Chris Pine is done wading through the bad reviews for his directorial debut “Poolman.” Pine co-wrote, directed, and starred in the comedy noir film that debuted at TIFF 2023. In Pine’s words, the feature was “fucking panned” by critics there, which led to a “real come-to-Jesus moment” for the actor.
“I watched my film. After the reviews in Toronto I was like maybe I did make a pile of shit,” Pine said during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast (which you can watch below). “I went back and watched it. I fucking love this film. I love this film so much.”
Pine pointed to how the criticisms of his feature directly contradicted the “joyful” quality of the film itself. “When the film came out at Toronto and just got fucking panned … I tried to make a joyful film,” Pine continued. “With so much joy behind it, to then be met with a fusillade of not-so-joyous stuff … the cognitive dissonance there was quite something. It’s ultimately been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s forced me to double down on joy and really double down on what I love most about my job, which you kind of forget, it’s fundamentally about play. You become children for hours a day and make believe. There’s an impish quality that I don’t want to lose.”
Pine added that he felt “utterly naked” due to how involved he was in the making of the film. “Criticism as an actor is just a part of the game, but there’s a lot of stuff to hide behind. There’s the director and the writer and the release pattern, etc.,” Pine said. “As an actor you come on set and you do your dance and you go off and by the time the film comes out you’ve done X amount of other projects. The closest thing I would imagine this is like — co-writing, directing, and starring in — is a stand-up comedian on stage feeling utterly naked. It’s been a real come-to-Jesus moment to seeing how resilient I am. I fully own the deep hurt of that process.”
But with Pine’s signature positivity, the actor/director is taking the “Poolman” criticisms as proof of his own resiliency. “In the reframing of it … one of my favorite quotes is in Latin and it’s ‘vigor grows from the wound,’” Pine said. “In everything that feels like a setback, yes there is the hurt of the cut, but as the scar tissue forms and the healing process happens you do benefit from a growth in resilience.”
Pine previously told IndieWire that directing wasn’t always his career goal but that he just wanted to do what felt the most fun. “I never had a passion for acting, acting was something that seemed to pop out of nowhere and then just took over my life,” Pine told IndieWire in 2022. “It seemed to be fated and it made a lot of sense. Directing, I never had a desire to direct, really, truthfully. The idea for ‘Poolman’ started as this little pebble in a pond. … And ‘Poolman’ and this character’s name, ‘Darren Barrenman,’ popped up and just made me laugh. And as I’ve been saying, I followed the giggle. I just followed the giggle and took the giggle to wherever it took me, and at the end of that giggle was me directing this film. It just seemed to be, well, yes, this is what I will be doing now.”
“Poolman” is now in theaters.
