Mongrel Media Presents
YOUR SISTER’S SISTER
A Film by Lynn Shelton (90 min., USA, 2011) Language: English 2011 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2012 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2012 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Distribution
1028 Queen Street West Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1H6 Tel: 416-516-9775 Fax: 416-516-0651 E-mail:
[email protected] www.mongrelmedia.com
Publicity
Bonne Smith Star PR Tel: 416-488-4436 Fax: 416-488-8438 E-mail:
[email protected]
High res stills may be downloaded from http://www.mongrelmedia.com/press.html
Synopsis
Following the success of her Sundance award winning film Humpday, Lynn Shelton weaves another compellingly human story in Your Sister’s Sister. Lost in an emotional funk one year after his brother’s death, Jack (Mark Duplass) takes his best friend Iris (Emily Blunt) up on her offer for a reflective week of solitude at her family’s remote island retreat. Upon arriving at the house, Jack discovers that Iris’ sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) had the same idea, and the two spend an awkward evening together. Iris shows up the next morning unannounced, setting in motion an emotionally twisted tale of sisters, brothers, and best friends. Shelton once again honestly explores the complexities of interpersonal relationships while gently poking fun at her characters’ predicaments.
Q&A: Lynn Shelton (writer, director) Q: What was the genesis of the film? What led you to embrace this story? SHELTON: My eternal interest as an artist is the self and how we perceive ourselves and what happens when we come face to face with the fact that our perception is not always in line with the reality of where we’re really at. Those kinds of situations when we rouse ourselves and become self‐aware, and then what we do at those moments, are fascinating to me. That often happens when we bump up against other human beings. It’s all about those dynamics, and the poignancy of how we’re all flawed. I heard Cornel West on the radio the other day say that we are all “cracked vessels.” And I thought, Yes, that’s what’s so beautiful—we’d be so boring if we weren’t! In this case, I particularly liked being able to explore sibling relationships. There are two strong ones in this movie—it just happens that one of the siblings is dead. Jack is really shaken to the core by the fact that he wasn’t that close to his brother when he died. He can’t get over his death because of that. Part of the healing process for him is that he ends up bringing the sisters back together again. And that enables him to forgive himself and move on. Those relationships were what interested me. Q: There’s a rich vein of humor in Your Sister’s Sister and all your feature films. Do you have any connection to the comedy scene or does your sense of humor spring from a more personal place? SHELTON: I love to laugh, and I’m not a quiet laugher. People usually think I’m a plant [in the crowd]! What’s funny is that in college theater, I was known as this serious, dramatic actor. In New York, I did a lot of off off Broadway downtown theater, and until I was given this one role, I didn’t know I could be funny. Madeleine Olnek (Codependent Lesbian Alien Seeks Same) directed a play I was in a zillion years ago—she was the one who made me self‐actualize as a comic actress. To answer your question, I don’t go out to see stand‐up comedy—that whole world is not part of my universe. Q: Comedy is something that arises naturally from the dramatic situations in Your Sister’s Sister. SHELTON: Right. I am not trying to make it funny. I’m trying to tell a story and the humor comes out of a very contextual place. It’s character and situation‐based, but there are no jokes in my movies. I find the biggest laughs come from the days on set that were the most serious. When things get the most awkward and intense for the characters, that’s when the laughs come from the audience because they recognize those situations. You know, “That’s the exact same look my wife gets on her face when she knows I’m bullshitting her!” Hopefully—and that’s what I’m going for—these characters feel real and authentic. That’s the big difference between me and anyone specifically trying to being funny. I still don’t know if Your Sister’s Sister is a comedy. It encompasses drama and humor alike. Q: How do you work with actors to reach a place where