A24’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You has many distinct sounds that places you in the life of despairing wife Linda (Rose Byrne). In Mary Bronstein’s psychological drama, Byrne’s Linda is a psychotherapist dealing with the complexities of being a parent while struggling with her waning sanity. In the film, sound plays a critical role be it the constant beeping of a feeding machine through a baby monitor, a screeching hamster, or just the sound of Linda breathing. Here, in an interview with The Contending, sound mixer Patrick Southern details his process of capturing the sound and dialogue that gives this film its distinct feel. He also relives his start as a mixer with the small nature of the film and knowing the value of a good disturbing noise.
The Contending: There’s a small moment at the beginning of the film that I really loved. It was Linda chewing the cheese off the pizza, which has this kind of gross noise that’s not what you expect in this little sequence in the apartment, and it really sets the mood for the film. I am curious how that noise came about.
Patrick Southern: As someone who records sound on set, I definitely know it’s not just dialogue that you need to get. Also, I gravitate towards somewhat profane sounds, so by the time I was recording that scene I understood the comedy of the film and just felt like this was a delicious asset, and we needed to get a microphone in as close as possible. As the production sound mixer, the final mix is something I can only speculate about. I read the script and I imagined how the movie might sound in the end and slot myself into the recording process. So, to a great degree, what I’m doing is providing these assets, and that scene is an example of an asset I would never overlook if it was happening on set.
The Contending: When I learned I was going to be interviewing you, the noises I immediately thought of were the sound of the feeding machine and the monitor in which Linda listens for her daughter, where we also keep hearing that same feeding machine. We hear both these noises throughout the film, and they are constant and yet they never overwhelm the film. How did you go about creating that balance?
Patrick Southern: My goal was really to capture what that thing sounds like in real life for the very least to be a reference for post production. If they choose to completely replace the sound of this machine that makes sense and it may be what happened. There’s an element where I never really know what the final product is composed of. But one thing I know, we all felt strongly about at the onset was to not suppress that machine too much. The impulse would be we are doing dialogue so let’s silence everything that makes noise, and that’s a lot of what sound production is about: turning off the things you don’t want to record. But we knew, though, their approach for this movie was to let everything play out.
The Contending: I wonder if you can talk about the hamster noises. That terrible squeaking noise made it seem like it wasn’t from a real hamster. Also, what goes into creating the noise of a hamster getting run over by a car?
Patrick Southern: It was kind of creepy actually. Obviously we had a real hamster, but there are also shots where you were seeing an animatronic hamster. Then, of course, there’s also a hamster that is built to get run over. However, all the sounds of the aforementioned things are creepily similar to a real hamster. So the sound of the animatronic hamster moving was eerily similar to the real hamster. I don’t know what composes the final product of how that hamster sounded, but I remember on set being quite unnerved by that little thing. Then the running over is just such an amazing moment, and again, hard to say what the final product was. But I was so thrilled to record that sickening sound.
The Contending: Did you have any say or input in that siren-like noise when the bright light hits Linda?
Patrick Southern: No, but I will say with great enthusiasm, like some other aspects of the final sound design of the film, it was such a beautiful surprise for me to hear how that came together. It was a novel experience like I’m certain it was for a lot of viewers.
The Contending: When Linda is doing her deep breathing exercises then it leads into the daughter screaming for her mommy, and we get the nurses talking, telling Linda to hold her child down, and Linda trying to talk to her, and then ending on that same siren noise. How did you go about trying to get those sounds to meld together?
Patrick Southern: It goes back to those providing assets and what’s going to be really valuable. I was clued in to what might be valuable very early in the process. One of the first things I recorded was the footage of the breath work coach Eva Kornet that Linda is watching on her phone. So that was my first introduction to the kind of sounds we would be dealing with. There’s going to be a certain degree of interiority, but there’s also going to be quite a lot of yelling in the distance, so this is going to be a very dynamic movie. Linda is going to be screaming in the car and then she is going to be silently melting down in their office. So my entry into the film, the breath work, really set the stage for me.
