Trifecta

About the Film

Trifecta is an exercise in comedic timing and juxtaposition. Each date gets set up the same way, Wallace holds up a photo and a one-line description before Willy ever meets the girl, and then the scene itself completely contradicts it, the girl pitched as put-together turns out unimpressed and hungry, the one described as “not goth” turns out surrounded by candles and dead spiders, the valedictorian turns out bored out of her mind and chewing gum in his face. The comedy comes almost entirely from that gap, what we’re told to expect against what actually shows up on screen, repeated three times with the rhythm getting tighter each round.

Director’s Statement

I wrote and edited Trifecta, and on set that turned into directing the actors too, since I was usually the person in the room who knew exactly why a joke worked on the page and how it needed to be delivered to land. I’d walk an actor through a line’s timing myself, holding a beat half a second longer or pushing a reaction bigger, treating it less like giving notes and more like protecting a joke I’d already written. That same instinct carried straight into the edit. I’d already annotated the script scene by scene for exactly where a beat needed to hold or snap forward, so the shot list, the performances, and the cut all ended up built around the same rhythm before we ever started shooting.