Kate McCarthy: Thank you so much! We’re super excited!

I Heart Noise: What was your role in the production?

Kate McCarthy: I am the co-writer and director.

I Heart Noise: Will you describe the film in a nutshell for me?

Kate McCarthy: It is a colorful musical dramedy set on one night of a 1970s variety TV show hosted by the Hicks Family Band. But tonight, dad did not show up to the taping. So, it’s about a family falling apart and playing the part of a happy family and trying to keep the show going.

I Heart Noise: I love the concept of this, how its set in that world on that particular day. Was this your idea?

Kate McCarthy: Yeah, it was, but it started out way different. It was not an idea that just came to me perfectly. Originally, I had pitched this as our AFI thesis film. And originally, I pitched the idea of a mom trying to make divorce fun for her kids. That was the original concept, way different. But it always was about a family in transition and splitting apart, and it was always about a mother character who sort of is having a hard time with reality and wants to slap a smiley face on stuff. And then I also, separately, have this lifelong love of 1970s variety TV shows, and I realized that that was actually, like, a perfect fit to further illuminate the themes. And I was like, that’s so me. I wanted to elevate it out of the living room and make it a family, but explored through a family band, but the keyboard is empty. And so that’s how it came to be.

I Heart Noise: I think your love for variety shows really shown through in this. What shows do you like to watch?

Kate McCarthy: Oh, my gosh, the big one that it really starts with is Donnie and Marie, which there’s a small Donny and Marie tribute in the film. But I think those clips really grabbed me with their showmanship and level of surreality almost because of how faux glamorous and over the top everything is, and the aggressive sort of characters they’re playing, and the fact that they’re like brother and sister and doing all these love songs is hilarious and part of the film. But there’s them, and then also the Partridge Family. As if the Partridge Family got to have their own Variety show, which I know the Brady Bunch later got to do their own variety TV show special. And it’s just such a strange era of entertainment where they were giving everyone these crazy gonzo variety TV shows.

I Heart Noise: I loved the Partridge Family! My Dad wanted my siblings and I to be like that, he gave us each an instrument and wanted us to be the Partridge Family pretty much.

Kate McCarthy: Oh, my gosh, and what happened?

I Heart Noise: It was a huge failure. And honestly the project ended when my parents got divorced. So, I really felt your story here.

Kate McCarthy: You’re the target audience, probably for the best that fell apart. I think if there’s one takeaway from my film, not one takeaway, but a thread, we all know, things didn’t work out so great for Michael Jackson. Safe to say, if a parent is enforcing the matter and being like, you will be a band, that’s probably not so good. A couple kids want to be a sibling band. That sounds fine, but it gets tricky when it’s the family livelihood.

I Heart Noise: What was the writing process like for this?

Kate McCarthy: My co-writer, Michael, and I just kind of talked and talked and talked endlessly, because this story kind of became sort of Frankensteined together. As I mentioned to you, it didn’t come together as one perfect idea out of the gate. There’s a lot of struggle, frankly, in developing the script. There is something a little bit contrived. I think it works with the tone, but it is sort of a crazy amount of stuff to happen in one night of a TV show. I think it’s okay with the tone at the end of the day, but Michael and I were just talking endlessly about how we get all of these little plot machinations in there. Michael was really trying to bring it back to, like, “Who is Jill? Who is this woman? What’s her damage? What does she want?” We mostly just talked and talked and talked. And then I sort of was the keeper of the script, and I went off and would write the drafts. He was sort of emotional support and story by support. There were just so, so many drafts. And with AFI (The American Film Institute), you have to have all these official script meetings. And then eventually you lock the script at about eight weeks out. But of course, it doesn’t get locked. You’re still changing stuff up until the day, which was hard in our case because we had the music as well, and the music needed to be finished by the time that we shot. But also, the script kept changing, so it was sort of a game of chicken of, like, okay, we need to lock this enough so that the songs can stop morphing and stop changing to reflect wherever the script is at.

I Heart Noise: Are these original songs for the movie?

Kate McCarthy: Oh, yeah, big time. Our composer, Simon Haynes, based in New York. Check him out. He’s basically just an insane savant. And we’ve been friends for years and share a musical affinity. We’re both huge Burt Bacharach fans, so we’ve got a Burt Bacharach number in there. We both love Glen Campbell. And he took the musical prompt and ran with it. He was like,” got it!” And knew exactly how to do an homage. Not parody, but homage to each form. He nailed The Partridge Family type song. He studied the Cowsills. The Cowsills were a big inspiration for me as well. That’s the family that inspired the Partridge Family, the real-life family. The script did keep changing. The Glen Campbell song at one point needed to feel sort of like Rhinestone Cowboy. No, that would be a later Glen Campbell. It was like, do we want it to feel like Wichita Lineman? Then one day I came upon The Everyday Housewife, which is a Glen Campbell song. And I was like, okay, now can we make it feel more like that, and can the lyrics reflect this tone more? We just worked remotely and co-wrote some of the lyrics and he truly just did everything himself. There’s no music producer. He used his musicians that he collaborates with and handled delivering all of these amazing songs and we had them all ready to go when we shot.

I Heart Noise: I was really impressed with the music. I feel like sometimes, especially in period pieces, the music can end up feeling kind of contrived and pull you out of the story a little bit. But it felt so natural.

Kate McCarthy: Glad to hear that. Thank you. I remember when I first showed the demos to our film’s editor, he’s a tough man to please by the way. And he freaked out and he was like, “I am now more excited than ever before!” I didn’t know they were going to be this good. I think my team, they were trusting me and Simon, but I think they were like, okay, “We don’t have the biggest budget in the world and what can this guy really do? And everyone’s just blown out of the water by Simon’s music. Our editor Jen, he said, and I agree, “We never got tired of the songs.” Hearing them over and over, they are just endlessly ear worms and so well produced and so that we can’t take credit for that. That’s just Simon really giving it his all and really doing it thriftily on a budget too.

I Heart Noise:  Did you end up getting a grade on the project?

Kate McCarthy: No, actually, that’s what’s so funny. There’s no grades. It’s just your graduation requirement. You just have to turn it in, and you have to have a certain number of photos and a poster and all these other things, and then you’re free to graduate.

I Heart Noise: I think having it screen at Tribeca Film Festival is validation!

Kate McCarthy: There is something interesting about being in a graduate school cohort because you’re sort of comparing the accolades of this film versus that. I do feel like, school, you’ve got to be proud of us! We bring glory to your name, for sure!

I Heart Noise: Was it difficult to cast the children for the film?

Kate McCarthy: Oh, my gosh! It was completely its own journey. It happened in a really crunched time period where we just looked at so many children. There was a full week where it was just like, kids, kids, Zoom with kids, call back with kids. And we had an amazing casting director, Lisa Zambetti, who is such a pro and knew when it came to casting these kids that we needed kids, I was very afraid of Disney Channel-type kids. But Lisa was like, you need kids who can do that because that’s what it’s going to take to do the stage part. You need kids who can act like “I’m performing for tv”, but then off stage can be normal kids. So that was always the challenge. And then on top of that, you need kids that bear a passing resemblance, or at least you need to feel like they all were raised the same way in the same household. And this was not a feature film with a lot of rehearsal time. I knew that I couldn’t have one crazy Disney Channelfied kid and one kid who’s basically a non-actor who is super mumblecore.

