Independent filmmakers have been getting creative for years, especially when it comes to getting their movies in front of the right people. Izzy Roland and family (literally) are just the next in a long line to work the ever-changing system for themselves.
Roland, best known for her appearances on the comedy streaming service Dropout, wrote and stars in the new film “D(e)ad.” The film follows a young woman named Tillie (Roland) whose recently-deceased estranged father begins haunting every member of Tillie’s family via mirror – except Tillie, that is. The film is based on Roland’s experiences with her own father (minus the haunting, of course), is directed by television veteran and Roland’s mom, Claudia Lonow, and stars many of Roland’s family and friends, including familiar faces from Dropout such as Vic Michaelis and Roland’s husband Brennan Lee Mulligan.
Roland and co. were able to raise over $250,000 via Kickstarter for the film and employed the help of comedy producer Laser Webber to help generate a theatrical run without assistance from a traditional distributor or the film festival circuit. Rough Draft Atlanta recently spoke with Roland about the making of the film and its non-traditional rollout.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I wanted to start off talking about your family history. Your most public-facing endeavor at this point is probably Dropout, and improv and comedy, but I know you’ve been writing scripts for a long time too. I’m curious, coming from a family of writers and comedians and performers, was it kind of a foregone conclusion that you would get into that professionally?
Izzy Roland: I think pretty early on, it was a foregone conclusion. My mom did a lot of recording – taping shows – that I was doing when I was very young. I mean, my dad wasn’t in show business, but he didn’t really have a career that I could sort of emulate. There was a time where I was like – I am an actor. I am not a writer. All I want to do is act. And then very quickly, [I] was met with the reality of what life is like and how you can’t just be an actor if you want to actually work. So I quickly took up writing.
I was listening to an interview that you did where you mentioned that this started out as an idea for a TV show. How did the project evolve throughout the process of making it?
Roland: My mom is historically a network show runner, and she had the idea for a TV show that would star her [as a] character based on her, and then my dad, where she can see him in the mirrors after he’s died. It was called “My Crappy Soulmate.” I guess we were in a place where she was working on something. I had been toying with an idea where a version of me – this is really just how we were processing … was coming up with some sort of written idea – I had one where I am trying to clean out his apartment and find a portal to Narnia, basically, where I can see him and he’s still alive. As I was trying to figure that out, I was like, why am I trying to figure this story out? This would cost millions and millions of dollars. I can’t stop writing films that have humongous budgets. And this thing in the mirror felt way more practical, literally. I don’t know, I was just like, “Can I take it?” [My mom] was like, “Okay.” And I went, “Great!”
I was looking back at your mom’s “television-ogaphy,” as it were, and she’s made some pretty autobiographical things. This is obviously very autobiographical. “Easy” is not the right word, as I’m sure it’s very emotionally difficult in a lot of ways, but do you find that stuff that’s true to your own life flows out of you more easily when you’re writing?
Roland: That is certainly her forte. I had the privilege of being able to watch her work quite intimately, and working with her in a lot of different scenarios. So I think I took to that very easily. [I] had that as a touchstone and an inspiration point. I use that in pretty much every one of my projects, but there’s always some sort of supernatural or greater element – like a big action comedy starring an improviser [laughs], or a portal to Narnia – something like that for ghosts – just because that is what is the most thrilling to me. I, by myself, am not as interesting. My family is interesting to me, but not necessarily so compelling that I find it worth it to write a whole movie about it or something. So I’m like, “Okay, let’s add magic. Let’s add great circumstances.”
I’ve heard you bring up that idea before, adding a touch of magic or surrealism to movies. I am really on that page – I get kind of bogged down when people are like, “Oh, that’s not realistic” when talking about movies, because it’s a movie – it’s not real life. What were the movies you watched growing up or as an adult that opened your eyes to that little magic touch that can make a movie pop?
Roland: A lot of the time, a Best Picture is not something I’m gravitating towards, except for when it’s like “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” That, I was like, this is the best! Because, I do think I agree with you. I don’t know, do that in a play. Do that in a living room play setting. Trying to emulate real life, I’m just sort of like – we are constantly living real life. I just need other elements to process it. I need Middle Earth to show me why Samwise Gamgee is the hero.
