J Paul Johnson
The new short film Little Mother Lies takes place on a single night over bowls of borscht, as two sisters, descendants of Russian aristocrats, look for a long-lost commonality. One of the sisters is still deeply ensconced in her family’s Russian culture and heritage; the other fled it long ago. One sister is fond of drink, clearly too much so; the other a stone-sober teetotaler. As the evening passes, old wounds fester between the two while in the next room, the one sister’s son fights his own battle with addiction.
The film is a proof-of-concept short for a planned feature film, Mother Lies, and is the result of a collaboration between writer Kitty Edwinson and director Amanda Deering Jones. Edwinson, a graduate of Cornell University with a Master’s in Education, has an extensive background in writing and editing; Deering Jones, who produced the Academy Award-nominated, animated short film Borrowed Time, has over 20 years of experience working with Dreamworks Animation, Blue Sky Studios, and Pixar.
Edwinson and Deering Jones recently spoke with Film Obsessive’s J Paul Johnson about their collaboration and their future hopes for the feature film to follow. The transcript following the video below has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Let me welcome you both, Amanda and Kitty, to Film Obsessive. So here’s a film that takes place in a single setting over the course of a single evening with just three characters. It’s two sisters and one of their sons.
Amanda Deering Jones: Yes, as you said, it takes place in one evening where one sister has returned home after being gone for many years and reunites with her other sister and brings her son home because they’re at a bit of a reckoning. He is in the throes of addiction, and she’s trying to find a way through. And so sort of the chasm between the two sisters grows sort to the point of no return and in is battling his withdrawal symptoms. But then he sets about to plan an escape.
Kitty, I’ll ask you specifically as a screenwriter here: the two sisters, Dorie and Marinka, are clearly opposed in their reaction to the son’s withdrawal, but they have other obvious differences. Can I ask you to talk a little bit about the differences between the two characters and where those come from?
Kitty Edwinson: Yes. They come from the their family of origin. They are 12 years apart in age, but Marinka (the elder sister) takes after their mother and is the star of the show at all times and completely buys into the family legend around exiled Russian aristocracy, and she just is a living relic practically of of the 1917 revolution. And the other sister (Dorie) so much wanted to get away from all of that that she literally left home and didn’t come back, and she wanted to protect her son from all of that. And so she didn’t even tell him about this side of the family. So he’s in this house. He has no idea what’s going on and his mother she’s just in such a terribly desperate situation that as it unfolds over this evening, you see why she’s back.
The plot also really unfolds on this theme of alcohol addiction, and I think in particular, both its cultural—Russian—and its genetic inheritance. Is that a culture with which you’re familiar? Can you talk a little bit about the reasons why you’re looking to explore that particularly here?
Kitty Edwinson: Yes. My grandmother was a child who had to leave during the revolution. And she carried around this just overarching sadness that both my mother and her sister also carried. And so there’s a very particular vibe to this culture that just was very interesting to explore. The genesis of this whole thing is that my mother moved in with us and she brought with her this carton of letters, and on the top was a letter that my grandmother had written to a psychiatrist in the 1950s explaining what it was like for them to leave. It was to the psychiatrist for her sister who was losing her mind.
I’d never heard this story. My mother had never heard this story, and I called my own sister and said, There’s a movie in here. This is so interesting because all kind of nickels dropped. That just seemed like the most interesting thing to explore because there’s a lot of talk about intergenerational trauma and addiction. This is just one way it plays out in this very particular culture that is as you would imagine, dying in San Francisco, it’s still there. But with every generation, there are fewer and fewer people who have this particular take on things.
Thank you for telling us about that. That’s such an extraordinary story, and I agree that’s my first reaction. What an incredible narrative—that’s one that has to be shared. So the story is set in modern San Francisco, and was it shot there, as well, Amanda?
Amanda Deering Jones: It was shot in the East Bay of San Francisco Bay area. So it was shot in Albany. But yes, the intent was that it was generally in the San Francisco Bay area.