 I needed them to have a similar level of naturalism and showmanship. And we just got really lucky with the kids we did kind of just pull the trigger on. They couldn’t have worked out better. There’s always a question of, “Oh God, will this work? Will they get along? Will they seem like a family?” But these three kids are just such stars. I think they’re the standout part of the film. And we just got really lucky that out of all the kids, it eventually becomes a sea of children’s faces. And you’re just trying to just pick the most talented kids. But also, it’s so much more complicated than that. And also, the parents. The parents have to be, “Are they chill and normal?” And we seriously couldn’t have found a better set of families.

I Heart Noise: Nice. That’s awesome. I didn’t even think about the parents, but that would definitely be a consideration completely.

Kate McCarthy: If they’re insane stage parents, that’s a problem for sure.

I Heart Noise: Do the kids play their instruments? It looked like the girl was drumming.

Kate McCarthy: Oh, I will tell Ella that it was that convincing! No, actually, none of those kids played those instruments. But we got really lucky, Ella’s father plays drums. That’s a complete lucky coincidence that we happened to cast her as the girl drummer because her dad was able to give her some basics. And then we also got some of our AFI friends to do a little bit of music coaching with these kids.  Manny plays the drums. He gave her some pointers. They just needed to know this one song. We got a lot of support for them, actually. And I think they all really pull it off. Even if they don’t technically know everything so much, they are such pros that they’re selling it on the bass and the guitar. Tristan and Charlie, those kid actors are just such little stars that they know how to sell it with their bodies and their faces. Its so funny to watch.

I Heart Noise: I thought they did a great job because sometimes that can really pull you out of something. I’m thinking of Saved by the Bell when they did their music episode and they’re pretending to play instruments and it’s the worst thing ever.

Kate McCarthy: That’s funny. I have to check that out.

I Heart Noise: Oh, for sure!

Kate McCarthy: There’s this one Partridge Family clip that I’ve been obsessed with for years. I always knew the little boy in our family band would be the one on the bass because there’s something so funny about a tiny little boy with a huge guitar. And in the Partridge Family, those kids are faking it pretty badly. At the end of the day, I was like, even if our kids don’t really look like they’re that real on the instruments, that might be almost its own sub layer, like, it’s never addressed in the film. But maybe these kids don’t even really know how to play their instruments. They’re lip syncing just like how the Partridge Family, they didn’t really know what they were doing either.

I Heart Noise: I thought they were believable. I thought they did a good job.

Kate McCarthy: That is a relief.

I Heart Noise: How did you get into directing?

Kate McCarthy: I’m a year out since I graduated 2024 with my MFA in Directing. I’ve always been doing something creative. Originally, I was a total theater kid in high school, and I got a straight up theater degree for college. But I’ve always been a huge film nerd, but also culture vulture. It’s always been really important to me to understand the history of movies that came before me and how life was lived before me. So that’s always been present in my life. But then there was this desire to perform. I used to do theater, then I was a huge comedy nerd. For a while, that was where I thought I was headed. I Alll throughout college, I was writing and performing comedy, and then during the Pandemic, I couldn’t do any of that. I had my first idea for a short, and I was like, “Wait a minute, I could totally be doing movies. Why haven’t I thought of that?” I felt really strongly about this short film, and so I decided to just work on it for a year. And I had a great time making it. My first short film! And I was really like, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is a way better fit for my skill set”. That’s the film that I applied to AFI with. My journey in film has not been that long, but I think that being a director satisfies a creativity in me, obviously, but it’s also a leadership role. There’s a certain amount of administrative work. There’s an amount of stick-to-itiveness and making your own work. I think it just really suits all of my sensibilities. I’m loving it so far, but we’ll see!

I Heart Noise: You are doing a great job. I can’t wait to see what you end up doing with it!

Kate McCarthy: Thank you, that means a lot. Tribeca Film Festival is some really great validation for all of our work.

I Heart Noise: Are any of the actors going to be able to make it for the premiere?

Kate McCarthy: I think almost the whole Hicks family; they’re going to be there.

I Heart Noise: That’s awesome!

Kate McCarthy: That’s really fun!

I Heart Noise: Nice. Oh, are you going to be showing any other festivals?

Kate McCarthy: Yeah, literally days after Tribeca, we’re going to have our international premiere because Tribeca is our world premiere, and then we’re going right to our international premiere in London at Rain Dance Film Fest.

I Heart Noise: Oh, that’s so cool.

Kate McCarthy: Then beyond that–we’ll see. Tribeca has been the big thing for so long, and we’ve had to turn down some other festivals to maintain that world premiere status. We’ll see what happens after that.

I Heart Noise: I love the world that you created, the banners on the walls– it’s just so immersive. It’s wonderful, the music is wonderful. I love the whole thing. Congratulations!

Kate McCarthy: Thank you. That means so much! I just want the tone to really grab people, so that means a lot.

The post Interviews // Kate McCarthy (The Hicks Happy Hour) appeared first on I Heart Noise.

Danny Boyle is back in peak form directing the third installment of his zombie franchise with 28 Years Later. Written by Alex Garland, this film approaches the horror genre with a fresh perspective that could only be hard-won by living through a world-wide pandemic. It is clear that Boyle and Garland have spent a lot of time since the second installment in 2007 mulling over the next film’s subject matter and Covid provided a new framework with which to approach the genre. The resulting film is a masterful addition that strikes all of the right notes from humorous to heartbreaking and includes noteworthy acting performances that elevate the film into something iconoclastic. Boyle has been credited with reinventing the zombie genre in 2002 and he has managed to do it once again. 

The film is visually stunning with scenes that will take the audience’s breath away and others that are so singularly designed that they are guaranteed to find their way into memes and Halloween costumes for generations of horror fans to come. The cinematography is notable because Boyle used a novel new method to capture the story on film—utilizing an array of 20 iPhones, proving once again with this franchise that he is a true visionary. The film is interspersed with archival footage that serves to ramp up the tension and give historical context to the Rage virus that we learn was eventually contained with Great Britain being quarantined ever since. Survivors on the island are left to fend for themselves.

A group of survivors thrives on a tiny island off the coast of the mainland living in a feudal society where the children are trained from a young age to hunt zombies. Spike (played by Alfie Williams) is having a coming-of-age ceremony where he heads to the zombie infested mainland with his father (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to go on his first hunt. The small society is divided into those adults who lived through the horrors of the rage virus and the isolated youngsters who have only ever known a world with the threat of zombies. Spike has no context for the broader world that seems to have moved on beyond the virus. Spike’s first hunt leads him to return to the mainland with his ailing mother (played by Jodie Comer) in search of a rumored doctor where they encounter an evolved type of zombie called an alpha that is larger, stronger, and faster than other zombies.

