J Paul Johnson
Director/co-writer/producer Catherine Argyrople has hit the ground running with her first full-length feature, Growing Pains. As a teen, she recalled the pang of losing a best friend among the other trials of adolescence; later, as a young first-time filmmaker, she longed to see stories like her own on screen. And so, inspired by a screenwriting class, she took the initiative to do herself what few like her in the industry do: to script, direct, and produce a feature-length film about young women, and to do so with an all-female crew.
Nothing about the process was easy, but it all came together with the completion of Growing Pains earlier this year. The film follows childhood best friends Nat and Zoe who face a tumultuous transition in the summer before high school begins. Nat is burdened with a busy work schedule, an illness in the family, and, for the first time, serious romantic feelings for the new girl with whom she works. Zoe, a childhood cancer survivor, struggles with body positivity as she tries out for crew and navigates the temptations and anxieties of drugs, alcohol, and sex. As Nat and Zoe both deal with life’s complications, their obligations take them further and further apart from each other—just when they need each other most.
Catherine Argyrople is an independent feature film director, writer, and creative producer committed to empowering women through female-centered narratives and authentic storytelling. Her work primarily focuses on social-facing issues including mental health, disability, gender equity in sports, identity, and coming of age. As Growing Pains begins its run of festival premieres and screenings, Argyrole spoke with Film Obsessive’s J Paul Johnson about the film’s conception and production. The transcript below the video has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: I’m so glad you’re with us today, Catherine. Welcome!
Catherine Argyrople: Yeah, thanks for having me Paul. I’m happy to be here.
Well, I’m eager to talk a little bit about your film Growing Pains, but I think I’d like to begin by ceding the floor to you to tell your audience here just a little bit about what it is and what it does.
Growing Pains is a coming of age drama about two best friends drifting apart in the summer before high school. And it’s a real and raw friendship story inspired by my experience as a childhood cancer survivor, in my writing partner, Mariana Fabian’s experience, coming out as lesbian in a Hispanic household. So we really wanted to tell an authentic story about teen girls and just real and raw experiences that young women in particular face that didn’t really feel necessarily like it got a lot of representation in the media, and the film has these dual protagonists that are going through pretty difficult life experiences while they keep missing each other over the course of the summer. So on screen, they don’t spend a lot of time together. It’s largely the bulk of their experiences solo and off when they’re on their own, and that’s how the friendship is falling apart as they’re drifting throughout the film.
It was a lot of fun to make. We shot in the summer of 2022, and recently, we premiered at Chelsea Film Festival in New York a few weeks ago. That was really great. This year is all about just premiering and getting the film out to people and we hope to distribute next year. It’s a very exciting process, and it’s really cool to be working on my first feature film as director, and I’ve been loving the whole process. Everything about making a film is so different from the writing to pre production, post distribution, everything. It’s just a new skill set: you have to learn every part of the process.
Especially as an independent filmmaker! Did you come through a program for filmmaking? Is it something that you’d always hope that you would have the opportunity to do?
So I feel like I always wanted to be a filmmaker, an artist. I’m just a very creative person naturally, and I always have been drawn to movies and music. And when I was younger, really pursued a lot of photography and videography and ran my own photo video business in high school into college. And that was a big part of how I spent a lot of my time. But I think in terms of my greater career ambitions, for a long time, I told myself this was something I couldn’t do because I’m from Boston, I’m from the East Coast and being an artist as your full-time career and being a filmmaker is pretty abnormal, I would say, even though there’s an amazing film scene and art scene in Massachusetts, it’s just not your typical career. And I think it can be seen as a lofty dream. To be a filmmaker and make that lucrative and make that your life.
And so for a while, I didn’t really have the self-confidence. Then I actually took a screenwriting course at Northeastern where I went in Boston and it was just such an amazing course and it really re inspired me and showed me my love for writing, which I’ve known my whole life. And that was really cool because the course showed me, I can do this as a career, and my teacher, her name is Ellen Fontana. She’s an amazing professor. She actually helped us with the growing pain script, and she’s incredible. But she just really showed me like this can be a viable career path, and after that, I think I was pretty gung ho, like, I want to pursue this.
Actually, It was 2021, and I was about to graduate college in December, and I decided over the summer that I was going to make a feature film instead of getting my MFA. The reason why I wanted to do that was because I felt like I really wanted the opportunity to be the director on something and to just go out and tell a powerful story. I felt like I had the tools and I had the chutzpah and I had a vision for making a movie. And the film really came to life when I started working with Mari on the script and everything.
