THE INTERVIEW: THE NICE ROOM

What inspired you to write The Nice Room?

The Nice Room was the second of two screenplays I wrote after seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! Its anti-patriarchal spirit and nonstop energy sent me into a burst of writing. Good Taste came first. When I finished it, I wanted to keep that energy going with a contained story set in San Miguel. I didn’t completely manage the contained part.

For the premise, I turned to Shallow Grave, Danny Boyle’s 1994 low-budget thriller about three flatmates who find their new roommate dead beside a suitcase of cash. In that film, greed and paranoia turn them against one another. I wanted to reverse that dynamic. My housemates are women. They don’t turn on one another. They focus on the task at hand. Their problem isn’t greed. It’s logistics.

As a comic postscript, while preparing this interview I watched the season two finale of Your Friends & Neighbors and found three financially successful men in their sixties thrown into the same frenzy over what to do with a body. Apparently, success and maturity are no preparation for corpse disposal.

How did you develop the central characters?

I start with the crucible. Before the body and the suitcase of cash enter the story, these three women already share a house, which means negotiating money, privacy, safety, and trust. The San Miguel rental market gave me a way in. Not long ago, one month’s rent was enough to secure a place. Now it can mean first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit. Every potential housemate generates questions and endless back-and-forth emails. Each woman reacts differently to the task: one says yes to almost anyone; one needs to know who will be sleeping down the hall; one just wants the rent paid and the conversation over.

These different responses helped define Kelly, the Irish stoic; Mara, the practical Texan; and Lila, the easygoing Californian yogini. The house rule is every major decision goes to a vote. But the higher the stakes, the less democratic they become.

What is the film about?

On the surface, it’s about three women facing an improbable situation which, handled correctly, could leave them with a financial windfall that would otherwise just be absorbed by corrupt officials.

Underneath, it’s about perception. The women do things that are usually in the realm of men on screen: nonchalantly behead a corpse, dump a body, destroy evidence. They lie to cover it up and people provide the reasons to believe them. Rats in the basement seem plausible because there’s no man in the house to deal with them. Eduardo accepts Kelly’s story that Cormac left town because it suits his purposes. Sergio believes Lila when she tells him Mara inherited a boatload of cash from her grandfather.

Ultimately, even the gold skull on the Día de Muertos altar is admired as an ornament. Who would suspect it’s real?

What does the title The Nice Room mean?

The women share a four-bedroom house with one full bathroom, so “Who showers first?” is a recurring joke. One bedroom has its own washbasin, making it “the nice room.” It’s the one they’re charging a premium price to rent.

Kelly points out that their new male housemate can piss in the sink when he comes home drunk after the pubs close, saving them from having to clean his splashes off the bathroom floor. When the others ask which of her boyfriends did that, she answers, “All of them.”

This tart comment about household logistics opens a window into Kelly’s history with men. It also reveals they’ve decided what kind of man Cormac is before he even arrives. Perception runs both ways.

The title becomes ironic when they find him dead. Until they realize someone else was in the house, they assume he slipped and cracked his head on the washbasin. The very feature that made it the nice room appears to have killed him.

Why did you set the film at Christmas?

Christmas already turns ordinary life into a series of urgent tasks: shopping, cooking, cleaning, entertaining, maneuvering complicated relationships, and keeping up appearances. I wanted to preserve that familiar drama while replacing the tasks with something more extreme.

The women still have errands, deadlines, and parties to attend. They just happen to be shopping for power tools, disposing of a dead body, and trying to pass a federal checkpoint with a head in a cooler in the trunk of their car.

The film has the tinsel and joy of Christmas, with a crime thriller at its core. That makes the drama both absurdly comic and strangely familiar.

What fuels the film’s energy?

Literally? Coffee, tequila, and cocaine.

It starts with coffee and adrenaline, then graduates to tequila and cocaine. They’re on a mission to get a job done and life keeps interrupting. Mostly they’re just exhausted. Caffeine keeps them upright, alcohol gives them Dutch courage, and cocaine amplifies their confidence.

How do you get the audience to root for the women?

I think the audience will be asking What about the money? When are they going to count the money? Because I’ve deliberately not made it the focal point of the action. Yes, we all know it’s there and will be dealt with. Meanwhile, I want them laughing, horrified, and mentally helping the women solve each new problem. By the time they reach the federal checkpoint, the audience should be worried that the officers will open the cooler, not appalled that there is a head inside it.

Be honest. Would you take the money?

Hell, yeah. The money isn’t the problem. The body is.

A cozy Christmas Eve fire yields handy-dandy tools