Interview With Victor Nunez, Director Of Sundance Classic RUBY IN PARADISE

The current asking price for a Ruby in Paradise DVD on Amazon sits well over $1,000. Its director, Floridian filmmaker Victor Nunez, has three copies sitting on his shelf – three times as many as the Internet may lead you to believe even exist.

Despite its accolades (a glowing Roger Ebert review and a Grand Jury Prize win at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival) and its recognition as the production that launched Ashley Judd‘s career, nothing ever really came of Ruby in Paradise. It sat, for a while, split into three parts on YouTube, and there was a time when the DVD fluttered around Canada. But for the most part, the film has remained off the radar for the entirety of the 21st century.

Now restored from its original quarter-inch tapes with 7.1 surround sound, Ruby in Paradise has made a grand return through Quiver Distribution. Available in online cinemas, but also to rent and own digitally, this is the most accessible the Sundance gem has been in decades. Starring Judd as a young woman from Tennessee who hightails it to Florida for a fresh start, the film is a powerful testament to the spirit in the mundane, and the victories that may look small, but are actually enormous.

Film Inquiry recently spoke with writer-director Victor Nunez about his long-lost film. He discussed his affinity for Florida productions, his goals in character building, and even a new project he’s working on – his first in 12 years.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Luke Parker for Film Inquiry: My first question is probably the most obvious one to ask. Almost 30 years later, what makes Ruby worth revisiting? Why will it connect with modern audiences?

Victor Nunez: It’s a good question and obviously, if I knew that, I’d be rolling in money because I would know exactly what the audience wants. I have been thinking a lot about this in general, why we like old stories and why we like things from the past. It’s possible that there’s some comfort in recognizing that the things we feel aren’t unique to the present. You know, I teach film – for the 19, 20 year olds – and there’s this tendency among them to believe that they’re the first people ever on Earth to have felt anxiety, and pain, and heartbreak.

Ruby, almost 30 years ago, was going through something that is recognizable, and she came out the other side. We don’t all have to end up in a ditch. We can take chances. We can make mistakes, and that’s alright, because that’s part of what life is about.

That story was valued at the time. In terms of the “why now,” instead of five years ago or five years from now, a lot of that is just chance. The first person we talked to at Quiver, his first Sundance ever was the Sundance that Ruby in Paradise was there. So you have the older generation, and the fact that it’s a story about a younger person. But part of it is that the film gods said it’s time.

Ruby in Paradise marked your return after nine years away from the director’s chair. Placing yourself back in that hiatus, where did this story come from?

Victor Nunez: The [previous] film was A Flash of Green, and it was a puzzle to people. It went to Cannes. It went to Sundance. But it didn’t connect.

Seeing it now – it was restored 10-15 years ago – it’s amazing how prescient John D. MacDonald was about the American landscape. But I made that film, and when you make a film that’s not received well at Sundance and you’re in the middle of nowhere, I had what I called my “ten years in the wilderness.” John D. MacDonald had this character Travis McGee, who was a detective, and he said he took his retirement as he went along.

My positive peak was that I was taking some of my retirement, which is why I’m still working today in part. But the other side of it was that I did one hell of a lot of reading, and my wife was reading feminist literature, so there was a lot in the air. We were interested in these discussions and these issues on a profound, human level, not the specific gender level.

The genesis of most of my stories come from an image. And Ruby was me going back and forth to Panama City as a kid, going into a shop for a Coke or a towel – and this was a party, this was freedom – but there was a person working there. For whatever reason, it struck me that somebody’s working at this place that’s supposed to be about escape. So that was always an idea and it just began to grow. I considered “Robert in Paradise,” but it didn’t connect to the story in the sense that Ruby did.

But the film was written at a time when there was absolutely no reason for me to think that I’d ever make a movie again. I took the script to people and they said nobody’s interested in a movie about a shop clerk. A friend, Jim Stark, a producer of independent film, called me – in fact, I was sitting in this exact chair – and asked me what I was doing. He was curious about what had happened to me. I told him I had this script, and he told me, “well Victor, the one thing you can do is make a movie for almost no money. And you should do it!”

So, I did.

You know, what’s the risk in letting you make a movie about anything if it’s on the cheap? [laughs]

Victor Nunez: Actually, that sounds like a silly question, but it is true that the less money you spend, the fewer people you have to try to please. I would say of all my films that they’re not for everyone. But for those that connect, they’re happy to have gotten to see it.

The reason Ruby goes to Florida is because it’s the only vacation of hers that she can remember. You grew up there. Nearly all of your films were set there. What kept you, as a filmmaker, in Florida?

