Lies I Told My Little Sister premieres in New Jersey at the the Summer 2014 New Jersey International Film Festival at Rutgers University on Saturday, May 31!

Lies I Told My Little Sister premieres in New Jersey at the the Summer 2014 New Jersey International Film Festival at Rutgers University on Saturday, May 31! 

Lies I Told My Little Sister is a deeply felt and expertly acted independent feature shot in New Jersey about the blood ties that bind us to the past. Here is an interview I did with the film’s screenwriter and executive producer judywhite:

Nigrin:  Your film Lies I Told My Little Sister focuses on two sisters who re-connect after a family tragedy. Tell us a bit about your film and why you decided to make it.

judywhite: Lies I Told My Little Sister is a story with two themes – recovering from a death in the family, and also about recovery from the stuff that happens to you in childhood, especially between siblings. Those childhood patterns are tough to break as you get into adulthood, and I wanted to explore that in film. I had originally written a humor essay for Seventeen Magazine many years ago, called Lies I Told My Little Sister, and always wanted to return to the ideas within it because they are so universal; we all seem to have been on the giving or receiving end of sibling ‘tortures.’ The story is loosely based on my own family; I am the middle of three sisters, told wild tales to torment my little sister, and then in adulthood, we lost our oldest sister to cancer. So Lies became a story about a family trip with the two leftover sisters and the extended family, going to Cape Cod like they used to as children, trying to recover amid all the childhood baggage. It’s a drama-comedy, because even in the midst of grief, life can still be funny, if you let it; that was an important message. And you have to learn how to integrate the difficult things into your life along with the good, because tough stuff just keep coming at you all the time.

I am a nonfiction book author, who had never before written fiction, and my nephew, Jonathan Weisbrod, the son of my tortured little sister ended up going to NYU Tisch film school. He encouraged me to write a script. Jonathan then gave a lot of input on early drafts, and became co-writer. It was thrilling to be writing a script about a family with a little kid in it, and having that little kid, now grown up, helping me write that script. He went on to produce the film, and along the way I became co-producer. He showed the script to the very gifted emerging director William J. Stribling, with whom he had already been making award-winning short films at NYU, and William immediately wanted to direct it. It was the first feature film for all three of us.

Nigrin:  The cinematography is really quite beautiful. Tell us a bit the look of the film and why you decided to shoot the film this way?

judywhite: Cinematographer Alex Gallitano is a very talented NYU Tisch graduate in cinema who also studied in Prague, absorbing European ways of lighting and shooting. Too many independent films are overlit, and Alex took great care in lighting Lies. He also pushed for using the ARRI Alexa HD digital camera, very expensive to rent but well worth the investment in quality obtained if in the hands of someone who has been trained in its use, as Alex had been. He says: “When director William Stribling and I started discussing the look of the film, we both agreed that a naturalistic approach to both the camera work and lighting was key to supporting the story. Shooting handheld for much of the film allowed the camera to be very responsive to the actors. We also tried to develop a color palate that underscored the emotional challenges faced by the main characters.”

Nigrin:  The actors in your film are pretty amazing. Tell us more about them and how they were assembled.

judywhite: Even though this was a low-budget film, the producer decided to go with the Screen Actors Guild contract, so we were able to cast professional SAG actors.

Lead actress Lucy Walters came in to audition, and the producer, director and I knew immediately she was our Cory - a perfect combination of strong and sexy and vulnerable and broken, with a highly intelligent humor. Lucy is enormously smart (she was a violinist who majored in economics before switching to theatre) and understood immediately about the type of relationship we wanted between the sisters. She had a breakout role in director Steve McQueen’s film Shame (which he directed right before 12 Years a Slave), with two incredibly sex-charged wordless scenes opposite Oscar-nominated Michael Fassbender. But I hadn’t seen that film when we cast her; her audition said it all to me. Lucy Walters is a tremendous talent, a naturally authentic actor whose name you are going to hear more often; she soon will be seen in 50 Cent’s upcoming series, Power, as well as the new Jennifer Anniston film, among many other roles.

We were lucky that two-time Emmy nominee Alicia Minshew from All My Children read the script and loved it, and flew in from California to shoot her small but pivotal role as the oldest and favorite sister whose death triggers the entire plot of the film. Everyone fell in love with her.

This was Emmy nominee Donovan Patton’s first adult lead in a feature – he has a huge fan base from his years as Joe on Blue’s Clues. We needed someone funny and sarcastic but at the same time with great decency to play the brother-in-law, and in fact that’s just how Donovan is in real life. He came in several times to audition, and was a favorite from the start. He is a delight.

The romantic lead, John Behlmann, has had a lot of stage and film experience, and was the funny Dairy Queen national spokesperson. He also was found through audition, and showed a depth and quiet soulfulness we wanted. He’s also gorgeous. Once he was cast, however, John had a conflict because he’d also been cast in new John Guare play opening in Princeton, so for his first week he commuted between the play and our location in Sea Bright for night scenes; we had to adjust the film schedule to make sure it all worked. He also didn’t have a beard when he was cast, but had to grow one for the play, so the beard ended up in the film.

