Pedro Almodóvar, the Spanish director known for brightly colored films filled with melodramatic plot twists, has unveiled his first English-language feature film. The Room Next Door dives into the inevitability of death and its inextricable ties to life.

“I don’t believe in God… I don’t accept death,” the 75-year-old director told NPR’s A Martínez. His unease is shared with Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore. Her long-lost friend Martha (Tilda Swinton) has a failed cancer treatment and asks Ingrid to accompany her during her last days in upstate New York.

“As Julianne said at the beginning of the movie, it’s unnatural that something that is alive should die,” Almodóvar added. He wrote the script, which was adapted from part of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through (2020).

Every morning, Ingrid (Julianne Moore) looks up the staircase at her friend Martha’s door. If it’s closed, Martha has said that means she has taken a lethal pill and is now dead.

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The film received the top prize (Golden Lion) at the Venice Film Festival. While it was snubbed for the best picture race in Spain’s Goya Awards, the director and his two leads all got individual nods. Swinton was also nominated as best actress for the Golden Globes.

Almodóvar says he chose to shoot The Room Next Door in English simply because the story called for it. Martha wants to die on her own terms, painlessly and peacefully, by ingesting a euthanasia pill she purchased on the dark web.

Euthanasia is legal in Spain. But it’s still banned in the United States, although some jurisdictions like Washington, D.C. and Oregon allow assisted suicide.

“If I am terribly sick, if life doesn’t offer me anything but pain, then I want to be the owner of my death,” Almodóvar said. “And I think this is a human right that we all have.”

Almodóvar’s idiosyncrasies fill The Room Next Door, including his use of saturated colors. Red, the color of blood flowing through arteries, is especially prevalent throughout this film.

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Parallel to Martha’s path toward death is Ingrid’s transformation in overcoming her own anxiety over the ethical and legal dilemma of helping Martha end her life.

In the stylish home in the woods where Martha spends her final days, there are three characters — the two women and death itself, the director explains. “Ingrid learns in that kind of sweet, apocalyptic moment how to appreciate the small things in life. She learns to appreciate nature: snow falling, dawn rising, the chirping of the birds.”

James Joyce’s short story The Dead is quoted, while pink snow falls on the scenery: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

It’s not all doom and gloom — there are moments of lightness and many of reflection. Almodóvar had initially scripted a lot more dark, wry humor, saying Swinton was up for it but Moore “was a little less so because she was afraid that it might offend people.”

L to R: Tilda Swinton, director Pedro Almodóvar and Julianne Moore appear on the set of The Room Next Door

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Almodóvar has his own ways of processing the fragility of life — by creating. “Pleasure for me is a way of running away from death, by writing and making movies,” he said.

In Pain and Glory (2019), the mother of a writer-director (Antonio Banderas) gives specific directions about how she wants to be dressed and made up after she dies. Almodóvar, who infuses his films with parts of his own life, says he had the same experience with his own mother.

The plot of this story may have called for it, but the decision to shoot his 23rd feature film in English was not an easy one for Almodóvar, who apologized for his “very bad” English in the interview and at times spoke through an interpreter.

He tested the waters first with two 30-minute shorts in English, Strange Way of Life and The Human Voice (the latter features Swinton). The experience, he said, “was like doing my first movie. I was very excited.”

Director Pedro Almodóvar operates a camera on the set of The Room Next Door

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Almodóvar then had planned to direct a feature with Cate Blanchett based on Lucia Berlin’s collection of short stories A Manual for Cleaning Women. But the travel required for the monumental project proved too daunting for Almodóvar, who had back pain after surgery, and he pulled out.

Creating The Room Next Door, which was largely shot in Madrid, has left Almodóvar “much more open to make a movie in English than before.” While it would depend on the story at play, “I discovered that I could understand the actors and the actors also understood me.”

The broadcast version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital version was edited by Majd al-Waheidi.

The bald eagle has been a symbol of the United States for centuries, with its iconography plastered across currency, documents, flags, stamps, government buildings, military uniforms and more.

You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s America’s national bird. But the fine print doesn’t officially say so — at least not yet.

On Monday, the House of Representatives passed a bill amending the U.S. Code to officially designate the bald eagle (aka Haliaeetus leucocephalus) as the country’s national bird.

