Introduction
In Okie, Louie, an acclaimed writer, returns to his dilapidated hometown after his father’s death. Confronted with a deluge of people from his past, Louie is forced to reconcile with the stories he’s stolen, misrepresented, or downright exploited for profit.
Synopsis
Louie, a wealthy writer, returns to his beleaguered hometown after his father passes away. The town, a weathered setting, and its people, equally worn, have served as the spiritual muses for Louie’s popular, rustic anthology. Upon his return, Louie is reunited with his childhood friends, the very same people he utilized as central characters in his pretentious novels.
Thus ensues a confusing swirl of nostalgia and enmity as Louie is dragged from party to party, coming face-to-face with those whose lives he’s exploited for his financial gain. But soon, as his grip on reality slips, he begins to wonder if these ostensibly simple townsfolk don’t have their version of payback in mind.
Meet The Creative Team
Kate Cobb and Kevin Bigley are a husband and wife creative team who have worked together for over a decade. Creating shorts for Funny or Die, a digital series Parked for Amazon Prime, and recently founded their newest creative venture, In The Rye Productions, which focuses on film, television, and podcast content.
In 2021 they scraped together a few thousand dollars and shot a short in Kevin’s hometown outside of Sacramento. They called it Dandelions and it screened at USA Film Fest, We Are Films New York, and LA Indie Film Awards, and won Kate Best Director at UCLA Fest (2022). The short was then utilized as a proof of concept to secure funding for the feature version, Okie, which they executive produced and shot in fifteen days in northern Illinois. The OKIE screenplay, written by Kevin, is Kate’s feature film directorial debut.
Meet Scott Michael Foster
Scott’s credits, to name a few, include Greek, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, You, and the feature film Deborah. He currently stars in Netflix’s debut interactive rom-com, the upcoming Choose Love, which was released in August of 2023.
Meet Kevin Bigley
The writer of Okie, as well as a supporting actor. His TV work includes USA’s Sirens, HBO’s Here and Now, Netflix’s Bojack Horseman, Amazon’s Undone, and Fox’s The Moody’s. But he is best known for his series regular role as Luke on Amazon’s Upload, along with his recent work on Fox’s number one comedy Animal Control. He has also published a novel, Comaville (2020), by East Coast publisher Clash Books.
Meet Kate Cobb
Also, the director of Okie, Kate’s acting work spans over a decade in television and film. Credits include Shameless, Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, and Castle, with recurring work in the unreleased David Fincher series for HBO, Videosyncrasy. She can also be seen in feature films such as Operator and Every House is Haunted, which both debuted at SXSW, and starred in a feature with Blumhouse called The Current Occupant.
Interview
Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower sat down with Kate Cobb, Kevin Bigley, and Scott Michael Foster to talk about their new dramatic feature film, Okie. They discuss what it’s like to shoot a film in fifteen days, the positives and negatives of writing what you know, and the importance of leaving some things ambiguous, among other topics.
(Edited for content and clarity)
Glen Dower:
Kate, the story of Okie was written by the gentleman who sat next to you, starring the gentleman who sat next to me…how was it for you to direct a gentleman’s story? Did you just take it on your intuition?
Kate Cobb:
You know, um, luckily they sat and walked as men do. They are men. However, I think some stories are important to differentiate the gendered differences in those stories. I mean, that is important in some cases. But I do think that some stories are universal. And I think that this story hits more on that universal feeling of a person coming home and dealing with what they left behind. And I think that that is without gender completely. So while there were masculine themes in there, definitely the way that they interact with each other, we can’t forget that that is part of it.
But I think mostly that was stuff that they brought themselves to the project. And when it came to it, it was more just about kind of helping them hone in on where they wanted to go with the story and with the characters already. That’s my job. So it wasn’t it wasn’t bad!
Glen Dower:
Shot in 15 days. Is that correct? And how much of that was shot in sequence? I ask because Scott did such a great job of looking worse, and worse…
Kate Cobb:
Not a whole lot. When you have 15 days, you are at the mercy of what locations you can get, and how long you can be there. So we would, for example, that place that we shot as Louie’s dad’s home, we had one week at that location. So everything that we needed to include in the film from that location, we had to just shoot that week. We had an incredible art team that made sure that they knew in the sequence of where we were coming from and where we were going and made sure that his clothes were aged appropriately for that.
And then Scott, obviously, he always knows where he’s at in the story. But then even more than that, he had said before that it was a punishing schedule. So there was no real work when it came to looking exhausted! That was not difficult for any of us at the time.
Glen Dower:
So, Mr. Bigley, how are you, sir?
Kevin Bigley:
Very good, sir. Very good.
Glen Dower:
You are the film’s writer, of course, and writing about a writer. We have a line in there where Scott says, ‘’Writers are a sponge’’, they take all experiences and put them into stories. How much did that reflect your experience as a writer when it came to this story?
