I sat down with director Daniel Askill to talk about Sia: Nostalgic for the Present, the feature he co-directed with Sia, arriving in cinemas worldwide on July 23 through Trafalgar Releasing, ten years after the performance it was built for. It stars Maddie Ziegler alongside Kristen Wiig, Paul Dano, Ben Mendelsohn, Gaby Hoffmann and Tig Notaro, with choreography by Ryan Heffington, and it was edited by Daniel’s brother Lorin. What struck me most was how fast he reached for other people whenever I asked about his own work, his brothers, his father, Sia’s instincts, the crew, and how genuinely pleased he was to be reminded of a record he played bass on as a teenager.
McAuley Tucker: And getting to this project… you guys, from what I gather, filmed this and then you guys afterwards kind of reperformed it. I’ve never heard anything like that before. It’s very unique. Why build it in that order?
Daniel Askill: Yeah, look, it’s a great question and, thinking back, like you said, it was 10 years ago that this all started now. It was quite an organic process, but I do remember Sia calling me and being like, ‘Hey, do you want to direct my stage show with me?’ and me being like, ‘Oh yeah, I mean, I love working with you, Sia, but I do wonder if there’s someone more versed in live stage direction than me.’ … She was really clear and adamant from the start of like, ‘No, we’re going to make a film and we’re going to then replicate that film on stage.’ … And it was a brilliant idea because it meant we could have all these actors in the show that could then be… their parts were then performed by dancers as the show toured the world. But Paul Dano and Kristen Wiig and Ben Mendelsohn and all the amazing actors in it would still be on the large video walls at the show. So there’d be no cameras on stage but it would look like the show was being filmed live. So it was this beautiful kind of meta idea that created a whole another level to the experience… The other element that we were then able to go back to that footage 10 years later and build it all back together as a feature film.
McAuley Tucker: Your father is a musician as well. And I found out that you played bass on one of his… you worked on bass on Shoalhaven Rise. I think that was back in the ’90s. Do you remember working on that at all?
Daniel Askill: I do. Wow. This is amazing. You’re really… you really went deep. I appreciate that. … Yeah. No, that does… I’m getting memory flashes. I mean, I think I was probably literally 19 or 20 when I did that. My father was doing an… my father’s a percussionist, Michael Askill, and he was doing an album at this country retreat in Australia at a painter’s house and, yeah, luckily I’d been playing… studying, well, I was playing bass a lot by that point and he decided to take me along and, yeah, we stayed in this amazing painter’s sort of retreat up there and did this album. Me, my dad, and a couple of people he played with. It’s kind of percussion and marimbas and, you know, I think there’s some didgeridoo in there. Yeah, thank you for reminding me of that. That was a really beautiful moment. And yeah, probably all very foundational to how I like to collaborate.
McAuley Tucker: You once described the creative partnership between yourself, Sia, Ryan Heffington, and Maddie Ziegler as feeling almost like a band. What do you think you brought to that group that made the collaboration work?
Daniel Askill: Yeah, that’s a great question too and it’s really true. It is the best way I can describe it, I think, in that it was a very organic flow and I think we were all sort of riding on Sia’s intuition a bit and just trying to get into that energy stream. And I guess for my part in it, I’m the one who comes from the more traditional filmmaking background… who can have the conversations with the cinematographer and the crew and, you know, that part of the filmmaking craft. Ryan’s obviously an incredible choreographer and also understands filmmaking really well. And then Maddie is just the most incredible performer. So I think that there was the sort of general roles, but then it all just sort of, particularly on this project, was really just flowing… It sort of flows when you’re in a band situation and you’re playing something and everyone’s just doing their part and feeding off each other’s energy and it’s very… I feel very blessed to have been part of that experience.
McAuley Tucker: You spent your whole life making, in a way, through these projects… things like dancing and music videos and other things feel like they last forever. You know, you’re documenting it. So honestly, what does nostalgic for the present actually mean to you now?
Daniel Askill: …In terms of what this film means to me now, it’s interesting having put it back together 10 years later. And it’s really just… just feels so lucky that we got to have that moment making this with Sia, ’cause it really was a very special kind of collaboration. And I’m so glad that it’s now in this form where it sort of exists as a cinematic artifact that people can go back and watch and enjoy and hopefully enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it.
Consider watching Sia: Nostalgic for the Present Today.