And it’s your task to take this story and bring it to life. And part of that, as I understand it, is going to begin with the setting and the location for the shoot.
Amanda Deering Jones: Well, we just got incredibly lucky because one of our producers home was perfect. I had everything that we needed. It was also large enough to fit the crew and everybody amongst the filming. But yeah, it was this perfect location where the inside had a lot that we already needed, which was these warm tones, the red couch, the wood paneling, the dark wood that was was automatically there. We decided to keep it story-wise inside for simplification, both for the story and for the budget. And then Kitty had plenty of family relics and things that we could add to the setting. And we had to get a few things prop wise, but very little. There was a lot of stuff that was automatic, and then we tinted the house, to make it day for night and to pull off that without having to do a night shoot.
I’m interested to hear more because I did not recognize that, and I do recognize that the setting, you know, is dark, it is the evening. And the house to me looks like it does not normally see a lot of light. And I had been wondering about what it’s like to shoot in there and try to get light in there without it being overbearing. But it sounds like it was a very different circumstance.
Amanda Deering Jones: Yeah. It was amazing how that came together. We had such a remarkable lighting team and camera team, and they basically came in and literally tinted the windows that would shed light on the areas that we were trying to control, and then it really allowed us to sculpt the lighting within the house once that was complete. So it was quite a process of watching all the windows get covered and everything put up because we wanted, you know, we also wanted it to be a single shoot, not overnight. That’s hard on everybody. So that tinting allowed us to really control all the aspects of the light, and, you know, they even added in some moonlight coming in, during the dinner scene.
You know, I want to ask you about the Russian dolls. They’re integral, like as a motif in the story. But I also want to ask where they come from. Are they native to the house or did you bring them along, Kitty?
Kitty Edwinson: Yeah, they’re called matryoshkas. I grew up playing with them and the one that we used to put the key in my grandmother gave to me. There’s all these little family things in the very beginning to when Owen looks at two pictures, One of them really is a picture of my grandmother as a little child in St. Petersburg. Yeah. We had a lot of matryoshkas growing up, and it just seemed really natural to have that be something recognizable. Most people have seen them and sort of know how they work, so that just seemed like a nice sort of familiar little touch.
Were you on the set during the shoot?
Kitty Edwinson: I was, and that was really fun!
It’s not every shoot that invites its writer. But I do want to hear your perspective on it, Kitty, what it’s like to unfold and to watch it happen in that translation from words on the page for the shooting script to what you’re seeing unfold during production.
Kitty Edwinson: I don’t know if everybody has this experience, but the actors were so perfect for their roles that I just trusted what was happening. And the crew was so seasoned and so working like this incredibly well-oiled machine that it felt a lot as if I just was watching this train go and I wasn’t worried about the story being going off the tracks at all. I was just there to answer little questions as they came up and it was just a wonderful experience, and it felt so much as if it wasn’t even there were moments where I thought I wrote this script. I’d forget because it just had turned into this whole other animal. All the people on the set wanted to be there and believed that this story needed telling, and they were 100% behind it and they were honored to be a part of it. I don’t know if that’s always the case either.
And Amanda, I want to ask you, now, I know you’re normally a producer, right, and that’s where the most of your work in film has been. And this is new territory for you as a director. What’s it like for you as a director to have the writer of the piece on set alongside you?
Amanda Deering Jones: Oh, man. That was key to have Kitty by my side because, you know, the story does so much come from her world that I wanted to you know, have that person to check with and, you know, be able to gut check things as you’re going through, and it was honestly magical. And I wouldn’t have done it any other way. And like Kitty said, the people that we managed to attract with this project were remarkable. They had a ton of experience, and there was so much investment. That was the part that I kind of kept pinching myself through the whole thing going, Wow, they’re as committed to this as we are. And that’s an important thing to note because they really brought everything they could to the short and then some and just blew us all away.