Victor Nunez: When I went to college – well, I read and did what I was supposed to do in high school – but literature and film happened at the same time for me. This was in the early 60s. I went to a little college in Yellow Springs, and they had an art theater there. They showed three movies a week. And I was also reading Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor, and Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers. This was a time when the best literature was coming out of the South, in terms of great literature.

When I saw all these films, I didn’t see Goddard or Fellini as part of a big machine. They were just people making films in their own places. So, I figured why not be in film what the writers I’ve read have done in literature. I hated the term “regional [filmmaker],” but I was based in a place.

One of the things I embraced was this Italian neorealist thing in which it’s not just character and story, it’s place. You get an energy there that you can’t get elsewhere.

It was really naive. It’s one thing to say that about a typewriter, but to classify yourself as a “regional filmmaker” is just dumb.

You may think it’s dumb, but watching your films, your sense of space is so apparent. What do you think that added to your films?

Victor Nunez: It happened that I came along and discovered film when Hollywood was kind of the last place you wanted to see a film from. Anywhere else was more interesting and exciting. I learned that [Yasujirō] Ozu loved John Ford, and when I learned that, I figured I’d better watch some John Ford. And damn, he’s a good filmmaker! A great filmmaker.

You begin to understand that these distinctions and differences are all matters of degree and timing. So, you build on what your opportunities are. I went to school at UCLA, so it’s not like I never crossed the Florida line, but there seemed to be so much here that could still be touched.

I’ve read that there have been times where you regretted your commitment to being a regional filmmaker, as you put it. Why was that, and now that you’ve stopped directing, is it something you ever still feel?

Victor Nunez: Well, first off, I haven’t stopped. I’m in pre-production on another movie.

Oh, wow! IMDb has failed me.

Victor Nunez: This is very exciting. It’s a similar story in that it tracks one woman’s journey. In this case, she’s a 63-year-old creative writing professor, a widow one year out. I’m interested in what happens inside to people. Not so much what happens to them outside, but how they process it and why they process it. Why do some people seem more inclined to process than others?

For whatever reason, I had made two adaptations prior to Ruby. It was Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (for 1979’s Gal Young Un) and John D. MacDonald. You talked about those ten years. I had thought, “well, I’ll find another thing to adapt.” It never showed up, so I had to sort of go back to trying to write. So I was sort of fresh again, too, when I wrote Ruby.

You’ve talked about the number of people you encountered in Panama City whose stories mirrored Ruby’s. Since this film came out, the economic landscape has faced an enormous shift and small businesses, like Chambers Beach Emporium, are struggling to tread water against large supermarkets and corporations. What elements of this “break out and start over” story are still universal, and what couldn’t possibly play out today?

Victor Nunez: I was reading that in New York City, people are abandoning the Internet. They’re publishing newsletters with mimeographs – anything to try to make this tangible connection between people and places. That comes out of this inner need and brought on certainly by COVID in the sense that suddenly, our general distractions are everywhere.

If you grew up in the 60s, you were very aware of this notion: Goddard said entertainment kills. There’s this thing about the speed of consumption drowning our souls.

We’ll find out, won’t we, if people bother to watch Ruby. When the average consumption of Netflix is 8 hours a day, there’s not going to be too much room for Ruby. What it has always been with that film – and with all of them – is that some people find them and some people are glad that they found them. For that, I’m very humbled and grateful. The other ones, you just accept.

Throughout the film, Ruby encroaches on different pressures and paths her life could take – relationships, college, religion, jobs, even the Navy – but she’s still able to make sure she doesn’t fall “hook, line and sinker” for anything. Films around women but written by men are often criticized, but that was far from the case here. How did you go about shaping Ruby’s character from such an honest place?

Victor Nunez: This goes all the way back to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings story, but I was at the Flaherty Seminar with Gal Young Un. It’s a story about this very abusive man and this person who finally, ultimately fights back. These two very smart young ladies in the back asked that very question; “how dare you as a man, make this movie.” Thankfully, the entire audience screamed, “that’s crazy.”

But I did not do it lightly. I was very aware and always asking and listening to people. If an actress felt like the lines could be flipped.

I gave a really good answer at the time. The intimately autobiographical telling of a story is fascinating initially, but it has its limitations. I was always struck by Picasso, of all people, saying the biggest thing he feared was revealing himself. I think what he really meant is that he wanted to do more. Somehow, going through the lens of gender and coming back, you’re challenged to get to a more fundamental level of whatever it is you’re facing.

