britt rentschler michael tennant

Longtime friends MICHAEL TENNANT and BRITT RENTSCHLER met in an acting class, a logical place to find a potential creative collaborator. But for many actors, auditioning and waiting to be cast in someone else’s project can become a tiresome experience. Thus, Tennant started working for a production company (his producing credits include Siân Heder’s Tallulah and Lauren Hadaway’s The Novice, as well as his own short film Pet Sounds) and Rentschler began producing and writing her own shorts (including Barrel 28 and Inside the Actor’s Studio: At Home Edition – Supportive Wife and Girlfriend). The two came together to co-write, co-producer, and co-direct short films, which eventually got the wheels turning on a potential feature collaboration. With additional actor friends, a location hookup to a Northern California mansion, and the grit to overcome the usual indie filmmaking obstacles (in addition to some unusual obstacles – like a pandemic), the resulting labor of love is now reaching a wide audience.

In the feature-length comedy PRETTY PROBLEMS, Rentschler and Tennant produce and also star as unhappily married Lindsay and Jack, who are invited by their new carefree (and extremely wealthy) friends to a weekend getaway in wine country, where things go off the rails for the struggling couple. J.J. Nolan, Graham Outerbridge, Charlotte Ubben, and Alex Klein co-star in the film, which is directed by Kestrin Pantera with a story by Tennant, Rentschler, and Ubben, and a screenplay by Tennant.

Pretty Problems premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival, where it took home the Narrative Spotlight Audience Award. Acquired by IFC films, the movie arrives in theaters and On Demand on October 7. [UPDATE: Pretty Problems is streaming on AMC+.] We were lucky enough to chat with writer/producer/star Michael Tennant and producer/star Britt Rentschler about their collaborative history and their new film.

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COLIN McCORMACK: So to start off, from what I understand, you guys met in an acting class. At that time, was acting your main objective, or was writing, producing, and creating always part of your career plans?

BRITT RENTSCHLER: It was acting for me. I came up in theater. I got my master’s degree and decided I had done enough theater; I knew what that world looked like and I wanted to try TV and film. I moved out [to LA] with a deep purpose to make a living as an actor. Writing and producing were so far off my radar at that point. LA really changed my perspective on that.

MICHAEL TENNANT: Yeah, same. I was in New York for a number of years after graduating from college and was doing theater. I was enjoying it but also was realizing that I wasn’t going to go very far doing Off-Off-Off-Off-Off-Broadway shows. I moved to Los Angeles because I kept coming out to test. I’m from Southern California too, but I kept coming back to LA to test for things and was kind of like, You know, the quality of life seems to be better here. I can get a tan, which would be nice. [Laughs] I fell into producing, which is kind of how this whole thing happened. I booked a couple of days on a movie and one of the producers took a shine to me and hired me to do development at his company. Then I started producing and I approached Britt a couple years ago with this script where I kind of had an idea. Also, it’s Britt’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Britt.

CM: Happy Birthday!

BR: Thank you.

MT: I approached Britt with this idea I had about this married couple that wasn’t doing so great. And it’s the first thing I’ve written. It’s not the first thing we’ve done together, we’ve done a couple shorts together. She’s always been my favorite person to act with and when I came up with the idea, I was like, There’s no one else who can lead this movie but Britt.

CM: Yeah, I was going to ask, you guys have both surely crossed paths with a lot of fellow actors, be it on projects or in classes. So what was it that drew you to each other as collaborators more so than just as classmates?

BR: I think there are always people in class that you have acting crushes on, and Michael and I had an acting crush on each other right away. We also came from die-hard theater. One of our first assignments in our TV and film acting class was our teacher decided to do a very strange thing and assign a theater piece, which normally doesn’t happen when you’re in a class that’s working on that. But it was this scene from Snakepit, and it’s so visceral. And we were both like, “Yeah, let’s do this!” And we were drinking whiskey in my apartment and rehearsing like theater nerds. It was so awesome and we fell in love with working with each other right then because we both knew that we were going to do everything we could to try to get the material as alive as possible. When you find people that excite you that way and are also as excited, then you want to keep finding that fire. It really doesn’t always work that way. There are a lot of people who don’t want to show up on time or don’t want to come in memorized, et cetera. But Michael was one of those people [where] his light switch was always on, and I really loved that about him.

