Actors
Interviews - Actors
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“Nostalgia for When Things were Terrible”: Conner O’Malley, Danny Scharar and Jack Bensinger on Rap World
There’s an honesty to Rap World, the feature debut of co-directors Conner O’Malley and Danny Scharar, beyond its vérité stylings. With Scharar playing the director, Ben, Rap World is a mockumentary following three friends—Matt (O’Malley), Casey (Jack Bensinger) and Jason (Eric Rahill)—from Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, as they trudge through one long night in a quixotic attempt to make a rap album. It is January 11th, 2009: a month earlier The Dark Knight was released on home video, in nine days George W. Bush will leave office, the Great Recession looms and America feels like it is on the cusp of some […]
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“There Is a Bombardment of Violent Images in Our Lives”: Director Pascal Plante on His High-Tech Serial Killer Drama Red Rooms
Real world inspirations and dark web folklore converge in Red Rooms, the third feature from Quebecois filmmaker Pascal Plante that has conjured much buzz since its U.S. theatrical release last month. Named after the fabled sinister backdrop of covertly circulated online snuff videos, the film dissects our culture’s obsession with gorey details. As the first day of a shocking murder trial unfolds in a Montreal courthouse, the devilishly striking Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) is first in line to snag one of a handful of seats available to the public. The man on trial, bald and lanky Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), is […]
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“The Process Was More Important Than the Result”: My First Film Star Odessa Young, Back To One, Episode 308
Odessa Young is only 26, but she already has a truly impressive body of work behind her. Assassination Nation, A Million Little Pieces, Shirley, Mothering Sunday, The Stand, The Staircase, Manodrome, in each of these projects, she seems to have an effortless command over her character, each unique, never forced, always true. Now she stars as Vita, the lead character based on Zia Anger in My First Film. On this episode, she talks about the need to “cultivate an obsession” as character preparation, recent musings on “how much an actor should act to the camera,” why she never worries about […]
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“America is Desperate for a Narrative”: Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez on Invention
Following a decade of work in experimental and documentary cinema, director Courtney Stephens steps into fiction for the first time with Invention, a remarkably resourceful microbudget drama that nonetheless resists strict categorization. Starring and co-conceived by Callie Hernandez, the film draws upon the actress’s real-life relationship with her late father, a medical doctor turned small-time huckster who made a name for himself on local television talk shows and public access programs in the ’90s and 2000s. In this fictionalized telling set in the Berkshires, VHS footage of those TV appearances weave through a story in which Hernandez, playing a version […]
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“If We’re Gonna Live in This Story, We’ve Gotta Live with Each Other”: Zachary Ray Sherman, Back To One, Episode 299
After early success opposite Kirsten Dunst in Lifetime’s Fifteen and Pregnant, and as Jasper on the CW’s reboot of 90210, he’s gone on to build an impressive acting resume balancing television work (Hulu’s Under the Banner of Heaven) with edgy, transformative roles in independent films (Cuck; Can’t Seem to Make You Mine, opposite Lindsay Burdge; and A Desert, which just premiered at the Tribeca Festival, to name a few). On this episode, he talks about why it all starts with building trust with his collaborators early, the semi-mystical process of aligning his heart with the character’s heart, the importance of […]
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Of Mascots and Men: Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickston Cole Tews on Hundreds of Beavers
The phrase “word-of-mouth indie theatrical hit” sounds as outdated in 2024 as “coming soon to LaserDisc.” And yet, the slapstick fur-trapping adventure comedy Hundreds of Beavers has graduated from its lengthy festival run to become that rarest of things, a star-free independent film that has already grossed more than double its $150,000 production budget during its self-distributed gradual cinema rollout (still continuing as of this writing, despite its release on VOD). First-time feature writer-director Mike Cheslik previously teamed with lead actor/producer/co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews on the latter’s feature directorial debut, the black-and-white adventure comedy Lake Michigan Monster. In classic independent […]
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A Film To Read: Matiás Piñeiro, Tomas Paula Marques and Gabi Saidón on You Burn Me
New York-based Argentinian director Matiás Piñeiro’s work is without a doubt, a celebration of intertextuality. After continuously exploring the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies from 2011’s Rosalinda up until 2020’s Isabella, he was drawn to a text which seemed impenetrable, admitting he had no clue how to film a poetic dialogue. In order to collect the shots for the adaptation-film-collage that would become You Burn Me, the filmmaker traveled between New York and San Sebastian (where he teaches at the EQZE film school, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola), which gave him the possibility to “develop the material, watch it and think […]
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“Nine Pages a Day of Heavy Dialogue”: Bob Byington and David Krumholtz on Lousy Carter
In 2012, Bob Byington won a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival for Somebody Up There Likes Me; last year, he returned with Lousy Carter. Writing about the festival, I said of the film: Introducing Bob Byington’s Lousy Carter alongside the writer-director, star David Krumholtz preemptively noted that while the film was shot and is set there, “Whatever you think of Texas, its politics have nothing to do with the film.” The disclaimer is accurate—this is another of Byington’s immaculately mean comedies with an underlying sentimental streak, a blend he’s been iterating with various degrees of sharpness for […]
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Forgive My Laughter: Vera Drew on The People’s Joker
The following interview with The People’s Joker writer, director and star, Vera Drew, appears in Filmmaker issue #126 and now appears online as the film receives its U.S. theatrical release from Altered Innocence. Just as The People’s Joker was preparing to premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, a “strongly worded letter” arrived that threatened immediate legal action if Vera Drew’s scrappy, bold feature debut went ahead with its multiple planned screenings. Warner Bros. was less than pleased that Drew and co-writer Bri LeRose based their film on a trademarked DC franchise, and it likely didn’t help that the […]
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“The Experience of Being an Outsider Is a Universal One”: River Gallo and Esteban Arango on Ponyboi
On a dreary Valentine’s Day in New Jersey during the early aughts, intersex laundromat employee and sex worker Ponyboi (River Gallo) finds themselves embroiled in a bungled drug deal. Estranged from his family and afraid of coming clean to his best friend (Victoria Pedretti) and her husband (Dylan O’Brien)—also Ponyboi’s boss and clandestine sexual partner—he decides to go on the run and permanently escape the Garden State. Along the way, he crosses paths with a rugged kindly stranger who’s shrouded in mystery and en route to Las Vegas. Just when he’s ready to hitch a ride to the desert, however, […]
