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On the heels of well-received mainstream video game adaptations like HBO’s The Last of Us or Prime Video’s Fallout, the timing of fantasy dramedy short film Chuck and Fern couldn’t be more appropo. Making its world premiere at the Oscar and BAFTA qualifying LA Shorts International Film Festival on Friday, the short follows the story of two video game characters, Chuck (Lorena Jorge), a D-List villain, and Fern (Mateo Mpinduzi-Mott), a happy-go-lucky Link inspired swordsman as they face an existential crisis when they learn that the child playing their game is facing some tough times at home. Here, playwright-filmmaker Henry Alex Kelly spoke with Dead-line about the importance of creative escape, the power of crowdfunding and working with fellow Afro-Latino cast and crew.
DEADLINE: This video game-based film relies on video game inspirations and references. But more than that, it’s about something deeper. It’s about domestic abuse. Why use the world of gaming to help tell this story?
HENRY ALEX KELLY: Yeah. It’s a heavy story, but I like making entertaining stories that also have medicine in them. There’s this aspect of this little boy escaping into games. For me, seeing people playing video games… everybody has something going on in their lives. I come from a family that would get into arguments and yell and things like that, but video games really helped me escape those feelings and emotions and helped me find comfort. And a lot of the movies and things that inspired me, like Taika Waititi, who has this beautiful way of putting so much comedy, fun and heart into these very heavy subject matters from Boy to Thor: Ragnarok.
DEADLINE: Where did the writing process start for you? Were these two ideas of video games and domestic abuse bifurcated, or did they always mesh together?
KELLY: Originally, this started as a play. In the play version, Chuck and Fern were talking to the audience, but you can’t cut to something happening in the real world in a play. It has to be just what you see on stage. For me, I was thinking, this is going to be crazy, but I was thinking of Toy Story, and I was like, “Well, Andy plays with his toys, but what if some really real ish went down and these toys had to see this, and how would they react and what would that be?” And I was like, “Well, I think they would be in a place where, ‘Well, we have to help our kid. We have to help this person that’s connected with us and been here with us his entire life and our entire lives.'” So, both ideas happened in the inception.
DEADLINE: This film had its world premiere at the LA Shorts International Film Festival. What’s that feeling been like?
KELLY: Yes, and I made the final round of shorts at Dream Con in Texas. But this is my first world premiere, my first directorial debut and I’ve never been to the LA Shorts Fest. The journey of getting here has been insane.
DEADLINE: What were some challenges in bringing your directorial debut to life, either in the writing or the directing process?
KELLY: Where do I start? Do we have eight hours? I’m still in the mindset of doing black box theater all my life. I’ve always had to make do with my small budget and be creative. Like, how am I going to make this talking animal happen? “Oh, we have a sock puppet and googly eyes that’ll be entertaining and carry that message across.” The challenges for Chuck and Fern were like, OK, I want to set it in a video game forest. Let’s try to find something that can contain this greenery and this beauty without being so expensive because this is indie-budget filmmaking. We did crowdfunding for this movie and it was amazing to see the community of people who banded together to help and uplift this film.
The most challenging thing was recognizing that every step of the way, I had to ask myself, “OK, how are we going to do this?” Every time I asked, something would open up and make itself known, which made the process easier. It blew my mind. LGBTQ non-profit Q Youth signed up as a fiscal sponsor, and that allowed us to get the fees waived for shooting at Griffith Park, for example. That was beautiful and insane. It was an honor to work with them and everyone to make this short film; it really takes a village.
DEADLINE: This is twofold, but I think it’s so interesting that you have your titular characters who are video game enemies. However, in the meta-verse of it all, they are friendly towards each other. Why not make them pure enemies? And can you talk more about finding your cast?
KELLY: Yeah, it’s very meta. Chuck is the villain and Fern is the hero, but really, they’re more like coworkers than enemies. Let me be real too, the two actors had incredible chemistry when they were on set. It was the most incredible thing I’ve seen. So, Mateo did play the theater version of Fern a few years ago, and I told him, “One day, we’re going to make this into a movie.” Fast forward to 2023 and I’m like, “It’s happening.” So, we started casting the other roles and found Lorena Jorge, who, from her self-tape, the moment she looked into the camera and clicked on the camera and tapped the screen [as if she was trapped in a video game], and I was like, “Oh, she knows what she’s doing. She knows this character in this world.” She also displayed a great range of frustration, sadness, anger and all these other emotions.