You know, another thing I’d just like to ask is and this could apply to either of you: if there are films or directors who whose work speaks to you as influences, maybe anything that you had in the back of your mind a little bit, as you were writing the film, Kitty, or as you were directing Amanda?
Kitty Edwinson: Well, for me, I wanted to stay true to what I’d built with that story and to have this just be a way to make people wonder what was going to happen with these characters and have them really go. What? It’s over? No, I want to know more. I did not have a model for this. I was really just coming from my own imagination. And I mean, it is a fictional story, but a lot of the experiences in it are not. So I would imagine that’s true of many writers.
And Amanda, how about you? Is there anything in terms of the visual design of the film or anything else that you’re working from in terms of influences?
Amanda Deering Jones: Yeah, it’s interesting. I can’t say any one person was an influence. It felt like a collection of things. And when I was doing research and gathering sort of images and things to demonstrate tone and style and all that. There was one image in particular that I found in the process that just was like a lightning bolt when I found it. I was like, this is encompassing everything I’m aiming for here, and it really did become the guiding light, I think for everybody through the process. But there was a collection. It was a lot of finding images from other films, finding lighting. I was trying to because I wanted to ride the balance of the warmth because there is a lot of love in this family. And I wanted that to be the backdrop and the underlying thing.
However, there’s still a lot of friction and tension and damage that needs to be repaired and all that. And so the current state of the relationships going into this it’s pretty cold. There’s a lot to learn about each other at the start of this short because Dorie is back for the first time in 30 years. But then there’s also these tendencies where they fall into old patterns with it, too, which is a layer that I absolutely love because we all do that with our siblings. And then the red and the golds were very regal tones to me because that’s the family history. And then some Russian blue sprinkled in there. So, it was a collection of things.
It’s a lovely film to look at. Your actors are very well cast. I think that’s very clear. And we do get that palpable sense of the aged aristocracy, the gilded past that these characters’ family used to enjoy. Kitty you’ve mentioned a couple of times that this is that there’s a feature film that you are thinking of in the future. And Little Mother Lies is proof of concept for something a little bigger. Could I have both of you talk a little bit about your hopes and dreams for the feature film that might follow in the wake of Little Mother Lies?
Kitty Edwinson: Well, we just want it produced. We want this to entice the right people to come up and say, this is a really good story, and we absolutely want to see screen time. That’s my hope. I just think that the bigger story is both interesting because of the whole Russian angle, but also because of what this family endures as they deal with addiction. Now there are a lot of films about this. But This one takes a little bit of a different perspective, and it is definitely controversial, and I think that that’s a good thing when we’re talking about this topic to stir people up about it.
Amanda Deering Jones: I came on in 2020 as a producer on the feature, and we started talking about doing a short as a proof of concept and the value of that. And so flash forward, that’s where we’re at. We hope that this gets people’s attention and intrigues them enough to want to make the feature because the feature answers all the things that we tease in this story. So that’s the hope that we can finish that story.
I hope you will indulge me a quick question about the potential feature film that may follow from this. Does it all stay in the present in terms of the timeline or does it explore the past as well?
Kitty Edwinson: It explores Dorie and Marinka’s past. It doesn’t go all the way back to 1917, if that’s what you mean. But yeah, it does go back. It has to because that’s where the mystery occurs. Yeah, we think that the roles of Dorie and Marina are so juicy that they should attract some really powerful actors to play them. They-re somewhere between the ages of 45 and 65 and so people at the height of their skill set, that’s what we need for it to come together and we just think that would be so exciting.
I think it would be too. Listen, thank you, both Kitty and Amanda for taking the time to speak with us at Film Obsessive today. We’ll wish you the very best with your short, your proof of concept film, Little Mother Lies. I understand that you’re currently sending it out to festivals, and we hope to see it in front of audiences soon. And maybe in the next year or two, knock on wood, we’ll have the opportunity to see the feature film Mother Lies as well. Thank you again for talking with us.
Amanda Deering Jones: Thank you so much, Paul. It’s a pleasure.
