Shawn Levy thinks Taylor Swift’s creative vision is reminiscent of another very iconic director.
“[Steven] Spielberg was on the set of a movie he produced that I directed, called Real Steel, and I said to him, ‘How do you know it’s the right shot?’” Levy, 55, recalled to Entertainment Weekly in an interview published on Thursday, October 12. “His answer was, ‘The way you see it, that makes it right.’ I feel like that’s something Taylor Swift has figured out really well because that’s about trusting your instinct.”
Levy — who appeared alongside Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien in Swift’s directorial debut, All Too Well: The Short Film — called the pop star, 33, a “generational voice and creative force” whose impact is only matched by Beyoncé. The filmmaker noted that it’s “the depth” of Swift’s vision that makes her so exceptional.
“She wants a creative piece to be, whether it’s a lyric, a melody, a bridge, a concert tour, a video, it’s profound,” he explained. “It’s profoundly vivid, and she has the strength of her convictions,” Levy continues, going on to invoke a key Spielberg philosophy that reminds him of Swift’s artistry.”
While Levy, who is an executive producer and director for Stranger Things and the upcoming Deadpool 3, said that Swift has “not consulted” him on any of her upcoming directing projects, he believes she has the making of one “hell of a director” if it’s a craft she chooses to continue.
It was announced by Searchlight Pictures in December 2022 that Swift will direct her first feature-length film from a screenplay she wrote herself. The project came after she won two MTV VMAs Best Director awards — for her “All Too Well” and “The Man” music videos — becoming the first artist in history to do so.
Swift’s All Too Well: Short Film, which dropped in November 2021, was a nearly 15-minute video written and directed by the Grammy winner in tandem with the release of Red (Taylor’s Version). (Swift is rerecording her first six albums after her masters were bought and sold by Scooter Braun in June 2019.) Sink, 20, and O’Brien, 32, starred in the project as “Her” and “Him.” (Levy, meanwhile, portrayed Sink’s father.)
The short featured the 10-minute version of Swift’s hit “All Too Well,” which is widely rumored to have been about Swift’s relationship with ex-boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal. While the track was never released as a single during Red’s initial release in 2012, it became a fan favorite Swift felt should be honored.
“This is all about what the fans have turned this song into,” she told the Associated Press in November 2022. “It was never a single, never had a video, it never had a visual element to it, but they pretty much created their own imaginary cinematic universe for it, so this is just me following through on what they started and what they told me they wanted.”
The singer also praised the film’s stars, Sink and O’Brien, for what they brought to the story. “They were so prepared, they were so committed,” she told Extra at the time. “You couldn’t really keep your eyes off of them on the monitors, so obviously you try to prepare as much as you can before you get there, but on the day, that electricity is either there or it’s not, and the onscreen chemistry between those two — they’re just so talented.”
Swift first teased that she had bigger plans for the song when she announced the release of Red (Taylor’s Version) in June 2021.
“Musically and lyrically, Red resembled a heartbroken person. It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end,” the singer wrote via Instagram. “Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past. Like trying on pieces of a new life, I went into the studio and experimented with different sounds and collaborators.”
Levy, for his part, only had a brief cameo in the All Too Well: The Short Film — but he has seemingly become closer to Swift through their mutual friends Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. The foursome were all in attendance at the Kansas City Chiefs vs. New York Jets in New Jersey earlier this month. The group was in attendance to support Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, whom Swift has been romantically linked to since September.
