SEE THE DIRECTOR THAT PUT TO BED ON SET

The filmmaker and single mother behind HBO documentary First Comes Love talks about the making of her new movie and the making of her son.

“I just woke up from a nap, if you want to know the truth,” filmmaker Nina Davenport said not too long into the interview. This is the kind of confession you would expect from the documentarian — she is charming and unapologetic in her dishevelment.

Davenport’s new film, First Comes Love (premiering July 29 on HBO), follows the lead up to and the aftermath of the single woman's decision, at age 41, to have a child on her own through in vitro fertilization. The documentary takes the audience through the sometimes cruel judgment of family members, the hormone shots, the pregnancy tests, the sonograms, the weight gain, and the graphic and ugly labor, all the way to the first steps of her son, Jasper. As Davenport navigates her relationship with her friends and with her father, a stoic and acerbic man of old-school values, First Comes Love shies away from neither uncomfortable conversations nor double chins. The film is perhaps flawed in its myopia — Davenport, a white college graduate from an affluent background, isn't exactly the Everywoman — but it is a deeply personal work. That seems to be the point.

Davenport is supported by a network of friends, including her best friend Amy, who administers hormone shots on screen and is to this day (Jasper is now 4) a huge part of the child's life. “She treats him like her own kid,” said the filmmaker. And indeed, the movie explores the ways people build families out of what they've got. The sperm donor, her friend Eric, didn't want to have children, but he falls in love with Jasper; Amy, who “probably” doesn't want children of her own, cries at his birth; the man Davenport starts dating while she's pregnant wrestles with what he would do if they broke up; Davenport's father, initially unsupportive of the pregnancy, bounces his new grandson on his knee and claims he never said those terrible things he said.

It's ultimately a movie about coming to terms with reality, rolling with the punches, and loving what's in front of you, even if it's not quite the way you imagined it. What follows is an edited transcript of BuzzFeed's conversation with Davenport.




The movie starts with you asking people for advice on whether you should become a single parent. Did you actually feel conflicted or did you just want to hear what people said?

Nina Davenport: I definitely felt conflicted — not conflicted about wanting a baby, but just scared. If someone tells me I can’t or shouldn't do something, it will only propel me towards doing it, so maybe that's why I went into the — what's that expression? — the jaw of the tiger, and asked people who who might be predisposed against the idea for advice.

How long has the movie been in the making then?

ND: A long time. It was a lot of work. I'm not enjoying the handful of negative reviews that have come out, but luckily the experience is mostly extremely positive ones to offset those.

When did you start working on the movie?

ND: Right around the time that I started thinking about this, so I think I shot the first scene in late 2007, and then I ended up getting pregnant in March 2008. The time that I went from very seriously thinking about this to action was not that long because I just, I had it in my head that after 42, it was over. Even though obviously, it's all statistics and gambling, so who knows.

When you first set out to make this movie and made the decision that you wanted to try and have a kid on your own, did you feel like if that didn't happen, you were still going to make the movie? How far were you willing to follow it?

ND: Knowing me, and knowing my previous work, I imagine I would have continued with the movie and it just would have gone in a different direction, but I was certainly way more concerned about getting pregnant than the movie, especially at that point. There were definitely times when I had to prioritize one or the other, and I always prioritized getting pregnant.

The first part of the movie where you're onscreen, where it's not a still shot of you but it's actually you filming yourself, is when it seems like your friend is saying no, he doesn't want to be a sperm donor. Can you talk about that choice and why that was the first time we see a moving image of you?

ND: When I was shooting it, I'm not sure what I was thinking. I know that at some point fairly early on, I realized that I should be on camera more than maybe in other films because my body would be changing, and my body would be a character in the film if I got pregnant, so that may have been why I handed him the camera.

I think that part in particular stuck out to me because you're not really afraid to be messy on camera, and I thought that was really impressive.

ND: Well, thank you. I'm not vain, it's true, but also it would be really alienating if I looked great in every scene; it would not help the film. I think it would be alienating because then I would start to seem like an actress rather than a real person.