KELLY: They had that dynamic. And then Tara is an amazing theater actor. Why don’t we just cast the whole family?
ALEX: I think I said that.
Who gets credit?
KELLY: He can have it.
ALEX: I think it was me. (Laughs.) We have this ensemble, but Keith, Katherine, and Tara we’ve never worked with before. We have this ensemble to pull off. And I think we were all thinking about who from “My Summer Vacation” or “Rounding” or “Saint Frances” do we pull, and then our casting director was talking to Kelly. You knew Tara’s work really well. I watched her reel. “Oh no, this is very unlikely, but they are all incredible.” We could have cast three of the best actors working in Chicago to play father-mother-daughter and I don’t know if we ever could have gotten to the level of vulnerability that they get with one another. I don’t think we could have done it with all the theater games in the world. (Laughs.)
There’s an emotional throughline that wouldn’t have been there. An unspoken connection.
KELLY: Yeah. And on-camera I can see them playing with and challenging each other in a super, super fun way. They’re almost like, “I did this, now what are you gonna do?” Sometmes with Tara and Keith and then with Katherine and Keith I see a lot of play.
It’s a Chicago movie. Why is that important? Why are you Chicago filmmakers and what does that mean to the final product?
ALEX: What’s cool is that this is where we live. So, unlike a lot of writers, we’re writing this for a specific place that we live in. So that specificity doesn’t come if we go chase a tax credit in Toronto. Yes, there’s a good tax credit in Chicago, but this is where the relationships are. There is no better place to cast a movie. Period. I think you can get this level of performance other places, but I don’t know if you get the buy in. I don’t know if the way that actors that show up, the way a crew shows up, and all that peripheral stuff – most of our costumes were borrowed from local theaters! 70-80% of our props were borrowed from theaters. The theatre space, the rehearsal space – I think we paid for 3-5 days, and they just allowed us 14 more days to store our gear there. And to use the bathroom.
That would cost money in L.A.!
ALEX: Yeah! You can’t do it. I don’t think we get to put the amount of production value up on screen anywhere else like you do here. It’s an ensemble city. It’s a very selfless, self-motivated place. It’s a place that people like to come because of that. When people say, “Is there anyway we can do this crazy thing?” Usually the answer is yes, whereas on a traditional film I think there’s just like “OK if your film is under a million dollars this is what it looks like and how many days it is and…” Those were conversations we’d have talking about other movies in development. “Actually, this independent film is a little too big for the budget level, so can you make it smaller?” Whereas with “Saint Frances,” out of ignorance, we were just like we’re not going to ask Kelly to write fewer locations or cut characters or cut days. We’re just gonna do it. And that’s the ethos here.