The Senate already passed the bill, with bipartisan support, in July. Now it just needs President Biden’s signature to become the law of the land.

“Today, we rightfully recognize the bald eagle as our official national bird — bestowing an honor that is long overdue,” said Rep. Brad Finstad, the Minnesota Republican who introduced the House version of the bill earlier this year.

So why did the recognition take so long, and how did it finally become a reality? Americans have one dogged eagle enthusiast to thank.

How bald eagles became America’s unofficial bird

The presidential seal, like the logos of many federal institutions, stars a bald eagle.

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Eagles have been used as a symbol of strength since ancient Rome, so it’s not surprising that they soared into American iconography too.

After the U.S.’ founding in 1776, three different committees tried unsuccessfully to come up with an official seal that would satisfy Congress.

Eventually, Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress, combined elements from all three proposals into what is now known as the Great Seal, featuring an eagle front and center, clasping an olive branch and arrows in its talons.

The original proposal depicted a small, white eagle. Thomson recommended it be replaced with a bald eagle, a species native to North America.

Congress adopted the design in 1782, cementing the bald eagle’s status as an American icon.

The species’ popularity has continued to soar ever since. In addition to its official appearances, the bald eagle can be seen today decorating all sorts of patriotic merchandise, serving as the mascot for hundreds of schools and even flying over major sporting events.

A Minnesota eagle enthusiast lobbied for their recognition 

That’s why Preston Cook was shocked to learn that bald eagles aren’t technically America’s national bird.

Cook, 78, has devoted much of his life to studying and honoring the species.

“I saw a movie in 1966 called A Thousand Clowns, and it had one line in it: ‘You can’t have too many eagles,’” Cook told MPR News in November. “And that inspired me. So I left the movie theater thinking, ‘I want to collect eagles.’”

Over the decades he’s amassed more than 40,000 bald eagle items, from pins to paintings to playing cards, a collection that currently lives at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minn. (He doesn’t play favorites, but counts the eagle buttons issued to him on his military dress uniform in 1966 among the most meaningful.)

Around 2010, while doing research for a book about the birds, Cook realized he could not find “anything whatsoever that the bald eagle had ever been legislatively designated as our national bird nor any presidential proclamation,” as he told NPR’s All Things Considered this week.

Alarmed, Cook wrote a letter to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. She sent staffers to the National Archives, who did more research and ultimately confirmed his hunch.

The U.S. recognizes the rose as its national flower, the oak as its national tree and the bison as its national mammal. But nowhere does it legally establish a national bird.

Cook took it upon himself to change that. After years of lobbying lawmakers, he joined forces with the National Eagle Center last year to write what he calls “a very simple bill.” But getting lawmakers on board wasn’t easy, in part because so many figured bald eagles already held the distinction.

“It was a little bit of a challenge in the beginning because they wouldn’t believe me,” Cook said, adding that Feinstein’s letter helped. “So they did their research and came up with the same conclusion I came up with: It is not our national bird, and we don’t have a national bird.”

Bald eagles are a symbol of resilience in more ways than one

Bald eagles were endangered for many decades before federal protections led to their recovery. They were removed from the Endangered Species list in 2007.

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Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith were among the bipartisan co-sponsors of the Senate bill, and Minnesota Reps. Brad Finstad and Angie Craig introduced it in the House.

It makes sense that the proposed bill was popular in Minnesota, as the state has the second-highest number of bald eagles after Alaska, MPR News reports. As Klobuchar said in a statement, “we know a thing or two about eagles.”

An estimated 316,700 bald eagles populated the lower 48 states as of 2020, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which says that number had quadrupled since its last data set a decade earlier.

Bald eagles lived peacefully among Indigenous Americans (who consider them sacred) for generations and were abundant in the U.S. when they were chosen as the star of the seal in 1782. But their population has dwindled dangerously at times since.

For many decades they were considered an endangered species, largely due to “human ignorance and persecution by pesticides, careless shootings, car and powerline collisions and loss of habitat for nesting and foraging,” according to the National Audubon Society.

Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act in 1940, making it illegal to possess, kill or sell the birds. But in that decade, a new threat emerged: the insecticide DDT, which caused eggshells to thin and easily break.