Kevin Bigley:
Yeah, it’s my worst fear as a writer that I would do something where I would exploit people I knew, grew up with, and love, especially where I’m from. I have such a connection with it. When I write, I usually write somewhat from a place of that. And to feel as if I think everyone feels as if they’re an authority on their hometown, you know, but to what extent? So, Louis feels that he is such an authority that he has full ownership over not only the place but the people and their stories. So that is a level of ego that terrifies me that we’re all susceptible to, you know, egotism and everything.
But man, that is a fear. And there have been some times where I’ve been writing stuff where I’ve stopped and been like, is that mine or my dad’s? Or is that my grandfather’s? What is this in particular? And, you know, it’s nice to be able to talk to folks back home and who have seen it. I sent a couple of early cuts of this to them to see how they felt. And they were like, Oh, it’s great. I was like, great. Okay, good. Good! You know, because it is a fear, because it is about that. You are writing that.
Kate Cobb:
But then be careful when you go home because you never know…
Kevin Bigley:
Yeah, I could get socked in the face, right?
Glen Dower:
And you wrote the main characters as Louie and Lainey also played by Kate. Was that alliteration deliberate?
Kevin Bigley:
Yeah, usually that rule is that every character has to have a different first letter. But I thought it was kind of funny that it was like there’s so much blending of personality with them and it felt like a cutesy high school kind of thing.
Glen Dower:
And I wanted to ask because there are certain elements that we’re not informed about as the audience. For example, we don’t know exactly what Louie’s condition is. We don’t know exactly what time we’re in. We don’t know exactly what he has said about certain characters in his books or indeed, what sort of writer he is. Did you deliberately leave those details out for the audience to interpret or just leave it as a character study?
Kevin Bigley:
We left a lot of it vague, just because I feel like it would be best to kind of project a lot of that information. Even the place itself, you know, it’s called Okie, we shot in Illinois. We wanted to make it like Everywhere USA and Stephen King is a big influence on that. So many stories about writers, mostly that they’re horror writers, like Salem’s Lots, it feels somewhat ambiguous, you know? There’s a lot of those types of writers coming home and the pomposity of just being a writer, you know?
We played with a lot of that stuff. And then we did have some background information that I’d written in there that felt way too expositional. Once you see it you’re like, oh the language is so pretty. And then you see that it’s in a car for about eight minutes and you’re like, oh, this is boring! So figuring out ways to maybe skirt some of that info and leave it vague. We actually liked it much more!
Glen Dower:
That’s great. Finally, Scott, how are you, sir?
Scott Michael Foster:
Hey, good. How are you?
Glen Dower:
I’m really good. So I just want to get back to that point I made before. Now, I quit alcohol two and a half years ago. I was watching the film and your performance and thinking, I don’t miss it!
All:
Ha!
Glen Dower:
Yeah. Man, you pull off hungover, you pull off drunk, you pull off high, and the morning after. I’m like, dude, and the bit in the hospital at the end, we pull up the zip lock bag and smell the shirt you’ve been wearing all week…
Scott Michael Foster:
Visceral, isn’t it?
Glen Dower:
For sure. How much of that was the method and how much of that were you tapping into the experience and just ‘ok day three, no sleep and I’ve had ten beers’?
Scott Michael Foster:
Let’s just say I definitely drew on experience! You know, I’ve been in a lot of those positions before, like you Glen, I haven’t had a drink in two and a half years. So congratulations to you. I mean, to me, I’ve done this before, too. I did a short film a few years ago where it was very similar where he’s just like on a huge bender and then hungover and everybody there was like, you look really fucked up, man. Are you…are you ok…are you…have you been drinking?? I’ve had experience, shamefully. It wasn’t hard to pretend.
Kevin Bigley:
It wasn’t hard to pretend like I was, there is that one day I was just off camera when he woke up in the bed. He’s like, at the end of it, I was like, had a few of those, dude.
Scott Michael Foster:
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been there. I’ve been there many times. And that was, that was the fun part because, you know, when we shot this, we shot the short film. I wasn’t sober when we shot the feature. I was. And so, you know, it was, it was, it was an exercise in like, oh man, this is how I used to actually be a lot. And it was kind of, I don’t know, for me, it was a bit of a catharsis to look at that, be it and, and get it out of my system in a way.
Glen Dower:
Oh, that’s really cool. So the whole idea as well…going home. I’ve been thinking about that recently, just outside of the film. I’m from Ireland originally, and if I went home, none of my friends were there anymore. One is in London, one is in Mexico, and I’m in Qatar in the Middle East right now. Is there a difference you think between men and women as we grew up? And Kate, you contribute as well, of course. Do women and men have different attitudes to what home is and what makes a home?
Scott Michael Foster:
Kate, you can chime in. I don’t know if it’s gendered. I mean it’s the same for me, I go home, and not a lot of people are there. And also, I don’t even really know what home is for me. I moved around a lot. I say I’m from Texas, but I only actually lived there for six years. You know, I’ve been in Los Angeles longer than anywhere else in my life. So for me now, home is here. I’ve been in this house for almost fifteen years. That’s the longest place I’ve lived ever. You know, so the idea of home, I think, is malleable.
