Rashida Jones and Will McCormack’s doc short ‘A Swim Lesson’ taught them life lessons
It’s an honor to be nominated and shortlisted. Just ask Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. Their documentary short A Swim Lesson, which they co-directed and executive-produced, landed on the Oscar shortlist last month. “It’s such an honor, mainly because it means more people are gonna see it,” Jones tells Gold Derby. “Shorts are kind of a category that, I think, people find it hard to find, like where do you watch it? How do you get it to people? And so being shortlisted means more people will know this name.”
The name that the duo wants the world to know is Bill Marsh, their film’s subject and a highly sought-after Los Angeles-based swim coach who has taught hundreds of kids how to swim through an innovative eight-day program. A Swim Lesson has won the Audience Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Calgary International Film Festival, in addition to receiving a Cinema Eye Honors nomination. The short is about water safety and the importance of the life-saving skill of swimming. Still, A Swim Lesson also offers life lessons of resilience, independence, and confronting and overcoming fears. The soft-spoken Marsh takes a stern but gentle, supportive, and patient approach with the kids, most of whom are 2 years old and wailing when they first go into the pool. But by the end of the eight days, the tears had dried, and they could swim and conquer — using Marsh’s metaphor — the dragon.
Jones and McCormack witnessed Marsh work his magic firsthand when their sons took the class during COVID. “There was one kid in my son’s class who cried from the minute we started until the end of Day 8,” Jones says. “He swam, but he cried the whole time. He never stopped crying unless he was underwater, and it was so interesting to watch him. [Marsh] was so tender and present with this kid and never gave up on him. Also, the fact is he gained a skill through his own emotions. I just thought, ‘God, what an interesting process to be privy to as a parent, as a person.’ Will and I, years later, both of our sons, were taking the lesson again, and we were standing next to each other, listening to Bill, just all this wisdom, just coming out of the pool that was like about swimming and also not about swimming, and we were like, ‘God, I wish he could come to my house in the morning and take my hand and be like, you’re not in charge like your brain’s not in charge.'”
Marsh was game when the pair approached him about doing a doc. He had fielded pitches before, but nothing ever became of them. “I don’t know how many people had approached him, but we were the first ones that sat down, and we were very serious about it,” McCormack says. “It happened during the strike, and this film became like a lamplight in the dark. I had lost my parents in the last couple of years, and I have small kids, and this moment with Bill just felt like an opportunity to be really present and available to this story. And he’s just so charismatic on film. It was just a really rewarding film to make.”
While Jones and McCormack have written and produced together (“we friend together,” she quips), including Celeste and Jesse Forever and Toy Story 4, the pals had never directed together until now. But they had experience in the documentary and short spaces: Jones won a Grammy in 2019 for Best Music Film for her Netflix doc Quincy about her father Quincy Jones and McCormack won an Oscar in 2021 for his animated short If Anything Happens I Love You.
Because they “share a brain,” according to Jones, their first go at co-directing was a seamless collaboration. The Parks and Recreation alum characterizes herself as the “pipe layer” who wants to ensure that “all the structures are there” and McCormack as the big picture guy who’s always “looking for the little moments that are gonna like plug into that thematic arc.”
“I think thematically and creatively, we’re always moving in the same direction. And I think within that, we have different skill sets,” McCormack adds. “I really, truly admire Rashida’s guts in post in cutting. She’s so brave and has the strength to say, ‘Yeah, that’s great, but how we don’t need it.’ And the truth is when you get rid of it, you make it leaner and tighter. I struggle with that more, where she has also worked in documentaries before and worked so well in documentaries before that I learned a lot from working with her. But I really, truly, when it comes to editing and the putting the movie together process, she’s really good at it.”
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One element they and their “incredible editor” Mo Stoebe cut were interviews with the parents. Marsh’s rule is that parents can watch the class, but they must stay silent even as their kid cries and screams — a difficult task since the instinct of any parent is to come to their child’s rescue and make them feel better. But Marsh’s goal is to empower children and show the tenacity of the human spirit in our smallest human beings.
“There were cuts of the film where there was more of [the parents’] response, but ultimately, we felt like Bill asks the parents to be neutral and not say anything, and that felt like the right representation of the process because that’s exactly what’s going on,” Jones says. “So getting inside their head felt like a different movie. It didn’t lie with the vision that that we had, which was to keep it in the pool and keep it a kid’s point of view and Bill’s point of view. But it was fascinating to talk to the parents because they didn’t get to say anything. So they were happy to kind of talk about it because it’s not easy to do that when you watch your kid suffering, like just fully hands off with a stranger.”
“I think the parents were sort of getting used to that,” McCormack adds. “It’s OK to cry, it’s OK not to want to do it, it’s OK to scream, it’s OK to burp and vomit. But the truth is when Bill says we’re gonna do it anyway, that’s life. It’s not always supposed to feel great, but we will do it anyway. Learning to swim is that way, parenting is that way, screenwriting is that way, breaking up is that way, dying is that way, falling in love is that way, falling out of love. It’s just one of the first times in your life where you get this lesson as a parent. And it’s one of the first times you have to let go and not fix your kid’s problem but be there for them after class and wrap them up in the towel and say, ‘We’re gonna come back tomorrow.'”