By the end of the short, our villain is the hero. She’s inspiring Fern to just exist in his job and what he does. You know? You ever felt like when you’re doing your job and you’re like, “I’m so over this, I’m done.” And then something happens, and you’re like, “Oh, what I do really matters. What I do is literally changing somebody’s life.” Both Mateo and Lorena had to balance these deep emotional things and this high level of comedy, and they would just go bigger with the improv and playfulness of these characters.
Then, the mom, Adargiza De Los Santos, and the boy, Grayson Fox, this is his first role. He was just so wonderful to direct and work with. And I remember when we were reading the script, I was checking in like, “Hey buddy, these are really big feelings.”
And he looks at me and goes, “I understand tough times. I’ve been through tough times. I completely understand.” And I was like, “You’re nine years old.” So that was impressive. So, Adargiza helped him hold that space for these big emotions. I would cry on set when I saw the dancing scene between them. Everybody was so lovely to work with.
DEADLINE: As for your crew, you found some of them on Instagram or cold emailing? How did you pull those pieces together?
KELLY: When I wrote this as a play a long time ago, I’d already known some people I wanted to work on the film version of the project with. I’ve been friends with my producer, Gabe [Figueroa], for a long time, and then I met another friend, Eduardo [Ayres Soares], who I asked to be my producers. So, we did crowdfunding, and then through that, I got connected with this company called By Association that Gabe had worked with before and was like, “Hey, you should work with this filmmaker, Henry.” And so, Katherine Croft and Harriet Cauthery introduced me to their production company. The rest of the crew was a mixture of my producers finding people they’ve worked with before who were like, “Hey, this person would be great for this project.” So, I searched for a DP that I really liked and found Adriel Gonzalez, who had worked with a lot of Black and brown creatives, so he knew how to light melanin. I messaged Adriel via Instagram, and I was like, “Hey, dude, I have this Zelda-type-inspired movie. Do you want to collab?” And he’s like, “Bro, this sounds dope.” And so, we met up, and I was like, “Oh, you’re Cuban, and I’m Central American.” So, the vibes were very immaculate. And it was just so easy to work with him, just so fun and wonderful.
My composer, Charlie [Rosen], I messaged him in 2021 or so. It was a cold email. Charlie did the orchestrations for Moulin Rouge on Broadway. And this musical called Be More Chill that I love so much. He also has this Grammy-winning video game orchestra called The 8-Bit Big Band, so I knew Charlie was the person to do the music for this film. He loves Zelda. His video game music is so layered and beautiful. So, when I messaged him, he told me to let me know more about when it was closer to development, and then fast forward to 2023, and I had the crowdfunding money. I reached out and said that I had a budget to fit him in. He then asked if he does this and if he could do it with a live band. I let him know I didn’t have the budget for all of that, but then he said, “I will pay for the band and the score recording, please.” And I immediately was like, “Do you want to be an executive producer on this project? Because this is crazy that you’re just doing this in the most beautiful way.”
And that’s how that happened. And it was just insane. And then my producer, Eduardo, he did post-production for a makeup company called Anastasia Beverly Hills, reached out to other post producers, they do makeup and stuff. He reached out to the post producers that focus on commercially big things and other things was like, “Hey, I’m attached to this movie and the script. Would you be interested to post produce?” And this company called Flawless Post was like, “We’re down. We will help, and we’ll make this.” And yeah, that’s all that happened.
DEADLINE: What do you want audiences to get out of this short film you’ve made?
KELLY: There’s one thing I want people to take and then another thing that has surprised me throughout the process. And the first thing is I want people to think about the thing that brings them the most comfort and joy and show them how much this art or this thing, whether it’s a hobby, books or crocheting, how this thing deeply affects your life in a positive way. I want people to look back either on their childhood or even in this moment of something that they love and be like, “Wow, this thing that I love has changed my life for the better. And it has helped me through tough times and has created a sense of joy and courage,” or however it speaks to you in a positive way.
Then, a surprise for me came when Grayson’s mom called me after she had read the script, crying, “Now I know how my son sees games. Thank you.” And I was like, “My God.” And by the way, this movie is a love letter to my mom. She’s the reason I play games. She and I played Zelda as I was growing up, so it was such a beautiful, connective thing.
I also set out to make this Afro-Latino short film. This entire cast is Afro-Latino, and so much of the crew was Latino, mixed-race Latino, all of these things. The vibes were great. There’s such a huge difference when you’re making something with people that are your culture, and it’s this boundless imagination because you’re like, “We relate to all this. Not just in the cultural sense, but even in the nerdy video game sense.” It wasn’t just that these people were Latino, but they were Latino people who fucking loved video games.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
