaBlvd.> Do you eat meat?
Ashley> I do. I was a vegetarian for a long time. To my surprise, one night, I came home from the Pub on New Years’ Eve and started throwing down a bunch of fried chicken.
MediaBlvd.> Joey, can you talk about what you’ll be doing next?
Joey> I have a script that I wrote for Peter O’Toole, but he doesn’t know it. It’s about two old people in an old folks home in Arkansas. I know I’ll get 50 cents to make the movie, and I can’t afford to do that right now, so I’ve got my first paid writing job that I’m going to go to Mississippi to write. It’s a woman’s story, but it’s an amazing story based on a real woman.
MediaBlvd.> Does it feel good to get paid to write now?
Joey> It’s weird that two years ago, I was in Oxford, Mississippi visiting some friends and said, “God, I don’t want that much out of life. I just want to get paid a little to write and own a little house in Oxford. Is it that much?” You can get whatever you want in life. I really believe that. But, it’s feeling worthy of it. It’s so gradual. It doesn’t happen overnight. I was actually in my house in Mississippi recently, and my mom came and visited with her husband and their friends. It’s the first time I’ve owned a house, and the first time I’ve had real company. I thought, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it’s happened. I’m here and I’m getting paid to write.” Even when I was writing the script, there was that voice in my head going, “Who do you think you are?” ‘cause I didn’t study it. But, I kept saying, “I’ve read a thousand scripts. That’s who I am. I know this.”
MediaBlvd.> Were there specific friends of yours in the business who were particularly supportive?
Joey> One of the co-producers, Dan Etheridge, was the first person I told I was going to write something, and he read every word and every draft and really encouraged me to go deeper. The first draft was very shallow. It was very superficial. He knows me so well, and he’s seen me in some of my drunken moments, so he knew that there was more there. And then, my agent was really supportive. I wrote 75 pages and sent it to him. It was so hard to get those 75 pages done. It probably took me nine months. I sent it to him and he had the most positive feedback, and then I was just able to finish the rest of it.
MediaBlvd.> Ashley, do you want to write?
Ashley> I love to write, and I’m endeavoring to adapt a book into a screenplay. I may fail spectacularly, or succeed modestly. I don’t know. But, I’m certainly looking forward to sitting down and taking a try at it. It’s a book called The Burning Time by Robin Morgan, and it’s historical fiction. It’s about Lady Alyce Kyteler, who is a 14th century Irish noblewoman. An ambitious emissary of the Pope was sent to bring her, and the whole of pagan Ireland, to heel, and she was really a match for him that he did not expect. Her protege was the first person burned at the stake for practicing the Old Religion.
MediaBlvd.> What made you want to adapt that?
Ashley> I saw the whole movie in my head, as I was reading the book. And then, when I finished it, I realized that not only could I act in it and it would be an incredible role to play, but I could write it. I didn’t sleep for three days after that. I was like, “I’m so fucked.” It is such a great book. This is a story that she started telling her son when he was a child, and she’s a great and accomplished writer and political rabble rouser, who has a lot to offer. After her son was grown and on his own, she thought, “Well, I could write all that down. I’ve been telling this story for 30 years.” I’ll see how it goes. I’ve got some people in mind to reach out to. I’m certainly not going to try to do it all by myself, but it might work out. I might end up doing it on my own. I have no expectations in that way.
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