‘Sweetness’ Director Emma Higgins On Her Tale Of Teen Angst and Obsession
After building a career around directing music videos, director Emma Higgins is taking the plunge into the world of feature film-making with her debut, Sweetness. This tale of teenage ennui and pop-punk obsession is like Misery but set in high school, doused in Victoria’s Secret body spray, and finished off with a line or two of dark eyeliner. It’s a film that’ll resonate with those of us who grew up alone and with an unattainable crush. It’ll also resonate for those of us who love a man with a tramp stamp.
In the new film, “When a chance encounter with her rockstar crush leads 16-year-old Rylee to discover that he’s addicted to drugs, she takes it upon herself to help him, ultimately forcing her teenage fantasies into reality.“
We spoke to Higgins after the film’s world premiere at SXSW and dug into how she approached writing the film’s music and the power of the male tramp stamp.
Dread Central: So I did not have this movie on my radar until recently, and I’m so glad I watched it because I was not expecting this Misery meets punk emo girls film in the coolest way possible. I read your director’s statement, and you said that you’ve had the script for a decade. I wanted to hear more about how the story has been with you for such a long time.
Emma Higgins: Sweetness is my first movie, so it took a long time, I think, to get the script in a really good place and just get it off the ground. I started making it around the time I was really involved in the music industry. So that was a big part of the inspiration. It takes me back, though. It takes me back to being that age.
DC: I grew up in that time, so that was my era. But I also wanted to hear about the songwriting because you have Peyton [actor Herman Tømmeraas] sing in Sweetness. What was that songwriting process like to create the music for Floor Plan?
EH: We had to do it before we went to camera, so it was very early on. We didn’t know entirely if Herman, who plays Payton, was going to be able to sing because he was so low-key about it. He was like, “Oh yeah, I can sing a little.” It turns out, he can sing perfectly. And so that’s actually him singing on everything.
But the composers are from the same place I am, in Canada, and I’ve known them for 15, 16 years. I did music videos for them in 2008, 2009. I met them, and then when they were just a nerdy punk band at the time. So I knew that they could write songs as well as be composers. So that was a huge point of hiring them at the time because I was like, “These guys are not only really great composers, but they can be songwriters, too.”
So we bounced references back and forth, and it went a lot of different directions. We wanted it to still be kind of modern, not fully pop punk, but have a little bit of that influence. So there were iterations of Floor Plan that were totally pop punk, and then there were ones that went in the wrong direction, and we brought it back to where you find it now.
DC: There are a lot of horror films about pop stars and musician horror films, and I feel like you really committed to the bit of having actual music and performances in a concert. Also, I was going to ask about the music video world and how influential that was on this film, which sounds like it was pretty heavily influential in making Sweetness.
EH: Yeah, I think music videos taught me to have a certain style. They allowed me to figure out what I like and don’t like. They allowed me to figure out how to make movies cheap and fast because music videos are really, there’s no budget. They’re always really fast, and they’re always very rock and roll. We don’t get permits, and we just kind of go.
DC: Oh yeah, you’re like, “Don’t tell anyone how we did this. Don’t worry about it.”
EH: Exactly. It was fully legal how that was achieved. [Laughs]
So I don’t know. It taught me not only how to be a filmmaker, but I think it also gave me the perspective on making this specific story, too. I got this perspective on the music industry from both sides because I was really young when I started in music videos. I was like 15, 16 when I started working on them.
DC: Woah, wait. Holy cow. That’s wild.
EH: Yeah, I was fully in high school. So I’d stay up all night making music videos, and then my mom would make me go to school in the morning. I was a PA at the time, and so I was up all night on a rooftop shooting a band in the rain, rocking out at the strip club. Also illegal, way underage. [Laughs] But yeah, shooting strippers all night and then having to go to school and take a Spanish test in the morning. It was this really interesting way of getting to see both sides of the coin, of seeing these famous people and their just normal lives. And then also being the age, that’s the prime fan girl age. It was a little bit of a unique place to be.
DC: Wow. That’s like a wild, cool experience. But then, now you’re making your first feature. How does that now feel to go from that experience to now making this movie? That’s got to feel so cool and overwhelming, lots of emotions all at the same time.
EH: Oh my God, yes. It’s very overwhelming. I’m very grateful I had the best experience making this movie. I don’t know, it’s kind of a dream come true. It’s been such a long road to get here, and I’m happy it happened when it did because I was in a good place where I was supported by the right team and got to pick the people to work with whom I felt really good about. I don’t know, I just cry a lot. I’ve been crying a lot. [Laughs]
DC: I just released my first movie, too, so I’ve also been crying a lot. So I get that emotion, I’m very much about that vibe.
EH: Oh my god, so you know how hard it is, too.
DC: It’s so hard to make anything happen. So just seeing this happen, it’s got to feel so cool. Especially, you’re making a movie about a messed-up 16-year-old who is just looking for a friend in the wrong way. I think you said in your director’s statement that we need more messy movies like this.
EH: Yeah. I’m also Team Rylee.
DC: I love her. I don’t care. I don’t care what it says about me, Team Rylee forever.
EH: Thank you. Okay, good. I’m unabashedly team Rylee, and then people are like, “But you can’t be, she’s a full-on murderer”. And I’m like, “No, she’s having a bad time, girl.” We’ve all been there. We’ve all been in love with the wrong guy and done the thing. What’s your movie called?
DC: It’s called Bystanders. It’s a rape-revenge film, but not in the way that you’re used to it being. It’s very much a no male gaze type of thing.
EH: Yes! There’s just a different way that I think you can tell. It’s the way that people dress and even look, and it gets me immediately. I can tell by a trailer and the way that the lead actress is presented on screen, I’m like, “Oh, a man directed this.”
I had such fight-back on stuff, too. I wanted to give Peyton the lower back tattoo…
DC: Wait, I was obsessed with the tramp stamp. I was going to ask you, did he have the tattoos, or did you put them on? The tramp stamp made me pause the movie because I started laughing.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
EH: No one got it. The girls got it. Me and my production designer got it. And we were like, “We think it’s cool.” Then one of my female producers was like, “Yeah, it’s going to be so great.” We shot this May of last year, so it was even before Brat Summer. And I was like, “I just feel like lower back tattoos are going to be a thing.” And I think it’s totally hot and cool to see it on a man. We haven’t seen it before. And people were like, “You’re crazy. This is going to detract. It’s too weird.”
DC: OK, tell them all it’s cool, because I’m obsessed. They put a lower back tattoo on this man! So yeah, it’s for the girls, I think.
EH: Our production designer had our graphics team make it specifically. We sat there being like, what’s the stupidest tattoo he could have? And thank you so much for validating me and this decision, because yeah, you are the audience for this. I think it’s sexy. I don’t know. I just think it’s sexy. I think all men should get lower back tattoos.
DC: I agree. I’m going to put that in the headline. All men should have lower back tattoos. Thank you for making such a weird, cool, awesome movie about being a fucked up teenage girl with a crush on a band guy in a band.
EH: Thank you. Yeah, thank you for enjoying Sweetness. Really. I love the movie. My editor is the same age as me. We came up together; she was my editor on music videos for a long time, so we edited all these music videos together. So, doing Sweetness, all the decisions were sort of like, “What would the teenage version of me want to see?” And yeah, I think it’s lower back tattoos and, I don’t know, cool haircuts.
DC: Some smudgy black eyeliner.
EH: Oh yeah. Bring back the smudgy black eyeliner.
Sweetness played as part of Fantasia 2025. Keep an eye on Dread Central for more updates on Sweetness as we have them!
Categorized: Interviews
