By Nate Hapke, Special to the Van Nuys News Press
NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA – I’ve had the privilege of screening many times at Valley Film Festival: One More (short film, VFF ‘17), She & Her (short film, VFF ‘20), Ride Share (short film, VFF ‘21), Two Dash One One (feature film, VFF ‘22), His, Ours, A (short film, VFF ‘23), Good Grief (short film, VFF ‘24), and now Why Are You Like This? (short film, VFF ‘25, alumni block Wednesday 9/17 at 5 pm).
In 2022, we had finished our first feature film Two Dash One One. It was made during the summer of 2021 with Covid protocols including a quarantined production to ensure we could make it through. The movie was the perfect first feature from a production standpoint as it was – two person cast, ten person crew, one main location for the vast majority of the film with a few flashback sequences filmed in our apartment. The movie was a dramatized version of our experience cohabitating for the first time during lockdown in 2020. We had been dating for three years but suddenly found ourselves in a 425 square foot studio apartment with a 7 lb chiweenie in a world that all of a sudden felt very dangerous beyond the front door. From April of 2020 to November of 2020 we wrote A LOT (features, and shorts) but this script was the most personal and would serve as a creative catharsis for so many reasons. We wrapped on schedule in July of 2021 after a 10 day shoot on the top of a mountain in Idyllwild, California during a heat wave with full hearts. We already had an incredible post team with us from our shorts, and the workflow was intuitive for the transition to features.
Tracey Adlai has always been an incredible support for Rosie and myself and, when we were figuring out where we wanted to have our world premiere in 2022, it was pretty easy for us to think “Hey, The Valley Film Festival would be an amazing place to show what we can do with a feature film, let’s submit it for consideration.” Not only did the film get in, but Tracey offered us the opening night of the festival. We were honored, and so excited.
While this was happening, we were moving into pre-production on our second feature film, Surprise!. This film was about a surprise birthday party that was really a surprise engagement party that keeps getting waylaid because of not despite the best intentions of all of the guests. Unbeknownst to Rosie, I had gotten her parents blessing to ask her to marry me at some point that year. I think the expression “write what you know” might come to mind here…
Production on Surprise! was going really well until a Covid outbreak on set forced us to shut down two weeks before the world premiere of Two Dash One One at VFF and we were heartbroken. It would’ve been easy to lose faith, but Rosie remained encouraging and reminded me that we would be able to make it through this as we had with all of the myriad issues our productions had faced in the past. These issues, not unlike issues that might affect a couple in their romantic life, have only brought us closer and made us stronger filmmakers over time. And with that, an idea hit me – I was going to ask a question of my own during the Q&A following the screening. It was a way to honor Rosie’s leadership, to celebrate my love for her, to turn the page on our recent bad luck, and to make the night our first feature film premiered even more special. The best part? We got to do it in a theatre that we had spent so many hours in (NoHo Laemmle 7) during a festival event that we had been so supported and inspired by over the years (The Valley Film Festival).
When Crickett Rumley, the night’s moderator, asked if there were any topics to avoid or include during the Q&A, I made sure Rosie was out of ear shot when I said “everything is fair game. But if you wouldn’t mind leaving enough time for me to ask one question at the end?” She knew exactly what I meant, and did a fantastic job queuing me up. As soon as I asked, Rosie enthusiastically said yes, tackling me to the ground in the process amidst a roar of applause from the audience members who got to watch more than what they thought when buying their ticket to the premiere.
It was a night we’ll never forget. The Valley Film Festival was always, and will always be, an incredible part of our personal and filmmaking journeys and we are so grateful to be a part of the 25th (and final) year. (https://www.valleyfilmfest.org/)