Ruby is named Gissing for George Gissing, who was a male writer – again, very controversial – but the first one to write about the working woman in England at the time. There’s a paradox or an irony that in order to be universal, we have to be specific. And in order to be specific, we have to understand that we’re also universal. You are both.

Identity politics is essential. But if we all stopped there, we would be missing an awful lot about what being a human being is about.

Many of your films are remembered as the hosts to marvelous performances, and Ruby in Paradise gave the world Ashley Judd. It introduced her as a ferocious dramatic performer. At that point, she hadn’t done any films, so what did you see that made her Ruby?

Victor Nunez: She came late. She had been out of town. She had not been on the list, so we were already trying to make decisions on who was going to be Ruby. Needless to say, we had very little money and six days to cast the movie. First off, you can say the film gods shined on us, smiled at us. She came in, she did a nice job, but you’re right, everybody else had more work.

But she was from Tennessee, at least partly. What she hadn’t told me was that she had been a model in Japan. She’s a very complicated person, but at her core, she understood what it was like to be from Tennessee. I remember driving over Mulholland Drive to my cheap motel and thinking, “it’s got to be Ashley.” My sense was that she liked the part; you could tell when somebody connects to something beyond work.

It came down to my Italian neorealist roots. She knows more about the world that we’re talking about than anyone else. It was interesting. To arrive on set in Panama City, she didn’t fly. She drove from Nashville. So she basically, herself, repeated Ruby’s drive from Tennessee down to Florida.

***

It was at this point in the interview that we had gone over our scheduled time, and Victor was kind enough to let the conversation carry on. When I told him I was out of questions – after just saying that I wished we had more time – he challenged me, saying “talk is cheap.” I accepted the challenge, and we continued.

***

You probably had the most beautiful scene I’ve ever seen that incorporated a trombone. [laughs] I was completely mesmerized. Where did that come from?

Victor Nunez: At a certain point, if you’re lucky, a story takes on a life of its own when you have people who care and love it. Todd Field (who plays Mike, one of Ruby’s love interests in the film) came up to me at a certain point and said, “you know, what I think Mike should do when he’s in his magic space is play the trombone.” So it was Todd Field. It was his idea. And the minute he said it, I said, “of course.”

It is a lovely scene. And if you haven’t fallen stricken in love with Ashley before, when she walks up to the door, that’s when you will. I love that scene. You don’t make a movie with just one wonderful person. They’re wonderful in good part because they’re surrounded by really nice, wonderful actors.

I was watching it again to approve the color on this thing and I was struck by how good Bentley Mitchum (who plays Ricky, another of Ruby’s interests, though he’s more of a passing thought) is as the bad guy. He was so good. And talking about timing again, everything he says still applies today – you know, the argument about being in stocks, that could have been today. “Two paychecks from the street” too.

What we forget, and some people have said this, it’s not just the pandemic. But we’ve been going here for a long, long time. The loss and the disappearance of a communal safety net, and the implications for all of us are huge. It was interesting for me to hear those lines that I could have written last week.

I recently rejoined Twitter, and what I’ve been doing is that every time I watch something, I put down a little quirk, a little moment that I like. For Ruby, I wrote “mysteries with women detectives, sunblock and swimsuits.” I thought that scene was fantastic.

Victor Nunez: Dorothy Lyman, a true trooper. She did a wonderful job. That was her scene. We all knew it. We were having a hell of a time synchronizing Ashley turning the switch on with the light, so there’s Dorothy, ready to do her scene, and we were just f*cking around. We just couldn’t get it right. She’s patient and finally, it works. She comes in and delivers what, for me, is just wonderful. All of the movie, she’s wonderful, but in there, she gets her moment.

The other thing about that scene that I’ll share – we were running late on time and the scene was written to take place around the table. And we had lit it that way. But Ashley kept going to the couch. I asked her not to do that because we didn’t have the light, but she said, “I got to.” And she was right. It was grainy and in the blowup, we were able to make it less so, but she was absolutely right.

It was even more powerful because she started at the table and then moved when the conversation was getting a little uncomfortable. It was a fantastic choice.

Victor Nunez: I learned a lot. In fact, I try not to say anything to the actors now. They have an initial direction in the script – let them chart their own path through the scene and make adjustments based on that.

Film Inquiry would like to thank Victor Nunez for taking the time to speak with us!

Ruby in Paradise is now available to stream in Virtual Cinemas, as well as rent or own through Quiver.

https://youtu.be/KlWMYCONL4I