Our valentine to you on this special (?) day of ❤️is “Ready for Love,” the surprisingly profound “The Bachelor” audition tape that becomes a rich character study. We asked co-directors, Dylan Pasture and Lauren McCune, how it came to be, the genre of reality show audition tapes, and what’s next for them…

1) What sparked the idea?

Dylan had just moved back from Texas, where he had spent some alone time watching “The Bachelor.” One night we were talking about the kind of fame and iconic status that comes with being a contestant on that show — and then began wondering about the thousands of people who audition for that role and never make it, whose dreams and personalities get forgotten. We thought that was an interesting story, so we kept following the thread.

A more basic question we were asking, though, was how a culture decides when it’s okay to make fun of somebody else. There are always people who become the butt of the joke to some other group — because they’re not perceived as serious enough, or don’t have the ‘right’ personality traits, or we think they stand in for some bigger problem — who most of us wouldn’t think twice about ganging up on socially. We wanted to take a person who would probably be used as part of a punchline in another movie and figure out what her life was about from the inside, and hopefully treat that life with some dignity.

2) How did the process go between you two, as co-directors?

We’ve known each other for a long time, and this collaboration came pretty naturally out of our friendship. We both took the conceit seriously — as well as how a person might relate to and feel real emotion for “The Bachelor” — which at times made us wonder if we had lost it, but bonded us closer.

This movie also took about two years to make, and if you’re going to spend that much time on one idea with somebody else, it is a relief to work with a person you trust and who shares the same sense of humor. Being able to laugh about your own ideas is important. Knowing from the start that Lauren would be playing Amber — and that we would be doing everything in the movie ourselves, the same way Amber might — helped open us up as co-directors. It was pretty clear to us both what the goal was, and it was a natural collaboration.

We’d also like to honor our editor, Phil Chernyak, who is a brilliant filmmaker and friend. As much as Lauren performs Amber on screen, Phil had to edit this movie in character, and he is responsible for much of that character’s voice and personality. He’s definitely the third point of our little triangle.

3) Were you able to watch some real “Bachelor” audition tapes? If so, could you characterize what you saw on them generally?

There are a lot of forgotten audition tapes floating through the internet if you know where to look. When you watch enough of them, you start to notice certain tropes — ways of talking or presenting information, a kind of shooting style that crops up, certain editing choices. There’s a similar arc to most “The Bachelor” auditions we’ve watched, to the extent that we starting thinking about reality show audition tapes as its own genre of filmmaking, which helped make us see that it was possible to make this movie. 

It became apparent pretty quickly that there’s a language, or even a ‘game,’ to how most people think they’re supposed to present themselves to “The Bachelor” casting team — which is probably the same as how anybody in a small field (filmmaking, etc) might relate to their own gatekeepers.

That footage was inspirational, but we were also strict about “Ready For Love” not feeling like a parody. “Found footage” usually implies something more like a skit, and that’s not really what we were after. The style of this movie was a way for us to tell a story and look at a character in a personal way. We are now so used to people broadcasting their lives, but watching somebody’s private videos is a very intimate thing.

4) It’s a brilliant framing device, to explore real emotion and desperation through something so surface level as a reality show audition tape. Did you intend it to be so heartbreaking? Can you talk about the decision to include 3 different tapes over 10 years.

Thank you. We didn’t set out to be “heartbreaking" necessarily, but, we wanted the film to be sensitive. Both us have experienced loss, and failure, and regret. Any person of a certain age has felt those things, and we wanted to see how somebody carries on in the face of that through their young adulthood. What inspires any of us to keep going when things aren't working out? That’s a complicated and maybe unresolvable question, and can be a painful one to ask sincerely.

The three tapes were our way of anchoring her life to particular moments. Showing an entire decade's dump of footage would have probably been overwhelming, but when you see just these three bits, it gives you more room the wonder what has happened in between those years, what Amber has left off-camera, and what she’s put on camera that maybe she doesn’t even realize the significance of. Hopefully, in getting to check in with her every few years, Amber might feel like a friend of yours, too. 

5) What’s next for you guys?

Our next movie is about a reality TV star who dies in 2007 and has to make sense of her own life from the afterworld. We're working on it now.

Contact info:

Email: Lauren@laurenmccune.com

IG: @pastureland, @l_mccune, @philchernyak