I felt like my world was completely changed when I saw “Eternal Sunshine [of the Spotless Mind].” What a f*cking brilliant way of showing that literal process of trying to get over an impactful moment in your life. So I think that’s just what has always drawn me to movies. Because that’s capable in movies.
It’s interesting you bring up “Eternal Sunshine” encapsulating this fantastical version of getting over something, because “D(e)ad” is really dealing with a lot of that. One thing I found to be very honest about this movie – and it all takes place in that final scene between Tilly and her dad, right before she screams – is that I like that it’s not necessarily a “happy” reconciliation. It’s still satisfying, but there’s a lot of frustration wrapped up in it at the same time. I wondered if you could talk about, both in the writing and on the day of filming, crafting that ending and finding messiness within that reconciliation.
Roland: That moment does feel like the culmination of grieving my dad, just realistically. I felt like I was so plagued by how my relationship with this person ended, how his life ended. I felt so guilty and so sad for him. I kept being like, was there anything I could have done to change the trajectory of his life? [I] was really lamenting and stuck in a place of guilt and sadness for what had transpired at the end of his life, and it wasn’t until I was able to soberly recognize how much good came from our relationship that I actually was able to sort of heal from the entire thing.
A very prominent feeling I had after he died … I’m very atheist. I don’t believe in an afterlife, even though I made a movie about it. I was sort of like, the people who are alive are the ones who are left with the memories. His pain is actually gone now, because he’s not here to experience that. He doesn’t have those painful memories anymore. I do. But I also have the good memories, so I need to be able to cherish those as well. It was a really out of body, beautiful experience, shooting specifically that part. The crew was crying. It just went really well. It was really wonderful.
I wanted to just talk about the unconventional rollout. The way I saw it was in a Emory University lecture hall, basically. This industry is really in flux and constantly changing, and artists are constantly having to change the way they promote their movies, and the way they get their work out to fans and people who want to see it. I wondered if you could talk about kind of how this idea came about, and working with that direct-to-fan approach, and how that’s been for the film.
Roland: It was always the plan that we were going to try and raise money for the movie on a much smaller scale. We were gonna do a Seed & Spark, and it was just not curated. It was not cohesive. We were filming my family members on an iPhone talking about the movie, and we hadn’t even shot any of it yet. My husband [Brennan Lee Mulligan] was like, “You can’t do it this way.” The potential this has is a lot greater than this. So he was like, “Shoot the movie first. You’ll have the footage. You’ll have images from the filming process.” Looking at it through that lens, I was able to see what other friends were doing. I have a good friend, Rekha Shankar, who works at Dropout as well, who was a part of this extremely successful Kickstarter campaign called DesiQuest. I reached out to her and to another one of the performers/director, I think, of DesiQuest, named Sandeep [Parikh]. I was like, “How did you guys do this? This is the coolest, the best Kickstarter in the world.” He was like, “We had a campaign manager named Laser Webber.”
I reached out to Laser, who was thankfully available and interested in taking this on. He was truly a magical sauce to get this all done. He came up with a narrative for the Kickstarter. The cohesion and the rollout was just so expertly crafted. It was just like, oh, you’re the most capable, competent person I’ve ever met in my life. You’re in charge of the movie now. He was like, “Great! I’m on board,” and has had this incredible vision, really utilizing what we’ve had. We were trying to book screenings on our own at first, and theaters were just like, “Who are you? We don’t care.” He started to be like, hey, people who want to see this movie, do you have connections to theaters? And people showed up. That started working. Once we announced the screenings, people were like, “What the f*ck? Why isn’t this in my city?” And we were like, “Tell them! Speak up! Let them know!”
That got us from like, 14 screenings to over 200. It was literally shocking, and a huge surprise to everybody. Then we were like, well, this is what’s working, so we’re not going to try to get studio money, or big fancy distribution, or whatever. We’re just gonna do it this way, because this also rocks.