The zombies have mostly lost their clothes in the last 28 years, leaving hordes of completely nude, mud-caked zombies that run in packs hunting for their next meal. Spike and his mother encounter Dr. Kelson (played by Ralph Fiennes) who has a well-earned reputation for being insane. This character is played to perfection by Fiennes in a performance so powerful that it evokes shades of Marlon Brando’s legendary Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. When the mother and son meet Dr. Kelson he is a vivid orange color because he coats himself in iodine to thwart the virus, this choice is visually stunning on the big screen and serves to make Dr. Kelson an instantly iconic and unsettling figure.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson delivers what is arguably the best performance of his career so far as Spike’s father who seeks to protect him from the harsh realities of the world. Jodie Comer’s performance is so beautifully subtle as someone who is losing touch with reality but still has the heart of a loving mother. Alfie Williams is brilliant as Spike in a natural performance that exudes innocence and curiosity.

The music in 28 Years Later departs from the atmospheric sounds of the first two films with a brilliant score by Scottish prog hip hop group Young Fathers. It manages to be both surprising and fresh without pulling the viewers out of the film experience.

The film ends in a way that sets up the next installment 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple beautifully, bringing in characters that have been hinted at for observant viewers through the course of this movie. The Bone Temple was filmed back-to-back with this movie with a new director, Nia DeCosta. A third film is slated for the franchise with Garland planned to direct.

As someone who saw 28 Days Later in the theater in 2002 and loved how it breathed new life into the genre, it’s exciting to see this new offering expand on the world in a way that deepens the story with lived experience in this freshly post-pandemic world. 28 Years Later is arguably the best film in the franchise so far with its stunning visuals and superb acting, a feat that is hard to achieve in a world of sequels and reboots that can often feel more like unnecessary cash crabs than genuine exercises in original storytelling. Boyle and Garland took some big chances with this film, and this paid off in major ways, resulting in one of the best zombie films ever made.

The post Movie Reviews // 28 Years Later appeared first on I Heart Noise.

Wolfgang: Great. Thank you.

Benito: Yeah, we’re very excited about it.

I Heart Noise: As showrunners, what exactly do you do for this production? I know that title can mean different things on different shows.

Benito: I mean, it started very early on with discovering the book through a contact of Wolfgang’s in at Random House in Germany, and all the way to devising a concept and bringing it to buyers, convincing them that they should be doing this. And in this case, it’s a bit of a unusual role. We’re both producers and showrunners, so a lot of putting together the production was done by us too. But then eventually also they’re writing together with our head writer Barbara Stepanksy in season one, and then we brought on some additional writers in season two.

Wolfgang: I think what we really loved was, and from the very beginning, and still now, and even hopefully in the future as well, is the main character of the show, Blum. She’s so rough and vindictive, and that is very fascinating and unique for us, and it was great fun to work on that and see how it works out.

 I Heart Noise: I love any show that’s about vengeance with a strong female lead like Blum. Do you find a lot of people are looking for a strong lead, female lead in their shows?

Benito: Yeah, I mean, I think, as Wolfgang said, I think we don’t look for stories thinking, oh, the market is looking for this, or we’re searching for that. But when we found it, we just loved the premise and the character that Bernhard Aichner created because it’s based on a series of novels. A lot of that character that he created was there. We just found this woman who takes destiny into her own hands. Very fascinating.

Wolfgang: Yeah, I mean, we met her in the book, in the novel, of course, and then we saw her with the wonderful actress Anna Maria Mühe, and she gave it a very different thrill as well. So, it was really a wonderful journey.

I Heart Noise: How long have you worked together? I saw that you co-founded Barry Films in 2007. Were you working together before that?

Benito: You did some good research there.

Wolfgang: It’s a long time, right? It’s a long period.

Benito: We actually met in LA in 2006 and then we founded the company and we’ve been Working across the pond ever since.

I Heart Noise: Was it difficult to come up with ideas for the second season that would continue to heighten the tensions after the super heightened nature of the first season?

Benito: I mean, there was a trilogy of novels written by Bernhard Aichner, so that was definitely an inspiration to where the story went. And obviously the TV series has its own universe a bit, so we strayed a tiny bit from the book. But the thread of what Bernhard wrote is definitely there. So that was our guiding light.

I Heart Noise: Have you been happy with the responses to the second season so far?

Wolfgang: Yeah, it was overwhelming. It was fantastic. As you know, it’s this Netflix show, but it’s also in Austria where the novel originally came from, it is on the local broadcaster over there. And they were so, so supportive for us and they loved it so much. It was even bigger than the first season.

I Heart Noise: The setting for this is stunningly beautiful. Where in Austria was it filmed?

Wolfgang: On different locations in the Alps. A lot of the interiors were shot in Vienna.

Benito: Yeah. The region is Tyrol, which also supported the shoot. Then there’s a regional support, and they were great partners in getting this made.

I Heart Noise: Do you think they’ve seen an increase in tourism because of the show?

Benito: We hope so. We hope it’s an increase in tourism and not in murders.

I Heart Noise: Woman of the Dead has a very suspenseful atmosphere. How do you maintain that from season to season with different directors for each season?

Benito: I think it’s all based on the character and her strong want. You need to be fully with her. And as long as you’re with her on this journey, you’re gonna stay glued to the series. And then season two, I think it’s really the whole village that started to come into play and with all these different intricacies. There’s always some sort of conspiracy going on, but it’s not the one you think. And that’s what we’re trying to keep up.

I Heart Noise: What do you hope the audience will take away from the second season?

Wolfgang: Of the show, that they want to see a third season.

I Heart Noise: That’s my next question. Are you hoping for a third season?

Wolfgang: Well, we have a lot of ideas. Yes. I think we are brainstorming right now.

I Heart Noise: Okay, so the book series is a trilogy. Do you think you might go past the book series Would that be something you’re willing to do

Benito: Yeah, into 10 seasons. We have actually been talking with the novelist Bernhard Aichner about where the story goes, exchanging ideas, his ideas, our ideas.

The post Interviews // Benito and Wolfgang Mueller, Showrunners of Woman of the Dead appeared first on I Heart Noise.

Jonathan Hammond: Thank you very much!

I Heart Noise: When’s the festival?

Jonathan Hammond: It just happened. We screened on Friday–the comedy block.

I Heart Noise: Did you make it to Cleveland for it?

Jonathan Hammond: I went. My producer went, our lead actress went, and my co-writer went. It was our world premiere.

I Heart Noise: So how did Fireflies in the Dusk come to be? What inspired you to make this film?

Jonathan Hammond: You know, I was just thinking about it the truth is I was kind of going through a bit of a dark time, and I wanted to make something that was stupid and fun and funny and wild and original. And when you think that way, there’s just a lot of latitude to just kind of go bull bunkers. And we had the best time making it. I would say that I had grown up, you know, loving science or time travel movies and there’s just something that’s absurd when you think about it in reality terms, about if someone traveled time from one century to the other, especially if it’s for romance purposes, what are you gonna talk about? What do you have in common? And I think that was sort of the genesis from watching them. And then I guess my playful mind just really went into overdrive and we made this movie.

I Heart Noise: I really enjoyed it, the whole time I had to pause it, I was laughing so hard.

I Heart Noise: Do you watch a lot of romance and time travel movies?