MT: I have no notes on that comment. I love that comment. That comment was perfect. No, same. What Britt left out was actually the first time Britt and I rehearsed, I used to run a bar in Hollywood so I’d be up very late. I had to get to rehearsal at her place at like noon on a Sunday and I’d been up to four or five o’clock in the morning closing out the tabs at the bar. And I showed up and I was the first person there and she was like, “You look tired.” I was like, “Yeah, I am. I was working all night, but I’m here and ready to go.” And she’s like, “Well, I have coffee and I have bourbon.” And I was like, And here we go. Best friend. High five.

BR: [Laughs] Yeah.

CM: It seems like both of you were balancing making other people’s work — either by acting in other people’s stuff or producing other people’s stuff — with your own projects that you wanted to get off the ground. Were there certain types of roles or projects that you weren’t seeing out there that you wanted to create for your own? Britt, your Inside the Actor’s Studio [parody short] about supportive wives and girlfriends makes me wonder if those might have been roles you’ve seen a time or two in auditions.

BR: Maybe once or twice or a hundred million times. I was so frustrated with the stereotype that I was seeing. And you might have noticed Graham Outerbridge, also from Pretty Problems, in Inside the Actor’s Studio, and also my husband Alex Klein. Proof that when you fall in love with people’s acting, you just want to keep them as close as possible and keep working with them. You asked that wonderful question about when I landed here, did I imagine I would be doing this? No. I imagined that like in the theater, there are elevated playwrights, you can’t touch them. They’re all the way up here. I am just supposed to act their work. I never thought that I would be in a position to be working on my own dialogue in any way. And then also someone hires me. That’s how it works. I show up, I hope I get hired. And after a good grind in Los Angeles, [I started] realizing that we could be the people that created work. Looking around the set on Pretty Problems and knowing that we gave everyone a job, it was something I can really get addicted to. It was so empowering to know that we could tell the stories we wanted to tell, but also that we could invite in people that we felt were so deserving of getting screen time. Just because they don’t have a celebrity name attached to them, these are our friends who are fighting for a couple of lines on television just so they can try to make their health insurance. And then here we are doing a project right out of COVID when everything’s been shut down and just the gratitude to be working, but also to have created it ourselves, was an incredible experience.

MT: We shot during the pandemic. I mean, we were all quarantined together. We were all vaccinated, but we were very serious about [being] all in this bubble together. We had to actually cut a few roles from the movie and combine them into one character because we didn’t have space for that many actors on the property we were on, which we were very fortunate to have. I love what Britt said though. I think both of us felt that way where it’s like, I’m not seeing myself in my casting. Like if I played one more douchebag ex-frat boy, douchebag stockbroker, or douchebag lawyer. I was like, “No, I’m a really nice guy. I’m really sensitive. I understand I look the way I look, but goddamn, man. I can do more.”

BR: I want to feel things!

MT: I’m not a dick, I swear to God! Britt and I talked about this a lot, but I think actors get caught in this idea of the linear career, and it’s not linear. You get told that if you book a co-star, you’ll get a guest star, and if you get a guest star, then you’ll get your series regular, and then you’re George Clooney or Julia Roberts. And that’s not how this works. I think people are looking at this as a doorway they have to run through and what Britt and I have discussed a few times is instead of running through the doorway, what if we just go around the door? And it’s hard to go around the door. You have to have the resources and the very talented and amazing friends and crew that we had. But I think we took a shot on ourselves and it’s been incredibly rewarding for it to work out the way it has.

CM: And in terms of a linear career path on the filmmaking side, it is very common for people to start out with shorts and then work their way up to the feature level. So when you guys were doing that and starting with making your own shorts, what were some of the early, on-the-ground filmmaking lessons that you learned that then you could bring with you to the feature side?

BR: Wow, there’s so much. That’s such a good question. First of all, I feel like the development of iPhones was a huge thing. We met each other a decade ago and — personal story — I hawked my old engagement ring so I could buy an HD camera and start doing self-tapes. It’s actually that camera that’s right behind me right now. I will never let go of it [laughs]. Now it would be like a hundred dollars, but then it was a thousand. And it was so challenging to get anything shot. Once you could have an iPhone, we just started messing around with stuff all the time and our very favorite short that we made together, Overshare, was a parody of an Instagram Story. So having the technology in our hands made a huge difference and was really empowering. I also learned to edit because of that. So during this process, going through all of our test audiences and editing, feeling empowered to be a part of that process as well I think opened all of these doors.

