The Story

Bridget and Nick are two friends who never got the timing right. Nick thinks now might be the right time, but Bridget isn't so sure...

Nothing to Say is the story of two friends trying to love each other without hurting themselves. Bridget and Nick have been friends since high school, and they’re frequently in love with each other, but never at the same time. The story takes place over the course of a few days, as Bridget is crashing Nick’s couch in LA while she interviews for a job in his city. She’s got an Ivy League degree. He’s a barely-employed musician. Even though it’s been years since they’ve seen each other and life has taken them in different directions, they fall easily into a comfortable rhythm. It’s always been easy for them.

Nick is optimistic. They’ve never lived in the same place as adults, and if Bridget gets this job, they might finally get a chance to be together. But Bridget is confused. She doesn’t know how she feels about Nick. She was in love with him when they were younger, but he broke her heart, so she got over it. Now, she doesn’t know if she can find the feelings she used to have for Nick. But she wants to. After all, she loves Nick, really. They know each other. They speak the same language. It’s effortless. And yet… there’s something missing.

Bridget begins the movie with a real sense of hope that she might actually fall back in love with Nick. But as they spend more time together, Bridget realizes she’s never going to feel the way she used to feel. Nick, on the other hand, only grows more confident that this thing with Bridget is finally about to become real. The only way forward is for both of them to say all the unsaid, true and hurtful things they’ve kept buried for years. And in the aftermath, the new shape of their relationship emerges.

Is their friendship bigger than romance?

Or are they doomed to keep hurting each other forever?

Director’s Statement

I call this a “Chicken Soup” movie. It’s the kind of movie you watch over and over again. You tell your friends about it. You throw it on when you need a good laugh or a cathartic cry. It reminds you of someone you used to know. You remember them fondly. It’s a conversation you’ve had in your own kitchen at 2am. It’s trusting someone enough to say the mean thing out loud. This is a film about unrequited love, yes, but it’s also about friendship, and the precise kind of love that can survive a heartbreak.

This film is inspired by my relationship with my best friend from high school, who I’ve known since I was 14. I love him deeply. I was in love with him, when we were younger, but after several years of one-sided pining, I had to get over it. And as soon as I did, he realized he had feelings for me. It’s a tale as ordinary as it is tragic.

So many of my favorite films are about the-one-who-got-away (Past Lives, La La Land, the Before trilogy), but those stories are usually about external forces in life getting in the way of true love or whatever. The characters love each other, but they’re on different paths. The obstacles are largely external or situational. In my experience, the greatest heartbreaks of my life have not been the result of living in different time zones or having incompatible ambitions, but about a simple imbalance of feeling. One person just wants the other a little bit too much, or not enough. This particular kind of heartbreak is a ubiquitous feeling that’s underexplored in cinema. And it’s the kind of heartbreak I plan to explore in this film.