the performance feels true, where it feels like real life? SHELTON: I wrote a script for my first feature [We Go Way Back] and auditioned actors for the roles and then made the movie. In some instances, it was hard to find the overlap between the actor and the character I had written. Sometimes it was a struggle and other times it wasn’t. I love my first film—that tension was just something I noticed and it inspired me to try something else. I thought, What if I started with people I want to work with and designed a character for them? I was interested in making movies in Seattle, and most people who want to work in front of the camera, leave here! [Laughs] I wanted to create a process that would allow me a lot of
flexibility, so I could work with inexperienced actors and theater actors and even nonactors if I wanted to, people who could be themselves in front of the camera. On My Effortless Brilliance I pitched an idea to my friend Sean Nelson and asked if he would play the role, and he was thrilled. And on Humpday, the starting point was Mark Duplass. Q: You have a very specific way of building characters in collaboration with your actors. SHELTON: With each iteration, I’ve been working with more and more veteran actors. Their skill set lies in not just being themselves but actually creating characters. And they just provide an extra layer of honesty if they can participate in the development process. We have a lot of conversations leading up to the shooting days. We’re building up whole histories and back story for each character—specific experiences and where they’ve met and what their relationships to each other are. We all end up telling stories from our own lives or stories we’ve heard from friends that inform it all. Q: What shape was the script for Your Sister’s Sister in when you first presented it to the cast? SHELTON: On this movie, the idea came from Mark: he called me and said, “I think I have your next movie.” And it turns out he did! It was such a great starting place for a story: a grieving guy, his gal best friend sends him up to her family’s remote get away, he encounters someone unexpected. That was what he brought me and then the film just spun out from there, in all kinds of fun directions. I like to gather my actors really early on, as soon as the kernel of the movie comes into being. I want them involved on the ground floor. What I was hoping is that veteran actors who are used to working in a really traditional way would see Humpday, find out how it was made, and get interested in working on an intimate, very collaborative level. Of course, most actors are used to working with scripts – they use the text as the spine of their performance and build on that. So there’s this leap of faith when you’re asking actors to improvise—you don’t know if they can do it or not! I remember talking to Emily about this way of working and being so relieved when she told me, “Of all the movies I’ve done, my favorite is this little drama called My Summer of Love where we improvised all the scenes, and I never thought I’d work that way again.” I had no idea that film was unscripted, but I thought, Perfect! She’s done it before! And she was so excited to have a chance to do something in that vein again. Q: Rosemarie DeWitt has had a number of roles in film and television. Was she also a natural at improvising dialogue or did she take some time to adjust? SHELTON: When I talked to Rosemarie, she said she’d never really done much improvising, a little in the theater and for Rachel Getting Married. I just had an instinct she’d be good at it. She was certainly game. On set, because I knew I would have actors who were less experienced as improvisers, I had more of a script. Humpday was a ten‐page outline with all the emotional milestones and arcs we had to hit in each scene—it was tightly structured but there was no dialogue. In this case, and it worked out well, I handed Rose a character bible telling her all about Hannah. There was a 70‐page script with some bits of dialogue and a few sketched‐out scenes. I didn’t think we’d use the dialogue I’d written—it was just there as scaffolding, to make the actors feel there was a safety net. I was surprised when they did use my lines—I thought, these sound really good coming out of an actor’s mouth! But vast swaths of the film are completely improvised. There are moments in the film that could not have been created in any other way.