Once you start working on a short and you make all of the mistakes that you make — and you will make so many and you’ll continue to make them — you start to realize that everyone’s job is related to everyone’s job. If you can learn how to do a little bit of everyone’s job, then you’ll be better at respecting the people who are doing those jobs. But [you’ll] also know that it’s not just your job to sit there and behave. That’s how I felt as an actress, especially. It was like: Show up, do your role, and then you leave and you don’t get to be a decision maker and you don’t get to know what anyone else is doing. Starting with shorts and growing into a feature for me was about the confidence of learning everyone’s jobs and also realizing that it’s an entire ecosystem that needs to be tended to and it’s important that everybody has a say.

MT: It’s like the idea of going through and acting conservatory, right? You’re like, Why am I taking stagecraft? Why am I taking costumes? Why am I taking lighting? Why am I doing this? And then you get onto a set and you’re like, oh, because now I understand how hard that job is. Why am I stage managing a play? Oh my God, this is hard. I don’t have the skill set for this, but I appreciate the hell out of these people. We were so blessed. Aly Brocato, who was our DP, put together such an amazing crew of people who just showed up every day. It was most of their first features, it was Aly’s first feature. And we also felt really good, as the writers and creators of the project, to be empowering people on our film, which is our first feature together too. I was at SXSW in 2018 when Mark Duplass gave his second version of the “Calvary Isn’t Coming” speech. And I snuck into it, and I’ve apologized profusely to the festival for sneaking into it at this point. But it just hit me that like, the calvary isn’t coming. No one is going to hand me the career I want.

Most of my favorite actors are self-starters. I moved to New York to be an actor because of Matt Damon, honestly, and because of Good Will Hunting. I was an athlete in high school, I got injured and I fell into acting and Good Will Hunting just honestly changed my life. I had the fortune of meeting Matt Damon a couple of years ago and I got to tell him the story, and he was the sweetest human being on the planet. He took about 30 minutes, let me gush about him, and then asked me questions about myself. This was a huge risk we took. But also I think Britt and I just trust one another. We believe in one another and we know that we’re going to show up for one another. On the days that I don’t want to show up, I know Britt’s going to make me show up, and the same for her. I think that’s what the genesis of the film really was.

BR: And there’s a guarantee we’re going to mess it up.

MT: Absolutely.

BR: For everything you see, there are a hundred things you didn’t see and there’s a reason for that. Your trash bin on your computer file gets real full, you know?

MT: Yeah, I have more folders of cut scenes from Pretty Problems than I do actual scenes in the movie.

pretty problems movie

CM: When you are kind of creating your own cavalry and starting that collaboration process, did you have the roles super defined and delineated? Like, “You work on this while I work on that.” Or was it just letting it organically flow who was doing what and when?

BR: I feel like we would start with a task and then it would end up finding its way to the right person, even as our team grew. It started when Michael brought the first 10 pages he’d written to me, and then we sat down and decided on what the trajectory was going to be and what people were thinking about and what activities [they’d do] and fleshing out the rest of the script in Act Two and Act Three. And then all of a sudden it was, okay, I think we’re ready for a director, and then we found Kestrin. And Michael worked on a short with [producer] Katya [Alexander], and Katya was amazing, so he brought Katya in. And as we continued to grow, everyone’s roles were in flow. We had things that we were primarily good at or maybe initially assigned, and what I loved about this team is that Michael started with the ethos of “best idea wins.” So even if there was any definition, if it was very clear that something was shifting and someone was doing a better job at something else, we just kept shifting. It was like pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot. Always. That was really what it was. And ultimately, I think that’s why we all feel so much ownership over this project. This is everybody’s project. Even the actors coming in, the crew coming in, people having ideas would change at the very last minute into something more brilliant than we could have imagined. It was a hive mind in a lot of ways.

MT: God, I love you. I think one of the most important things I’ve learned as an actor is malleability. It’s the ability to adapt to change. And I think we get so fixated sometimes as actors on the breakdown. Blank is blank. He is this. Versus being like, I don’t know, let’s see what happens, man. Let’s just try it out. Let’s roll with it. And I think we had a very “let’s roll with it” idea on set. Britt, you can back me up on this maybe, but I think 80% of what we typed made it on the screen, 20% was just people being flame-throwers. Graham, J.J., Alex, Charlotte, Clay [Froning], Kat [Hughes], Vanessa [Chester], Tom [DeTrinis], everybody. Some of the funniest jokes in the movie — and I’ll kill anyone if they say this out loud — were improvised. They were just people being brilliant and using something we just had joked about before we started filming and they would work it into the scene. I also think because we all knew one another so well, there was a level of trust. Like when you’re doing a play and it’s the last night of the play and you do the whole, We’re all going to mess with one another. We’re all going to do bits and see if we can get somebody to crack on stage. That was the entire process of shooting this movie, trying to get someone to crack during the comedy scenes. Britt and I had some of the more emotional weight of the movie, which was not as fun in those moments.

