We had a lot of discussions about humor, and where it was coming from, but the way I see the world can be unusual. I’ll share with you that my dad, when he died, the coroner came into the room, and his name was Dick Fucamma — and somebody else might have been too distraught to notice, but I obviously noticed that right away. I was looking at his name tag and thought, “This is what life is. Dick Fucamma comes into a room and takes your dad away from you.” These are things that happen in real life, and the filter I have over human experience is tuned to that chaos. Whereas I think other people might not see it as much.
Michelle: People can get stuck in the pain and not let their perception rise to the comedy or absurdity of a situation when that might be exactly what they need most — and Jennifer and I tried to see both of those colors at the same time. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t take things seriously, but life has always been a healthy marriage between comedy and tragedy.
With Film Threat being a publication all about indies — I wanted to go back to some interviews you both have done in the past and take a moment to dive into your thoughts on independent filmmaking… Michelle, you said in an interview with the LA Times in 2020 (surrounding a short film that you had done), “There’s a unique way of telling stories in that medium where they can be funny, or heart-wrenching, or scary all in this very short period of time.” How did you work in those areas of finite time and use that knowledge to crack into your first feature? How did your experience in shorts help you expand creatively into a long-form landscape?
Michelle: Thinking back to a couple of the shorts that I’ve directed that have been two of my favorites, one is called Summoned and another is The Interview — with the latter being about the last job interview on Earth. It follows this man as he crosses an apocalyptic Los Angeles to get to an interview because he really wants work. Which is ridiculous but very human. In a sense, none of us will ever not want the job. And with Summoned, the joke is that the main character is trying to summon the spirit of her lost fiancé but ends up accidentally summoning who the universe thinks is her lost love — which is a guy she made out with in a closet in the fifth grade.
“…life has always been a healthy marriage between comedy and tragedy.”
Both are presented as drama (or horror), but there’s an obvious turn into comedy. What the freedom of short films can allow, and by extension indie projects, is that larger ability to subvert expectations without having to jump through as many hoops. Doing things in the short form can carry interesting opportunities for pacing in longer feature films, and Jennifer and I were able to cut dramatic convention against our comedy
Jennifer, you gave an interview on Ruth Hill’s Media From the Heart in 2016 where you said, “Indie films changed my life.” And went on to say, “When you get a good indie film, you get to do things that you would never get to do in a studio film.” Piggybacking off of what Michelle just touched on, I hoped that you could articulate a little bit more about what indie films mean to you, and your ongoing spark of creativity in that space? In what ways has independent filmmaking changed your life, and how is it still changing your life?
Jennifer: Indie film has absolutely changed my life. It’s so funny because I said that stuff years ago, and I feel more connected to it now than I ever did then. Hopefully, it will continue to change my life for the better, that catharsis and those opportunities to work with great people along the way. Michelle and I had this talk a lot when we were on set and things were hard, and we would look at each other and remember that we didn’t have to answer to anyone. We could do dark jokes, we could try stuff, and we wouldn’t have to have it go through fifteen different people for them to tell us that the joke isn’t good — or that they don’t get it. We got to do whatever we wanted within the budget that we had, and there were no real creative constraints.
More than that, I think some of the logistical constraints because of an indie budget made our creative choices even better. You have to think outside the box. Indie film is, and I say this now having a world premier at the Austin Film Festival tonight, but it is so hard. Like, really-really hard. I don’t understand the people who do independent projects but aren’t really that passionate about them. Michelle and I are so lucky that every single person who worked on this film was so passionate about it, to the point where it makes me cry because they’re as proud as they are.
You can feel it in the movie. Everybody wanted to be there, and they believed in this story for whatever reason. They committed, and that’s not something you often get. I can’t say I’ve done a ton of studio movies, and I’d love to do those, but I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than making a film like For When You Get Lost. Working with Michelle and having a creative collaboration where everyone shared the same goal, from top to bottom, was incredible. I don’t know what it would be like to make a studio movie, and I hope I make one someday, but even if you have to trade logistical comfort for creative freedom — those restrictions feed your creativity. If we were given more this film might not have worked.