Q: Can you give me an example? SHELTON: There’s a scene where Hannah brings up a deeply personal embarrassing story from Iris’ past. It had been a jolly, buoyant dinner conversation and I needed there to be a turn. We were trying out other ideas to get to that place emotionally, but nothing was working. And then Rose said, “I got something,” but didn’t tell us what it was going to be. You see Emily actually blush—for real—onscreen. You can only achieve that through improvisation – it was a genuinely spontaneous moment, captured on film. It was fascinating to see how Rose and Emily worked with this method—it tended to be more the way they usually operate. They’d find a place to go and then keep revisiting it and look for the nuanced ways of exploring it. It’s one of the reasons I want to now go back to scripted material. It’s really stressful to write on set! [Laughs] Q: This is your second collaboration with Mark Duplass. He makes improvising seem effortless. SHELTON: Mark loves to experiment and mix it up and give you as many options in the edit room as possible. So you might get something wildly different with each take. Having Mark there was really great because his confidence level as an improviser is high and it’s very infectious. Not only can he guide a scene but he’s so generous — he was able to infuse the room with that confidence. He felt it was different for him being on set this time, too. There was a different approach to the material with Rose and Emily. It pushed him and challenged him in a fun way. They all brought different things out of each other. Q: That’s the nature of true collaboration, where everyone is bringing something to the table and sparking ideas that raise the stakes for everyone. SHELTON: Absolutely. And as a filmmaker, I have to improvise as much as they do. I have to be ready for whatever comes up. Still, it’s as pre‐visualized as I can make it in terms of mapping out the story—certain things have to happen in each scene for it all to add up. Q: But you went further here away from your comfort zone. SHELTON: I feel like it’s an evolution in the method and also my visual approach to it. Humpday is shot almost exclusively in close‐ups and 95 percent of it is handheld. On this film there are more wide shots and two‐shots and static shots. I wasn’t just thinking about story and character—I was also thinking about the movie‐going experience. And the presence of Rose and Emily definitely elevated the film, in a way. Q: Tell me about the thinking behind those visual choices in Your Sister’s Sister. SHELTON: It’s great to have two cameras when you’re working with improvisation, so that you get instant coverage and the actors never have to repeat a take exactly. For Humpday, I chose a single frame up for all the takes so that I could mix and match from any take that I wanted. With Your Sister’s Sister, I really wanted more variety of shots to choose from in the edit room. I wanted to give people a sense of place, as well as to delineate tonal shifts within the story. In traditional filmmaking you start wide and move in so that by the time you get the closest shot for each actor they’ve had enough time to find the scene. With improv it’s the opposite, because sometimes what happens first is the best and you’ll never capture it again. So I decided to start close and then once we found the shape of the scene, I’d do takes in wider shots.
A Brief Chat with Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt and Mark Duplass [Working on Lynn’s set] DUPLASS: Set was a lot like camp. We all lived and worked on this massive, gorgeous property on the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state. We shared all of our meals, rewrote scenes until the wee hours of the morning, and all basically lived this movie 100% for a few weeks. It wasn't always easy, but we were definitely "in it." BLUNT: It had a very loose, free‐flowing, collaborative atmosphere to it, and there was a lot of laughter. We were under the gun a little bit because of the time frame. I think we had only about ten days to shoot the entire movie. DEWITT: We were shooting 35 scenes a day. That made it very loosey‐goosey, because you were doing a drunk scene, a sex scene, a ferry scene, and a biking scene all in one day! So it was loose but in the best possible way—in a way that really feeds creativity. Emily was jetting off to Alaska on her days off and I was coming back to Los Angeles to shoot a TV show, but when we were all there, it was [cozy]. I hate when actors say this, but it’s true: It was a love fest. With the crew, too. Lynn had it right when she said she likes to kidnap her cast and crew and throw us together. We really were all in the movie together. DUPLASS: With “Humpday,” we were sort of making up the process as we went. It was definitely a "babe in the woods" kind of experience. With this new film, Lynn and I had already established a work ethic together, but we were also bringing in two much more established actors, so it was a little terrifying for us. Almost like, "they're gonna find out we're just a bunch of frauds!" [On improvising scenes] BLUNT: I found a lot of them quite hard, especially when you’re dealing with exposition. One of my favorite scenes to do was the dinner with the three of us, when we were talking about skinny jeans and poofy pubic hair, which was so embarrassing. DEWITT: It wasn’t fun at all to improvise the big confrontation scene. But it was good because we did about 20 different versions. BLUNT: I remember finding it exhausting, but I think it was good too because arguments are messy and completely fucked up. That’s what was fun about it: We got the mess and bewilderment and weirdness of that moment. DEWITT: It was the first time we weren’t able to have two cameras rolling, where everyone’s covered. So we are all kind of off our game in a way—but in a good way. My favorite scene to improvise—maybe because we didn’t have any lines, really!—was the one where Jack comes back. BLUNT: Oh, that was great. I cried.
