Production Notes

A Film by Michael Sucsy Production Notes Facebook: @EveryDayTheMovie Instagram: @OrionPictures Twitter: @OrionPictures #EveryDayMovie TRT 91 MINS / RATED PG-13 / USA / ENGLISH / COLOR Synopsis Based on David Levithan’s acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Every Day tells the story of Rhiannon (Angourie Rice), a 16-year old girl who falls in love with a mysterious soul named “A” who inhabits a different body every day. Feeling an unmatched connection, Rhiannon and A work each day to find each other, not knowing what or who the next day will bring. The more the two fall in love, the more the realities of loving someone who is a different person every 24 hours takes a toll, leaving Rhiannon and A to face the hardest decision either has ever had to make. Introduction Rhiannon is a good 16-year old – she helps out at home, doesn’t cause trouble, and does well at school. However, her family has been struggling – her father had a nervous breakdown and stopped working leaving her mother Lindsey the pressure of being the sole breadwinner. While her sister Jolene is the wild child who acts out, Rhiannon just wants to help keep her family together. At school things are little better – Rhiannon’s boyfriend Justin is the popular athlete, however, he’s also self-centered and takes Rhiannon for granted. That is, until one day when Justin shows up at school acting differently. Suddenly, he’s attentive and curious and sweet. Taken aback and enamoured, Rhiannon suggests they play hooky and steal away to Baltimore. The two take off in Justin’s car, listen to music and sing along, share stories they’ve never shared before, and play at the beach. Rhiannon is surprised to see a softer side of Justin – one that’s playful and unselfconscious. It is a day like they’ve never had before: perfect. Yet the next morning at school, Justin seems back to normal and he barely remembers what they talked about or the day they spent together. Rhiannon is perturbed, but tries to shake it off. By that weekend, though, it’s clear that the Justin who Rhiannon played hooky with isn’t coming back. She tries to recapture that day by playing the song they sang along to at a party, but Justin seems uninterested. It does get the attention of a boy Rhiannon doesn’t know named Nathan, however, who starts dancing wildly and putting on a show to make Rhiannon laugh. Rhiannon joins him on the dance floor and something suddenly seems familiar – but she doesn’t know what. Justin shows up and chases Nathan away and Rhiannon is left with a lingering feeling of déjà vu. A few days later she is contacted by Nathan who says he wants to meet and talk. They arrange a date at a bookstore, but when Rhiannon shows up Nathan isn’t there. Instead, she meets Megan, who says she is there on Nathan’s behalf. Yet when Rhiannon and Megan begin to talk, Megan explains that she in fact is someone named “A”. That weekend at the party A was Nathan, and the day at the beach A was Justin – because A is a bodiless spirit who wakes up inhabiting a different person every day, for just twenty-four hours. Always someone A’s age, always someone close to the last, never the same person twice. Rhiannon is naturally disbelieving at first, until A manages to make contact with her a few more times over the next few days and eventually proves they are telling the truth. What follows is an extraordinary love story that transcends external appearances and physical limitations. A love story about loving someone truly and completely for who they are in their heart and soul, regardless of what is on the outside. This is Every Day. About the Production My name is A. Every day I wake up in a different body. Always someone my age, never too far from the last person, never the same person twice. I have no control over any of it. I don’t know why it happens, or how. Yet I know what makes each person different and what makes everyone the same. I’ve seen the same color blue look fifty different ways with fifty different pairs of eyes. Every day of my life, I wake up and just try to live that day, for that person. Make no mark, leave no trace. Until now…. The Book In 2012, celebrated young adult author David Levithan (well known for co-writing 2006’s Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist) published a book that pushed him to new creative heights. It resonated so deeply with his readers that it spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and spawned online chat groups, fan art and writing. That book was Every Day. Ask any teenager or parent of a teenager if they’ve heard of Every Day, and not only will they know it, they’ll most likely have read it and passed it on to a friend. The story of a teenage entity named only A, who wakes up every day in a different body, Every Day deals with the challenges faced when A falls head over heels in love with Rhiannon, a girl unlike anyone they’ve ever met. Can you have a relationship with a soul who inhabits a different body every day – sometimes boy, sometimes girl, sometimes the school quarterback, sometimes the outcast? Who are you removed of your body, your race, your clothes, your family? The story is the actualization of the old adage that we should ‘love someone for who they are on the inside,’ all the more powerful because it is set during the teenage years when we customarily try on and experiment with myriad external identities in an effort to figure out we are. Levithan’s book explores all these themes, but fundamentally it’s a story about true love, growing up, and the lengths we’ll go for those we care about. Perennially relevant themes? Absolutely. As A says himself in the book, '…when who you are changes every day you get to touch the universal more.’ “The idea for Every Day came to me one day at work,” says author David Levithan. “I just thought, ‘What would it be like to wake up in a different body every day?’ This question intrigued me so I started writing some stuff, and as I was writing I started to realize ‘Oh, this is about not being defined by your body, or externally imposed ideas of who you are, but by who you really are.’ And I basically wrote the book as an answer to that question. It was unlike anything I had ever done before.” Levithan decided to take this unique concept and put it into the context of a teenage love story, “A has never connected with anybody, which is not dissimilar from the teenage experience of first love. I became fascinated with the conflict for Rhiannon, whom he falls in love with. Could you get past everything you’ve been conditioned to believe in order to love someone under these circumstances? What does it really mean to love the inner person devoid of the external?” The book was a juggernaut, clearly resonating with young people the world over, and taking Levithan on tours to visit high school and college students across North America. “There are a few key things that the readers seem to have connected to,” he shares. “The idea of ‘I am not who everyone sees me as’ – that there’s often a disconnect between the way the world sees you and how you feel inside. I also think readers take away a feeling of possibility from it – that they can be whoever they want to be. There’s a freedom in what A is that’s really interesting to explore, and that’s created a lot of great side conversations about gender and race and the binaries that society is built on, but that we can choose to step out of if we want.” The Discovery Fast forward a few years to producers Paul Trijbits and Christian Grass from the UK’s FilmWave and Anthony Bregman and Peter Cron from Likely Story discovering the book and themselves falling in love with it. Both companies had previously partnered on 2016’s Golden Globe nominated Sing Street (Best Picture Musical or Comedy) and decided to re-team for Every Day. “A great love story is timeless and remains one of the most satisfying cinematic genres, so I’m always looking for new ways to talk about how love works and how people relate to each other,” says producer Anthony Bregman. “When I read the book, the first thing I thought was that it was something that had never been done before – which is so rare now – and I also thought it was ingenious. On the one hand very simple – the embodiment of loving someone for who they really are – while also being very complex in how it addresses a lot of issues in the lives of young people today.” Producer Christian Grass adds, “We all talk about having empathy for other people and that we’re all the same on the inside. There is something really extraordinary about manifesting that in a character who literally has to walk in someone else’s shoes every single day. I think the profoundness of that and the magic of that just grabs people and inspires awe.” Beyond exploring the most universal themes of true love, identity and coming of age, Every Day also reflects very contemporary ideas about acceptance and the freedom to be whoever you are – a particularly resonant idea for young people right now who increasingly reject categorization.

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