WGTC: The film is filled with deeply moving performances. Boyd Holbrook is excellent. The one that keeps sticking with me though is Jacob Lofland. With Mud, he was cast because of a notice in the newspaper, but he was quite green as an actor. There’s such depth and feeling in his performance here though. What was it like working with him?
Sara Colangelo: It was a really great experience. I was lucky enough to have chatted with [Mud director] Jeff Nichols before the casting process because he was somehow involved with Sundance and had read my script. We were talking about script stuff, and I said, ‘I really loved Jacob. What’s it like working with him?’ And Jeff said, ‘He’s amazing. I wholeheartedly encourage you to contact him.’ And we did.
I thought that Jacob had that perfect blend of not having been trained. He’s definitely not a kid actor. You find some kid actors are a little forced at times, because they’re perfectly schooled in it. I think he has some of that naivety and naturalness that you just couldn’t replicate with a child actor. And at the same time, because he had been on the set of Mud, I think he understood the discipline of set. So it was this kind of best of both worlds situation. [Jacob] sent in an audition tape and I had auditioned dozens of other boys. And he just sent shivers down my spine.
I think [Jacob] has this great balance of really seeming like he could play this tortured teen, yet at the same time, having this levity where you can really imagine him interacting with James, his disabled brother, and imagine him as part of a very happy family. I thought that Jacob could handle both aspects of that character.
WGTC: The more I think about the characters, I start thinking of the parallels between Owen and Amos [Boyd Holbrook’s character]. It seems that all the characters feel at a remove from their community and are isolated. As an independent filmmaker who is on the outside looking in, are you drawn to writing stories about people who don’t quite feel at home or feel like outsiders?
Sara Colangelo: I think that’s sort of a theme in my writing. Almost in every character in some small way, there’s a feeling of outsider-ness, right? Often, it is what makes a character special. Just thinking off the top of my head to favorite movies of mine, it’s not about a character being anti-social or shy, per se, like Amos. But even in the case of Diane Doyle, you get a sense that she’s well within the middle-class, upper-class echelon within the town, that she would have friends but there’s something that sets her apart. That is her disillusionment she has with her husband and this lonely feeling within her, you know, the materialism of her middle-class home. I think in every way, there’s probably a reason why each of these characters feel alienated. I guess that makes for interesting drama, for me. My characters may be slightly alienated, yeah.
WGTC: As a first time feature director, what is your biggest piece of advice to a new filmmaker about to embark on their debut feature?
Sara Colangelo: I think it’s perseverance. I’ve made a bunch of short films. Some turn out well, some turn out better than others. You’re just kind of always learning from your failures and your successes. You have to have a thick skin and you have to just kind of keep at it. And the other thing is, you really have to have a story to tell. You can’t want to do it because it sounds cool to be a writer/director. You kind of have to have lived through some pain and some stuff that you want to shed. Within our indie film community, the people who don’t get kind of bogged down and keep plowing ahead and making stuff, generating these scripts, are the ones that are really doing well.
WGTC: What are you currently working on?
Sara Colangelo: I’ve actually started writing a pilot for a TV series that I’d like to start pitching soon. I’m really excited about that. It also kind of deals with industrial America and I have a female protagonist for that, which is kind of fun. The other is a book that I’m trying to get the rights to and would love to adapt, and that would be a feature narrative. I can’t say [the book], but it’s actually sci-fi, naturalistic sci-fi.
That concludes our interview, but we’d like to thank Sara very much for her time. Be sure to check out Little Accidents when it hits theatres this Friday!