It’s different for everybody. I don’t want to sound corny, but like, you know, for me, my home is wherever I am with my family. You know…that should be quilted on something. I really do feel like home is where you make it. And, for me, that’s been Denton, Texas. It’s been here. It’s been Illinois. Or, it’s been Indiana. So, you know, for me, coming home, this was kind of something I had to sort of think about when doing this feature was, what is my home? You know what I mean? Mine was very internal, personal, and familial, instead of an actual place and people.
Glen Dower:
Yeah, I see what you mean, exactly. Because it’s such a malleable thing. Like you said, it’s a really interesting aspect of that. I just have one quick question for you, Scott. The rap! How many takes did it take to get it?
Scott Michael Foster:
Well, I don’t know. Well, we didn’t have a lot of time. Also, we shot in one direction. It was just like, all right, here we go. We’re going to set up. We’re going to get it. And we’re losing light. We’re losing time.
Kate Cobb:
I understand it was one of those days, you know, we were fighting time…
Scott Michael Foster:
And I have to say, you know, I was like, did we get it? I don’t know if we got it. I don’t know if we finished the scene. And then, you know, of course, they do. Kate and our editor did magic in the editing room and made it look and sound great. I was stressing about that because it’s supposed to be a rap that they know by heart. You know what I mean? So I was in my hotel room, trying to get it over and over again. And it was one of those days where it’s just like, you’ve got you’ve got two takes to kind of get this!
Kate Cobb:
And we’re up against it. That was the big that was one of when I look back, that was like our hardest day because all of that we had all the pool scene stuff, all of that stuff in one day, a ton of extras. And it was a very tough day. So when by the time that was like the last thing we shot. So by the time we got in for that, I was like, dude, we don’t have a lot of time for this. And we got it in two shots. He was amazing. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Kevin Bigley:
He’s got an offer from Def Jam right now. He’s coming for tracks!
Scott Michael Foster:
No, no, don’t you lie. We were it felt like we were in that setting, that location, you know, the house with the pool and the garage. I feel like we were there for days and we were there for one day.
Kevin Bigley:
You don’t know what’s going to what’s going to to slow you down and what the tough days really are going to be. You can kind of estimate. I mean, we thought that that we knew the fair was going to be a tough day. And it was because there’s so many moving parts and we shut down a place to ride rides, which you’re like riding rides, which is fun, but you’re so stressed out because you’re trying to make your day. And then yeah, the party we’re like, I think we’ll be okay. That was really stressful. But then the races we thought were going to be tough and we were done early. Like it was. Yeah, you never know.
Kate Cobb:
Just don’t put raps into every scene!
Glen Dower:
Don’t do it. I just have one more question before my time is up. There was one scene at the end and I was gripping the side of my chair. And I don’t want to spoil too much but it involves when he gets loaded on shrooms and his friends gather and put him through an ordeal. I was thinking is he not going to make it out of this? Is this their revenge? That was epic! You know, I was watching the screener and gripping my chair going, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
Kate Cobb:
Yeah!
Glen Dower:
Between direction, writing, and acting…who can take the credit for making that amazing scene?
Kate Cobb:
Oh, that’s me!
Scott Michael Foster:
It’s Kevin. Kevin, clearly!
Kevin Bigley:
You were just there…she was just forming the word collaborative!
Scott Michael Foster:
And you pulled the rug right out from under!
Kate Cobb:
Hey, hey, it was 100 percent collaborative. We can’t do anything unless it’s in the script. So that is the number one thing. So that’s definitely his creativity. But I think making that scene work, was another one where we didn’t have a lot of time and Scott was such a gamer. We were dunking him in cold water in the middle of the night.
Scott Michael Foster:
Three a.m.
Kate Cobb:
Oh, it was. And we we tried. We had a fish tank warmer in that water, but it did not work. And then immediately when that scene was done, the dunk tank exploded!
Scott Michael Foster:
Just in time.
Kate Cobb:
It was lightning in a bottle for sure. But the scene was hard. It was honestly, it was hard to shoot. I mean, it was incredibly hard to shoot, but it was more emotionally difficult to shoot because it’s a very uncomfortable scene, and it’s scary, and shooting it felt that way, even though it’s pivotal.
Kevin Bigley:
And you’re like, I hope we land this, because like you said, that’s the exact reaction you’re going for: something that could be perceived as playful, which now feels like it isn’t. What’s going to happen? We always talked about his POV of this, it starts off as Garden State and ends up he thinks he’s in his Deliverance at that point. You know, so you’re like, wow, what’s going to happen, with this pig nose and all of this, all these allegories and things like, what is this going to be? So that’s awesome! We love to hear that reaction.
Glen Dower:
Yes. I really, really enjoyed it folks. OK, my time is up and it’s been a real pleasure meeting you guys. Thank you so much for your time. Up Okie!
Kate Cobb:
Thank you!
Scott Michael Foster:
Thanks.
Kevin Bigley:
Good to hear. And appreciated.
Okie is in select theaters now.
