(photo credit: John Hart – Wisconsin State Journal)
A selection in the now sold out “Short Films from Wisconsin’s Own” program at the Wisconsin Film Fest, “Bingo Night!” finds senior citizen Ethel (Lynne Stewart) robbing a bingo hall to avoid living in a nursing home with the help of two friends (Mindy Sterling, Brenda Pickleman), a scooter, and some absolutely charming ski masks — they’re handknit. In addition to turning to Kickstarter to fund his project, director (and UW-Madison alum) Jordan Liebowitz brought his project back to his college town for on-location shooting.
Earlier this week, Jordan spoke with me about setting up shop in Madison, moving out west, and hitting the casting jackpot:
You’re in California now, correct? And can I resent you for that?
I’m in California now, but I’m originally from New York. I went to school in Madison which is where I first got into filmmaking. I went back to New York and was working in production there and eventually hooked up with a documentary film crew based out of Los Angeles on a shoot trekking across the southwest and American south. They basically convinced me that “This is the place you should be,” and about 14 months ago, I made the trek out here. The one weird thing is it’s hard to gauge the passage of time [here] because you don’t really have seasons, but beyond that it’s fantastic. I get to sit outside in shorts in the middle of March.
You’re on the west coast now, but you shot “Bingo Night!” in Wisconsin.
The entire film was actually shot in Madison.
Was there a reason for that beyond the nostalgia trip?
There were a few reasons. Ryan [Heraly], my producer, and I had wanted to come back to Wisconsin at some point and shoot a project just because we both were shooting bands and music videos there and felt like there was a great aesthetic to the city that was worth capturing. With this specific project, it takes place in a bingo hall which is a very Midwest sort of thing. In theory, we could have tried to replicate that [in Los Angeles] but I just don’t think we would have gotten the same results. We did have like 12 locations, so all the travel costs incurred getting out to Wisconsin were justified by the fact that we were paying much less for our locations.
There’s a definite authenticity in the film because of the location shooting, too. Was that an actual bingo hall?
That was a local VFW on the east side in Madison. They were very nice to let us shoot there. And yes, it also functions as a bingo hall. By the end of that day of shooting, there were people lined up at the back of the room waiting for us to get done.
Where did the idea for “Bingo Night!” come from?
I was working as a gaffer in L.A., and Ryan and I were talking about getting into our own projects. I mean the reason we got into this is that we wanted to do our own stuff, and so we just started writing shorts and sending them back and forth. We’d give each other deadlines, and I had a looming deadline and hadn’t written anything and I’m sitting there thinking “What the hell am I going to write about?” and I remember walking down the street thinking “Wouldn’t it be funny if a bunch of old ladies robbed a bingo hall?” And so I ran home and pounded out a script that was about half the length the script is now, sent it over to Ryan and his response was immediately “This is really good. We should do something with this.” We re-drafted it about 20 times and about six months later, there we were shooting it.
You turned to Kickstarter for this project, but you had actually finished shooting already.
We knew we were going to raise money for post-production, especially once we got Lynne Stewart and Mindy Sterling as our actresses. It seemed like it would be a waste to not really try to do this project justice. Basically, the Kickstarter funds covered a full-blown professional post-production process. That meant hiring a feature film editor, sending it to a professional sound studio to get remixed and remastered and on top of that, color work and HD cams and producing high-end deliverables we could send into festivals.
Both Lynne Stewart and Mindy Sterling are pretty recognizable talents. How did you manage to get them on board?
We didn’t cold call anyone, but Ryan shoots interviews for the Holywood Reporter and he ended up shooting a piece on the 50th anniversary of The Groundlings, which is kind of like the Los Angeles equivalent of Second City. If you print that I feel like someone is going to be like “That is so not true.” One of the people Ryan interviewed was Lynne Stewart, who was a member of The Groundlings for like 20 years, and she did Pee Wee’s Playhouse and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Ryan called me and said “I need to show you some footage I shot today,” and I watched it and it was like a light went on. We got a hold of Lynne’s agent and like three days later, she called us and said she’d absolutely like to do it. We really hit it off
With Mindy Sterling, we originally had someone else cast for that part but they were unable to due to some health issues about two weeks before production. We found a lot of extremely talented actors in Chicago but in the end, Lynne suggested Mindy to us, and she was totally on board to do it.
It’s a good thing you have that talent too, because Ethel really goes through the ringer in a few scenes. There’s that opening dialogue where you really feel like her character’s at the end of her rope. And then that crushing phone conversation between Ethel and her son.
That phone scene was super stressful because it was the first scene we shot, and it’s one of the first scenes in the film, and from the first take, Lynne nailed it.
She puts on this toughness but you also see a fragility in her performance, like living in a nursing home really would be the worst thing ever. I go back to when the ladies are holding up the bingo hall and Ethel goes into the back office and gives this great line reading of “Is that like ‘Life Alert?'” There’s this fear in her voice even while she’s sticking a gun in some guy’s face.
That’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie, too. Lots of high energy.
You have this early scene in a dojo, but I get the feeling that Master Ken from “Ken Kwan Do” doesn’t actually know taekwando.
[laughs] The concept behind that character was a well-intentioned if not somewhat delusional guy. Ben Fritz, who plays Master Ken, does a phenomenal job. He’s a Madison local, and he and Chris Lay both do a phenomenal job with that scene. They just hit it off so well and the two of them deserve so much credit for what that scene became. One of the biggest struggles in that scene, beyond the broken air conditioner, was trying to contain everyone’s laughter. All the kids you see in that scene are actually all fresh out of karate class. I was a little nervous about that and wanted to make sure the parents read the script beforehand. A whole bunch of kids were excited to meet Mindy because of her role in The Legend of Korra. They had a field day.Ruth’s character is pretty memorable too, which is impressive given that she says absolutely nothing in the film. How do you cast for a role without dialogue?
Brenda [Pickleman] came into her audition wearing those glasses she wears in the film which are such a great look for the character. She gave a really fantastic audition. She has to be so expressive with her face without hamming it up, and she struck that chord perfectly. We were lucky to have her, since Brenda spends half of her time in Hawaii and half in Chicago. We got her just before she left for Hawaii.
What I like the most about the film is what it suggests about Ethel’s character. By the end, she’s hardened and adapted. Without giving anything away, she seems like she’s found a place to call home anyway.
One of the big themes I wanted to approach is that Ethel is someone who doesn’t like the idea of change but at the same time has this impulsive desire for adventure. So when someone tries to force her out of a situation she likes, she ends up going to extreme measures to make sure she can stay where she is. These three characters represent a refusal to become old, and Ethel’s independence gets reaffirmed in a very odd and strange way.
- “Bingo Night!” plays Saturday, April 5 at 6:15p in the UW Elvehjem Building as a selection in the “Shorts from Wisconsin’s Own” program