Staff Pick Premiere: When partners reconsider their relationship

There are many incredible films at Sundance every year, but Joey Ally’s short PARTNERS left a lasting impression. In just under seven minutes, the film brings the viewer into the complexities of a modern-day relationship. As a couple navigates their newest rocky patch, they passively reference long-standing differences in conversation, while employing newly surfaced ammunition. It’s a situation most can, unfortunately, relate to, and it feels entirely real. Written and starring Hannah Pearl Utt and Jen Tullock from the recent Staff Pick “DISENGAGED,” the duo captures what it feels like to fight for the upper hand, while not trying to hurt the other person involved … well, not too badly at least. Anyhow, the film resonated with us and we are delighted to premiere it today on Vimeo, along with a conversation that I had with Joey about collaboration and what it means to be a short-film creator today. Vimeo: Partners captures the complexities of being in a relationship so perfectly. Where did the desire to share this story come from? Joey Ally: When Season 1 of Transparent came out, TJ — my real life “partner,” and the film’s cinematographer/editor/our fellow producer — and I loved it so much that we watched the entire season twice in a row. Watching the Pfefferman’s love and fight with each other in such a grounded, visceral way made me want to make something simply deep. I wanted to make something focused outside the white, heteronormative experience, something entertaining and funny and fun with gravitas that gave that ease of tone to characters you don’t get to see inside of it all the time. It’s really important to me that what I make in my life have a reason, and in directing I’ve started to find this “reason” by working with socially unconventional protagonists. Although my life is by all standards pretty great now, I grew up heavily bullied for the bulk of my youth, and I guess it’s always made me stick more on the side of the outsider. I want to make my audiences recognize them as an insider, as themselves. When Hannah and Jen popped up with Partners shortly thereafter — as besties and writing partners who’d crafted a couple constantly and hilariously bickering about their sex life (among other things) — it felt perfect. [It’s] a couple going through something, and that couple is gay, and the tone of the piece points neither to nor away from their sexuality. You’re just watching two people go through some shit, and they happen to be people with lives that we haven’t seen explored in media nearly enough, which means an amazing wealth of fresh moments to explore. I’d always rather watch, and make, something new.

I know that Hannah and Jen work together frequently, but how did this particular collaboration come about? Having lived in both NYC and LA, have you noticed a difference in people’s willingness to collaborate? I was introduced to Jen and Hannah through a mutual friend, Michael Nathanson, who I’d met assisting Lynn (Shelton) on a CBS pilot that he was hilarious in. He saw my first short MINIMUM WAGE, and thought we’d hit it off in work and lifestyle. He was right! The project he had in mind when he introduced us went another way, but many months later at a picnic, Hannah told me about Partners, and within half an hour she’d phoned Jen in New York and we decided to make it together. Being from New York, and coming from the theater community as an actor, I’ll say the desire to workshop and rehearse seems stronger to me in New York overall. That said, it’s easier to shoot in LA because of simple things like space and having a car to toss your production stuff into and the weather being generally amenable to your aims. Both places have challenges and built-in benefits. Wherever I am, I just try to make sure I’m working with people who are doing it because they really, really care about the story we’re telling, and not because “it” might do well — whatever “it” is. I don’t need a massive community, just one as manic and ruthless as I am about the quality of the work.

The roundness of the film, I think, mirrors the roundness of the experience of arguing with someone you already know you’ll forgive.”

The performances, setting, and writing all felt so natural and genuine. How were you able to achieve this feel? It didn’t hurt to start with amazing writer/actors who knew each other all the way down and trusted each other completely. Because Jen and Hannah had been playing with these characters for some time, I was able to come in and tweak and pinch and pull here and there. We workshopped the script over a couple rehearsals in the space where we ultimately shot. We f—ed around and improvised and found what was funnier than what was on the page, and what was too funny in a scripted way and cut it, and where there may be needed to be some denouement, or one character or the other needed to trim back the anger to not really end things, and honed and honed. After taking time to prep, the shoot and edit were actually very quick – TJ and I have a pretty symbiotic working relationship and he’s an amazing DP, who I then convinced to edit the thing, and I think keeping it so homegrown was another large factor in it gelling so completely. In the edit, we worked hard to cut any knee-slapping or quippy moments that they felt like they broke the reality of the space. There’s a bloopers reel in that footage that’s pants-wetting good; Jen and Hannah are hilarious. But I wanted, and we all wanted, it to feel really real. So I guess, we did it by starting with something we all understood — that loving each other doesn’t mean everything’s perfect — and then we all tried to stick to the truths we knew about that thing, instead of punching it up.