BR: But it was also why we chose those roles in that we didn’t necessarily get to do all the character acting that we wanted to do. You asked that question earlier about choosing roles. We knew that we could ground everybody. Because it started with us, it had to end with us. And we had a set that was not based on hierarchy. There was leadership, that was important, but there was no hierarchy. I think that makes a huge difference.

MT: Also, Britt and I just had this ongoing Google Doc of ideas for scenes the entire time. I was sitting there typing, typing, typing. And she would hit me with, “Wait, what’s the most awkward thing you can do? Murder mystery night. Everybody screws it up, it’s the worst and no one ever does it correctly?” I was like, “Oh my God, that’s brilliant. Here we go.” Britt and I text all the time, we talk all the time. It was really fun to collaborate in that way of just [saying], “I have an idea!” And sometimes they were great ideas, sometimes they were bad ideas, but also the idea of “I’m just going to throw this against the wall and see what hits.” More often than not, it hit, which was awesome.

CM: For a lot of independent films, the writers are sort of working with what they already have at their disposal, be it fellow actors that they’re already connected to or a location, and kind of work backward. You know, have that [pre-existing] foundation as they fill in the pieces. But not many people have a mansion in wine country at their disposal. So how early did that location come about as a potential set?

MT: My producing partner Charlotte Ubben, we’ve made about seven or eight features together. The family that owns the home was a huge fan of a few of the movies. We met them at Sundance a few years ago and we went and spent some time with them. We were at this house and I was like, “I would love to shoot a movie here. This would be insane to shoot a movie here.” And they graciously offered us the property because they were cinephiles and fans of the work we’d done.

BR: I will interject. This is a “shoot your shot” moment. And I say this at every Q&A. On the other side of it, if you ever have a restaurant, a vacation home, a house, a car, anything that you can lend to an indie filmmaker, it can be the difference between having a movie and not having a movie. It’s so important. On the flip side of that, you have to ask. You have to ask, just take the chance. You know, we were in the Berkshires and we started talking to these wonderful people who were a fan of the movie and I already had another movie idea based on their house. I was like, “Do you guys think you might let us come and shoot?” You just have to ask because they might say no, but if they say yes, it can absolutely be a game-changer. And it takes that willingness to be vulnerable and to hope that there might be a generosity that meets you. But I say, shoot that shot.

MT: The worst thing they can say is no. And I think as actors, we get so people-pleasing sometimes that we forget that “no” isn’t a bad word. No is okay. So yeah, I asked if I could shoot a movie there and I then went up, I took a ton of photos of the property, and then I went full Duplass Brother and rode around the property and knew what I had at my disposal. Again, having a billionaire complex ruled, but Kestrin brings up a lot too at Q&As about how you spend enough time in a place and you start to see the cracks in it. I think the movie is very emblematic of that, the idea that like, Wait, this doorknob doesn’t work. This house is worth how much money and why is the water pressure shit here? Why is this happening like this? This shouldn’t be like this.

BR: And I’m also really grateful for — we’ve mentioned the Duplass Brothers a couple of times — but truly the filmmakers that have come before us that are so willing to share their process. Michael was brave enough to ask because he read a book where it said [to] write around what you have and if you don’t have it, ask for it and see if you can get it. And I think that kind of empowerment is important because we went to a festival we never thought we were going to get into. We screened on a Monday at 11 a.m. at a 450-seat theater and we had no celebrities in our movie and we thought, There’s going to be 50 people there.

MT: It was terrifying. Terrifying. I tried to buy tickets and they wouldn’t let me ’cause they caught my name [laughs].

