Do's, Don'ts, and Anecdotes with Jordan Tetewsky and Roger Mancusi
The 'Hannah Ha Ha' team on finding first-time actors, finding their groove, and finding the limits of guerilla marketing.
Hello! Welcome to Nothing Bogus, an Indie Film Listings+ newsletter. The + is commentary, interviews, dispatches, tutorials, and other groovy stuff. I’m going to start with the +. If you subscribed for the listings and only the listings, scroll as fast as you can to the bottom of this email. If you came for the +, no scrolling necessary :)
Early this year, I was downing micro budget movies like they were the primo hors d’oeuvres at a wedding reception—seeking out as many as I could as I tried to connect some dots for an article many of you have by now read. Though it didn’t entirely fit into the framework I was laying out, one of my favorites was Hannah Ha Ha, the debut feature from Jordan Tetewsky and Josh Pikovsky. Set in rural Massachusetts over a sweaty, itchy summer, the film follows Hannah (Hannah Lee Thompson) as she slowly, quietly pushes back against societal (and sibling) pressures to get a job and become a yuppie. It’s a timeless premise, but one carried out with so much texture and idiosyncrasy.
It at once feels like yesterday that I saw it and like an eternity ago—the latter, in part, because in the intervening months Tetewsky and Pikovsky have premiered a second feature (Berman’s March) and shot a third. For a pair whose work is imbued with an anti-ambition ethos, they sure like to hustle. As does the third recurring member of their creative team, producer (and frequent actor) Roger Mancusi (who also has credits on Mutt and Shiva Baby). I wanted to know how they’ve been so prolific on a small scale and what they’ve learned in production and rollout. Because Pikovsky was unavailable, I spoke to Mancusi and Tetewsky.
How did you guys meet and start working together?
Jordan: We worked on a web series in late 2020. I was a cinematographer, and Roger was a stunning PA, and seemed of producer quality. I was gearing up to make my first feature with my creative partner, Josh Pikovsky, and I wanted to bring Roger in.
Roger: I was really impressed by the work Jordan was putting into the series. There was one scene where we were shooting an exterior, and in the deep background, like 200 yards away, there was a white chair on the top of this green hill, and I saw Jordan look at the monitor and go, "Ugh, terrible," and dead sprint, without breaking stride, to move this white chair and come back to set while we all looked on aghast. And I thought, "OK, that's a guy that really has attention to detail. That's someone I might want to work with." Afterwards, we caught up, and I saw his shorts, which are pretty crazy. I was hoping to do a first feature, and his made sense. It seemed doable and fun and challenging and we were on the same page about making it together.
Jordan, how did Hannah Ha Ha come together from a creative standpoint?
Jordan: Josh and I knew we wanted to make a feature that summer. We had made two short films that year. And I certainly feel like I was trying to fast-track us into making features, and there was a feeling of need because I was getting nervous about where we were in life.
The process involved a lot of spitballing and rewriting up through the filmmaking. It wasn't this crazy plotted out thing. We had two other films that we had failed to write in the timeline that we had set for ourselves, and Hannah Ha Ha was the one that we felt worked. It was sweet and endearing and built upon a lot of the things we were talking about and referencing at the time.
Why did Hannah Ha Ha click into place where the other scripts didn't?
Jordan: I think it clicked because it was thematically related to things people in our circles are going through. And the ones that didn't click, I think they didn't have as much to say. We had similarly quiet characters in those stories, but this one stuck because there was this storyline that wasn't fully centered on Hannah and dealt with her sibling and father and familial relationships, and then these economic anxieties and figuring out what to do with your future. I think those things were all in the drafts of the other scripts, but we didn't have a central character that we found as compelling.
I know you have a strong preference for non-actors. Tell me how that developed, your reasoning, and how you cast and coach non-actors.
Jordan: This very much developed from a youthful fantasy to put friends in movies. For most people I like, I'm always thinking about how they'd work in a movie. It's something Josh had latched onto because we like the idea of completely new and fresh faces. Coaching, I know much less about. It's just hoping to god people don't spike the lens or have a lot of self doubt. For the most part we haven't encountered a lot of this.
I remember when Hannah Ha Ha came out you guys were doing a lot of guerilla marketing—on the subway, in front of the theater, and so forth. What worked and what didn't in the release process?
Roger: There were a couple of hurdles in the release. One was the location and theater we were playing at. Releasing an indie film of our level is always going to be challenging, and thankfully there are certain places in the city that have a built-in audience of people who know to go to those places to see indie films. But the place we were showing just didn't have that built-in audience. So we realized we had to try to do something to get the word out.
Another thing that's tricky is that you're promoting the hell out of the film to your own Instagram followers. But how do you break out of that bubble? I don't even really know the answer. But we realized that we knew everyone at every screening. And we want to get people we don't know at these events and parties and things. So that's where the guerilla marketing videos came in, with me reading the New York Times review to strangers, and then tagging those people in the video so hopefully they re-share it.
Were those videos effective?
