Joanna’s feature directorial debut did not disappoint
The Knockturnal: First, congratulations on your film. It was a wonderful film. I saw it last night. So, this is your directorial debut, right?
Joanna Gleason: Yeah. I directed shorts, television, and theatre a little bit. This is my first feature film.The Knockturnal: That’s so exciting. Congratulations!
Joanna Gleason: Thank you!
The Knockturnal: How did you prepare for your directorial debut in features?
Joanna Gleason: I prepared for it by doing shorts. I assembled the same team: the same producers, composer, and DP. I said ‘Let’s take two and a half days and shoot this fifteen-minute movie.’ By the way, it got into festivals, which I am excited about. We knew that we clicked. We knew the rhythm.
From fifteen years of being on the camera’s other side, I have absorbed quite a lot. I know what I want the set to feel like. I know how to talk to actors and they feel like they can talk to me. I’m one of them. The preparation was in everything I’ve ever done before. This was just like ‘Go! Hire all the best people from every department: sound, hair, makeup, costumes, everything. They will bring you your best.’
The Knockturnal: For sure. I am curious to know about what you’ve learned. Do you have any specifics?
Joanna Gleason: Among the many things I’ve learned, you can’t be precious about what doesn’t make it into the movie. Instead of spending the money for people to shoot and then saying ‘oh, we’ll see…,’ make sure your script is water-tight before you start shooting. Second of all, demand, carve out, and scream for time with your first AD, script supervisor, and DP. Through this, you’re all on the same page and know the way you would like to work.
Gabe and I have worked before. We have a shorthand, so we can walk onto a set and go ‘Hey, let’s flip this. Let’s not start down there. Let’s start at the other end!’ If that happens, everyone goes on fire. The script supervisor might pass out. This is the kind of thing where you must write every idea down. Write down every idea you think you might have, like ‘Hey! Let’s have him sing over by that table!’ Don’t just say it out loud. Write it down and let everyone know. I think that was the biggest takeaway.
The Knockturnal: Nice. So, what were you channeling when you wrote the screenplay? I know you said that it was in remembrance of people you met in the past.
Joanna Gleason: Yes, it partly was. I created my club to be a place of healing, like the healing of the gods in France or the ‘drink the water and throw away your crutches’ kind of thing. I thought about the need for one in America. Then, I thought about the AIDS crisis. I said, ‘how about a club that used to be a gay nightclub?’ It ties into Alice’s story about who she thought she would spend her life with.
Also, it was about my own midlife crisis in my forties. During that time, everything was wrong. I thought that the cast of characters surrounding me was not good. I thought I was living where I should be or doing what I should be doing. Everything sort of fell apart. I thought, ‘well, that’s a good place to start a story.’ All good stories start near the end. Somebody else said that once.
If you think about it, it’s true. You start like a wind-up toy, like ‘he’s dead, you’ve got no home, you have no business, your whole life has been a lie, and you’re already in your forties. What do you do?’
The Knockturnal: Was it challenging to write a story based on your life?
Joanna Gleason: No. I have been around so long. I have observed and been through so much. It came out fairly easy.
The Knockturnal: Okay, that’s good. One of my favorite little jokes from the film was the sign and how it flickered in and out. The device moved the plot forward. Where did you come up with that?
Joanna Gleason: Six years ago, my mom and dad were both dying in very different ways. They were both at home. My sister and I would crawl on my mom’s bed as grown-ups. We’d say, ‘Mom, how will you know you’re around us?’ She said, ‘Oh, I’ll be in the lights.’ Well, of course! Why not have Nick’s spirit be in the lights?
He leaves the grotto and finds clues that he isn’t happy in his life. He finds people who love him and will help him through. The only way he can say to her ‘I’ll be okay’ is in the lights. The lights are on the sign.
The Knockturnal: That’s an interesting parallel. I loved the film’s campiness. It showed a different lens on grief. It can take many forms.
Joanna Gleason: Many forms! There will be times when things are fine. There will be music. Her real grief and the whole ‘I don’t know who I am anymore’ comes in Act Three. At first, it’s disorientation, anger, and muscle memory. Suddenly, the grotto is working its magic on her. The staff sees something special in her. She’s working her magic on the grotto, but not taking it seriously.
In the end, you realize that everyone there has been healed. There’s the ‘I’m the actor and now I’m an artist’ and ‘I’m a ventriloquist, but I have to move my mouth.’ Everyone has found their little home. They welcome her in it. It’s not so much that Alice heals the grotto. She has plans to make it a super club, but we don’t know if it will happen. Instead, the grotto heals her.
The Knockturnal: Yeah, for sure. Where did you draw inspiration to create such eclectic characters?
Joanna Gleason: I just know these people! In fact, Carly, who plays Mrs. Norman-Bane with the puppets, is one of the great vocal impersonators. I’m a fan of hers. Twelve years ago, I said to her, ‘I wrote this movie. I don’t know if it’s going to happen and I don’t know if I’m serious about it. However, would you be in it?’ She said, ‘yes.’ She’s got the puppets and she does the voices.
I owe my career to gay men. Some of my best friends are gay couples and men. The producers of my movie are three gay men. I just know them. I know that a man can wear a kilt and gold boots and just pull it off. Nobody is really outrageous. They’re just authentic in their own skin and clothes.
The Knockturnal: If you’re in that scene, you’ve met these people.
Joanna Gleason: You know these people. Someone at a screening once said to me, ‘they’re people we know. These are people we…know.’ I said, ‘that’s right!’ You might not see them every day, but when you see them here, they aren’t demonized. They’re not in your face. These are just people we know.
The Knockturnal: I appreciated that nothing is being made fun of. I feel like there are so many stories where queerness is put at the receiving end of a joke. In this film, a person simply wears a kilt and there’s no explanation needed. It’s just that.