Jonathan Hammond: If I can. One of my mom’s favorite movies was Summer and Time growing up, so I had to watch that. I think if there has been one, I definitely would have seen it. My personal taste is actually my favorite time travel movie is La Jetée, which is not funny. And it’s a French short film, it inspired 12 Monkeys.

But I also love Back to the Future very much. And someone else said they thought of Bill and Ted, which I guess maybe subconsciously. But there aren’t a whole lot of romance ones outside of Somewhere in Time. There’s a Hallmark Hall of Fame made for TV movie called the Love Letter with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Campbell Scott that has tones of this. But if it involves time travel, I’ll absolutely watch it.

I Heart Noise: When did you start working on this idea and how long did it take from the inception to the post-production?

Jonathan Hammond: We had written this seven or eight years ago and it just ended up on the back burner. And I do love making comedy and irreverent movies, but it just, it seems like a big swing. And my co-writer, Ryan Roach really wanted us to make it, so he was pushing me to make it. And then I was going back and forth between this and a couple other projects.

We were due to make a short film and I just wasn’t sure. We had written with an actress in mind, one of our good friends who had moved to Norway. So that’s another reason why I kind of just lost steam. I went to a film festival where I met Emily Goss, the lead actress. And within 30 seconds, I’m like, that’s her. That is her. I have this project for you. It’s insane.

I think it took her a swallow before she was on board, but she was like, let me register this. And then she’s like, I absolutely want to do this. So, from there, it was really, really easy getting the cast on. From the time of go to filming was very, very short. So for once, we decided to do it. To filming, I would say it was in a month or two, but for me to say yes to do it, it was about seven years.

I Heart Noise: I was especially thrilled to see Hale Appleman playing Cecil. He’s my favorite part of The Magicians, so I just love seeing him in anything. How did you end up casting him?

Jonathan Hammond: He’s my favorite part of that show, too, and he’s one of my favorite people right now. The reason we ended up casting him was because our producer, Martin Spanjers, is friends with him. We brought on Martin and he’s an actor, and just has a lot of friends. And we were going over who we should cast, and we were putting up feelers. And then he goes like, ‘Oh, my God, my friend Hale would be perfect for this.’

Then my creator, Ryan Roach, is a huge Magician’s fan, so he was like, especially double take. He’s like, ‘Are you kidding’ and started shaking. It’s like, are you serious? And he’s like, yeah. So we sent it to Hale and he read it. He loved it. He’s like, ‘I just want to have a conversation about the tone’. And he was on board. And so, he was a dream to work with, he really is fantastic in this movie. He’s very funny.

I Heart Noise: Is it hard to cast people who don’t look too modern?

Jonathan Hammond: That’s a really good question. So that’s part of this. One of the things we’re spoofing. I would say, several years ago, a friend of mine took me to go see Pride and Prejudice, the Joe Wright version with Keira Knightley. I majored in English literature. And I have read Pride and Prejudice, I think, more than most guys. And I do love the book. I think it’s amazingly structured.

I just remember thinking; do we need another Pride of Prejudice? Because it’s been done a lot. And then when you see it, you’re like, yeah, I see now why that’s really pure cinema. It’s a fantastic movie. But one of the things that you see in the movie is like, everyone is really beautiful. And when they smile, I leaned over and I’m like, you know, if these people were real, their teeth would not look like that. These people have not bathed in weeks.

And so that start carried over, and we wanted to make sure that it was because we’re parodying these things. They look like movie people. That was deliberate. There’s, you know, we considered like, the Austin Powers, makes your teeth bright. I’m like, no, no, we have to make it. This is a movie about movies. So that was a deliberate choice. They have very beautiful people with very good teeth. They were the big movie stars. We used movie stars.

I Heart Noise: I love the way Nick Ballard played Zach. He was like a tool. Was it fun to write his dialogue and film that?

Jonathan Hammond: It was so much fun. That was a concern. Like, is this too much? Is this too much of a bro? This is a caricature. But Nick is such a sweet guy and such a talented actor that I think he knew just the right beats. There was one or two lines where I had to explain, this is what we meant. And he got it. To answer your question, yes, it was a ball. It was a ball to write It. But the concern was, is it too much? But then when you see Nick, acting lands, it’s fine. He actually brings a vulnerability. We’re, like, completely pleased with how it turned out.

I Heart Noise: Near the end of the film, it kind of switches genres from romantic comedy to something else. Can you explain what inspired that?

Jonathan Hammond: That was when there’s like a certain faction of the population that would want to take things back. There’s a romanization of the past, particularly, like a further back past. And that could be in health care, and it could be social. I’m trying to think of how I can say this without giving it away. Sort of social norms, especially, with gay people, they want things to go backwards. So that was kind of our commentary.

That’s kind of the point of the movie, is that a romanticization of the past can be very dangerous. I’m not talking about, being nostalgic or dressing up or whatever. I’m talking about, bringing back things that we have learned from that we’re just deliberately trying to forget. So that, I think, is very dangerous. That was our commentary.

But also, we felt that it was just in terms of story. It was sort of a fun twist that was organic, and it was kind of telling you the whole time without telling you. And I love it when movies kind of present themselves as one thing when they’re really something else. If they do that in a way that’s honest, I, as an audience member, am exhilarated. So, I hope to do that to other people who think like me.

I Heart Noise: How did you end up becoming a film director?

Jonathan Hammond: You know, I was born that way. It’s all I ever wanted to do. Truthfully. That’s all I ever wanted. I grew up movie obsessed. Over the years, I hadn’t done it for a while, and then we started doing the 48 Hour Film Festival. Started doing really well and winning and whatever factors in life kept me away from it, and then I just of late jumped into it. I really want to have a career and do this. I really, really love the process. And I love when people react to my movies positively. When they don’t like them, that’s a bummer. But you know, hopefully fortunately there hasn’t been too much of that.

I Heart Noise: What advice do you have for people who are looking to break into the industry?

Jonathan Hammond: My advice is just to know that it is really hard, is really competitive. I believe at Cleveland there were like 7,000 submissions. They took like 150 movies. So, it’s hard. Just make sure you have a strong story, and it’s executed well. Ask people who’ve done it before to maybe help you. Where I learned the most is, the 48 Hour Film Festival because it really forces you to be as creative on a point as possible. You have to edit, you have to score, you have to do all of the things and its really low stakes. You get an audience. Everyone goes and sees everyone else’s movie and you see what and how people react. So, you see what might work and what may not work, but like winning and losing. Winning feels great, but also if you don’t do well, it’s, it’s low stakes. You spent a weekend and you had an opportunity to learn.

I Heart Noise: Do you have any other projects you’re working on that you can talk about?

Jonathan Hammond: I have another short that is called Mask Looking and it’s nothing like this. It’s a horror, you know the gay app Grindr. It’s kind of a horror based on that. It’s an exercise in tension. It stars Daniel Franzese from Mean Girls. And that is also, I think I can say, it’s going to be at Cannes in May in the short film corner. And then it’ll be premiering in the States in July.

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Confronted with several distractions on his journey, including a Cyclops and his wooly flock of sheep, a sea witch determined to keep Odysseus for her own amusement, and the potential promise of absolution in the arms of a priestess–Odysseus must navigate each of these situations as well as the oceans themselves in order to find his way home.