By 1963, there were a record-low 417 nesting pairs in the lower 48.

But federal protections saved the species from near-extinction.

After the U.S. banned DDT in 1972 (and Canada the following year), the bald eagle population increased exponentially. By 2007, they were removed from the Endangered Species list and considered officially “recovered.”

Ed Hahn, the communications director at the National Eagle Center, hopes the bird’s legacy holds lessons for the management of other species, whether they are nationally recognized or not

“When we look at some of the issues that are facing other natural resources today, we can look again at our living national symbol and now our official national bird,” Hahn told MPR News. “It shows what we are able and willing to do when we truly value something, when it’s important to us.”

Like most working moms, Los Angeles ceramist Emily Haynes has mastered the art of multitasking.

“Please excuse the boxes of popcorn,” she says with a warm smile, leading the way to her ceramics studio in the garage behind her Valley Village home.

“Our garage is the holding container for the Cub Scouts’ popcorn,” adds the den leader. Next to the stacks of popcorn, across from her potter’s wheel, a child’s kite rests next to a pop-up tent.

In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating and producing original products in Los Angeles.

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It’s a scene that perfectly captures the diversity of her roles, further emphasized by a small table opposite her potter’s wheel where her sons Kiran, 7, and Arjun, 11, often work alongside her.

Here in the garage, steps from the main house where the boys are making paper airplanes and discussing Dungeons & Dragons with her husband, acclaimed illustrator and animator Sanjay Patel, Haynes steals time to throw her distinctive line of boldly graphic ceramics.

“The biggest struggle for me is balancing everything,” says Haynes, who has worked as an editor for Penguin and Chronicle Books and is now a copy director for Airbnb. “I often paint my ceramics from 9 to 11 p.m. after the kids have gone to bed.”

“My process is slow,” Haynes says. “I’m a fast thrower, but the painting takes a long time.”

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For Haynes, who took her first wheel-throwing class at Choplet Ceramics Studio in New York when she was 25, ceramics “hit all of the buttons in terms of hands-on creation and glazing.”

“I loved it right away,” she says. “It is one of those endeavors where there’s always more to learn no matter how long you’ve done it. That’s what I miss now — going to class and connecting with the studio community.”

Five years after that first class — for her 30th birthday — her parents treated her to a wood-firing workshop with Scott Parady and Christa Assad at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colo. “I loved the process,” Haynes says of using wood as a fuel source. “After the class, [Parady] invited me out to help fire his wood kiln in Lake County, Calif., with a crew of Bay Area potters. From then on, I was hooked.”

A petal power jar, $280; blues egg drop fruit bowl, $230; and petal reflection vase, $260. (Emily Haynes)

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The experience eventually influenced her move to the Bay Area, where she lived for eight years. “I felt that I needed to move on from New York City, which had been my home since I was 18,” Haynes says. “I craved a fresh start and more time and space to explore ceramics.”

Now 47, Haynes says her pottery practice has always been a balancing force in her life, alongside her other work, including writing the children’s books “Ganesha’s Great Race” and “Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth” with Patel.

But after her first son, Arjun, was born, Haynes stopped making ceramics for four years. “We lived in an apartment in Oakland, and I had a full-time job at Chronicle Books. It was all too much,” she says.

Kiran Patel removes a piece of painter’s tape from one of his mother’s vases.

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“The underglaze paints are fun to use because they are so vibrant,” Haynes says.

Then, when the couple moved to Los Angeles in 2016, Haynes started taking classes at Berman Ceramic Arts in North Hollywood, and her pottery changed dramatically as she “absorbed the Southern California aesthetic” of her new home.

“It dovetailed with the creative life that I share with Sanjay,” says Haynes, who grew up in Minneapolis. “When I moved here, I felt like I needed to lean into ceramics. I thought, ‘How do I fit in in the maker world? What’s my aesthetic?’ I didn’t paint my vessels the way I do now until I moved to L.A.”

Inspired by the captivating Southern California landscape, she began decorating her ceramics with colorful, wavy sunset patterns and rainbows and clean lines and drips inspired by the Midcentury Modern architecture of L.A. The more she experimented with color and design, the more her unique style emerged. She describes it in California terms: “Retro Midcentury Modern meets ’70s surf wear beach vibe.”