DEWITT: We didn’t have any idea what Mark was going to say. It was so beautiful because it was super honest. At that point, I think we felt like sisters because we’d been in it for a while, and it was right near the end. We got to hold each other and just listen to him, which was such a gift as an actor, when you don’t have to work at it. BLUNT: We really had no idea what he was going to say, so we just went on this journey with him in the monologue. I don’t think I’ve had that experience before. DEWITT: I haven’t either. The great thing about Lynn and the way she works is that she’ll use the take where it really happened in front of the camera, even if there’s some weird shadow in the shot. She’ll fix it because she’ll go for what’s raw and honest. DUPLASS: Emily and Rose are unreal. You'll see in the film that they can handle the naturalism of improvisation, but simultaneously maintain what I like to call, subtly, their "movie star stuff." For example, they can casually throw away an improvised line with the best of them, but also be aware of where the lights and the camera are, and cock their head in just the perfect angle so the light hits their eyes when zing you with the climactic moment of the scene. It was honestly a huge learning experience for me. I felt outclassed in a lot of ways. [On crew and camaraderie] BLUNT: There was an epic night where we watched the original Conan the Barbarian. [Laughs] It was in the boy crew’s house. The room looked like some kind of opium den. They put cushions everywhere in the boys’ cabin and everyone was lying around watching Conan and kind of mocking it, which was unfair. I think Mark was in there with them. He was in the little girl’s bedroom [laughs] and Rose and I had this opulent, amazing cabin all to ourselves. We were rattling around in there like ants. DEWITT: And in our fabulous house, it was kind of cold—we had to leave our bedroom to go the bathroom every night. I would wait to hear your little feet go before I’d get up. We had some early 5am calls and I could kind of hear you in your room. I’d be like, “Is she doing it? Is she getting up?” Then I’d hear the little feet. BLUNT: Ben Kasulke, our DP, was my favorite crew member, if only for the hair! DEWITT: Although [sound recordist] Vinny’s up there. BLUNT: He is well up there. They’re going to have to duel for our affections. In fact, I want that to happen. That has to happen immediately. [Behind the scenes] DEWITT: What was really amusing on set is that Emily kept doing impressions of her husband John doing impersonations of Maya Rudolph doing impersonations of Whitney Houston—and we all three were doing them between takes. Every time I did it those guys would make fun of me! I have the Peter Brady “When It’s Time to Change” problem.
BLUNT: One night I came out of my cabin and I had a torch and literally ran straight into a massive stag. They’re really big up close, and kind of skittish, like they might charge you. But in the middle of the night when you’re walking back from the dinner area? Scary. [On sibling rivalries] BLUNT: I have three siblings, and I have an older sister who’s a year and a half older than me, so I think the competitive flair came from her, although now we’re best buds. Growing up, she was always the most brilliant intellectual. She always excelled at things like math and science. What she’d say was, “Well what I didn’t like was I wanted to be good at art and be able to do gymnastics like you.” So I guess you’re never happy—you want that little sliver of your sibling. But I think that wears off with age. DEWITT: I have eight half brothers and sisters but didn’t grow up in the house with them. So what I tend to draw on when I play a sibling—and especially in this movie—feels like sometimes the sister dynamics with my girlfriends. Even though you’re all the same age, someone is the leader, someone is the little runt who’s left out and it constantly shifts with the different groups that you’re in. And I feel like I pull those friendships more than the ones with my real sisters because there’s a huge age gap and we didn’t fight over sweaters or boyfriends or anything like that. DUPLASS: [My Brother] Jay and I are lucky to have four years between us, so we didn't have any romantic conflicts. But, there's no doubt that the feeling of "what the hell would I do if something happened to Jay" infused my performance in this movie. I know firsthand what it's like to be closer to a sibling than most people can imagine. [On uncomfortable toasts] DEWITT: I went to a wedding once for one of my best friends. Her father stood up and said, “Well, so‐and‐so, she’s your problem now” and sat down. I think it was meant to be a joke. She kept asking me later, “Did he really say that?” BLUNT: [Gasping in disbelief] Oh ... my ... God. That’s all he said? Oh how awful. I had good speeches at my wedding, I was really lucky. People excelled at making speeches. DEWITT: You feel so loved when people take the time. BLUNT: You do. You feel so loved. DEWITT: Someone told me about a wedding where his wife was so worried she was going to cry – she’d written a speech and wasn’t sure she’d get through it – so she had her husband bring a whoopee cushion. And he kept doing it through the entire speech, even though she was bawling. DUPLASS: I prepared for about 3 weeks to give the toast at Jay's rehearsal dinner. The pressure was on. "Oh, they're best friends. AND he's a writer! This is gonna be AWESOME!" I was ready to fucking nail it. Problem is, about 12 seconds into the speech I couldn't stop crying. It was heartfelt, but incredibly odd and highly unintelligible.