Meanwhile, Odysseus’s wife Penelope has been beset by suitors who are eager to wear Odysseus’s crown. She is simultaneously grieving and holding out hope for her husband’s return, but it has been years since she last saw his ship sail disappear on the sea or got word of his whereabouts. Can she maintain her hope that her husband will return long enough for Odysseus to make his way home?

The stakes are high for the characters in Homer’s epic poem and the person who did the adaptation of the show, Kate Hamill, did an excellent job breathing life into the material for a modern audience. She did double-duty by also playing the sea witch, Circe, as well as Woman 2 in the Greek chorus and really stood out with her intensity and wit. When she played the part of the Cyclops’ sheep, she inhabited the role and elicited a lot of laughter from the audience with her sheepish antics.

The play’s program states that “by reimagining the stories of Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, Hamill asks us to reflect on the cycles of violence, revenge, and the trauma of war, and more importantly to consider how we can learn to embrace healing and forgiveness in order to end those cycles.” It’s a lofty goal, but Hamill succeeds with this production where the humor also manages to shine through all of the trauma. One scene that is particularly funny is when the audience first meets Penelope’s suitors. They come on stage dancing to club music dressed in fur coats. Later, they play a herd of cows to the delight of the audience.

Odysseus is presented as a man of faith who observes the holy days and regularly makes his sacrifices, but after losing all of his men to misfortune he also loses his faith. The Priestess says to him at one point “You must have suffered terribly to lose your faith” and Odysseus’ suffering is plentiful. He was played to perfection by Wayne T. Carr who brought a fresh energy to the character. Penelope was played by Andrus Nichols, and she was mesmerizing as the long-suffering queen and brought strength and sensuality to the role.

This play features a lot of intense imagery including the death of a baby, animal sacrifice, mentions of sexual assault, struggles with PTSD, as well as flashing lights and fog so it may not be well suited for everyone. But if you can manage to sit through those things, this is a delightful way to spend 3 hours. The press night closing curtain earned a standing ovation from the crowd.

The post Theater Reviews // The Odyssey at the American Repertory Theater appeared first on I Heart Noise.

The Life & Times of Michael K is a moving and heartfelt show playing at the Emerson Paramount Center from Jan 31st to Feb 9th. It is a puppet show, but much like recent puppet experiences in greater Boston such as The Book of Mountain and Seas and Little Amal Walks Across America at the Emerson, and the A.R.T.’s upcoming Odyssey– these aren’t the felt puppets with googly eyes the term may conjure. In the Life & Times of Michael K. they are beautifully carved, evocative wooden figures that look like smaller people, birds that “fly” with their wings flapping at the tip of sticks, and even leaves “blowing” upon the wind. The puppet of Michael has 3 puppeteers—one who does his voice and two who operate his head and limbs in an intricate dance that brings the creation and the story of Michael to life.

Michael K is a “simple” (fictional) young man born with a cleft lip which causes people to have strong reactions to him, growing up in South Africa during apartheid and a fictitious civil war in institutions he pours himself into his work as a gardener. It is based on a novel of the same name by J.M. Coetzee which won the Booker Prize in 1983. Michael quits his job and goes on a journey from Cape Town to take his mother to safety to her hometown of Prince Albert in a wheelbarrow contraption that he has cobbled together and pushes cross country. He faces many obstacles on his journey including racism, ableism, goats, thieves, hunger, checkpoints, soldiers, and he manages to maintain his humanity to the end despite all of these challenges.

The stage design was ingenious with one scene that took place in a raging river that was staged by lighting changes, and having stagehands hold up pieces of furniture to act as the boulders in the swirling water. It truly tests the limits of what can be achieved with puppets and was so realistic and immersive that the audience forgot for a moment that they were watching a puppet show. The woman next to me in the theater openly wept at some of the more somber scenes and the audience laughed throughout the play which maintained its sense of humor even through incredibly grim circumstances. This play walked a fine line between watching someone experience hardship and engaging in torture porn, but it mostly managed to keep the character of Michael as someone the audience could support from their seats.

This remarkable piece of theater was adapted and directed by Lara Foot in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company. They were last seen in Boston with the 11-foot-tall puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee child that was starting her journey in Boston to “walk across America” on her journey around the world. Michael K and Little Amal share one of the excellent puppeteers. The puppeteers in this show cannot be praised enough. They brought this sculpture of wood and frame to life in a way that can hardly be described. You can feel each breath that Michael takes, and his carved face somehow takes on varied expressions. The play also used projections onto the back wall to enhance the show and I couldn’t figure out how they depicted the puppet moving around unaided by puppeteers, it was real theater magic.

The cast was brilliant without a single obvious misstep or missed line. They worked together seamlessly to bring these puppets and the story of Michael K to life, leaving a lasting impression on the audience with their tale about human dignity and grief.
It left me looking forward to seeing more puppet shows in the future—the medium is so ripe for creativity and invention. It’s a real pleasure to see such cutting-edge theater in Boston.

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10. The Forest Hills

A horror film that makes its audience feel as if they are losing their minds along with the main character. Directed by Scott Goldberg, this low budget indie flick was Shelley Duvall’s final movie, and her performance was excellent. It explores the horror a man faces after an accident in the Berkshires. It’s hard to shake this film after you’ve seen it. Chiko Mendez put out a fantastic performance as the lead character who is haunted by his past.

9. The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer

This film, written and directed by Tolga Karaçelik, didn’t get a lot of attention outside of film festivals, but it was absolutely delightful. It really captures the resentment that can build up in marriages over time. Steve Buscemi plays a serial killer who acts as a couple’s therapist in order to put himself in a position to help the author husband write a book. Buscemi is pitch perfect in this film.

8. Your Monster

Is a modern romantic comedy horror retelling of Beauty and the Beast directed by Caroline Lindy. After a cancer diagnosis and subsequently losing her playwright boyfriend, a young actress meets a monster that has been living in her closet. It’s hilarious and sweet and endlessly entertaining with a great musical number and just the right amount of horror.

7. Twisters

This sequel to Twister, directed by Lee Isaac Chung, is a CGI-filled ride about storm chasers with more tornadoes than you can count–including a hilarious fire tornado. It was a solid blockbuster with laughs in all the right places and a great soundtrack boasting classic and modern country songs.

6. Love Lies Bleeding

This neo-noir queer crime thriller directed by Rose Glass is tense and atmospheric to the end with a delightful love story and unexpected bouts of violence. The stellar performances by Kristen Stewart, Katy M. O’Brian, and Ed Harris, elevate this film into award-winning territory.

5. I Saw the TV Glow

A fresh and innovative surreal supernatural horror fantasy story by Jane Schoenbrun is about a television show that causes viewers to question their identity and reality. This film has a superb soundtrack full of songs that elicit teen angst.

4. Nosferatu

Directed by Robert Eggers, this fresh take on the tale of Count Orlok is a combination of Dracula, Nosferatu, and The Exorcist along with homages to a myriad of other classic films. It had the audience squirming in their seats the entire time with dread. Bill Skarsgård invokes pure terror as the titular creature with his haunting performance in this gothic horror.

