In 2020, I was frustrated creatively. COVID had forced me to shelve a different project, and I felt lost. But after driving up Highway 395 on a two-day escape from LA, I got interested in capturing the lockdown. I was inspired by the visuals of empty, open roads. Trash. Birds. The absence of humankind. Misery became opportunity.
I stole the premise for Where in the Hell from a short story by Sam Shepard, plucking out the straight male protagonist who's been abandoned by his wife and replacing him with a queer female character, newly abandoned by her partner. Though I don’t identify as queer, there’s a lot of me in Kasey. Through her, I’m exorcising my demons. Exploring a suspicion that I’m selfish in my relationship, putting my own needs and aspirations first. And to what end? My life partner/producing partner, Ricky de Laveaga (who does identify as queer), often rails against Los Angeles, advocating that we move away—to Colorado, to Canada, to Uruguay. “What would I do in Uruguay?” I say to him, dumbfounded. In the movie, Kasey says to Alan, “What would I do in Montana?” torn between going after her girlfriend or going back to LA to salvage her career, even as the movie industry is crumbling.
Alan is my comedic interpretation of the mysterious, dark-haired woman who appears in Shepard's story. I wanted to force Kasey into close quarters with this straight, square-seeming actor guy, someone she wouldn’t be friends with in a million years. I wanted to make them both uncomfortable, and see what would happen when they set out on a road trip together. My intention, I thought, was to magnify the unsettling dystopia of the lockdown, and delve into what the pandemic was doing to human relationships. What came out was a buddy comedy. A surprising, life-affirming story about two people reluctantly being there for each other.
A movie I studied early on was Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women (2016). I admire Reichardt so much. Her stark, arresting visuals. The way she stays out of her actors’ way. (I admire Debra Granik for this too.) But our movie needed humor. An elevated sense of fun. Laughs are my way into the emotional core. Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) became a touchstone. Further sources of inspiration for me and my cinematographer were Morvern Callar (2002), Paris, Texas (1984), and Y Tu Mamá También (2001).
In shooting Where in the Hell, we set out to capture kinetic images that put the focus on the characters, favoring a handheld camera that roots us right there with them. Lingering inside a simple two-shot or an expansive wide, we’ve made space to discover spontaneous behavior and emotional truth. My hope is that our audience will find the movie funny and moving and, above all, human. The script, the setting, the camera work, the acting—all of it is in service of embracing our humanity.