“So how did this film come about?” This is the question all filmmakers are inevitably asked at every single Q&A and in 2023, during the festival run of our debut feature, Sour Party, boy, did we have a juicy answer. “We were in New York making what we thought was going to be our first feature, a documentary, and we were catfished by our subject!” Back in 2023, nothing could have shaken this narrative, but time has a way of revealing truths one simply can’t see in the moment, and today, we have a much different answer to that question.
The year was 2021 and we were standing on the deck of a massive ship, a ship that was quite literally sinking. We had 13 bags of film equipment, zero dollars in our bank accounts, one day’s worth of mostly unusable footage, and nowhere to go but home. We were in the middle of a documentary shoot that had gone terribly wrong. We turned to our cinematographer and asked her, “What do you want to do? Do you feel safe?” “No,” she said, “I don’t feel safe.” And with that, we packed up the gear and headed to a friend’s to crash for the night. A Los Angeles friend who ironically was in New York to premiere their debut feature. The next day, tails between our legs, feeling like complete failures, we planned our return to L.A.
This had all begun a few months earlier. A friend had sent us a strange email with a link to a spec pilot for a reality show he’d filmed. The footage was bizarre, to say the least. A woman with a wild story. She had been burned by corporate America, her company and very name had been stolen, but she’d not let this injustice slow her down. Instead, she’d channeled her misfortune into creativity by purchasing a historical ship, transforming it into an art installation and forging an unconventional lifestyle with her husband aboard the vessel. Her world was a magical wonderland filled with whimsical paintings, sculptures and Swiss Family Robinson-style inventions. While this woman’s story and lifestyle were compelling, the actual reality show pitch was ludicrous, campy in the worst way and totally not in line with anything this woman seemed to stand for. Still, we were taken by her optimism and childlike wonderment. We started researching her, learning more about her life, and after a few days of watching her online, we were inspired. This wasn’t a reality show – this needed to be a documentary.
“You guys are the most persistent filmmakers I know,” a friend had said to us, after working with us on a short film that ended up at the bottom of a long list of projects that didn’t go anywhere. To give you some backstory, we met in 2009 and started making films together in 2013. Before we were married, before we were even a couple. After many years, we’d done everything from web series to short films, and had even built a nice side hustle of branded content, but nothing had really hit. No big festival laurels, no viral success, just raw determination. In 2021, after spending 12 years trying to break into the industry, on the heels of the Covid lockdown, with an urgent sense of now or never, “persistent” was not the adjective we wanted to hear.
So we stared through our rose-colored laptop screen at this magical, fairy-like woman on a ship and decided to grab the opportunity that was in front of us. To tell this woman’s story, to vindicate her, and in doing so, to deliver our first feature film, with critical acclaim and industry recognition surely to follow. We scraped together what we could (some savings combined with a handful of unemployment checks), borrowed camera equipment in exchange for a producer credit, enlisted a cinematographer (who would later become one of our closest friends), and we were on our way. Our subject was very excited for the opportunity to tell her story and welcomed our pitch with open arms. After several months of Zooms and remote planning, we were on a plane, New York bound, a crew of three ready to make the next great documentary. Our glowing optimism, however, would soon turn sour, as the moment we got off that plane, the floor completely fell out beneath us.
Now, to protect those involved and for legal reasons, we can’t go into all the details of this failed shoot. Suffice it to say, we were deeply misled by our subject, threatened by a competing filmmaker, and confronted by a gang of criminals who we feared were members of the Russian mob. It was one disaster after another, but as we touched down back in L.A., completely broke and defeated, our documentary subject had become the villain of the story. Things became dark and at times even dangerous, but in the end, we had neither the resources nor the wherewithal to pivot. Our subject had led us astray from the story we thought we were telling, from what we wanted to tell, but what she really did was add layers, layers we weren’t prepared to tackle. We were so fixated on the outcome that we didn’t approach the story with the level of authenticity it required. We had been shown a mirror and we didn’t like what we saw.
Back in L.A., we felt lost. This was different than the rejections and defeats we’d faced in the past. This was a defeat that made us question everything we had ever done. We were forced to face the worst parts of ourselves, the darkest side of our ambition, a place that misguided desperation had brought us to. For the first time in our 12 years in L.A., we thought about giving up. It wasn’t only a dark time for us, it was a dark time for L.A. Our friends were leaving in droves, work was non-existent, the weight of uncertainty hung in the air like a black hole, swallowing everything in its path. Would this be the moment that finally broke us? When the jet lag wore off and oxygen started to come back into the room, we had an epiphany: this trauma wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was the swift kick in the ass we needed to do something truly authentic. Sour Party was born. From the ashes of our failure and shame, we decided to tell the most authentic story we could – our story. The story of 12 years of navigating the absolute, over-the-top absurdity that is L.A.
We worked to reverse-engineer a project that needed no green light. “Write what you know and use what you have,” they say, and as clichéd as it sounds, that was the best advice we could have ever taken. We shot the film in 2022, got married during production, and spent the next two years touring it at festivals. That experience came with its own ups and downs. Our hearts sank with every Film Freeway rejection, near miss and close call. Once again, we were filled with self-doubt, but we never gave up. Sour Party did eventually find its home, and at every festival we played, people would approach us, telling us how much they saw themselves in the film. For a project filled with fart jokes and slacker humor, that made us feel amazing. We faced many more rejections with this film, many times we wanted to give up, but something in us kept us going; we kept telling ourselves that we just needed one person to see this movie to give it the chance it deserved. Finally, thanks to the help of Decentralized Pictures, we found that one person in Steven Soderbergh. He chose our film to be awarded his Andrews/Bernard grant and offered us his name with a “Steven Soderbergh Presents” title. Our authenticity and our persistence had paid off.
Looking back on our experience on the sinking ship, it’s become one of the most formative creative experiences of our lives. And if you are wondering, yes, we are writing a narrative feature about this pivotal moment. Much like the characters of Sour Party, we were confronted with failure and our deepest insecurities. We had to face the worst parts of ourselves in order to unlock what we had been searching for ever since we began our journey into filmmaking: our voice.
We think a lot now about the person who told us we were the most persistent filmmakers they knew. At the time, we were so offended. That word stung, it felt back-handed, a low-key insult likening us to Sisyphus, forever pushing a boulder up a hill. Now we see it for the compliment that it was. It takes persistence to hone your craft and become skilled at any pursuit. Persistence is not just an important quality for a filmmaker to have, it’s the most important one. Persistence has led to us finally releasing our first feature film. It has taken our self-financed, scrappy production, strung together with bubblegum and shoelaces, and brought it to the highest place it could go, with an industry legend giving us a stamp of approval. Sour Party is now out in wide release and we’re looking back on our journey, chips dusted off our shoulders, ready to take on whatever challenges are to come next.