3. Conclave

This film, directed by Edward Berger and masterfully scored by Volker Bertelmann is absolutely sublime. It has a twist ending that no one can see coming that will stay with audiences and hopefully facilitate some honest discussions about the state of the Catholic Church. In Conclave, the Pontiff has passed away and the Catholic Cardinals must come together to elect the next Pope, but the meeting is rocked by scandal that threatens the very existence of the Church.

2. The Seed of the Sacred Fig

This is an amazing piece of film, and not just because of the circumstances surrounding its creation. It was filmed in secret and smuggled out of Iran after the director, Mohammad Rasoulof, was sentenced to time in prison and fled to Germany. This film features actual footage spliced in of the political protests in Iran in 2022. Some of the footage featured is fairly graphic in nature but it serves to underline the message of the film. In the Seed of the Sacred Fig a family in Tehran is shocked when their patriarch is publicly outed as being a judge. The family must deal with the destabilization that happens within their family while outside the walls of their apartment, society destabilizes.  It won the special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

1. War Crimes in Gaza

This is the most singularly shocking piece of film I have seen in years–definitely in 2024. It features footage from the social media accounts that Israeli soldiers posted of themselves committing heinous acts against Palestinians. It also contains interviews with experts and witnesses of the atrocities. Not for the faint of heart, the images will forever be seared in my mind. But the film seems to invite people not to turn away from the horrors depicted, it begs its audience to bear witness to the genocide in Palestine. It was put together by Al Jazeera Investigations and is sure to be used in future trials. This documentary is remarkable not only for its unflinching portrayal of the war crimes in Palestine, but for its demand of its audience to see these people as humans deserving of dignity.

Best Short Film of 2024

Kum-Kum

Kum-Kum is the gripping story of a young woman struggling after the childhood loss of her friend in a traumatic incident in the water. Beautifully shot in the Red Sea, this is a short that tugs at the heartstrings. Directed by Dur Jamjoon, this film beautifully captures the ever-changing nature of grief and how it changes with time.

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Red One is the cynical, fascistic holiday movie we all deserve to find under the tree this year. It’s 2024 and gone is the jolly, fat, twinkling Santa of old. Instead, this film offers an ultra-fit Santa (played by J.K. Simmons) with an army of bodyguards headed by the “Extremely. Large and Formidable” Callum Drift (played by Dwayne Johnson).

Santa’s North Pole operation is run by stressed out minions under an ineffectual force field dome. The minions orchestrate the “magical” one night a year when Santa belays on a rope from his sleigh into chimneys around the world, tucking and rolling, while delivering presents as his crew observes from their military-esque bunker.

Viewers are introduced to Santa in a mall in Philly where he is soon escorted by US fighter jets back to the North Pole. A picture should be emerging here, and its grim. Santa is quickly and very easily kidnapped by a witch (played by Kiernan Shipka) who quite literally seizes the means of production.

The E.L.F, which actually stands for Enforcement, Logistics, and Fortification sets out to rescue him. Head of Security, Drift, is forced to reluctantly team up with a degenerate gambler and skilled tracker, Jack O’ Malley (played by Christ Evans) who is level 4 on the “Naughty List”, in order to retrieve Santa.

This film is riddled with bad green screen shots. It doesn’t add anything to the IMAX viewing experience. It feels like the action sequences are 80% terrible green screen. The acting is all one note, and the characters are two dimensional. There are plenty of wise cracks, but few of them land. Even the fake snow is paltry and sad.

The director made the inexplicable choice to give Drift the power to shrink himself down Ant Man-style while retaining his strength for fight scenes. It must have sounded cool in the writer’s room, but it did not translate well to screen.

The best parts of this film were the scenes with Santa’s brother, Krampus (played by Kristofer HIvju) who brought some much-needed levity and wit to this movie. Hopefully, if this becomes a franchise, as something this ridiculous inevitably will–Krampus will feature.

I want to predict that this film will not be a holiday classic, but if November has taught us anything, it’s to never bet against how much America loves its fascism. The bloated budget for this film was $250 Million and it was absolutely put toward hiring big name actors (who didn’t earn their paychecks, with the exception of Nick Kroll, who gave it his all and then some) and not toward production value. What a disappointment.

The filmmakers had the opportunity to make an edgy, heartwarming holiday film and they blew it on propaganda shots for the US military, shots of hordes of women in Aruba in impossibly small bikinis, and long monologues by Dwayne Johnson about how people are increasingly terrible—which is the only thing that felt authentic in the end. The movie spends so much time showing the audience how awful everyone has become and very little showing any sort of redemption for humanity. Santa’s seeming unwavering love for humanity rings hollow, as does this film.

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I Heart Noise spoke with filmmaker Aryasb Feiz who is the director, writer, producer, and animation supervisor of the animated short film, Tomorrow. Despite some technical difficulties, we were able to have a conversation about his work on the film and what he hopes people will take away from the heartfelt film.

I Heart Noise: That’s amazing. So how did you come up with the idea for this film?

Aryasb Feiz: Yeah, the idea for this film actually came to me when one of my colleagues told us how he had to buy illegal medicine for his son. It was a lifesaving medicine, and he had to buy it in black market. And I always wondered about this issue that how far can be and will be go for our loved ones and how this and about the ambiguity of morality in these situations. So we wrote a film about a young boy who is poor and he has to face these difficult decisions every day.

I Heart Noise: It was such a moving film. It’s truly and beautifully done. How did you decide not to have anyone speak during the film?

Aryasb Feiz: The decision was that we made because we wanted it to reach a global audience. And it’s always better to do, to do it dialogue-less. But it was more challenging for me to tell a story without any dialogue. It makes it longer the film. To reach the bigger audiences. And I think it’s a little bit more sincere when you don’t have any dialogue. People could believe it more.

I Heart Noise: How is the animation done?

Aryasb Feiz: I have an animation studio called BadStash in Tehran. I had it. It’s closed now. And we had many artists working on this film throughout, I think, five years. And it’s really difficult to make animation because you have to make everything. You have to design every street, every tree, every clothes, every character. You can’t just put actors and just make…put your camera on the street and record anything you see. So, it’s challenging. But on the other way, on the other side of it, it’s better, actually, because you are making a board for this particular story, and everything is designed for this story. For example, in the environment and in the sets. We made the set a little big, we made it huge, actually, for the child. So, he has to reach for everything. Because we wanted to tell the audience that this is not a proper place for a child. This shouldn’t have happened anywhere. When you make this work for this story, you can make changes. If you are the God of this world, you can make this sun go backward, for example.

I Heart Noise: Where can people watch this film?

Aryasb Feiz Right now we are talking also right now we are talking to distributors and hopefully this will be in the streaming services. But I think in a couple of weeks it will be available on YouTube for a short period before the Oscar, Oscar announcement of the shorts list and after that. And they can watch it if they are in Miami. It’s screening in Miami Short Film Festival in a couple of weeks.

I Heart Noise: Awesome! Congratulations on that!

Aryasb Feiz: Thank you very much.

I Heart Noise: So what other work or other films have you done? Is this your first film?