Joanna Gleason: Yep, he’s just wearing a kilt. Kip is funny in his own way. Victor is gay in a quiet and heartbroken way. It’s easy. Jonathan Delarco speaks very quietly and speaks Spanish. Dan Arbintenski is half-Argentian. They’re just speaking Spanish to each other, like saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ I said, ‘this is what you would do. This is who you’d be.’
The Knockturnal: It’s authentic. Also, touching upon the AIDS crisis- which you lived through- how did you address it?
Joanna Gleason: It’s spoken about during a memory in the bar scene. They say, ‘we created this space as a place for us to laugh, eat, and pray for a miracle.’ Another character says, ‘we still need a miracle.’ There was just that sincerity of ‘we need a place to come and heal.’
The Knockturnal: While watching the flashback, it reminded me of an HBO show. The memory showed me a parallel of expressing queer joy with pain.
Joanna Gleason: Alice juxtaposes this. It’s not an authentic flashback. Instead, she’s having a drink and imagining what Nick’s life is like this whole time. In her imagination, he dances with men. She thinks, ‘I don’t know this world and I don’t know him either.’
The Knockturnal: Nick being closeted and queer became a big twist.
Joanna Gleason: She says, ‘who cares about anyone identifying as gay anymore.’ The answer is a lot of people, like families.
The Knockturnal: Even in metropolitan areas where it’s all around, there is still a struggle for acceptance. How did you approach this, even for secondary characters?
Joanna Gleason: Some of the scenes did not make the film. They would have weighed down the film and held back the story. There was a scene with pills where a character wanted to hurt themselves. Taking this weight out reveals a weakness in his character. If he came clean to Alice, they would have divorced. If he came clean to his parents, he might have lived an authentic life. If he came clean to Victor, they would have had more time together. Nick is not a martyr or a victim, except out of his own doing.
The Knockturnal: I wasn’t sure if I should feel sympathy for him.
Joanna Gleason: You don’t have to.
The Knockturnal: In a previous answer, you talked about writing the screenplay twelve years ago.
Joanna Gleason: I started it twelve years ago. Then, I put it away. Later, I took it out again. I hesitated a lot. I didn’t trust myself to tell people that I want to direct this movie. When I started saying it out loud, people said ‘yes, of course, you should direct this movie!’ Other things occurred too, like work and other obligations. Then, there came the right moment to show it to my friend and producer, Todd Schatz. He said, “I want to work on this.’
The minute you start building a staff list, you take a bold step. All the right people showed up. I found an investor who had just started producing films. She lives two miles from me, which I did not know. I had never met her. She read the script and said, ‘I’m in!’ Then, we were off and running.
The Knockturnal: One of my favorite themes is the idea of chosen family. It’s such a queer-centered idea. How did you envision this theme? Did the film communicate it in the way that you wanted?
Joanna Gleason: First of all, I come from an enormous and fantastically-supportive family. The theme doesn’t represent my family. However, in the hardest times, my friends have pulled me through, free of any artifice or jealousy. They only offered authentic friendship and support.
In the movie, I casted many of my friends and collegues. In one scene, Gideon is singing. He’s got a guitar and they’re all cleaning up. A woman spent the night in his trailer while he slept outside. So, he’s singing and she’s eating scrambled eggs. She’s looking at the world outside the window. I did not have to tell any actor what to do.
Carly knew to drink a cup of coffee over here. Amanda knew to clean the menus over there. At another point, she goes over and talks to Chuck. I said, ‘Chuck, you know how you feel about her. Let us know how you feel about her.’ Another actor mends the sequins on his boots. They all answer the question, ‘What should we do the next day, before the show?’ It was easy. I thought, ‘good actors who know their characters know what to do. Just let them.’
The Knockturnal: I loved when the camera pulls away and you see the whole picture.
Joanna Gleason: There were no sparkly lights. It was just everybody in daylight.
The Knockturnal: It was very picturesque, both in a film and theatre sort of way. I loved the intro and the outro of the stage. Do you have any favorite moments from filming?
Joanna Gleason: The fact that we all got along. It was kind of a lovefest. We wanted to be together while filming. We sat backstage and told stories. I thought of it as a miracle and the best experience of my career. The joy was great.
You discover your movie by writing, shooting, and editing it. It becomes three different films; it’s true. The throughline is that you can watch the movie and wish that you included other, now-deleted scenes. I can give you a list of scenes where I’m like, ‘Oh my god! That scene was so good! I wish I had ten extra minutes to shoot that! Why didn’t I fight for that?’ Nobody knows about that while watching the film for the first time.
Here’s what my husband said: we finished it and edited it. Editing was an arduous, grueling process because we did it over Zoom. That team lives in California and I live in Connecticut. My advice is to be in the same room. Take everyone who has ideas and put them in the same room. It’s not like working on a script.
I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know what happens now. It can get into festivals or not. Maybe someone won’t like it.’ He said, ‘Hey, you’re seventy-two years old. You wrote and directed a film. Take the win. There are thousands of people waiting and trying to get their movies made. All your experiences came together and you got a film made. Sure, you want to get it into the world, but also celebrate what you did.’ It changed how I look at what I can do. Now, I’m working on my second film.
The Knockturnal: That partially answered my last question. I wanted to know what it’s like to see your film in the world. And also, what’s next?
Joanna Gleason: Another film is next. It’s a drama, with no music and nothing very funny. It’s about grief and the question of ‘who are my people in life?’ It’s a bit of a mystery. It ends up in the desert. I think I have an affinity for the desert.
The Knockturnal: It’s a good setting. Thank you so much for speaking with me.
Joanna Gleason: Thank you!