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Author-director Tracie Laymon has loads of Bobs in her life.

First, there was Bob Laymon, her father.

“In 2012, I used to be in search of my dad,” she says. “He would simply really feel disrespected for even essentially the most minor infractions, and he’d disappear for a yr or two and never speak to me. So I put his identify into Fb and noticed this little tiny image. I friended him and woke as much as ‘Bob Laymon likes it.’ I used to be like, ‘My dad likes one thing of mine! We’re again! It’s gonna be okay.’”

It wasn’t okay but. This was a second Bob Laymon.

“It was a stranger in Wichita, Kansas,” Laymon says, “who continued to be extra fatherly to me than my dad ever was — he crammed the void. He had such entry to my coronary heart due to his identify. My dad by no means wrote me completely satisfied birthday, however [on Facebook], I’d get ‘Bob Laymon says “Pleased birthday!” My dad by no means got here to my screenings, however I’d get an award, and it’s: ‘Bob Laymon says, “Solution to go, kiddo!”‘”

Laymon by no means met the person she calls Fb Bob in actual life, however imagining what it would appear to be if she had helped her to jot down “Bob Trevino Likes It,” a movie starring Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo that’s competing in SXSW‘s 2024 narrative characteristic competitors. All through the method, Laymon discovered methods to floor even the fictionalized plot factors in actuality — that’s the place the third Bob is available in.

“I wanted to alter the identify, as a result of I used to be anxious that my dad would sue me. There had been this gentleman in Austin, Bob Trevino, and he and his spouse had at all times been so form to me from my very first movie set. So I stated, ‘Can I exploit your identify? As a result of you’ve gotten such coronary heart, after which I can mix these and it’ll really feel actual to me after I’m writing it.’”

Slightly than a conventional rehearsal course of, Ferreira targeted on attending to know Laymon whereas getting ready to play Lily, the character Laymon wrote primarily based on herself. “We’d go to a diner, get meals and discuss household trauma,” Ferreira says. “It felt like the one time I’ve ever seen this specific household dynamic that’s so near issues I’ve skilled. We had per week in Kentucky doing prep and workouts, and the whole lot was developing in a means that I’ve by no means had earlier than as an actor. It was so simply accessible to me, my feelings.”

Casting Leguizamo as Fb Bob was equally emotional for Laymon.

“I used to be a giant fan of John’s work already, however I checked out loads of interviews of him and I noticed one particularly associated to bullying. I believed, ‘This particular person will get it.’ This on-line interplay [with Bob Laymon] might have gone utterly otherwise — there’s a lot bullying on-line — and there’s a lot energy in simply doing one thing totally different, saying one thing form.”

“I noticed that interview and I began crying. Then I flew to New York and met with him. By the third or fourth time, he stated, ‘Oh yeah, bro,’ and hit me on the shoulder. I used to be like, ‘I feel we’re doing this film.’”

Within the movie, Lily works as an aide to a younger disabled lady named Daphne (Lauren “Lolo” Spencer), who notices the people-pleasing tendencies Lily picked up from her dysfunctional relationship along with her father. However when Daphne takes Lily to a rage room, the place she’s given a baseball bat to smash and destroy issues with a view to vent her frustrations, Lily can’t transfer.

“My dad’s anger was very scary, and it damage lots of people, so I realized early to only suppress it,” Laymon says. “Once I received to varsity, I had suppressed my feelings for thus lengthy, folks would say, ‘Are you hungry?’ And I’d be like, ‘I don’t know. How do I inform if I’m hungry?’ I had not felt my emotions. Nobody had requested me how I really feel. Once I was taking a look at Lily, and what the hero must expertise to allow them to develop into who they have to be, one was that she wants to specific her anger.”

That expression occurred on a second journey to the trend room.

“It’s the suppression of any emotion that could be not-as-okay for everybody round her,” Ferreira says. “So that you see the distinction within the two conditions within the rage room, which was very enjoyable as a result of I received to get my rage out.”

When Lily’s father (performed by French Stewart) cuts her out of his life for by accident revealing to his girlfriend that he’s been courting round, she finds the “different” Bob Trevino on-line and the pair develop into quick mates. Bob firsts helps Lily in smaller methods — repairing a damaged bathroom that Lily is aware of her personal father would by no means assist her with — then by listening to traumatic tales from her childhood and attempting to assist her relive them extra positively.

In contrast to Bob Laymon, a part of Bob Trevino’s drive to point out up for Lily comes from the ache of his circle of relatives story: Years in the past, he and his spouse, Jeanie (Rachel Bay Jones), misplaced their son to a uncommon illness. Jeanie learns to manage by making elaborate scrapbooks, a apply that strikes Lily to tears — partially as a result of her father had performed the alternative, slicing her out of outdated household pictures.

“My good friend’s mother was a scrapbooker,” Laymon says. “She was a guide on the movie; Rachel Bay Jones and I Zoomed along with her. I used to be simply fascinated. When my dad was mad at me, he gave all my childhood pictures to my sister in a rubbish bag. So I simply sort of mixed that: Right here’s my good friend’s mother, who takes each photograph of her household and adorns it as a treasure to maintain for generations, the place my dad put them in a bag, wrinkled.”

She additionally borrowed from one in all her friendships to intensify Bob and Jeanie’s grief.

“My good friend and his spouse had misplaced their child, and I volunteer for a corporation they began for his situation. So I believed, ‘I’m going to ask them if I can use footage of him.’ Similar to the Bob Trevino identify, the whole lot on this film wants to come back from one thing actual. John and Rachel actually revered that. There was an vitality within the room the place you felt that it wasn’t only a image; that was an individual.”

Ferreira additionally introduced in her personal childhood pictures for a pivotal scene close to the top of the film, throughout which she says her “physique was overcome with emotion. It shattered me.”

“Probably the most treasured childhood pictures on this planet,” Laymon says. “How might anyone deal with this little one with something however absolute love?”

Spoiler alert: As at all times, therapeutic from trauma and dysfunction is an never-ending course of, and Lily’s onerous occasions don’t finish by the point the film does. However Laymon and Ferreira hope the story they advised comes throughout as hopeful.

“I like to think about Lily because the interior little one. There’s naiveness, like a toddler who follows their father or mother round and to ensure that they’re okay. Despite the fact that there’s no closure on the finish, getting higher incrementally and acknowledging that what occurred to you was tousled is such a [big deal]. I at all times made positive my interior little one was out first.”