Tina Kakadelis
Director Drew Dickler may be one of the only people, if not the only, who can point to a plastic fish as a cornerstone of their queer journey. A documentary filmmaker by trade, Dickler turns the camera on herself in her OutfestNEXT-playing short, Big Bass. Told in a charmingly antiquated ’90s style, Big Bass sees Dickler returning to her elementary school to have a conversation with Cheryl, the gym teacher. In Dickler’s memory, Cheryl pulled her out of class and had a conversation with her that made a lasting impression. And a fish was also there. Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis carries that further here.
Are you familiar with Fun Home, the Alison Bechdel graphic novel?
Drew Dickler: Yes. Very much. Big Bass is a Ring of Keys film.
But with the fish, which I thought was hilarious. It’s such a small moment that means something when you’re a kid, but then takes on a whole new meaning as you get older. Was this conversation with Cheryl something you always kept coming back to? When was the moment you realized why you were doing that?
It’s funny, because the memory of the fish truly was very deep in my subconscious. It was not something I had thought about since it happened, or at least certainly not that I consciously thought about.
I was on a road trip driving across the country with my partner. There’s a meditative state that you go into when you’re on the road watching everything go by. I’d brought an old vintage Sony camera that I used to carry around as a kid. I was holding that camera, kind of looking out the window.
I think the mix of physical nostalgia, peace in my brain, and the fact that I had given myself a prompt that I wanted to tell a short, personal film dislodged this memory in my head. All of a sudden I was on the stairs with Cheryl, and then I was like, wait, how did I get there?
What was interesting is when it came to my brain, it came super queer-coded. I was like, oh, this lesbian elder was mentoring me, that’s so sick. It wasn’t until I went back and really started to think about it and where my relationship with Cheryl ended that I was like, what does it really mean?
You mentioned that there were personal reasons you wanted to take on a short doc project, and that goes into this question. Why were you interested in doing a documentary format as opposed to a fictional retelling of this memory?
I’m a documentary filmmaker. I’ve made one feature film that I co-directed with a friend, Jakob Hochendoner. It was called Fire Boys. That was a verité film I shot out in California. I’ve always been a filmmaker. I went to school to make films. I’ve been working in the industry for 15 years.
Recently, I found myself doing a lot of producing, which is a skill I really love. Anyone who wants to be a producer knows that no one knows what the job is, but it’s a very important role that’s keeping everything together. I’ve found myself in a niche the last 5 or 6 years, working on feature docs where I’m producing for a director who’s telling really personal stories.
What that means as a creative producer is that I’m often saying to directors, I need you to be more vulnerable, be more honest, let’s dig a little deeper. That’s part of the process of making a personal film. Pushing yourself.
I was doing that for other people a lot, and then I had this realization that I’d never asked myself as a filmmaker to do it. That’s how I gave myself this assignment. Not necessarily thinking it would turn into a film that a lot of people saw, but thinking it would be interesting for my practice as a producer. It was only a couple of weeks later that I was on the road trip and the memory came out.
You play with the ’90s aesthetic you grew up with. From a production standpoint, how did you make the recreation sequences and the kitschy ’90s styles?
I call the film a ’90s sandwich with a warm, emotional middle. What was really important to me about the ’90s element was I wanted it to feel like it had a ’90s shell, the whole thing. There’s never a background that’s black unless it’s intentional. There are always ’90s pixelated backgrounds and moving imagery. I worked with a fantastic graphic artist, Juan Pablo Rozos, who I work with a lot on corporate projects, and it was so fun to give him something creative and fun for us to work on.
He and I really collaborated. I sent him several references, some ’90s screensavers. Are you familiar with Dyke TV? It was this amazing public access show in the late ’90s and it was one of the first that was made for queer women by queer women. It was something I was obsessed with in college.
They had a segment called “I was a Gay Child” where adults would send in their gay photos, like the ones you see of me in the film with the voiceover track. That was an inspiration for me for the structure of the film in general, but also, they use really cool graphics and backgrounds. I pulled a bunch of references from there. You’ll see on our poster that there’s this big bass with three circles and a green background. That’s stolen from Dyke TV, because art is stealing. For the folks of Dyke TV, I hope they’re still making work because I love it so much.
Sound was also really important. I pulled a lot of AOL noises. Whenever there’s an animation of my brain and the door opens, it’s the sound from when you logged in to AOL Instant Messenger. It was a lot of finding little tags to make it feel immersive for those sections.
Cheryl is such a huge, important part of the film. How did you go about contacting her for the first time in so many years? Did she have any trepidation about being in the film?
It was a cold email to Cheryl. The subject line was “Blast from the Past.” I just emailed her and was like, I don’t know if you remember me. I was at Germantown Friends School during these years, I have this memory of us talking, it’s weird, can we talk?
