Iowa City author hits the silver screen as ‘Nightbitch’ goes from book to movie

IOWA CITY — As Iowa City resident Rachel Yoder contended with the new experience of motherhood after having her son 10 years ago, the lonely experience prompted a lot of questions.

“Am I alone in how I’m feeling?”

“Is there something wrong with me?”

“Am I a monster?”

But she was afraid to share those questions and feelings with most people. So instead, she wrote it all down.

“I wrote it all down and told myself I never had to show it to anyone,” Yoder told The Gazette.

Three years ago, those feelings were released to the world in “Nightbitch,” her debut novel. And on Thursday, hundreds in Iowa City saw one of the first screenings of the book’s film adaptation with A-list celebrities on the silver screen.

The irony does not escape Yoder.

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The new film by the same name, scheduled for theatrical release through Searchlight Pictures this fall, stars Amy Adams in the journey of a new mother who transforms into canine form at night under the compounding pressures and new maternal instincts of motherhood.

In the movie directed by Marielle Heller and produced by Annapurna Pictures, Yoder and her son have a cameo appearance at a quintessential scene in the movie’s rising action. The mother played by Adams, having broken her disposable silverware at a cafeteria, gleefully devours a plate of meat loaf with her toddler using nothing but her mouth — to the shock and concern of surrounding bystanders.

In addition to the novel’s rapid adaptation that survived the major SAG-AFTRA strike last year, Yoder said the experience of being on the set was simply surreal.

“My son and I were sitting there, and all the cameras and lighting were being set up. Amy Adams was set up across from us. One of the crew members looked at me and asked how it’s going,” Yoder said. “I said ‘I really like sitting alone for hours on end in a little room in silence, writing.’ ”

“Things have really gotten away from you, haven’t they?” the crew member replied.

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Yoder told the Iowa City audience that the film, initially slated to come out last year, was enhanced by a new cut formulated after the writer and actor strike ended — the cut seen by FilmScene’s Refocus Film Festival this year.

But credit for the speed at which her debut novel gained traction could be given to the timing of the novel’s release early in the pandemic, as mothers across the country contended with many of the same questions of household labor division.

“We were all stuck in our houses, parents were stuck with kids, the division of labor at home was coming into full focus,” Yoder told The Gazette. “Perhaps the material felt really close and urgent, which might’ve greased the wheels.”

She hoped Adam’s performance — a kind of “unhinged” audiences don’t often see from the actor Yoder lovingly describes as “America’s sweetheart” — would affirm mothers in the ongoing conversations about gender roles in marriage, too.

“I’m hoping it will open the conversation about long-term partnerships, parenthood, domestic labor, and creativity,” she said. “I think that’s already in the zeitgeist. It would be great if this could be part of that conversation.”

The author, now an assistant professor in cinematic arts at the University of Iowa, saw Heller’s film not as simply an imitation of the book, but a piece of art that found a life of its own. Some movie scenes are pulled directly from the book; others are not part of the book at all.

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But there are plenty of things she said mothers will identify with instantly — a fact affirmed by the audience’s engagement and reactions Thursday evening. Many of them are the parts of motherhood that are historically kept out of polite conversation.

“Maybe it’s the fact that parenting can get tedious and boring. Maybe it’s the fact that sometimes you wonder if you ever should’ve had a kid to begin with. Maybe it’s talking about all the things that happened to your body after you had a kid,” Yoder explained. “I think this film provides an occasion for us to actually get that out in the open and start being very real about what modern motherhood actually is, in all of it’s glory and exhaustion.”

As Adams contends with a double life of shape shifting into a Siberian Husky who leads a pack of neighborhood dogs, her other scenes in human form don’t shy away from the parts of being a woman and being a mom that can be less than savory.

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The husky, adopted from a local rescue in Southern California, was also named Amy and trained specifically for its role in “Nightbitch.”

Adams was drawn to the role as the mother by “the feral rage,” Yoder said.

At a discussion with film writer Emily Yoshida after the Thursday screening, Yoder was asked what breed of dog would fit her best.

A Border Collie, Yoder replied.

“But I’m not really a dog person, oddly enough,” she added.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.