Zoë Kravitz reveals what inspired her to write and direct “Blink Twice”

Much has changed since Zoë Kravitz began working on her directorial debut Flash twice – and no, we’re not just talking about the less provocative title.

Flash twice (formerly known as Pussy Island), In Frida, Naomi Ackie plays Frida, a cocktail waitress who is fed up of being overlooked and is invited to the private island of billionaire tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum), where she has what seems like a never-ending luxury party. She soon discovers that paradise is not what it seems when her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) disappears and none of the other partying vacationers seem to care – or remember meeting her days before. The dark psychological thriller – which also stars Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Simon Rex, Kyle MacLachlan, Geena Davis and Trew Mullen – literally becomes a fight for survival.

When Kravitz started writing Flash twice In 2017, just before the rise of the #MeToo movement, she was inspired by a very real issue that she felt wasn’t being addressed in society. As the daughter of two famous people – father Lenny Kravitz and mother Lisa Bonet – she had a unique perspective on gender and power dynamics from a young age and wanted to shed light on something she had witnessed but never heard discussed.

“It came from many years of living as a woman in this world, in spaces with powerful people, and witnessing and being interested in these power dynamics from a very young age,” Kravitz says. Weekly entertainment. “Also, I have friends and family members who are all women as well and are in completely different situations in the world, whether they’re waitresses, doctors, lawyers, students. So it’s kind of an accumulation of what it means to be a woman in the world and seeing how things work and how these power dynamics play out at all different levels.”

That’s why it was so important for Kravitz to focus her debut on these themes. “It was definitely an interesting process to write a story from a certain perspective, because I felt like there was a lack of conversation,” she explains.

But during the years-long process of writing the script, the world changed. With the rise of the #MeToo movement and the Time’s Up organization, society began to have the difficult conversations it wanted. Flash twice to inspire. The film therefore had to be updated again and again. “Many themes and things in the script changed quite drastically culturally in the spirit of the times,” she explains. “And so of course we had to rewrite and adapt to that. So there were many different versions of this world and the story.”

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She adds: “There are almost so many different conversations going on that it’s hard to even know what to focus on. And behaviors and what’s acceptable and all of those things change. And having to grow and evolve with that, or help the story grow and evolve with that, has been a really interesting process. It’s like this living, breathing thing – you’re trying to keep up with this thing or keep up with it that feels quite alive. That’s what’s exciting about the movie that’s coming out now – because of all that, it feels like this living being to me in some ways.”

While it’s difficult to go into detail without giving the film away, Kravitz says of the changes, “In the original version of the script, the danger was much more obvious. And then, in a post-Time’s Up/#MeToo world, where we have to create an environment where that discussion has been had in society, different rules apply and the way we play the game is different. So I suppose just the information that the characters had going into the story had to change a lot, and the seduction of that world and what’s seductive about it. Those are probably the biggest changes.”

Kravitz hopes that Flash twice inspires the audience to have a conversation about difficult topics, even if that conversation turns out differently than she originally imagined seven years ago.

“I wanted the difficult moments to be honest and real without being so uncomfortable that people look away,” she says. “It’s about looking. I’m a real lover of going to the movies together and I love when you go home and have those conversations, but you also leave feeling accomplished and having had a good time. So it was about finding a balance where we can have those real conversations about real things and still not feel manipulated or gross or having to close our eyes or look away. I want this to be something that engages people’s minds. I want people to want to talk about these things and for men and women and everyone to feel invited to have that conversation.”

Flash twice will be in theaters on August 23rd.