Ilana Glazer tried without much success to think of films devoted to the experience of conceiving and bearing a child.
“There isn’t much from a pregnant person’s point of view,” Glazer said. She pointed out, for example, “Knocked Up,” the 2007 comedy starring Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl, but it was said “from the inseminator’s perspective,” she said.
There was “Rosemary’s Baby,” the 1968 thriller adapted by Roman Polanski, which fitted the narrative bill but was still difficult to shoulder. As Glazer succinctly summed it up: “Great movie, not a great guy.”
And the 1987 comedy “Three Men and a Baby” definitely didn’t make the cut. “How many men are we to tell about how this baby got here?” Glazer exclaimed.
The subject was particularly personal for Glazer, creator and star of the Comedy Central series “Broad City”. She was 36 weeks pregnant during that phone conversation in late May and apologized for eating while she spoke.
“I’m stuffing my face,” she said. “I have no choice. I have to eat this pita and soak right away.
The subject of childbirth is also of particular interest to Glazer as she is the star and co-writer of a new film, “False Positive”, which presents her as a woman whose efforts to have a child the lead into a nightmarish spiral of uncertainty. and deception. The film, directed and co-written by John Lee, debuted last week at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released on Hulu on June 25.
In reviews of the film, The Hollywood Reporter hailed “False Positive” as a “juicy genre entry on how women’s reproductive systems are treated like coveted real estate,” and The Wrap called it a “shock. smart and sharp “.
Glazer, 34, started working on “False Positive” long before she got pregnant, and despite being one of the most important projects she has appeared in since the end of “Broad City” in 2019, this is by no means a comedy.
It’s a piece of shameless body horror – one that begins with the image of Glazer’s character disoriented and drenched in blood as she wanders the streets of New York City. The provocations intensified from there.
This on-screen version of Glazer is very different from what audiences have grown used to seeing – no happiness, but frantic and fighting for their lives – and the writing and shooting of the film brought it to life. the ordeal in a way comedy hadn’t fully prepared her for.
But Glazer said those efforts were needed to tell a story about a modern childbirth process that she says has become debased and commodified, especially in the United States – fears she had long before she took on it. first-hand knowledge.
“I am really obsessed with the visible evil of the system we live in,” she said. “It’s absurd and it’s funny, even if it’s horrible, the way we are stripped of our humanity. Everyone is made to think this is normal.
Glazer and Lee began working together when Lee, a creator of subversive television comedies like “Wonder Showzen” and “Xavier: Renegade Angel”, was hired to direct episodes of “Broad City” starting with its first season in 2014. .
They bonded around a common worldview and talked about their work outside of the series, including an amorphous narrative piece Lee was writing with writer and TV creator Alissa Nutting (“Made for Love”) .
Lee, who described the piece as a “symphonic poem,” said it drew on tragic events in her life: his wife and frequent collaborator, Alyson Levy, had a miscarriage and her father had died.
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“I was reading ‘Peter Pan’ at the same time,” said Lee, “and there were all these issues with memories and ghosts swirling around. I became fascinated with the idea of Transfiguration – it’s such a thing. cinematic – and how it plays out in the real world through the birth certificate.
Glazer also had thoughts about pregnancy, but they tended to be reluctant. “We are all told it’s a win, a win, a win – you win a baby,” she said. “But there are a lot of losses around that. Life brings death. You think about the people you’ve lost who don’t meet this baby. You lose the old pre-parental version of yourself.
Glazer recalled the early days of “Broad City” and the experiences of executive producer Amy Poehler when she became a mother. “I remember being asked over and over again to Amy, ‘How did you get all this? How do you do all this? How did you get it all? ‘ She said.
And she thought about the long-standing traditions of childbirth that she saw as inherently patriarchal and how little they had changed over time. “It’s like, no, no, no – 10,000 years of this system isn’t going to go away with Instagram’s latest update either,” she said.
Glazer and Lee channeled these ideas into what would become “False Positive” storyline: the story of a New York professional (Glazer) who, after becoming pregnant, becomes increasingly suspicious of her husband (Justin Theroux ) and their prominent fertility doctor (Pierce Brosnan) and begins investigating a conspiracy that may only exist in his mind.
The writers learned more about how to collaborate with each other in the script writing process.
Lee said of Glazer, “I knew her pretty well in the comedy business, but did she really want to do weird things? Did she like Lynch? Did she know Zulawski? She’s like, yeah, I wanna do that. And she gave it a more grounded structure to hang all of these things. “
Their screenplay won them the support of A24, the independent studio behind thrillers like “Hereditary” and “The Lighthouse”, as well as the involvement of co-stars like Brosnan.
“It was a movie that my wife read and said, you have to do it,” Brosnan recalled, adding that he was interested in “False Positives” because it brought up “a thorny and thorny subject” and highlighted. scene “what is happening in our society to women at the most joyful and vulnerable time of their lives, when they are trying to have a child.
Although Brosnan was not initially familiar with “Broad City” – “I’m so late on TV, I mean decades,” he explained – he said he received a crash course in the methods of Glazer when he arrived on the set.
“I remember the first night I met her, I went to Brooklyn where they were filming and Ilana was there, naked, covered in blood,” he said. “And I thought, wow. OKAY. Play. “
But when it comes to the film’s actual production, which took place in the spring of 2019, Glazer said bluntly: “It was an eyesore to do.”
Part of that difficulty, she said, came from a sense of identification with the protagonist and Glazer’s growing understanding that the scenes and actions she writes for her characters are things she does. must actually do in front of a camera.
“In ‘Broad City’ we would write these ridiculous and vulnerable comedic scenes,” she said. “We part ways with the characters, thinking it’s funny.” As the shoot progressed on “False Positive,” she said she realized, “I’m not faking it. I’m not inventing anything. I lend myself to whatever the character has to go through and we capture that. “
The physical demands of filming gradually took their toll on Glazer, whether it was spending long periods of time in stirrups for a pelvic exam scene or shooting a hallucinatory sequence that required him to be submerged in a bathtub. .
“It was so hard and so painful,” Glazer said of the experience. “In the end, I had the flu for a week. “
“After some takes, I was trying to hug her,” Lee said. “She was like, can you just be really close to me in this scene?” And I would and be right next to her.
Glazer said the release of “False Positive” was never designed to coordinate with its due date and was only aligned due to various delays related to the pandemic that limited previous opportunities for the film to be screened at other film festivals. (Plus, an April release date for the film put it too close to National Infertility Awareness Week.)
Now that she has experienced a pregnancy for herself, Glazer has said she has no regrets about doing “False Positive,” but she was delighted that none of the spooky or downright disastrous results imagined in the film came to pass. be produced for her.
“My horror came from what I was told about the trauma of pregnancy and childbirth, how it ruins your body, it ruins your job,” she said. “My experience in life has been so different from that, so much warmer, sweeter and colorful, prettier and warmer than I’ve ever been told it would be.”
After giving birth, Glazer said, she planned to take about four months of maternity leave from her production company and then start telling stories again about a range of human experiences.
“I am really inspired to continue,” she said. “After my break, I am delighted to come back and take it hard.”
Glazer thought for a moment and realized she had changed her mind. “You know what?” she said. “My new perspective on everything is, I’m going to take it slow. The system tells us, go strong, push push push. I will become gentle.
