When filmmakers and companions Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson premiered their “Ghostlight” on the primary day of Sundance this January, it wasn’t the one new addition to their rising household they needed to share. One month earlier than the duo confirmed their “Saint Frances” follow-up to an keen Utah viewers, they’d welcomed their first youngster.
For a filmmaking pair already carving out a distinct segment for hard-won, heart-warming indie options (like Indie Spirit and Gotham nominee “Saint Frances”), making it a household affair is simply a part of the deal. In any case, who else is healthier outfitted to launch a movie whereas additionally affected by huge sleep deprivation than a pair of can-do filmmakers?
As O’Sullivan and Thompson put together to convey “Ghostlight” to theatrical audiences this week, that perspective and that household bond go a great distance, even when the issues are a bit of completely different this time round. Like, sleeping? That may come again sooner or later, proper?
“I hold being like, ‘So there’s no approach he’s going to be 16 years outdated, unable to roll onto his again. It will change,’” Thompson stated with fun throughout a current interview with IndieWire. It appears as if the vagaries of unbiased filmmaking have ensured these two consider each risk.
The pair first rose to acclaim with Thompson’s “Saint Frances,” which debuted at SXSW in 2019, profitable each the Viewers Award and a Particular Jury Award within the Narrative Function part. O’Sullivan, who additionally wrote the script, stars within the movie as an unlikely nanny who varieties a profound attachment to her younger cost (Ramona Edith Williams because the titular Frances).
The February 2020 launch of “Saint Frances” was disrupted by the pandemic, however it remained a vital favourite, and located its method to a number of Gotham Awards noms (together with breakthrough actor for O’Sullivan and the Bingham Ray breakthrough director prize for Thompson) and a John Cassavetes Award nom on the Indie Spirits.
Working collectively works for them, even when it’s typically a bit all-consuming. “I want we had extra boundaries, that’s for certain,” Thompson stated with a smile.
Not that they haven’t tried. “At one level, we drew up an inventory of boundaries that we might have, in order that we wouldn’t be speaking about work on a regular basis at residence,” O’Sullivan stated. “It lasted 20 minutes.”
There are, nonetheless, some pure breaks within the course of. Whereas O’Sullivan and Thompson co-directed “Ghostlight,” O’Sullivan wrote the script herself. Throughout the launch of “Saint Frances,” O’Sullivan began to work on the script for “Mouse,” which the pair anticipated to be the following movie they did collectively, and the primary one they’d formally co-direct.
Life, after all, occurred. The pandemic hit. The world shut down. However O’Sullivan stored working: She workshopped the script with the Hamptons Screenwriting Lab which, in 2020, was held as a digital gathering.
That lab additionally impressed O’Sullivan, who had “by no means taken a writing class” earlier than, to get again to fundamentals. “I used to be like, ‘I must study what construction is,’” she stated. “I used to be actually researching The Hero’s Journey, after which I used to be like, ‘OK, how do I take essentially the most unlikely, uninteresting hero and put him into this type of underworld that he’s by no means been in earlier than?’”
Then, she noticed a trailer for a Nationwide Theatre manufacturing of “Romeo and Juliet,” which sparked one thing else. “I used to be like, ‘I need to do one thing with traditional theater, in a approach that feels actually up to date and that examines the story from a unique age viewpoint,’” O’Sullivan stated.
In “Ghostlight,” O’Sullivan makes use of “Romeo and Juliet” as a canny entry level into a number of storylines. On the floor, it’s a neighborhood manufacturing of the long-lasting Shakespeare play that brings the emotionally distant Dan (Keith Kupferer) into the orbit of a area people theater group, run by the spunky Rita (Dolly De Leon). But, as he begins rehearsing with them in secret, we study extra in regards to the earlier tragedy that has fractured his household — with Kupferer’s real-life spouse, Tara Mallen, starring as Dan’s spouse Sharon, and their very own youngster, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, taking part in Dan and Tara’s daughter Daisy — one which loosely modernizes the everlasting story of woe and younger love gone awry.
Regardless of the assorted bits of “kismet” that impressed O’Sullivan whereas writing “Ghostlight,” she and Thompson nonetheless anticipated that “Mouse” can be their subsequent venture. As regular, that concerned a variety of conversations.
“I believe we stored flip-flopping on whether or not we have been going to co-direct it or whether or not I used to be simply going to be type of the inventive producer,” Thompson stated. “And typically it was like, ‘Are we in a great place in our relationship? Are we in a foul place?’ Sooner or later, even into pitching it to folks, we have been like, ‘We’re going to really feel this out, see the place it goes.’”
