Jay Rohr
BIGHT recently hit streaming services. This twisted steamy erotic thriller comes courtesy of writer-director Maiara Walsh, who also stars in a lead role. Her co-writer Cameron Cowperthwaite also performs alongside Maya Stojan and Mark Hapka. Together, these four feature in a film about the thorny side of sexual entanglements.
When two couples decide to open their relationships up to one another, the physical aspect leads to emotional consequences which fuel a dark descent. BIGHT is a repeated series of manipulations and bad decisions racing towards ruin. It’s the kind of nightmare many might think they’d avoid, despite how inviting it seems.
Recently, Walsh, Cowperthwaite, Stoyan, and Hapka allowed Film Obsessive a moment to get to know their movie a bit better inside and out. They discussed its origins, the production, and what it’s like to tackle such dark material. What follows is an abridged transcript of that conversation, while at the bottom is a link to the full chat on YouTube, where they expand with a lot of lovely anecdotes and insights into indie filmmaking.
Film Obsessive: What is BIGHT? What is it about?
Cameron Cowperthwaite: In the most simplistic way, it’s a dark exploration of an open relationship that devolves over the course of one evening while an artist does his best to expose the truth of what’s been going on with these two couples. We sort of play on a lot of themes of revenge, there’s some catharsis, artistry, depression, love, and it all kind of expands upon itself in this 90-minute lean and mean erotic thriller.
Mark Hapka: Just a wild ride of artists with bruised egos and lust, love, drama and I like to call it a beautiful nightmare.
Where did the idea for this come from?
Maiara Walsh: To set the stage, it was written in lockdown, and I’d been wanting to write with Cameron for a long time. I really wanted to also write Mark, an incredible role because he’s such an a great actor and I just hadn’t seen him play a role that he could like really dive into that was this dark. And then we were like, “What can we write with four characters in one location that we can control so that we know that we’ll actually make this film?”
How difficult was it shopping this around to people?
Cameron Cowperthwaite:: Maiara is our captain and also our kind of through line between the three of us. Mark was Maiara’s roommate. Maya and Maiara had worked together, but none of us knew each other outside of her. We all kind of leapt in trusting her.
Maiara Walsh: It was a leap of faith, a leap in trust because that’s a big ask you know because indie film making is really hard and takes so much time and energy like we had no idea how many years and how much you know of our own personal funds and emotions and everything that would go into it. So it was a journey and I’m grateful that we decided to stick it out.
Mark Hapka: With all the hardships that indie film making provides in general in obstacles in just nightmare scenarios, the one silver lining is that you get to do it your way, right? Even if you don’t have the resources you would typically want, you get to do it without permission. To answer your question, we didn’t really have to shop it to anyone in the beginning because we weren’t looking for permission.
Were there ever moments where you’re like we should go further or we’ve gone too far and you had to scale things back?
Mark Hapka: We’re all good gauges for that. I guess some would push further… cuz some people are not too afraid to go too far and some people are like we should take it easy. Then we’re like we should I guess consider the commercial commerciality of this a little bit but like also f**k it.
Cameron Cowperthwaite: We wanted it to be a palatable experience. We wanted to feel visceral, but at the end of the day, we still knew we had to entertain people. So, I think it was like trying to do this tastefully in a way that was provocative and added the allure without alienating people away from the film because we really wanted people to buy in and dive in.
Maiara Walsh: I think you made a good point with the with the tasteful aspect of it. This is not a Gaspar Noé film. It could have been pushed further, but there were choices made to not feel like an unnecessary layer. Even though I do love Gaspar Noé, it’s just like that’s not the film we were setting out to make. And I think there is something just really beautiful and sensual about the shots and what was built.
Mark Hapka: How can we push the boundaries and maybe there are moments where we could have pushed it further and we were a little afraid, but I think everyone did a really good job at just letting it unfold and be what it means. Kudos to you and kudos to you and
I’m curious how much from your own personal experiences were used in putting together not only the characters but the story itself because there was an authenticity to it.
Mark Hapka: We’re glad that came across. That all started with the script. And I think we’ve all been in Hollywood long enough that we’ve definitely met these characters. Slightly cathartic to be able to express them and bring them to life because there’s a slight bit of mocking that you want to do for some of these guys cuz they’re just such a**holes.