LYNN SHELTON (Writer / Director) is an acclaimed filmmaker best known for the 2009 Sundance hit, HUMPDAY. Born and raised in Seattle, Shelton studied photography and acting before transitioning into film editing and experimental/documentary filmmaking. Shelton's first narrative feature as a writer/director, We Go Way Back, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at Slamdance 2006. Her second feature, My Effortless Brilliance, premiered at SXSW 2008 and earned her the Independent Spirit “Someone to Watch” Award. Humpday, her third feature, premiered at Sundance 2009, where it picked up a special jury prize and was bought by Magnolia Pictures. Humpday was also shown at Director’s Fortnight in Cannes and picked up prizes at the Edinburgh, Deauville and Gijon film festivals. The film was released theatrically in July 2009 and received the John Cassavetes Award at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards. Recently, Shelton was a guest director on the acclaimed AMC television series “Mad Men", directing the episode “Hands & Knees,” which aired in September 2010. EMILY BLUNT (Iris) is a Golden Globe® winning actress who rose to international prominence with her eye‐catching performances in films such as My Summer of Love and The Devil Wears Prada. Other notable films include Charlie Wilson's War, Sunshine Cleaning and The Wolfman. Blunt played the title role of 'Queen Victoria' in the critically acclaimed film The Young Victoria, which focuses on the early years and love affair between Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, and for which she received a BAFTA and Golden Globe® nomination. At the start of 2011, she starred alongside Jack Black in Gulliver's Travels and voiced the female lead role of Juliet in Gnomeo and Juliet. She recently played the female lead opposite Matt Damon in the sci‐fi romance The Adjustment Bureau. Forthcoming projects include the Bruce Willis thriller Looper, the literary adaptation Salmon Fishing In The Yemen (also playing at TIFF), the Judd Apatow‐ produced rom‐com Five Year Engagement, and a cameo role in Disney's The Muppets. In October of this year, Emily begins production on Dante Ariola’s dark comedy Arthur Newman, Golf Pro opposite Colin Firth. ROSEMARIE DEWITT (Hannah) Following years of increasingly larger roles on the stage and on the small screen, it was an unusual family connection that provided Rosemarie her first major break into feature films. As the great granddaughter of the film's subject, boxer James J. Braddock, DeWitt landed a role in Ron Howard's Depression‐era bio, Cinderella Man. After standing out as the romantically‐inclined hostage negotiator Emily Lehman on the Fox series, "Standoff,” and as Don Draper’s sometimes lover Midge on AMC’s "Mad Men,” Rosemarie starred as the title character, whose troubled sibling (Anne Hathaway) comes home for her wedding, in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and won Best Supporting Actress from the Toronto, Vancouver and Washington DC Film Critics. She also played Charmaine for two seasons on Showtime’s “The United States of Tara.” Rosemarie can be seen in Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, opening this fall, and next summer in Disney’s The Odd Life of Timothy Green, alongside Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton.
