What would you do to fit in? One of the most difficult experiences a young person can go through is leaving their friends and familiar surroundings behind and switching schools. Then, having your new classmates question what gender you are makes an awkward situation even more challenging. This is the premise of Epic Pictures’ recently released coming-of-age feature, Before I Change My Mind. The official synopsis reads “Set in 1987, while the other students wonder if their new classmate is a boy or a girl, Robin forges a complicated bond with the school bully, making increasingly dangerous choices to fit in”. Originally premiering at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival, Before I Change My Mind stars Vaughan Murrae, Dominic Lippa, Lacey Oake, Matthew Rankin and Shannon Blanchet.
We wanted to peel back the curtain on how Before I Change My Mind was made, so we spoke to the film’s writer and director, Trevor Anderson, in the below interview.
Before I Change My Mind is available now on VOD.
Tell us how Before I Change My Mind came to be?
I trained as an actor and worked in live theatre for ten years as a playwright and director. I thought I might go back to school to get an MFA in film, so I made a short film for my application portfolio – but then instead of applying to grad school, I just kept on making short films. I made twelve short films from 2005 to 2020, which all stream free on my website trevorandersonfilms.com. These shorts did well on the festival circuit, and I learned a lot from each experience. We were supposed to shoot Before I Change My Mind, my first feature, in the summer of 2020, but we all know what happened instead. We finally shot it in the summer of 2021, it had its world premiere at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival, and it’s finally getting released in the spring of 2024.
Now that the film is out, what has been your favorite comment to read from someone who has seen the film?
I’m kind of addicted to reading the meanest reviews on Letterboxd – a habit my friends wish I would stop torturing myself with. The worst/best is, “It’s like if Tommy Wiseau watched Eighth Grade.” When I’m feeling less masochistic, my favorite comments are the ones from enthusiastic queer teens who feel seen by the movie, and from queer adults who wish it had been around when we were young. 
Before I Change My Mind was supposed to shoot in the Summer of 2020, but then the pandemic hit. You have said that you were able to plan a lot more because of this. What came out of that extra planning period?
Casting. With the support of our awesome casting director Jesse Griffiths, we had time to do a proper nationwide search for the lead roles. We asked young actors across Canada to send in self-tapes. I knew the movie would live or die on who we found to play Robin. I was massively relieved when we found Vaughan Murrae – I think they’re a revelation. Then we found Dominic Lippa to play Carter, and Vaughan and Dom had great chemistry together. Lacey Oake had auditioned in person before the pandemic to play Izzy, and I loved her but she was too young. She would’ve read onscreen as a really little kid. By the time we did another round of auditions a year later, she’d grown enough that I could believe her as being contemporary to Vaughan’s Robin and Dominic’s Carter… even though there’s a four-year age spread among those actors in real life.
Not only did you write and direct the film, but you also play a character, Mr. Anderson. What was the best part of being an actor in the film too?
Writing and directing can be fairly disembodied activities, but acting forces you to be fully, physically present. I loved blocking those scenes from the inside, instead of visualizing an overhead camera plan.
Before I Change My Mind was a very close story to you. Are there other stories you would like to tell from your own personal life experiences? If so, can you share what one of those might be?
If we can raise the money, the next feature will be from a script my writing partner Fish Griwkowsky and I have written, called Goodbye Forever. It tells two stories in parallel. The raw material for the first storyline comes from experiences I had in the summer of 1995, when I moved to the big city determined to turn my back on my past and start my fabulous new life. The second storyline grows out of stories my mom told me about when she was young. Just like with Before I Change My Mind, Fish and I have worked and re-worked the material until it’s fiction, but the emotions are a true story.
What was the hardest part of making Before I Change My Mind?
The timeline. I started making short films in 2004 with an eye to learning how to make a feature. I wrote the first story outline for Before I Change My Mind in 2014, and the film’s finally hitting theatres and VOD in 2024. Hopefully the next one comes together a little quicker.
You had been making short films for 15 years before you made Before I Change My Mind. Will you go back to making short films or would you like to do another feature film next?
I’m hoping to make another feature film as soon as I can. I’d love to make a run of them. I didn’t know what kind of short filmmaker I was until I had a bunch I could stand back and look at, to consider as a whole. I’d love to get that kind of perspective on what kind of feature filmmaker I might be.
Since this is your first screenplay/feature length film, what about the process surprised you the most? What lessons did you learn that you would pass along to other first-timers?
You don’t have to do it alone, and when it’s over, don’t try to pretend you did. I spent years banging my head against the brick wall of a feature script, and it only cracked (the brick wall? my head?) once I started throwing the story ball back and forth with a buddy – in this case, my writing partner, Fish Griwkowsky.
Is there a message or a specific feeling you want the viewer to walk away with after watching Before I Change My Mind?
I hope the audience, no matter who they are, is able to feel affection for and identify with Robin. At the beginning of the film, the question, “What are you?” just means, “Are you a boy or a girl?” By the end of the movie, “What are you?” has been expanded to mean, “What kind of person are you?” and it’s a question several characters have to face, not just Robin. I think we can all benefit from checking in on ourselves now and then, to ask what kind of person we are, and whether or not it lines up with what kind of person we want to be. At the beginning of the film, Robin doesn’t have an easy answer to “Are you a boy or a girl?” and at the end, it’s not cut-and-dried what kind of person Robin is, either. We’re all complicated and contradictory, and that’s the point.