A purple and red painted vase by Haynes.

(Jenna Schoenefeld / For The Times)

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Haynes left Berman Ceramic Arts before the COVID-19 pandemic because she was making too many pots, and the studio couldn’t support her output. When the pandemic hit, she turned her two-car garage into a creative space for herself and her entire family. It was during that time that she invested in an electric kiln, built a slab where the kiln now sits and enclosed it in a shed. When the couple remodeled their home, they added an office nook for Haynes just off the kitchen in the main house, where she now paints her vases, bowls, coffee mugs and potbellied teapots.

“The only thing that is hard is that there is no transition between work and home, my children, dinner and all the other things,” she says of painting in her office on weekends, at lunch and after the kids go to bed.

Describing her home life as “an intermeshed creative family,” Haynes’ home, as a result, is an art-filled oasis. With her parents’ vintage Marimekko Kaivo textile in the entryway, her own ceramics representing beloved family members in the living room and her children’s artwork on the dining room walls, the house bears an uplifting quality that informs the lives of the couple, who both work from home.

Haynes’ colorful work has a retro feel featuring clean lines and Mod teardrops.

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Haynes embellishes the bottom of each piece with a pilcrow, a paragraph symbol used in editing.

A kitchen window filled with miniature versions of Haynes’ ceramics adds to the home’s creative spirit, and in her office, a painting by Patel from his early days at Pixar hangs behind her desk as if to offer encouragement. “It’s a master study of a painting by Odd Nerdrum, a modern painter who is inspired by Rembrandt,” she explains. Clearly proud of his creative parents, Arjun offers a tour of Patel’s office, which is filled with wooden dolls, Hindu gods and goddesses, illustrations and his and his brother’s artworks.

Such admiration undoubtedly stems from his parents, who openly encourage each other’s creative pursuits. “Emily, the goddess who graces our home, breathes life into clay at her wheel,” Patel said in an email. “Each vessel bears her unique touch, boldly showcasing the alchemy of desert-inspired designs and sun-dipped glazes — fired in her kiln at a bajillion degrees into art that’s gloriously AI proof and rivals the stars. And that’s just her side hustle.”

Miniature versions of Haynes’ ceramics are on display in the pop-out window of her kitchen.

Haynes acknowledges challenges with work-life balance while juggling two sons, her full-time job with Airbnb and her ceramics. At the moment, she is content to keep Blue Pen Ceramics small, even though many of her pieces sell out when she updates her online shop. But for now, she is satisfied with the slow process of throwing pieces quickly and spending weeks at a time painting them. “I’m a fast thrower, but the painting takes a long time,” she says.

She reached this decision after a six-month stint as a full-time ceramist that left her feeling unfulfilled. “I wasn’t happy,” she says. “I did a ton of work, but it felt unbalanced and stressful because my family needed income. When I got the opportunity to have a full-time job, I leaned into that.” Now, as she transitions into this new role, she is optimistic about finding a better balance for her ceramics.

Haynes paints a vase in her office, surrounded by artworks by her children and husband, Sanjay Patel.

(Lisa Boone / Los Angeles Times )

Today, Haynes tries to replicate 70% of her most popular core patterns such as sunrise travel mugs, petal power vases and flower power butter keepers. She fires the white, more vibrant pieces at home in her electric kiln, while the darker ones go through a reduction firing in a gas kiln at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona. “It’s a chemical reaction that happens,” she says. “The iron in the clay gets pulled into the surface — it almost gets in the paint.” The remaining 30% of her vessels are “new designs or evolutions of existing patterns,” she says. “[It’s] fun for me to experiment, although I have a lot of not-quite-right patterns in my cupboards.”

“Emily has such a keen eye and sense of color that’s hard to find in the ceramic world,” says longtime supporter Philip Seastrom, designer and founder of the Los Angeles-based clothing brand Big Bud Press. “Her work is distinctive and truly her own.”

Many people approach ceramics as an outlet, says Haynes. But it’s fulfilling to be paid for your art and “share it with the world,” she says. “I get to be a part of the creative community in Los Angeles and connect with people who love my work and have it in their homes. For me, that’s the point.”

Haynes throws a pot on the potter’s wheel in her garage.

Haynes quickly throws a pot in her garage studio.