Immediately, she was like, of course I remember you. That was shocking to me. She’s seen thousands of students in her 35 years. She just retired, by the way, so congrats to Cheryl!
We arranged a call and I shared a little bit about where I’m at now, the films I make. I vaguely described the memory, but I didn’t want to get too much into it. I talked for a while, and then she revealed that she was driving with her son Greyson in the car, and I was on speakerphone. It was funny, because I could hear Greyson being like, this is cool, you should do this. So thank you, Greyson.
When I asked Cheryl if she’d be open to shooting, she said something that I think is so indicative of her character. She said, I always say yes to my students. I haven’t been a student in decades, but I think that speaks to who Cheryl is.
She was nervous about being on camera because it was a new experience. We had a wonderful executive producer, André Robert Lee, who’s a queer filmmaking professor at Germantown Friends. He gave great advice to Cheryl and to me. He said, truly, just be yourself, that’s all you’re asking for.
As the film explores, being herself is one of Cheryl’s superpowers. Her ability to be herself on camera doesn’t shock me because of how beautifully she does that all the time. I think it really showed on film. You get to see her heart, and I was really grateful.
You briefly mentioned doing a lot of creative producing, and I chatted with Lexie and Logan from What Will I Become? recently. We talked a little about legacy and what that means in terms of queer identity. Your short film plays a lot into those themes as well. How do you feel this pursuit of documenting true stories of identity plays into the larger canon of queer stories?
Representation matters, you know? Seeing yourself and seeing what you can become makes a big difference. It makes you feel less alone. It makes you feel connected to a community. It makes you feel inspired to be yourself and also to forgive yourself.
I think a lot of queer folks, and I talk about this in the film, carry a lot of shame for various choices they’ve had to make in order to survive. I think stories that allow for compassion, empathy, forgiveness, resilience, all of those things, form a tapestry for young people to get to dig into their resources that we didn’t have.
It means a lot to me to be part of that and to hopefully feel like Big Bass can find a way to be a part of a pantheon of films that allow people to feel seen and supported, and hopefully inspire them to connect again, particularly with elders.
That was something I felt, before this film, was really missing from my life. I had a wonderful queer elder, my aunt, who passed away suddenly last year, and there was a big vacuum. Having the opportunity to share this film has been really moving because so many elders come up to me and either tell me they feel seen through Cheryl’s story, or tell me their story about a person who inspired them. All queer folks coming up and saying that to me, telling me about their teacher and how maybe they want to reach out to them.
I think it’s kind of a chain we pass along. Something that’s special about documentaries in particular and telling nonfiction stories is that it shows real, tangible people and real, tangible examples of survival, love, and coming together. I think that’s all we can give in this moment. Just to encourage people to hang on, stay connected.
My film is about hope. It’s about self-forgiveness. It’s the idea that it’s never too late to forgive yourself, to thank others. We’re trying to figure out a way for students to see it in some schools. I’m hoping we can figure that out, because I do think that’s the target audience. Queer elders and high school students.
Where’s the bass now?
On my dresser. Thank you for asking! The bass is real. We actually bought a second one for Eva, the child actor who plays my younger self. The bass is still being made, so we got one for her. She has one in her house and I have one on my dresser. I look at it every day as I get ready for work.
Something else that made me laugh in the doc is that you shout out your high school girlfriend twice.
Hell yeah. Shout out, Erica Hauswald. She’s one of my best friends now. It truly was an inside joke for Erica and me. She’s come to a couple screenings and she’s seen the shout outs in person. I think it’s funny.
When you screen a bunch of times, you start to get a sense of what people laugh at and when. Young audiences, audiences my age and younger, really laugh at the prom stuff and maybe see themselves in it a little.
Older folks, when they watch it, they don’t think it’s as funny. I think it’s because being hidden was just a reality of their life and wasn’t something that was remarkable. That’s been kind of interesting to uncover a little bit.
Erica sent me the photos of us that we used in the film. We had a good laugh. It’s been a nice way to connect and to honor her because that first secret girlfriend…that’s an honorable position for anyone. I’m glad she’s in there.
You’ve played at a lot of festivals. Some were LGBT-specific and some weren’t. Now you’re coming to OutfestNEXT. How is screening at a festival like OutfestNEXT different from other festivals?
I’m someone who always wanted to make films. I grew up dreaming of making films. As a young, queer person, Outfest has always been on my radar as the place that launches queer filmmakers and queer stories. Knowing that it was restarting around the time where I might be able to get my film in was super exciting, and it means a lot.
It’s one of those institutions. It’s a queer institution that means something, and to get to be a part of that legacy alongside other queer films that are also telling really important stories means a ton. It’s Outfest, you know? It’s really, really cool.