After which the strikes occurred. “When the strikes occurred, all the pieces type of fell aside,” O’Sullivan stated. “We knew that we might pivot [to ‘Ghostlight’], as a result of ‘Mouse’ had a a lot larger finances, and I had ‘Ghostlight’ able to go. We knew that we might do this for approach much less cash. We might do it domestically. We might rent all of our actor mates who we love and need to work with. It simply grew to become the factor that was proper in entrance of us.”
With an interim settlement in hand, they have been in a position to make the movie the way in which they actually like to make movies: at residence in Chicago, with folks they love and know, with the scrappy ethos they appear keen to carry on to. Casting began with the character of Dan.
O’Sullivan had beforehand labored with Keith Kupferer in a 2014 manufacturing of “The People” at Chicago’s American Theater Firm. Within the Stephen Karam play, Kupferer performed O’Sullivan’s father. “In my mind, he was like this father determine, and I knew what an unbelievable actor he’s,” she stated. “Figuring out all the pieces that [the character of] Dan must do in ‘Ghostlight,’ I used to be like, ‘It’s solely him. Solely he is usually a plausible development employee who’s going to be humorous and have unbelievable pathos and is aware of the way to bottle all the pieces up till he can’t anymore and have that second of catharsis and vulnerability.’”
When the pair requested Kupferer if he was , he had his personal query: May his daughter, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, audition for the position of Dan’s daughter Daisy?
“She got here in, she did a studying, we thought she was good, and she or he thought she had finished a horrible job,” O’Sullivan stated. “She was like, ‘I fucked it up. I used to be flat,’ and we have been like, ‘That is such a Daisy power,’ and so we forged the 2 of them.”
After which their casting director Mickie Pascal threw yet one more concept into the combination: What in the event that they forged Keith’s spouse and Katherine’s mom Tara Mallen, too? “It simply made sense,” O’Sullivan stated. “To have the ability to harness this power … we by no means might’ve deliberate it. We simply occurred upon the chance.”
Whereas each Kupferer and Mallen have been confirmed portions to O’Sullivan and Thompson, due to their intensive work in Chicago theater, the youngest member of the household was a bit extra of a wild card. The rising star had simply completed work on Kelly Fremon Craig’s charming “Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret,” however O’Sullivan and Thompson don’t have a tendency to look at earlier performances relating to casting.
“We didn’t watch ‘Are You There, God?’ till after we shot ‘Ghostlight,’” Thompson stated. “ when Harrison Ford has one scene in ‘Apocalypse Now’ and also you’re like, ‘That man’s a film star’? She’s bought that scene [in ‘Are You There, God?’] the place she’s going to the occasion, and she or he retains turning again to her mother, and she or he’s like, ‘Mother, I’ve to go,’ after which her mother’s like, ‘Another image,’ and she or he’d simply hold posing. I used to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s Katherine. She’s so crisp and alive.’”
Armed with that household dynamic on-screen, O’Sullivan and Thompson introduced their very own bond behind the digital camera. Whereas “Ghostlight” is the primary movie they’ve formally co-directed collectively, the pair appear to maneuver instinctually between their roles whereas on set. (And, sure, O’Sullivan was pregnant throughout the shoot; she was eight months alongside after they wrapped.)
“I believe we get to cowl extra floor,” Thompson stated. “We’re sharing a monitor, due to budgetary constraints, a really small monitor! However Kelly has an curiosity in this factor, and she or he’s speaking to this actor, and I’m ferreting away with the cinematographer within the nook, after which possibly that’s reversed, the place Kelly has some massive concept about manufacturing design, and I’m speaking to a forged member. Whenever you get again to the monitor, you do have the chance to be shocked, as a result of the opposite particular person is working parallel.”
Maybe these lack of boundaries are useful, as a result of the fixed communication appears to serve them, each on the day and after they’re speaking about it these many months later.
“It’s not like we’re relegated to only one side of filmmaking,” O’Sullivan stated. “We’re type of each doing all the pieces on a regular basis, and checking in with one another that we’re on the identical web page or saying, ‘I actually need to attempt one thing completely different,’ and being like, ‘Cool, go for it.’ We attempt to get aligned on general imaginative and prescient earlier than we get to set, so there’s no massive arguments about, ‘Wait, I assumed the scene was about this.’”
Like “Saint Frances,” “Ghostlight” is a Chicago film with a capital C. Made in and across the metropolis and its suburbs, if the entire thing feels actual, it’s as a result of it’s. You’ll be able to’t pretend that.