Structurally, the film is tight and has a great punch line. It’s very digestible. When making a film about a huge topic like the differences couples encounter in their relationship, what does it take to distill the story into less than seven minutes? I think it comes down to recognizable behavior that unfolds in an unhurried manner. Showing a snapshot. I’ve certainly had many arguments like the one in Partners on a range of topics with ex-loves, and most of them really go that way. One of you is grumpy, an argument is begun, the other doesn’t really want to engage, it’s heated for a moment, and eventually, you realize you’re hungry or thirsty or you want to watch TV so you say f— it and give up enough to keep hanging out. The only fight that doesn’t end that way is the one that ends the relationship or the one that should, in my experience. I think Partners works because it’s two people fighting, for sure, but in a way that’s clear that neither of them is ready to break the thing apart. Then one of them hops on the others’ back, and I smile every time. That was improvised in that take. So real. The roundness of the film, I think, mirrors the roundness of the experience of arguing with someone you already know you’ll forgive.

As a director, what’s your process when approaching a script that you didn’t write? Does it differ from a piece that you have written? What are the pros and cons? What did you learn from working on Partners? Outside of a corporate video spoof of “The Office,” PARTNERS is still the only piece I’ve made that I didn’t write in entirety. Turns out, it’s exactly the same – I care the same amount, I deeply question every word on the page, and I work with my collaborators for everything to be in tone. I’ve studied at UCB and Groundlings, and in a billion acting workshops, but until PARTNERS I hadn’t been able to play too much with improv as a director – something I’d especially wanted to do after assisting Megan (Griffiths) and Lynn (Shelton). Turns out, it’s my favorite thing. So I’ll always be grateful to this project for that experience. I also learned definitively that I love working on other people’s scripts as much as my own, if differently – I’ll always write my own words, but there are some really smart writers out there, Jen and Hannah among them. It’s fun to throw all the brains in together.

How was your experience premiering the film at Sundance and since then, showing at several more festivals? I ended up at Sundance as a volunteer in 2011, having my quarter-life crisis on the backend of some serious family stuff that had me feeling pretty lost, and it was there that I discovered I wanted to be a director. I didn’t even really know what indie film was at the time, and I was an actor who had just started writing and had very little idea what to do next besides finding a new waitressing job in LA, where I’d just moved from New York. I sat in a screening of Megan Griffiths’ THE OFF HOURS, which I instantly connected to and loved, and afterward listening to her in the Q&A I thought, “Maybe I want to do what she does?” So premiering at Sundance was the beyond, of the beyond, of the beyond of my mind being blown. I had been envisioning premiering exactly there literally the entire time that I’ve been on this mission. I cried in every screening. Especially in the last one, coincidentally in the same theater where I’d seen Megan’s film. I don’t want to be that asshole, but really, I felt like motherf—ing Dorothy in Oz before stuff starts getting crazy. That feeling has continued, sharing it with more audiences. It has been unspeakably moving, to hear gay people tell me they’ve never seen themselves and their relationships on screen this way before, and to have straight people, and people who are neither gay nor straight, tell me that too. We’ve felt equally accepted and celebrated at LGBT and more mainstream festivals, and I think that’s my greatest happiness of what we’ve made. What’s your take on the current landscape of short filmmaking? Short filmmaking as a whole is in an exciting place right now. The internet has made it so that we are all interested in shorter content, meaning that where a short may previously have been a teaser for a feature or full-length television show, it can now be a teaser for a series that can keep its same form, or just stand on its own and still be seen around the world with or without the festival system. That’s a big deal. Even five years ago when I started wanting to direct, I was barely aware of shorts existing. Getting them funded is still a nightmare hassle death race, even for my AFI DWW piece which has a human rights-based story and was a tax-deductible donation. I wish the U.S. funded art and film the way Europe does. Being at Aspen ShortsFest, in particular, I saw some European films that made my eyes fall out of my head. Norway is killing it. But I’m sure I’ll always make them, funded or not, tiny in a room with five other people like Partners, or with 25 scenes and a crew of 60 like JOY JOY. They’re such a great way to explore, and some stories really shouldn’t be longer than 20 minutes.

Are there any plans to develop PARTNERS into something more? What else are you working on these days? Hannah and Jen have a must-see show called DISENGAGED on SuperDeluxe, which they write and star in together and which Hannah has directed the bulk of, that explores some of the same themes as PARTNERS. Outside of being about a lesbian couple having a confusing time in their relationship, it’s totally different because Hannah and I are different directors and these are new characters, but it’s funny and full of heart and they are both so good in it so it has those things in common.