The Contending: When Linda is trying to commit suicide by diving into the waves, in a way it is almost a flashback to the beginning of the film when water creates the hole in the ceiling and starts this whole stress cycle that she’s on. Was there a particular way you were trying to capture water, and was there an attempt to link back to the beginning with it?
Patrick Southern: We were so lucky to be filming so much of the movie at that hotel because it is so close to the ocean. So me and Deanna Williams, my boom operator, were lucky to have plenty of time to record these beautiful ocean sounds that were totally authentic to that moment in addition to the work we did during those scenes. It was really quite a beautiful experience to be out there at that time of year. I think it was late October where Montauk became, not exactly a ghost town, but definitely has a different feeling being out there. I kind of like to imagine that the sound of the ocean is different at night in October than it is at night in July. I don’t know if that’s true, but it feels true.
The Contending: Where does the noise come from of Linda pulling the tube out of her daughter as well as the noise that the hole makes as it’s closing up since there is no real noise for that occurring?
Patrick Southern: Kind of like the animatronic hamster, it is surprising sometimes the degree in which the fake version of something happening sounds eerily like the real version. So in the case of the tube being pulled out, it was a fairly straightforward practical effect using a belly prosthetic. But, nevertheless, you are still pulling the rubber out of this plasticy thing and it makes that certain sound. I do not treat those moments as something that will be inserted later by special effects so we can have the boom mic operator stand down. I have to thank Deanna Williams for sharing my enthusiasm for capturing those moments. You never really know when those sounds, as artificial as they may be, feel quite authentic.
The Contending: How is capturing sound affected by the fact that we almost never see the daughter on screen yet we hear her speaking?
Patrick Southern: The main thing is she was always there. Rose (Byrne) is never acting alone, Delaney (Quinn) was always proximal to the scene in a way that made geographic sense even if she wasn’t pictured. Delaney’s performances were so vibrant and alive that I felt very strongly that they needed to be captured on the day. So she was always wired and we always tried to include her in what the boom heard as well with the expectation that, although she wouldn’t be seen, she would be heard as though she was right there. I’m glad we did that because she gave such a wonderful performance.
The Contending: While of course this film has many talented people working on it, it lives and dies by Rose Byrne’s performance as she is in almost every scene of the film. So much of the time it’s just her and her dialogue or her thoughts. Is capturing that unique in how you usually go about recording dialogue?
Patrick Southern: In a sense there’s a technical simplicity to it. But I was very aware that having a boom operator in the room in those moments was the right way to do this. If you really think about it there are usually only a few people in a room, especially for a movie like this. You have one camera that the director of photography is operating, one boom operator, and the actor, so three people in the room. I think that interpersonal energy is as important as anything I could do with all the equipment I have in front of me. There is no technology that exists that is more valuable to me than having someone who represents the sound department in that room who is able to communicate what we need, and is able to give the actor space and provide the kind of energy that makes everybody feel comfortable. Deanna Williams is the star of the movie for me. To a great degree I just recorded what she did on the boom.
The Contending: Is there an aspect of the sound work on this film that you think would be interesting for people to know?
Patrick Southern: I think part of what I enjoyed so much about working on this film was how much it reminded me of some of the work I did in the very beginning of my career about 15 years ago. There was a little technological thing that happened with sound recording where you could do a lot more with a rig that you could wear on your body. Whereas previously with a bag setup you would be limited to a couple of inputs, all of a sudden smaller movies could be shot with one person representing the sound department. You could just have one person holding the boom and wearing a mixer, receiving sound from a bunch of lavaliers. I came up during the growth of that system and so I was in the room for a lot of the movies I did in the beginning of my career. That allows for a certain mobility for everybody, suddenly the whole sound department gets boiled down to the size of a camera operator. But as I’ve gone on to films with a larger scale to them that kind of system just doesn’t work on a simple logistical level.
This film, though, I was able to go back to my roots where it is an intimate and creative space that is not bogged down too much by technology. When I think back on the recording process for this movie it was quite pure, for lack of a better term. I hope I get to work on more films with that same kind of energy.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You streams on Apple and other major streaming platforms.