Aryasb Feiz: No, it is the first film that I started. But in between this, between this project, we made another short film. It’s a two-minute short film called Mr. Indifferent and it went viral around the world. A lot of people have seen it. It’s about kindness. It’s available on YouTube. Everyone can see it. And it’s part of the education curriculum of a lot of countries right now in South America, in North America. I’ve heard that teachers in New York are showing it to students, to children in their writing classes.

I Heart Noise: That’s great. So how did you end up as in this career? How did you end up as a film director? Creator?

Aryasb Feiz: My journey started when I collaborated with two college friends to make a short film, an experimental short film. And then I edited two music videos for another friend. So, I was captivated by editing. I really liked it. And I was a character animator for a few years when then I was approached by someone, and they gave me project. I had to direct a trailer for a 20-minute film. So, it was the first time that I had to really think about directing and telling a story. And I loved it. When I started my animation studio, the first project that we wanted to make was this short film and I was the director.

I Heart Noise: Awesome. Do you have any advice for people who want to get into filmmaking?

Aryasb Feiz: I don’t like to give advice really, but I think the best advice that I got was to don’t overthink it, just make it. Especially your first and second films, because at those initial films, you learn a lot about the craft. Don’t overthink it. And don’t try to make a perfect film or an amazing film. Just try to make a film. That’s it.

I Heart Noise: I like that. What do you hope people will take away from this film?

Aryasb Feiz: I hope that it will be seen, you know, by a lot of people so I can continue my career as a director and can find finances for my future projects. But for this particular film, the goal was to show the people, the struggles of our people in Iran and in this part of the world, and the effect that it has on children, because politics are seriously hurting children in these parts, and this is not right.

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See also – Movie Review // The Forest Hills / The Forest Hills Review Revisited

I Heart Noise: How did you end up writing, producing and directing The Forest Hills?

Scott Goldberg: The Forest Hills came from an idea that we had when we unfortunately had to back out of a project that was filming, that was going to film in Detroit. There’s unfortunately a lot of red flags from a producer I was speaking to with a production company that we wanted to hire and work with. We had to start anew, and we kind of just started a new script which then formed into The Forest Hills, completely different from what we had planned with the other production company. And this setting was basically a cabin in the middle of the woods. And it always had the idea of a character that was running through the woods after having murdered someone, in cold blood, and then basically going to the cabin to seek refuge in the cabin. There was always that initial story there.

I Heart Noise: What do you want people to take away from this film?

Scott Goldberg: It’s very interesting seeing a lot of the comments nowadays. How the film is done, you could see so many people’s perspectives and what they believe and what, as far as the characters and what happens in the story and how people feel about the film, from the most negative stuff to the most positive. So, it’s very interesting seeing what I feel people should take away and what actually, people do take away.

I’d say that the biggest takeaway that I think people should get out of this is that cruel world that we live in, where we need love and respect and communication, unfortunately, are people like Billy, who’s played by Edward Furlong, who take advantage of people because of their mental health. So as you see with Rico being taken advantage of and fooled by Billy and Arnie and a lot of the other people in the film who basically screw with him to basically laugh about it.

And I’m sure everyone has gone through something like that to an extent with believing that people are kind and good friends, and all of a sudden, it’s the complete opposite. Just taking away the fact that basically people are cruel. But at the end of the day, for many people, there still is at the end of the tunnel, because I know a lot of people do deal with mental health and struggle to a big degree, as we all do.

And no matter how big or how little, that struggle is, there is help if people need it. And unfortunately for the character Rico, he was unable to get it. And we just wanted to kind of showcase how important it is, reaching out to people and. And trying your best to, kind of communicate and. And have that communication and dialogue of communication open. That’s very important.

I Heart Noise: I was curious watching this. Has there ever been a time where you’ve struggled with knowing what’s reality the way Rico did in the film?    

Scott Goldberg: Well, I grew up diagnosed with ADHD, struggling with everyone has a disability to a degree. I feel, whether it’s mental, whether it’s physical, and people adapt and utilizing whatever disability you have, such as myself, who has ADHD, in school it made it very difficult for me to concentrate on things that I just wasn’t interested in, but on things that were creative and things that I really felt I thrived in.

I think focusing on that and really realizing the type of things that I enjoy doing as far as a career or things like that really helps tremendously. So, speaking of Shelley Duvall, when we worked with her, her struggle wasn’t at all mental. It was physical. Cause she was dealing with physical ailments. So that’s why production worked alongside her with making sure she felt comfortable and just working with her to create a safe environment for her and where she felt respected and loved and cared for. And, yeah, so I think people just deal with a lot of different things, whether it be physical or mental.

I Heart Noise: I really appreciate that because like I said in my review, I’ve had psychosis and struggled with reality before. So, I felt like you really captured that, like, just not knowing what’s real, not knowing where the footing is.

Scott Goldberg: Well, yeah, I appreciate that. And, you know, the interesting thing upon reading reviews is like it’s so interesting to see as we take the good and the bad, right? Like negative reviews and positive reviews and whatnot, just seeing on certain websites like Letterboxd.

Cause, you know, people like me, we’re filmmakers. We’re human beings. We want to know how people think about the film and feel about the film and seeing like, the negativity and confusion sometimes with, like how a story is structured.

Conversations are good to have because It can help by telling the story because if something might be confusing in a film, for example, in reality, what it was for me with The Forest Hills, to keep it disjointed because it was being narrated by Rico and his disjointed personality and who he is and the mental state that he has is not going to be linear. It’s interesting. Some people got that, and some people didn’t.

So that was very interesting to see that. Some people do take that away from that. But then there’s some reviews where people are completely just bashing the film and it’s fine. Everyone’s going to have an opinion, and you have to respect that, and that’s completely fine. Everyone’s human and we all are affected to a degree, but at the same time, we create. Art is creative and you have to put it out there and whatever people think is what they’re going to think.

I Heart Noise: How did you end up casting Chiko Mendez as your lead?

Scott Goldberg: I’ve known Chiko Mendez for many years. He responded to a Craigslist ad that I had where I needed a mauled zombie victim for a thesis project. So, I went to what’s called a community college, Five Towns College in Dix Hills, New York. And so the teacher had said, hey ‘Your thesis is going to be about this. Your video production thesis is going to be about a superhero, and you need to come up with a story.’.

My idea was to have a story about a janitor, an everyday janitor who becomes a superhero by fighting zombies in the school with a security guard late at night. So having the casting call needing one for a mauled zombie victim, Chiko contacted me and said he was interested, and he came out and it had a gallon of blood, and he just put in his mouth and started spitting all over the place and scratching his arms up with his nails to show that he had been attacked.

And just noticing, never having worked with someone like that before who, who definitely put it all out there. And I think there’s a clip on YouTube. If you type in, ‘Chiko Mendez zombie mauled attack’ or something like that, and you’ll see it’s from like 18 years ago or so. I posted it, obviously, after we had filmed, a couple years after we filmed it. But it shows his range of emotion, which is very similar to Rico. So, kind of building a story around what I knew he could do. And having known him all those years and worked with him on short films and stuff I felt that this was his time to shine, I guess.

I Heart Noise: Oh, definitely. He was brilliant.

I Heart Noise: So how did you end up casting Shelley Duvall?

