Pools Director Sam Hayes and Michael Vlamis Talk Chicago, Pool Hopping, and Following Their Dreams
After the loss of her father, Kennedy searches for permission to live her own life in a wild pool-hopping escapade. Pools director Sam Hayes and actor and executive producer Michael Vlamis spoke with Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado about the inspiration for the film and going after their dreams.
From his own life experiences to iconic directors like Edgar Wright and fellow Chicagoan John Hughes, Sam Hayes drew on many influences to bring Pools to life. “The inspiration for the film was wanting to make a fun summer coming-of-age film that I felt like pool hopping would just be the perfect template for. I felt like the image of a glowing blue pool at night was just such a beautiful spiritual symbol,” he shared. “And then what ended up unfolding was a deeper, very personal story. Kennedy's journey over the course of two days kind of reflects my coming-of-age story over the course of seven or eight years through my 20s.”
“I don't think I would have written this movie without Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club as inspirations. John Hughes lived and shot in that same area where we lived and shot. A lot of the motivation was to make something like that, but for our time because I feel like those kinds of movies haven't been made as much since then, you know?” Hayes explained. “My favorite director stylistically is Edgar Wright, who really uses the camera a lot — the crash zooms and the whip pans and camera tricks — but he uses it artfully. I wanted to use it […] to accentuate comedy and character. Obviously […] as we get into the deeper heart of the movie, we're not doing crash zooms anymore. It's more intimate close handheld, so the camera is meant to reflect the style of the film. When it's those crazy camera moves, it's sort of a wink at the audience, you know? [It] makes the camera a character and makes it feel more tongue-in-cheek to me.”
The best friends called it “awesome” working together on Pools, with Vlamis even staying at Hayes’ childhood Chicago home with his mom while filming. “I opted for that because it was a beautiful experience,” Vlamis shared. “There's just already such a level of trust and understanding and rapport that the two of us had. If there was ever something that Sam felt he really needed in the scene that we weren't finding on the day or he wanted to bring something different out of it, it was an easy, respectful conversation. We were always consistently amping each other up, but we're also always challenging each other because both of us […] want things to be the best they can be. We know that everything that we do is not about us. It's not about ego at all. It's about servicing the story and making the best movie we can make. Knowing that Sam operates from that level and I do as well, made the collaboration […] as simple as it could be, as organic as it could be.”
From the very beginning, Hayes had written the role of Michael with Vlamis in mind, as well as Blake for Tyler Alvarez and Kennedy for Odessa A’Zion. “She's so natural. She's so versatile. She's the most in the moment person and genuine person I've ever met, both as an actor and as a person,” said Hayes about finding A’Zion to lead the film. “When I discovered Odessa, it just immediately clicked that like, oh, she has to be the other role. She fit perfectly, but also brought so much more to who I was envisioning. I was envisioning somebody really unique and somebody that had all kinds of range and quirkiness. She is so magnetic that she makes it really easy to you […] work with in that way. She just brings so much value.”
Life imitates art as Hayes revealed his favorite memory from the filming process. “Me and the actors went pool hopping because we had to do a little studying. Real pool hopping. That was a lot of fun,” he disclosed, while Vlamis loved the more intense and improvisational moments: “I loved driving the Ferrari, I'll tell you that. I love pressure so much. The fact that I had to whip a Ferrari… I was driving pretty fast at one point and I had to stop at the end of the movie when I drop Odessa off at school. I have to stop on a dime to line up perfectly with the camera and with us shooting into the window of the Ferrari. They were like, ‘Are you going to be able to do this, man?’ and I'm just like, "Oh my god, I live for this.”
“Even the montage that I get to do with Odessa,” Vlamis continued. “At one point, I grabbed my cigarette with chopsticks and was smoking out of [it]. That was just so fun. And a lot of that was improvisational. There are these beats. Like we're looking at a painting in the house and we're acting as if we're at an art museum or something, right? Like a lot of that was just found with getting to play with Odessa on the day. Those are the experiences when I look back of just the things that surprise us on set are always the things that I kind of walk away with the most.”
Directing Pools was like a coming-of-age for Hayes “into the life that [he] really wanted to live via the process of making” the film. “I wrote it to direct it. Nobody else was going to direct this. This is my story and […] nobody else is going to do it,” he revealed about making his feature directorial debut. “Having now gone through the whole many years process of making this movie, if you don't have a passion for the story you're telling, don't even bother. It's so much work and so many ups and downs and hurdles and uncertainty. You really need that passion to be able to get through the process and go through all the rejections along the way of making a movie.”
“What was interesting too about the film was the fact that we shot in Chicago because [of] both of us being from there, right? We took these big risks in our lives to leave a town that we grew up in where we knew nobody in the industry. Then […] we're acting in this movie where people are taking risks and figuring out who they are,” agreed Vlamis. “The fact that was happening while we were home — for me, the longest I had ever been home since since summer in college — it was very reflective of the type of movie we were making.”
Vlamis’ final thoughts encompassed the message of the film: “It was like I was coming-of-age while making this coming-of-age movie, reflecting on what I left to go follow my dreams, but so thankful that I followed my dreams.”
Pools is available nationwide on September 5.