Maiara Walsh: They’re weak characters which I find pretty fascinating. I don’t really feel like any of them are heroes. Usually in a normal unfolding of a film, there’s someone that you’re really rooting for like hero characters, and I don’t really feel like our characters are based off of specific people but real people that we’ve encountered or just the dark side of people. The dark side of people’s egos.
There are a lot of little performance choices like Maya has some fantastic facial expressions on occasion reacting to people talking about stuff. How much of that is in the script and how much of that is performers making choices?
Cameron Cowperthwaite: I think a lot of that was one of the most interesting parts of editing. I had never edited a film before. We only ever see 10% of the 100% that actors do. I think we had the best problem in the world, which was too many options. Actors didn’t even — they were disarmed — and we used that in the film because there was this raw presence.
Maya Stojan: I haven’t looked back on the script in five years, but I felt like they chose the best moments. I remember that I was so present with this character, and I felt like everyone was so present with who they were being that it felt so effortless in a way, as difficult as these characters were.
Mark Hapka: Honestly, another silver lining to indie film making and your actors being your producers and also being your editors is that we get to protect the performances. Cam and I would be looking at each other, Sebastian’s rolling off on this this b*llsh*it and in that moment, we’re like, dude, what does Naomi think of this right now? This is what we want to see what she’s thinking right now in this moment.
This isn’t your first time as a director. You’ve done a short film called YOUNG BLOOD back around 2019. There’s an exponential leap in the quality of the visual dynamics. Was that part of your ambition when you were going forward with this?
Maiara Walsh: It was very intentional. We did a lot of previsualization with the uh with the cinematographer [Petros Antoniadis], and we got to use this program called CineTracer — I wanted to make sure that we had as much setup as possible beforehand. Personally, I love films that move and are dynamic and have interesting shots. And I felt especially because this is such a contained project, we needed to feel the movement.
Was there anything that didn’t make it into the movie that you wish you had been able to include?
Maiara Walsh: There were three pieces of dialogue that weren’t used in the gallery scene. And I don’t miss those because they weren’t necessary.
Cameron Cowperthwaite: The reverse is actually true. Oddly, there’s a moment that in the midst of all the chaos we didn’t have, for lack of a better word, a dynamic moment between the characters and their own perspectives waiting for this decision to be made that we built out of a bunch of different coverage cuz in the hustle and bustle we didn’t manage to capture that moment. We just had to go and find it and stitch it together.
How do you as performers get to dark places but also keep yourselves safe psychologically so you’re not abusing yourselves with the emotions that you have to go through?
Maiara Walsh: I think we lived with these characters for so long and you normally don’t get this much rehearsal time that for me I did feel completely overtaken by my character. I felt like I was her by the end of it and it actually took me a little bit of time afterwards to be able to kind of like wash her off and wash off the other characters as well. Yes,
Mark Hapka: Luckily, none of us are method actors in this particular thing because I don’t think that would go well in this type of subject matter. Also, we’re all wearing so many hats that in between scenes we’re forced to just jump in then put out some fires on production and then just jump back in. So there’s not much time to like think about it or live in it. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t it didn’t linger.
Where are people going to be able to enjoy this erotic thriller?
MAIARA WALSH: It releases on the 10th.
Mark Hapka: Just in time for Valentine’s Day.
What do you all have planned for the future?
Maiara Walsh: I think all of us are working on personal projects. I have two other features that I’ve written that are ready to go that I’d like to make next. I’m in the middle of writing a novel
Cameron Cowperthwaite: I’ve got some I’ve got some other indies that are hopefully going to make this same journey from like you filmed it a couple years ago almost to the point of forgetting it existed and then you get these texts from people that are like, “Hey, this is going to come out.” So, I’m hopeful that that kind of comes to fruition.
Mark Hapka: I have another feature that actually Cameron’s in as well. And this is a complete polar opposite of BIGHT. Midwestern comedy feelgood type thing, which this is not. That’ll be out in April. Hopefully we’ll have a nice little theatrical release on that and currently shooting another one.
Maya Stojan: I am currently producing a romcom and wrote it as well, co-wrote it. And then I also am writing an auto biography.
BIGHT is currently available on VOD services such as Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