BR: But then we made QR codes on high heels and we took them all over Austin and we begged people to come. We handed out business cards and we did the thing that you do. But ultimately, it’s important for anyone to know who’s trying to do this, I want them to feel like this is not a mystery. We didn’t have magic. We really just grabbed the things that we could and worked as hard as we could and there were a lot of really wonderful people who met us where we were in that process. But I never want this to feel intimidating to people. I think once the awards start to stack up, it can get put on some sort of pedestal. And this is indie filmmaking. It’s an experiment. You might fail, but you grab what you can and you keep going and really good things can happen. I want other filmmakers to know that. To grab their iPhone, to grab whatever camera they have, to raise the money on Kickstarter. That’s really what it is. There’s not a secret.

pretty problems movie cast

CM: In terms of asking for things or having to be vulnerable or kind of suck it up and make the hard ask when comes to financing, that’s another thing that new producers are very often at a loss of where to even start. Did you have at least the lay of the land because of your previous producing experience of potential avenues of financing?

MT: Uh, I took a mortgage out against my home to make the movie. I’m not going to tell you what the budget was on this movie, but I’m going to tell you it was not a lot of money. We made this movie for a very small amount of money. But it was also what Britt just said, “Shoot your shot.” I think I can do this. I was fortunate that I worked in development for a number of years and produced a bunch of movies and I kept watching movies get made for exorbitant amounts of money. So much money. And I was like, Why does that movie cost $9 million? I didn’t get it. And you’d watch the movie and be like, Oh, because everybody took a paycheck. Good for everybody. High five. But I also watched my then-boss take a paycheck and invest someone else’s money into the movie so he could drive his Audi, he could eat sushi, he could drink wine at lunch. I love my car. I love sushi. I love wine. That’s not why I want to tell stories. I want to tell stories because I care about telling stories. And I feel like so many people that are making choices are making these choices because they want to pull fees. They don’t care about the actual story. We were very, very conscious of how much money this movie cost while we were making it. To be perfectly honest, post-production costs more than shooting did. Because Britt is an MF-er and learned how to music license, we got some amazing music and that cost some money. But also those artists deserve to be paid someway. Our artists deserve to be paid. We went into this with that mindset. I mean, it’s the Leslye Headland, Jim Cummings, Duplass Brothers again, it’s all these amazing indie filmmakers who are like heroes.

BR: Zoe Lister-Jones, crushing it. And Kestrin Pantera! We found Kestrin because her movie [Mother’s Little Helpers] was at South By, and I was like, “This woman knows how to do this, I can tell. She’s doing it and we need her and I want to learn from her.” And that was a lot of it too, in that we brought people in that we knew had the same work ethic and could get their hands dirty. Everyone on this set — we were union, they took scale — but every single person gets a backend off of it as well because we couldn’t promise anything upfront. We were like, “Truly, we can feed you, we can house you, we can fly you here and we’re all going to live on this compound together.” The compound is fancy, but you know, I did my own hair and makeup. That’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it wouldn’t happen on a Paramount set. But you take care of yourself, you take care of each other, and then I think the product ends up reflecting that in a different way.

CM: Can you say how long the shooting schedule was?

MT: Three weeks. Six days on, one day off on the compound. And then three days in LA to pick up. It was really tight. We also rehearsed the hell out of this thing on Zoom. We also, again, all knew one another. We knew that we were going to get there and we were all going to be professionals. Britt said this earlier, and I love that, but a lot of this movie too was giving people [roles they deserve]. Graham Outerbridge is one of the greatest actors I’ve ever met in my entire life. It blows my mind that Graham is not a movie star. It blows my mind. I wanted to give people like Graham, like Alex, like Charlotte, like Amy,  like Tom, like Vanessa, like Britt, like Kat, everybody, I just wanted to give everyone an opportunity to shine and I saw that chance. When I initially pitched this idea to Charlotte, where I was like, “What if we do this with our friends?” we both were a little reticent because it was a scary way to do it.

BR: Because it’s not the formula. The indie formula.

MT: Exactly. The way to do this is to grab two actors who are on hiatus from TV shows, make them the leads of the movie, and then plug ourselves into smaller roles. And I was sitting at my birthday dinner in the “before times” in 2019, and I was looking around the table at Britt and Alex and most of the people who are in this movie and was like, “What if we just went with this chosen family and made this movie?” And I know we’re not the first people to do it this way, but I will say I’m so happy we did it this way. I’m so happy we trusted our friends. I’m so happy we trusted our chosen family to show up and perform the way we did. I don’t think this movie works without those people. I keep saying this and I know [Britt’s] annoyed about it, but just work with people you love if you can. Look, if you get offered a series regular on a show on ABC, yo, take the job. Take that job.

BR: Take it! Make health insurance for life! But then come do our movie in between [laugh].