But I felt like I had that inner confidence, and it was such a long journey. I mean, we’ve been working on the film for almost three years. So in the grand scheme of an indie film, that’s not super long, but for a young filmmaker, it feels like it’s been a big part of my professional growth and development, especially because we started writing this in my final semester of college, and now I’m a few years out of college. I’ve moved across the country twice. I’m in the West Coast in Los Angeles, and just so much of my life has changed and I feel like the world has changed a lot, too and streaming and everything.
It’s very interesting to be wrapping up the process now. We made the film, we’re premiering, we’re getting it out in the world, and it’s just—I’m just—a different person and I’m a different filmmaker. I think that’s something I talked to a lot of my friends who are filmmakers about too. It’s like you work on this film for years, and then you look back on it and you’re really proud of it. But there’s like, Oh, I wish I wrote this a little differently or stuff that comes up that because you were three years younger, when you started the process, you were a different artist and different entrepreneur, and there were things you might have missed then that you learned throughout the whole process.
I feel like making a movie is such a great learning experience, and to me, it was the best film school ever. And I know you want to chat a little about funding, too. I was lucky enough to have savings to go to film school, and instead of going to film school, I went and made the movie, and that was a majority of our production budget. And then we also crowd funded. So we raised a good amount of money locally through about 100 community donors and supporters, which was awesome. And really that process too showed me how much people were really rooting for us to make the movie and how excited people were and Yeah, I also in the beginning of the process, too, a lot of people didn’t really understand what I was doing or didn’t know, they’re like, Oh, you’re making a short film or what are you doing?
Then the people that did support us really came through with the project. We made the movie all locally in Massachusetts, which is where I’m from and where my community is largely based. We had so many people help us out giving us discounted gear or free locations. The restaurant that we shot the movie at was actually a restaurant I used to work at in high school, and they catered the production too and they let us film there for free, and I’m not kidding without them, and without a whole number of other people I couldn’t mention, we couldn’t have made the movie with what we had in mind because there was just so much that went into this film on a grassroots community level, and I was so grateful to be able to share that process with people.
You know, as a former academic, retired now, I’m heartened to hear the little sliver of that story that speaks to being in the classroom and being inspired by a professor. But I understand, too, that gestation process for a full length feature film is a lot longer than any academic semester. And it is a huge project to commit to. And so congratulations to you for that and for getting it to this point of completion.
Now, your narrative, as it is, is going to rest in no small part on the strength of your two leads. Your characters, Zoe and Nat, are on screen, one or the other, I think, every scene in the film. Can you talk a little bit about the casting process for those two characters, where you were, what you were thinking about, what you were looking for. And then how you chose the two actors and what it was like working with them?
Yeah, I was such a wonderful time working with my actors, especially Molly (Morneweck), who plays Zoe and Deanna (Terraza), who plays Nat. They’re just really talented and have great attitudes and brought a lot of them selves to the project, and we’re really passionate. And I think when you’re working on an Indie passion project. You as the director are the leader of that passion, and you have so much excitement. But what’s so beautiful is to see people on your team also share that excitement and that belief in you and the story because that really is what brings everything together and has the magic of filmmaking and makes it really special.
The film was super grassroots. It was really me and Mari, my writing partner, doing so much of what would occupy a way bigger team in a traditional blockbuster or even a $1,000,000 indue film because we’re not close to that budget range. And so we essentially did all the casting ourself. We didn’t have a casting director, and so we posted the casting call on backstage and we ended up getting I think only one submission for Nat and that was Deanna and she just blew it out of the park. We knew she was it from the moment we saw her tape, and it was very early on and when we posted the call. And I think we closed we closed the casting call for Nat and we’re like, we don’t need to see anyone else. You know, when you know you have someone really talented and you know you’ve kind of struck gold with something, you’re like, I know.
And also, it was really interesting because the way that we casted too for the two leads where we had them read for two different scenes that showed a lot of emotional range. The film is very dramatic and heavy and raw. So we wanted people for actors who could emote and tap into that side of themselves that they could really express through the character and bring that authenticity to screen. Yeah, Deanna just blew us away.
For finding Molly, that was actually really hard to cast Zoe because Zoe’s requirements for her character are a bit strict. First off, we were big Mari and I on casting authentically. We wanted to cast teens to play teens. We really didn’t like this movement in the industry that’s casting 25 to 30 year olds play teens because that feels like really harmful representation that we’re trying to prevent against. It also feels like it lends toxic just ways to view women when it comes to oversexualizing or over dramaticizing, and that was something we weren’t comfortable about. Basis of us casting the majority of the characters were they had to be the appropriate age range, and her character is a rower.