Actress Michelle Petterson makes her debut in feature films as the Little Sister in Lies. It was a very hard role to fill, because it could have been a very unlikeable character in the wrong hands. Michelle had just finished a short film for director William J. Stribling, playing a totally opposite kind of character, but he and the producer Jon Weisbrod thought she was up to the supporting lead. She also had gotten to know the real “Little Sister” of our family, and they are actually quite alike in personality, so Michelle was able to bring a first-hand knowledge to the role.

And then, of course, there’s Ellen Foley.

Nigrin:  I am a huge fan of singer Ellen Foley, who gained acclaim by singing on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album. How did you get her to act in the film?

judywhite: This was Ellen Foley’s return to film after a more than 20 year hiatus; she took time off to raise her two sons. Besides her initial fame with Meat Loaf in the late 1970s, she is an accomplished Broadway star, was lead on TV’s Night Court, and had roles in such movies as Cocktail, Married to the Mob, Tootsie, as well as is a solo recording artist in her own right, with a number of acclaimed albums, including About Time, which she just released, her first in 30 years (one of the songs on that album is in the film).

We were lucky in that Ellen decided to start acting again at exactly the time we put out our call for auditions, and her agent submitted her name to us. We sent her the script, she came in to audition, and she was extraordinary, displaying a grittiness and humor no one else brought to the table. Ellen delivered a powerfully nuanced performance as the family’s mother that everyone is remarking upon, playing a previously remote parental figure now trying to establish connections to the two daughters she has left. This was an indie film with not a lot of money, but Ellen liked the role and chose Lies as the first script for her return.

For the ending credits, she also recorded a beautiful new cover of the ballad, Heaven Can Wait, off the Bat out of Hell album, which we will release as a single. She will be attending the New Jersey Premiere at the New Jersey International Film Festival, and answering questions.

Nigrin: Your film is set in New Jersey and Massachusetts. Why did you shoot your film in these locations?

judywhite: Producer and co-writer Jonathan Weisbrod and I are both from New Jersey. As I said, the film is loosely based on our own family, so the beginning of the film is set in New Jersey. We actually used our family homes for a number of scenes, especially the flashbacks; independent films often do that to keep costs down.

Jonathan wanted to shoot in New Jersey as much as possible, supporting the local businesses and economy, as well as the ease and control of literally shooting in our own backyards. Of the three week shoot, nearly two weeks were at NJ locales: Union, Kenilworth, South Orange Village, and especially Sea Bright – some of the Cape Cod beach scenes were actually the NJ shore.

Nine days of shooting was on Cape Cod, because the bulk of the film is set there. Our family often took vacations to Cape Cod, and when I was writing the script I naturally gravitated toward making it the trip location in the film, because we love the Cape; it has beautiful scenery and its own definite feel that lends naturally to nostalgia and contemplation.

Lies I Told My Little Sister Trailer: vimeo.com/liesitoldmylittlesister/trailer-30sec 

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Two great short films will be screened prior to Lies I Told My Little Sister on Saturday, May 31 at the New Jersey Informational Film Festival.  Here is more info on this screening:

The Champion – Jaclyn Noel (Arlington, Virginia) Pablo Alonzo, a five-year-old Hispanic boy, dreams of swimming with the greats. Every day he sits in front of the television watching professional swimmers, as his dreams of grandeur carry him to another place. 2013; 4 min. With an introduction and Q+A session by Director Jaclyn Noel!

Guest House – Aaron Wolf (Los Angeles, California) After losing his job and his fiancée on the same day, a depressed and downtrodden Lance Wesley moves back into his parents' guesthouse. As he fights with his less-than-patient father, relics from his past begin to pay him visits. Will his uncanny objects propel him forward? 2013; 27 min.

Lies I Told My Little Sister – William J. Stribling (Union, New Jersey)
A deeply felt and expertly acted independent feature about the blood ties that bind us to the past. Traumatized by the death of her oldest sister, a globe-trotting nature photographer is guilted into taking a family trip to Cape Cod, along with the younger sister she used to torment. Amid recriminations, revelations, a very strange shopkeeper and the inklings of a romance, they square off against the patterns of childhood and tentatively move toward reconciliation. Starring 2014; 98 min. With an introduction and Q+A session by Screenwriter judywhite and actors Ellen Foley and Michelle Petterson! 

Saturday, May 31, 2014 at 7:00 p.m.

Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University,
71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey
$10=General; $9=Students+Seniors; $8=Rutgers Film Co-op Friends
Information: (848) 932-8482; www.njfilmfest.com

Free Food courtesy of Jimmy Johns will be given out prior to this screening of the New Jersey International Film Festival!