“We didn’t know that it was going to work, [especially because of] the way in which our budgets are solely potential by way of generosity,” Thompson stated. “On ‘Ghostlight,’ our costume finances was zero, primarily, and so everyone needed to convey their very own stuff. After which, all these costumes [for the play] have been donated from theaters, so most of the props are from theaters.”
Principally, he stated, it sort of felt like placing on a present, simply as they do within the movie. “It felt like an awesome, massive hug. It felt like being in a neighborhood theater present,” Thompson continued. “It actually looks like while you’re a child and also you’re ready for the summer time so you may go play with your mates, and [you’re thinking,] what’s the film going to be this summer time? What story is somebody going to assume up?”
It additionally serves as a method to remind folks of the unbelievable expertise on supply within the metropolis — of the movie’s leads, solely De Leon shouldn’t be a neighborhood, and even she got here on board the movie as a result of private connections; she and Thompson and O’Sullivan share a private supervisor.
“It confirms, to me, that it’s a metropolis worthy of alternative, particularly for actors,” O’Sullivan stated. “Keith has performed a cop in so many alternative motion pictures and TV exhibits, and he’s unbelievable. It looks like an actual honor and privilege to get to make one thing the place, hopefully, we’re placing these extremely gifted forged and crew members up on the display that they need to be on, which is because the leads, because the heads of division, to have the ability to present the world, ‘You don’t must go searching in New York and L.A. on a regular basis. That is an extremely hardworking, ultra-talented group of individuals right here.’”
So, no, don’t anticipate O’Sullivan and Thompson to show tail for Hollywood anytime quickly. “Marvel has not known as us,” O’Sullivan stated. Thompson added with fun, “Yeah, no person’s calling!”
“We benefit from the scrappy nature of [indie filmmaking]. In fact, we all the time need more cash. But when we had an in depth costume finances and people costumes [could] be constructed from the bottom up…” O’Sullivan stated with a shrug. “A few of what helps is the authenticity is for actual. Like in ‘Saint Frances,’ we filmed in our residence. These costumes [in ‘Ghostlight’] have been worn by 16 different actors over the course of a long time. Even when an viewers isn’t super-conscious of it, I believe it does get in on a unconscious stage of the authenticity of it.”
Their subsequent movie — fingers crossed — could take them a bit of farther afield. The pair are hoping to lastly make “Mouse” this fall, with a shoot that will not less than partially happen in Arkansas.
“We’re capturing it in fall, knock on all the wooden, as a result of with unbiased movie, what we’ve found, is nothing is actual till you’re there, and even then, it’s not till wrap,” O’Sullivan stated. “However that’s what we’re doing, I say, hopefully and confidently.”
They’ve bought some backers lined up, however no forged as of but. “Ghostlight” has been instructive: It’s nonetheless potential to do issues on an indie scale and see them flourish. “We had set as much as do ‘Mouse’ in a really conventional Hollywood approach with packaging and growth and all these items, after which we bought impressed by the ‘Ghostlight’ of all of it,” Thompson stated. “Basically, we’re doing the ‘Ghostlight’ mannequin; we’re simply feeding it steroids and corn and seeing how massive it will probably get.”
So, what’s “Mouse” about? (As is a recurring theme with these two, loglines is usually a bit robust to convey the complete scope of what they’re doing.)
“That’s a very good query. I’ve such a tough time with loglines,” O’Sullivan stated. “Simply know that nonetheless dangerous this logline is, hopefully, it’s higher than that. It’s about two finest mates in Arkansas in 2002, and a friendship that outcomes after a tragedy. It’s much like ‘Ghostlight,’ however I don’t need to give an excessive amount of away as a result of there’s some shock baked in. I might simply say it’s about ladies in highschool in Arkansas 2002. Not simply ladies, however ladies, too. It’s intergenerational. That is horrible!”
“What a logline,” Thompson stated with fun. Does he have a greater one? “Oh, I might not have a greater one,” he stated. “I assume it’s about Callie and Minnie, who’re opposites, in Arkansas within the early 2000s and one thing occurs that modifications their lives. And Minnie will get an opportunity on the highlight—”
(That is when the pair’s pure inclination to work in tandem actually hits its stride.)
O’Sullivan: “That upsets the—” Thompson: “—the dynamic.” They laughed. “That’s good!” Thompson stated. “We’re workshopping this proper in entrance of you.”
IFC Movies will launch “Ghostlight” in restricted theaters on Friday, June 14, with enlargement to comply with.