So we needed an actor who knew how to row. I consulted with a friend of mine who came on as the rowing safety and logistics coordinator. Their name is Clara Babbitt Ward, and Clara told me you have to have a rower, it would be a huge safety issue and you couldn’t have real rowing, even if they are the cockswain who’s not rowing because they would be steering the boat, it would just be a whole nightmare. We needed a rower for Zoe. Then we also for her character, she’s a childhood cancer survivor, and that was inspired by my experience. She has a big scar across her stomach, and that’s something that really was a crux for the character in that it shaped how I grew up and how I developed my mental health and body image kind of around that that scar and having a lot of dysmorphia about it. I was a huge part of the character. And so when we were casting, I was like, I’m just going to have to special effects make a bit. I just didn’t see a world where I could possibly get someone who could empathize or represent in any way.
But It was hard to find rowers. Rowing is a very big-time commitment, just as acting is a big-time commitment. I had to get very creative and I ended up posting in a bunch of Facebook groups. I posted in my town’s Facebook group that was connected to the town next door to us from growing up and they have a dual rowing team. I said, Hey, I’m making a movie. It has a rowing story line. I’m an alumni of this school in Massachusetts, and we’re looking for extras to fill the boats or a lead. And so I posted it, and I ended up getting an e mail a few days later from Molly, who turns out to be our lead actor. And she sent me this really sweet message just being like, I was really blown away by your casting call and so many people sent it to me because I really identify, and I had a tumor when I was younger and actually have the same scar as your character. And I have the same drama teacher as you did, and I’m from the town next door to you. And it would be an honor to have the opportunity to read for the character. And it was so sweet!
Amazing! You have the tiniest sliver of Venn diagrams that this girl resides in, right? Yeah. There’s three circles, right? There’s the scar, there’s the actor, and then there’s the rower and there she is. How was that even possible?
Oh, my gosh, I know. And it was just amazing too, because I’m very spiritual, and when I saw that email, I was like, This is the girl, but we needed her reading, of course, to confirm that she’s talented at acting and can fit the role really. But that just really felt aligned. It was so sweet, too, because she was young. She was going to be a senior when we were filming. And she was like, I don’t have a backstage, but I would love to read if you can accept a video and I was like, Of course. She sent me two great readings, and it was just like it. She ended up working with our drama teacher on it, too, which he shepherded her through the process. It was just amazing to to be able for me, as director and as a survivor to collaborate with someone who could empathize with the medical background and while she didn’t have cancer, the disability representation in terms of having someone who had that scar for real was so special and she’s so talented, too, and she theatrically was a theater actor, and she had never acted on screen before.
That was a big learning curve for a lot of the actors because a majority of our cast were kids. So many of them were drama kids and theater actors, but they never acted on screen, and so it was a lot of people’s first time acting for the camera.
That’s an entirely different art!
For sure. So I think what we did was such an ambitious film. I mean, we made a micro budget feature for two semesters of college roughly and grant funded and crowd funded and self funded, and then we shot over 21 days, which is a long time for an Indie. Some people shoot over 14 days, and then we shot on the water, we shot the concert scene, we shot two big party scenes, a lot of ambitious things, but I know it was amazing to pull it off. But I know for me as a writer, this was something I was really cognizant of because I was the lead producer was like, I need to write a movie that I can feasibly make. There was a lot of really cool stuff that we wanted in the film. We had Nat bike to work and a lot of we loved bike scenes, and we wanted that childhood vibe of, you know, just childhood innocence and biking, and you don’t have a car. It’s not really feasible to walk places.
So we had like that scene where Lexi and Nat, they touch hands. We had that, like, happen as Nat falls off a bike, but we couldn’t I felt like I couldn’t make that because that’s like a low key stunt. Sounds you would need maybe a crane and there are just things we didn’t have access to.
One of the things I wanted to engage you in a little conversation about, too, Catherine, is just the very notion of the genre films about young girls in adolescence and their coming of age stories and how rarely they’re actually told on screen. You know, there have been a few more, I think in recent years. But historically, these kinds of films get frequently mislabeled as comedies if they get made at all. And I’d just like to hear you talk a little bit about your ambitions in telling a sincere and honest story about some of the trauma and turbulence that young girls specifically face in this day and age.
For sure, and I don’t think it’s specific to young girls. I think it’s teens and kids in general can feel like they go through a lot of highs and lows and it’s a roller coaster in that you’re growing and going through puberty and learning more about yourself. But also I was really struck when I was growing up by the fact that I grew up in a small town and there was about 250 kids in my grade, and we all came from what I thought was similar backgrounds, but not at all, too, because I I was really amazed by the fact that I could be going through something really difficult and completely different from my best friend, and they could be going through something really difficult and different and unique based on how they grew up, their family background, their economic status, everything, and how you can be in the same town and be in the same class and everything can be the same on the surface, but you’re going through really different life experiences and how you don’t really know what someone’s going through under the surface unless they share that with you.