MARK DUPLASS (Jack) is a writer, director, producer and actor who been extremely busy these past few years working in all areas of the business. Mark first made a name for himself when he starred in, co‐wrote, and co‐directed a string of award‐winning short films, including This is Josh and Scrapple, which premiered at Sundance in 2003 and 2004, respectively. He and his brother Jay also wrote and directed the 2005 Sundance breakout hit The Puffy Chair, which went on to win the Audience Award at SXSW 2005 and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards. The film was released theatrically by Roadside Attractions and Netflix in 2006. Baghead, their next feature film, was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics at Sundance 2008 and received an international theatrical release that year. Fox Searchlight recently released Mark and Jay’s first studio feature, Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei, which garnered rave reviews. Mark and Jay’s next film is Paramount’s Jeff Who Lives at Home, starring Jason Segal, Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon, and Judy Greer. As an actor, Mark co‐starred in 2005’s The Puffy Chair, Joe Swanberg’s 2007 Hannah Takes the Stairs from IFC Films, and 2009’s breakout Sundance hit Humpday from Magnolia Pictures. Mark also appeared opposite Ben Stiller in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, which Focus Features released in March 2010. Currently, Mark can be seen on the small screen as the lead in FX’s “The League,” a semi‐scripted comedy about a fantasy football league. The show’s third season will begin in the fall. Mark also has produced numerous films including The Freebie (starring Dax Shepard and Katie Aselton) as well as Lovers of Hate and Bass Ackwards, all 3 of which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Mark resides in Los Angeles with his wife Katie and daughter. MIKE BIRBIGLIA (Al) is an actor, writer, comedian who is best known for his 2009 hit show Sleepwalk With Me, called "simply perfect" by the New York Times and named "Comedy of the Year" by Time Out New York. In addition to being nominated for numerous awards (Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Circle Critics) Birbiglia is currently filming Sleepwalk with Me, which he is directing, writing and starring in with Lauren Ambrose and will be co‐produced by Ira Glass. He recently filmed parts in Going the Distance, starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, and Cedar Rapids, directed by Miguel Arteta and starring Ed Helms and John C. Reilly. His recent stage production of My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend won him at 2011 Lucille Lortel Award. Birbiglia recently wrote his literary debut, “Sleepwalk with Me and other Stories,” which has been released by Simon & Schuster and topped the New York Times Best Seller list. NAT SANDERS (Editor) cut the critically‐acclaimed Medicine For Melancholy, nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards, and the Sundance Jury Prize‐ winning Humpday, recipient of the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit Award. In 2009, Nat was named one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine. Recent credits include The Freebie, On The Ice (winner of Best First Feature at the 2011 Berlinale), Our Idiot Brother, and the upcoming The DoDecaPentathalon, directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, and Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister.
BEN KASULKE (Director of Photography) Ben's professional experience includes employment as an Instructor at Seattle's Northwest Film Forum, a film archivist with The Image Treasury, programmer with London's Raindance Film Festival, and as a staff projectionist with the Olympia Film Society. While employed as the staff cinematographer for the Seattle based Film Company, he was fortunate enough to begin running collaborations with award winning filmmakers Guy Maddin and Lynn Shelton. Kasulke has also worked in music video and performance documentation with various acts including Einsteurzende Neubaten and Built To Spill. In 2006, he received two awards for his Cinematography on Shelton's We Go Way Back from the Slamdance and Torun Film Festivals. The Seattle Stranger shortlisted Kasulke for its Genius Award in Film in 2007. In 2009, Ben was fortunate enough to lens the Sundance Special Jury Prize winning Humpday, which went on to win the John Cassavetes Award at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards. He was honored to shoot Marie Losier's The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye, which was awarded both the Golden Teddy and Caligari Prize at the 2011 Berlinale. Also in 2011, Ben was invited by the Sundance Institute to join the Feature Film Director's Lab as a Director of Photography. Recent credits include Guy Maddin’s Keyhole, also premiering at TIFF 2011. Ben is based in Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York. STEVEN SCHARDT (Producer) has collaborated with Lynn Shelton previously on her last film Humpday (Sundance, 2009; Director's Fortnight, Cannes 2009). His credits also include The Oregonian, which premiered at Sundance 2011, and Treatment, which premiered at Tribeca 2011. He lives in Seattle and New York. JENNIFER ROTH (Executive Producer) is a 20 year veteran of the film industry. She is currently executive producing What Maisie Knew, directed by Scott McGehee & David Siegel, starring Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan and Alexander Skarsgard. Her other executive producer credits include two films with Darren Aronofsky: the Academy Award winning Black Swan starring Natalie Portman, and The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In addition to Your Sister’s Sister, her other producer credits include World’s Greatest Dad, Smart People and The Squid and the Whale. Her early production credits include Bad Lieutenant, Smoke, The Crow and Deadman.
