Tango for Two in Cha Cha Real Smooth

When Dakota Johnson signed on to be part of Cha Cha Real Smooth, she recalled, "There was no part, there was no script, it was just a concept and a title."

In the completed film, released today in theatres and on Apple TV+, she plays Domino, a woman in her 30s with a pre-teen autistic daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt). In desperate need of a babysitter, she has to rely on recent college graduate Andrew (writer/director Cooper Raiff), and that one-off reliance blossoms into something deeper and much more complicated.

The star of Suspiria and The Peanut Butter Falcon, her first actual meeting with Raiff was actually on Zoom, while she was in Greece filming The Lost Daughter. She knew his debut feature, SXSW award winner Shithouse, and after his pitch for what would become Cha Cha Real Smooth she quickly signed on as lead actor and producer. After that conversation, Johnson said, "He went away and wrote the first draft, and we went back and forth a lot of times in a short amount of time. It was a really amazing creative process of me and [producer Ro Donnelly] and Cooper."

Raiff himself put part of the success of the project down to sustaining that momentum. "We were constantly inspired because it was never in limbo," he said. "It was never, 'Oh, we're going to get back to you with notes in three months.' It was, 'Oh, we're going to get back to you with notes tomorrow.'"

But it didn't always take a formal process for Johnson to feel like her feedback was having an influence on Raiff's writing and directing. "He has this ability to be, when we're developing, writing, to be present and have a conversation with me, and I can also see his mind working, 'Oh, OK, I can write that down,' 'I can use that sentence,' and, 'What she did with her hands.'"

The collaboration from so early in the project allowed both Johnson and Donnelly to become what Raiff dubbed "ghost directors." Johnson said, "We were so prepped, we were so prepared, that we were really on-board with his preparation, that he had two extra sets of eyes to be part of his process."

"That I trusted, too," added Raiff. "You can always have another pair of eyes, but they were there from the beginning, so we really trusted each other to know everything."

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Austin Chronicle: Shithouse felt very drawn from those freshman blues, but Cha Cha places Andrew in that post-graduation slump - which is not really your experience, since you were making a movie.

Cooper Raiff: Originally, honestly, this one came because I wanted to make a movie about the mother of a disabled kid. That was the kernel of it. But I really liked writing Shithouse, and it felt like I was writing what I knew, so I wanted to place someone who was my age to get that story across. But the original idea was far away from somebody post-college.

AC: So why the shift?

CR: I think it was that I didn't trust myself fully, or didn't have enough confidence to make that movie, so I wanted to show my point of view of that. My sister is disabled, my mom has a very specific life, and I wanted to tell that through a young person's lens. And then everything else comes from that.

AC: Every year I get a lot of interns, and one of the first things I make sure they read is the style guide on talking about disability issues. That's a different challenge, though, to write with sensitivity in a dramatic setting.

CR: It's so objective for a journalist to talk about it, but when it's a movie you're feeling things out. When we saw Vanessa's tape, we really wanted to write it around her. The script, before we met Vanessa, was going to be one thing, and we always knew that we were going to meet someone, and have someone play her that was really going to change things, and their dynamic was going to be written around that.

AC: This was a much bigger project for you that Shithouse, just in terms of scale and budget.

CR: It was a massive learning curve. One of the first days, we were all together, we were all getting lunch or something, and Dakota was like, 'Vanessa, do you want me to tell you about what an actual day is going to look like?' and I was like, 'Yeah, you should go ahead and tell Vanessa what an actual day is going to look like.' I really didn't know, because with Shithouse there was, like, five people on set, and there were no rules. 'Let's go shoot here.' We didn't have permits or anything, so it was things that I didn't know.

Dakota Johnson: Also knowing how Vanessa's mind works, that's really helpful for her. She can really thrive if she knows what she's walking into in terms of logistics and times, and how things are going to play out in a logical way. That's really helpful for her.

CR: It was also really super-helpful for me, because I really had no idea how a movie was made at this level.

Austin Chronicle: At the same time, there's a connection between your two films, a signature bravery. Like the opening scene in Shithouse, where he's talking to a stuffed toy. You have to really commit, or it will seem fake, and sabotage the film.

CR: But that what was so helpful. Dakota was working on Cha Cha because of Shithouse. I didn't have a script where she was going, 'Oh my god, this is fucking great.' And it wasn't, 'I saw Shithouse and I want to do something entirely different.' She saw something that she enjoyed and wanted to work with. So that trust was important too.

AC: And there's this complexity in there of the questions of age, and age difference, and how the older you get the less it means, but when you're young it's everything.

CR: I love that. That wasn't intentional, but we did always talk about the coming of age for three different ages - 12-year-old, 22-year-old, and 32-year-old. That was what what I always loved about the Andrew-Domino relationship specifically. If they could flip, I think Andrew would love to be a 32-year-old with a kid, settling down, and I think Domino didn't have her 20s in the way that Andrew has them.

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Cha Cha Real Smooth is in cinemas and on Apple TV+ now. Read our review and get screening times on our Showtimes page.