I think that’s the biggest theme for me with the film is like You really don’t know what someone’s going through, and it’s important to be kind and understanding to other people just because we’re all dealing with something and especially in a really turbulent time like childhood. Even at the best of times, it’s difficult sometimes. I think that was something we wanted to speak to. But yeah, in terms of representation on screen, this film, I feel like was an advocacy film in a way for both Mary and I because there’s not a lot of accurate representation about teen girlhood in that a lot of times it feels over-dramaticized, or over-sexualized or just not accurate to what difficulties you might experience and how awkward it can be and the things that really a lot of teens face, and I think we wanted to create an authentic film, and it was cool too.
It’s a female centered story, we made it with a team of women, and we got our ReFrame stamp, which is a stamp by Sundance and Women and Film to mark gender-balanced hiring, which was a huge honor. But yeah, we wanted to tell a story that just felt authentic and real. I know too, there’s some scenes in it, particularly with Zoe and Dan (Logan Broadway). So Zoe’s our main character and Dan is her love interest, but he is really toxic, and it shows this very difficult to watch cringy relationship and he pressures her to do things sexually before she’s ready and You know, I look back on that now three years later through the process of making the film, and I’m like, Oh, I don’t know if everyone’s ready to have that conversation of this is a very no frills depiction of what a lot of kids can face when they’re coming of age and having their first sexual experience.
I know that was something that we really wanted to show without any dramaticized depiction or stuff that felt like it might not be real. And it might be a little controversial in that I think it shows a different side of the teen experience compared to other traditional shows or movies. But we were really inspired by The Wilds, which is an amazing show on Prime Video made by a team of women as well. But for us, that’s actually how Mari and I connected. I found an article she wrote about The Wilds when I was doing research for Growing Pains, and I emailed her and we ended up hitting it off. So We met for the first time at our world premiere. It was cool because The Wilds, while it’s a show about girls lost on an island after a plane crash, it shows authentic experiences of young women in eight different characters, and each experience is so diverse from the other, and it has mental health representation, it has queer representation, it has all sorts of representation packed in there and that was felt like the first TV show I saw that felt so real. And that’s something we wanted to emulate.
Congratulations to you for that, Catherine, for really remaining undaunted in the filmmaking process and seeing that determination through to bring those kind of topics in those situations to the screen where they’re not really seen often enough, as difficult as they can be. They’re conversations that people do do you need to have. I’d just like to ask in wrapping up, what are the next steps for Growing Pains?
For Growing Pains, we are towards the end of 2024 now. So I’m not sure if we’ll have another premiere this year, but we will have another screening in Boston on January 9 at the Somerville Theater, which is very exciting. I’m hoping to have it be an advocacy event and partner with a survivorship organization and do something in conjunction. And we’re hoping to have a premiere in North Carolina and Raleigh the following week. So we’re still just tying up some things, but a North Carolina premiere is coming. It’s very exciting and we’re collaborating with a queer nonprofit on that. That’s super cool to be doing these advocacy events to raise awareness for the organizations we’re partnering with and ultimately the topics within the film.
And then I think my team and I are applying to a few more festivals, and we’re waiting to hear back from a few more. So my hope is to come to Los Angeles, where I’m partly based now and show the film at a big festival or organize a big screening and then go to Florida where a lot of my family is, share with the local communities who have supported us in the film. Then eventually distribute and I would love to get it on a streaming platform that feels accessible to this level of an indie film.
That’s my hope for it, and for me, I’m just making movies. I’m working on my second feature and it’s a coming of age surfing drama called The Ocean Calls Me and I’m very excited about that. It’s cool to be pivoting honestly, to be doing something that feels less tied to me emotionally in the sense that it’s not inspired by my life. Because that is a whole different aspect of making something when it’s very vulnerable and very personal that I could talk to you about for ages, too. It’s a whole different piece than making a movie in general.
I hope a year or two from now we get that opportunity to have that conversation about that film, too, Catherine. I’ll just conclude by saying best of luck to you with Growing Pains as it continues its festival run, as you look forward to more screenings and hopefully to a streaming deal in the future. Thanks again for spending time with Film Obsessive today.
Thanks, Paul. I’m really excited to collaborate with you and Film Obsessive. You’re a great organization. Thank you.