Scott Goldberg: So, Shelley Duvall has always been an interest of mine to work with. I mean, obviously, as everyone else forgot about her. And then the whole 2016 Doctor Phil episode had happened, and I turned to my girlfriend at the time and said to her, I said “I haven’t heard of Shelley Duvall in a long time.

I love her look. Like, she looks nothing like Shelley Duvall from the eighties. And at the time, and just in general, I don’t like working with talent who are like models to that extent. So, kind of like the Rob Zombie, that stuff, like people who look real and raw. I felt like she had a very unique look. Like I said, she looked nothing like Shelley Duvall from the eighties or nineties. So that was my initial reaction to the Doctor Phil episode obviously being very sad.

And unfortunately, seeing the state that she was in at the time, I was like,’ I just wish she could overcome that.’ So, time came when the production was going and I said, we’re kind of throwing around names, Edward Furlong had come along and Dee Wallace at the same time. And then I guess just the idea again, who would I really want to work with? And then Shelley Duvall, her name came into my mind, and I didn’t know how to contact her. How do you, how do you contact Shelley Duvall?

So, Sarah, who runs the ShelleyDuvallXO Instagram page, had posted a picture of her and Shelley Duvall. Oh, my God, she’s still around. And, you know, she hasn’t acted in a while. I contacted Sarah and obviously being very protective, as everyone should be about, Shelley and people looking to be in contact with her. She unfortunately, wouldn’t give me the contact information.

I think they were doing a documentary at the time on her which ended up not being finished to this point. Maybe it will in the future. I wanted to contact her somehow. I just didn’t know how. So. I went on a website and I typed in her boyfriend, her partner, Dan Gilroy’s name.

I knew she lived in Blanco, Texas, so the information was readily available. Once I was able to find his number, I contacted him and I said, ‘hey, I would like to work with Shelley Duvall. I’m definitely interested in doing so.’ Then from there, Dan had said to me, ‘Here’s her number.’ He gave me her number. I texted her.

She said, ‘I’m interested’. And then we kind of just started the process from there. It took a while and then just kind of had that conversation of, ‘hey, we want to get you out to New York. We’re filming,’ There is an understanding at that point that unfortunately, she was not able to travel because of her physical ailment, which was her foot. She was having a lot of trouble with her foot.

And although she was driving around and being able to kind of go from place to place and go to her favorite spots, like to pick up Mexican food or whatnot, her mobility was not great. So, we then kind of just had to figure out, well, okay, what about if we go to her? So, Scott Hansen, the producer, and Steve Wallenda, one of the other producers, drove from Georgia 16 hours down to Blanco, Texas. And she agreed to be a part of the film.

She filmed a sequence where they put a backdrop behind her on her property and, like, a black backdrop. And she recited some lines because originally, it’s supposed to be kind of like a Pamela Voorhees type of flashback. She said ‘This is cool, but I really would love to work with someone. Can I work with someone on the opposite side of me?’

So that’s where the whole Felissa Rose doctor sequence came in. And also, Rico talking to her as you see before the opening credits, yelling at her and, as she sits in a wheelchair and how she talks about how, don’t talk to me this way and whatnot. And then from there, it kind of built off from there, where we then added the breakfast scene, Rico helping her out of bed. And then after that, it was about five different shoots.

So, the fourth shoot, I think, was where she was painting the wolf on that, the painting as she was lying in bed. And then the last date that I filmed with her, because I filmed with her twice. We spent 48 hours with her. We got her food, we’re hanging out. You know, me, Crystal Wyndham, who’s one of the executive producers, Chiko Mendez and Alex Leyba, we all just spend time with her and basically just filmed with her and kind of hung out with her and stuff over a two-day period.

And those sequences were like the flashback. Rico was saying, ‘I can’t take this anymore, Mama. I’m tired of this and that’. And this is where he took the knife and stabbed his adopted father, played by Dan Gilroy, and all these different where she’s screaming in bed. ‘What did you do to me?’ It was spread out over quite a bit of months.

But the last time we saw her was September 2023. And we kept in touch on occasion. She would call me and ask how the weather is, and ask ‘when are you coming down?’ ‘We were planning on doing it in August of this year, but sadly she passed in July.

I Heart Noise: Yeah. That’s so precious that you got to spend that time with her.

Scott Goldberg: Yeah, she was really sweet. It’s interesting, people always ask ‘Weren’t you freaked out with filming with Shelley Duvall?’ Like, ‘You must have been so nervous!’ There are all these different things about asking all these things about Shelley. And I said, well, time had passed so far, so long.

As far as her involvement in The Shining, obviously she doesn’t look anything like she did, so it wasn’t too hard to kind of separate the idea that this was Shelley Duvall because of just how she looked. If she looked very similar to, like, let’s say, how she did in the eighties, and yes, it would definitely be a little less nonchalant about it.

But I guess because there was the difference of time passage. It just made it seem like, ‘oh, this is Shelley.’ Like Shelley of today. I wasn’t really reflecting back in the moment of being in the moment with her and hanging with her. Shelley from The Shining, so there was. Because I didn’t know her back then either. I wasn’t even born, but she was so sweet.

And the issues weren’t even mental at that point. When I met her was a lot of just physical ailments and once we were done filming with her, that’s when her health really started deteriorating where we felt that we had to keep everything private. She went on hospice, as Dan had informed me months before she passed.

You know, we knew that if any word got out about her being on hospice, TMZ, we’d be all over it and all the news sources. And we didn’t want that to happen because the whole thing for us with Shelley Duvall was to give her a platform to act again and have some dignity left instead of letting the Doctor Phil episode be that kind of a final stamp on who she was in her career. And so, we felt that it gave her the opportunity to act again, and she loved it. So that was really nice to notice that it gave her solace and that she enjoyed acting again.

I Heart Noise: There’s so much jarring imagery in this film, like brief flashes of horrific scenes. And I was wondering what it was like filming them. Was it really mundane or were you having, like, nightmares at home?

Scott Goldberg: They were fun. I mean, that’s what you want as, like, a person who loves horror is to kind of make those types of–film those types of things. I mean, those are always a blast because the flashbacks are meant to be something that raises attention.

I think having added that tension was good, too, because seeing it in the theater now and just seeing, knowing that it’s a wild ride throughout and seeing the theater is cool because you get this experience, people’s reactions. So that was really cool to kind of see that. As we pushed those sequences and get them out there and stuff, people start to feel more tension, for sure. So that’s cool.

I Heart Noise: What was your favorite memory from working on The Forest Hills?

Scott Goldberg: I would say definitely Shelley Duvall, because she was really sweet and so kind. But mainly, when I think back to the movie, I think about the farmhouse, have visuals of the farmhouse and just the exterior of it and the way that everyone just worked together and a family type of atmosphere.

Working with Edward Furlong was really cool because I love his movies: Brainscan, Detroit Rock City, Terminator 2. I grew up on having popcorn in the cinemas and drinking Coke and having candy, Twizzlers, and just watching that and relating to that character of John Connor, so all those things. But just having that family atmosphere and being a part of this production was something I’ll always remember for sure.

The Forest Hills is streaming on Amazon, Fandango, Vudu and is available on Youtube. Through the month of October, it will be screening in cinemas and theaters.

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