MT: But again, Britt and I saw an opportunity to showcase a lot of people we really love who we think are incredibly talented and I feel great that we did that. Whatever this movie does, whatever happens in my career moving forward, I’m so happy that I took a stand on this one project and was like, I’m going to do it this way with my people. It feels really good that it’s working out the way it’s working out.

BR: And to gather people too. I think the industry can feel really big. We talked about it like being behind the gates up around the castle walls. But there are so many people that started doing this because they also went to film school and they nerded out watching triple-features until 3:00 a.m. with somebody. If you can, tap into that love. Gary Rizzo, who did our sound, has two Academy Awards. I met him because I did a Kickstarter for one of my first movies and he happened to see the trailer and said, “I like what you guys are up to. If you actually finish this movie, you can come to Skywalker Ranch and I will mix it for you.” And he did for free. He donated his time and then every movie since then, he said, “I will always help you.” And he helped us on this movie, which was the biggest ask we’ve ever had because we ended up selling worldwide. All of a sudden we’re dealing with foley mixes that we’ve never dealt with before and a different set of production. The first movie that we mixed at Skywalker, I had a garage sale because we couldn’t afford gas to get up there. He said, “I will mix your movie for free if you can get here.” And we were so broke that we did our garage sale, we went to Subway and got a foot-long sandwich, and then we drove up to San Francisco and slept on the floor. And it was the most incredible experience. Now here he is mixing this movie. So those people are out there. They are out there and that’s what I want other artists to feel from this, is that it doesn’t have to feel like it just can’t happen unless it happens one certain way.

MT: One, Gary rules. Two, Melissa Lynn, who did all of our costumes and wardrobe, she’s a stylist for a very famous pop star. She read the script because J.J. is a friend of hers and she was going to style J.J. And she read the script and said, “Oh my God, I need to style this whole movie.” And she called in every favor. I literally just got a DM from one of these clothing brands about, “Oh my God, are we in your movie?” And it’s like, you are. And we couldn’t afford you in real life.

BR: She got us sample sales through the roof, got donations. I mean, she kept our wardrobe budget to a level that is unreal even for a Target run. And she did it all by asking for favors because she believed in the movie.

MT: This goes back to what Britt said earlier, the worst thing someone can say is no.

CM: So to wrap up, what’s next for you guys? If you can say.

BR: I’m working on a movie called Pain Hustlers right now, which is a Netflix film. It’s got Emily Blunt and Chris Evans in it. And actually, Alex Klein, who is my husband in real life and plays Kerry in [Pretty Problems], also got cast in that movie. So we’re working on that project together, which is wild and completely unrelated. That’s been really exciting. I’ve been going back and forth to Atlanta to work on that.

MT: I have a feature right now called The Mirror Game that’s currently doing a festival run. And also I’ve got a mockumentary about people taking the master sommelier exam that we’ve got written and we’re about to take out. I’ve got another script called Chloe that I am in love with. I didn’t write this, I’m just acting in it and producing it. It’s amazing. Cheyenne Jackson is producing it. We’re very excited about that. And then Britt and I are working on a couple scripts right now. We had this really amazing idea with J.J. when we were in Maui at the Maui Film Festival, which, by the way, there are worse film festivals to be invited to.

BR: Yeah, it was terrible. Hawaii’s awful. Never go [laughs].

MT: My new best friend Tracy Bennett’s job is being the film commissioner of Maui. And I’m going to take that job from him and you can print that. But anyway, we had a great idea for a movie we’re writing about that, which he’s helping us get put up there. And then we have another idea about our experience of being at SXSW. A lot of stuff in the works.

BR: We’re currently lobbying SXSW to let us film during their festival.

MT: They gave us thumbs up for, like, wide shots. We got B-roll approved.

CM: Nice. Well, congrats on this film. I’m excited to see what you guys do next.

MT: Thanks. This a big for us.

BR: This is huge, being interviewed by you for this. I mean, my dream moving to California was just to be in SAG at all. So to be talking to SAGindie is huge.

CM: Thank you guys so much for the chat.

MT: Thank you, man. And I’m going to blow Britt up real quick. I texted her yesterday and said, “Oh my God, tomorrow’s your birthday. And we get to spend the whole day doing press. What a great fucking birthday!”

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Thanks so much to Michael and Britt for the great conversation! Learn more about PRETTY PROBLEMS at the IFC Films website or prettyproblemsmovie.com.

If you’re an independent filmmaker or know of an independent film-related topic we should write about, email blogadmin@sagindie.org for consideration.

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