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY LYNN SHELTON CREATIVE CONSULTANTS EMILY BLUNT ROSEMARIE DEWITT MARK DUPLASS MIKE BIRBIGLIA PRODUCER STEVEN SCHARDT EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS VALLEGO GANTNER JENNIFER ROTH CO‐EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS DAVE NAKAUYAMA LANCE ROSEN CO‐PRODUCERS MEL ESLYN MEGAN GRIFFITHS CINEMATOGRAPHER BENJAMIN KASULKE EDITOR NAT SANDERS PRODUCTION DESIGNER JOHN LAVIN MUSIC SUPERVISORS SANDY WILSON MEL ESLYN
SOUND AND ORIGINAL MUSIC BY VINNY SMITH unit production manager/first assistant director JENNIFER ROTH second assistant director SUSAN LASALLE associate producers KATE BAYLEY JENNIFER MAAS CAST (in order of appearance): tom (in photos) jack al iris tom’s friends
photography studio crew
hannah waitress diner patrons
mother young boy #1 young boy #2
additional camera operator 1st assistant camera
MIKE HARRING MARK DUPLASS MIKE BIRBIGLIA EMILY BLUNT JASON DODSON PETE ERICKSON EVAN MOSHER JENNIFER MAAS JEANETTE MAUS DORI HANA‐SCHERER STEVE SNOEY DUSTY WARREN SETH WARREN MEL ESLYN KATE JARVIS JEREMY MACKIE NATHAN M. MILLER NORM TUMOLVA ROSEMARIE DEWITT KATE BAYLEY JASON BRAGGS JOHN LAVIN LEE LUNA PETRA KJORSVIK KIMBERLY CHIN KOHEN CHIN BECKETT CHIN RYAN MCMACKIN JASON KNOLL
1st assistant b camera TADD SACKVILLE‐WEST additional camera assistance ALEX DABOUB data management JOE JACOBS gaffer JEREMY MACKIE key grip NATHAN M. MILLER additional grip work NORM TUMOLVA production sound mixer VINNY SMITH key makeup/stylist PETRA KJORSVIK art production assistant DORI HANA‐SCHERER additional camera operator JASON KNOLL 1st assistant camera NATHAN M. MILLER key grip NORM TUMOLVA set p.a. LEE LUNA p.a. YONA PROST l.a. camera assistance JACQUELINE STAHL original artwork by JOHN LAVIN art department graphics TANIA KUPCZAK additional artwork by DUANE PASCO and FRANCESCA BERRINI beer graphics CHELSEA CONBOY and CARLOS RUIZ photoshop work STEVE SNOEY payroll provided by ENTERTAINMENT PARTNERS insurance provided by DAVE PETERSON at MIDLAKES INSURANCE cleaning crew HOMEMAID SUSTAINABLE CLEANING post production supervisor MEL ESLYN supervising sound editor & mixer VINNY SMITH re‐recording mixer DAVE HOWE, C.A.S. additional dialog editing KEVIN BRESSLER color grading TIM MAFFIA, SR. COLORIST at MODERN DIGITAL main title design by WORLD FAMOUS scrolling credits JOE JACOBS
legal services provided by LANCE ROSEN at ROSEN LEWIS, PLLC accounting services provided by KRISTEN PARSONS and CAMILLE WREN at ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CONSULTANTS, LLC distribution advisors SUBMARINE ENTERTAINMENT UTA INDEPENDENT FILM GROUP publicity by ADAM KERSH at BRIGADE MARKETING