Roger: I think on a smaller scale yes, in that I'm now friends with some of those people. We racked up something like ten or twenty thousand views, and got extra eyeballs on the film versus if we'd just sat at home and done nothing. We also cut together fake trailers—one was a horror version, one was a romcom—to try to find other ways to get people to look at the movie.
Jordan: I found the most effective thing—which is probably still ineffective on a net level—was that strangers I was bothering on the subway did end up seeing the movie. I'd see a Letterboxd review pop up and confirm that the person liked the movie in spite of the abrasiveness with which they were approached.
Roger: You also have to sell a bit of the event of it by having a party or making sure there's panels. Every screening that had a panel sold out and the ones that didn't had poor turnout. You have to become an event promoter and not just a film producer.
After Hannah Ha Ha, you guys made a second self-financed micro budget movie called Berman’s March. But then you made a third movie, which had actual funding. How did that one come together?
Roger: I was working with some financiers who I'd been friendly with for a long time. And I think the success of Hannah proved the model: We made it for no money and it was still a beautiful film with good critical and festival success. But we need more resources to tell the next story, which is going to be bigger, and hopefully better. So we were pitching Jordan and Josh's evolution as filmmakers to companies that had expressed a bit of interest in supporting emerging artists. But the budget was still pretty small and the film was makeable.
Hannah Ha Ha by the numbers:
Shoot length: 10 days
Budget: $20K
Crew: Jordan (camera/gaffer), Josh (sound), Roger (producer), Emily Freire (co-producer), Charlie Robinson (Production Design), PAs: Brett Shostek, Alex Robertson
Number of locations: ~5 + exteriors
Gear: Sony FS 7 + a lot of pantyhose
Roger, you've done a lot of producing work with other directors over the past few years, too. How did your involvement on those projects come together?
Roger: I had a life as a publicist and event curator before I became a producer. I worked at the Academy of Motion Pictures for a long time, producing a ton of panels. Through the Academy, I thankfully knew a lot of producers from the day-to-day of the job. And then one of them invited me to go to Los Angeles and be her assistant on the actual Oscars telecast. And I flirted with staying in LA and working at a production company there, but I was too old essentially to be an assistant and didn't have enough experience to be an executive.
So I came back here and I was just taking people to coffee and leveraging skills. And the only skill I had then was that I'm a big guy. So I met with a producer and said, "Hey, I hear you're making a short film, I'd love to come and move things around for you." And she was like, "OK, great." And that was my really good friend Katie Schiller, who produced Shiva Baby. And so my first credit back in New York was on a short film she was co-directing, and I proved to be very helpful by lugging a lot of furniture in and out of the location. And then from there we did Shiva Baby together, and then a bunch of other projects. And each time I was just trying to be as helpful as possible and learn as much as possible.
What sorts of things were you learning on each project?
Roger: It's funny. For the first couple years I had a notebook that I called "Do's, Don'ts and Anecdotes." I would come home from set every night and jot down, for instance, "Stinger means extension cord." And then I was accumulating the lessons I was learning on the fly by trial and error. And I was just trying to never make the same mistake twice and be really high energy and helpful so when you do make a mistake people forgive you for it quickly.
Are you able to locate through-lines between the different projects and filmmakers you've been drawn to?
Roger: Yeah, I think it's not one thing, like a certain genre. I think what I like is writer-directors, people with a singular voice that's very specific to their personality. Take Vuk Lungulov-Klotz's film Mutt, which I line-produced. I'd known Vuk as a gaffer, and he was a good friend and I knew he was a hard worker. And I love the film. I'm really happy to help advocate for writer-directors who have singular voices and are hard workers, but just need support and resources and experience. And then the other thing is a makeable story. Can I actually help this person make this?
Listings:
KITSCH, a new horror-comedy, dialogue-free short film, directed by Spencer James Hugo (Only Murders in the Building, Ezra, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and co-written by Wes Andre Goodrich (Palm Sunday, Filmmaker's Magazine 2023 New Faces of Independent Film), films in mid-January, and is looking for location (an apartment in NYC) and financing. It is offering a ton of different incentives, including receiving a small canvas from head artist and the highest Executive Producer credit with recognition on IMDb and on the credits of the film. For more on the project, check out its GoFundMe. Reach out to samanthaloriglass@gmail.com if you have any questions about the project.
Alex Cottle can offer script notes/analysis (TV, podcasting, short films, feature films). Experience is 8 years in professional creative roles. Rates depend on depth of feedback, whether feedback is given in writing/in meeting, etc. Email alexandrakcottle@gmail.com.
If you want to promote a screening of your film, I created a chat thread here.
And for those attending Sundance or Slamdance who want to link up, I created a chat thread here.
If you would like to list in a future issue, either A) post in the Nothing Bogus chat thread, or B) email nothingbogus1@gmail.com with the subject “Listing.” (It’s FREE!) Include your email and all relevant details (price, dates, etc.).
If you’re liking this newsletter, share it!