J Paul Johnson
Dirty Laundry is the fiction-film debut of writer-director Rocky Walls, an Indianapolis-based filmmaker whose primary work to date has been with documentaries. With Dirty Laundry, Walls has made something of a love letter to the 1990s, a time when he, like his protagonists, was coming of age and when he was enjoying some great coming-of-age cinema.
Set to premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival in Indianapolis, Dirty Laundry tells the story of two 19-year-olds on a single late night as they meet in a local laundromat to discuss their fledgling business plans. But when a stranger interrupts their laundry night with words of wisdom and a magic trick, suddenly, the two friends discover they are both incapable of lying to the other. The spell they are under leads to their divulging some uncomfortable truths as they ponder their future. It’s a heartfelt love letter to the ’90s and a clever comedy; it’s also a testament to the complexity of male friendship.
Walls’s increasingly diverse filmography includes award-winning documentary work like Finding Hygge (2019), which explores the Danish concept of coziness and contentment; IMBPREZ (2021), a profile of a local artist’s impact on his city; and More Than Corn (2022), a season-long look into life on a small Indiana farm. Dirty Laundry is his first foray into fiction filmmaking. He spoke recently with Film Obsessive publisher J Paul Johnson. The transcript below the video has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Rocky, welcome to Film Obsessive. Can I have you talk a little bit about your film Dirty Laundry?
Rocky Walls: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to talk about it with you today. Dirty Laundry is a coming-of-age film. It’s a comedy-drama set in 1997, and it’s got a little bit of that nostalgic piece for any of us who are entering this phase of our life. Even though people say 30 years, and we still think you’re talking about the ’70s, when people say 30 years ago, now they’re talking about the ’90s and that makes me feel old, but that’s okay. It’s about two friends, two best friends who are trying to start a business together. It’s a pretty simple concept, a simple idea. The two of them get together at a laundromat every other week and they go over their business plan and they’ve got these big dreams for starting a business together.
But there’s also some secrets that they have, some ways that they haven’t been completely honest with each other, and that all comes out in the laundromat through a series of events that ends up getting them under a magic spell in which they cannot lie. And so as they kind of go through the evening figuring out how to break the spell, a lot of truth gets revealed and their friendship, as well as those business plans kind of all get put to the test.
One of the things I’m going to comment on right away is, I like those kids. I like them a lot. I like your characters, and I like the actors that portray them. Can you talk a little bit about creating the two , where the idea for these two guys—similar, yet different—came from?
Yeah. First of all, let me thank you for saying that. That was one of the deal breakers for me. One of the deal breakers is that we found a really great laundromat to fill in. Like we weren’t going to make this movie unless we could find a perfect laundromat. And then the other one was that we had to have these two characters, these two actors that could play the characters in a way that would create the exact feeling the exact impact that you felt, that you like them. You want them to win. Whatever winning means. You want to root for them. That was really important to me.
And so these characters are loosely based on myself and my co-founder of our business, the production company that produced Dirty Laundry and then all the documentary films before it that have come in our long line of film work. And so there are aspects of their characters and their personalities that are based on the two of us. But ultimately, I know I also pulled a lot, maybe even more so from just characters and stories that really resonated with me as I watched movies from the late 80s all the way up until today.
And there are a lot of those moments. Another critic or reviewer commented that a lot of our dialogue and even facial expressions feels very borrowed from the ’90s. And I think that’s those are the influences of films of that time on my life. That’s what I can blame that on because I think there are little aspects of quips that they would respond with or the way that they interact, the way that they react to each other, that I think came probably right off the screen from another movie or TV show that I enjoyed when I was younger.
What strikes me as so interesting about the two characters to me is not that they seem like they come out of films. They certainly don’t seem like stock characters or types. These are not the kids who would have been in The Breakfast Club. These are kids very much like the ones at my local high school, you know, Maybe I played a little tennis with them. Maybe one or two of them dated my daughters for a little bit. They seem like you kind of very, very average, engaging, intelligent, Midwestern kids, kind of willing to work, but really unsure of what they’re ultimately working for, where their future is going to take them.
Yeah. That’s great. I’m glad that you strike that balance, you know, because yeah, absolutely. I think there are aspects of their characters that come from other films, TV shows, things like that or from my imagination. But you’re absolutely right that Mitchell and Charlie—Mitchell Wray, who is Kyle in our film and Charlie Schultz, who plays Eric Hernandez, the two stars—they’re both Midwestern guys. They grew up here in Indiana, which is where I’m from and where we produced the film. And I think they are best friends in real life. First of all, they come from a background where those Midwestern values, whether they would admit it or not, or whether they are even aware of it or not, come through in their personalities. And I think that that’s a really special aspect of the movie that also reflects our 12 Stars Media’s history and documentary work as well. Ultimately, the film is about two young guys who are having a conversation over the course of one evening, right? And we wanted that to feel as real and as authentic as possible because I think that’s the way that the true themes of the movie come across the best.
We use the magic spell to kind of put them in this position where they have to be honest. But ultimately, And that magic just serves as a tool for getting the truest version of themselves out there for them to talk about. I commented in an interview earlier this week that it’s almost there’s like this really interesting I guess, paradox, the most interesting way of looking at it. But I could probably sooner get an audience to believe that the boys were being honest with each other because of a magic spell, then I could get them to believe that they were just two 19-year-olds sharing their feelings and getting in touch with their emotions in the way that they did of their own accord. It’s good guys don’t talk like that, right? And so it was really important that you did feel that sense of reality from them, though and this authenticity, because going back to, what you said at first, we want the viewer to root for them.
We want the viewer to see them ultimately in the truest, most authentic, most vulnerable versions of themselves. And also then feel safe. Feel like that version of themselves, each of them can be safe, can be protected in this space, where they are, where the two of them in their friendship can allow them to be the truest versions of themselves.
I’m also going to mention something that strikes me as fairly rare in a film of this genre, the teenage comedy drama, is having lead actors who are age appropriate, right? Because that’s a challenge! I mean, you want people who have chops and experience and knowledge and wisdom in front of the camera, but you also want them to look like and be believable as 19-year-olds. I’m guessing maybe they’re a year or two older than 19, but they’re both acting students.
They both had a lot of experience in acting, but when we filmed, they were both 19. They were the exact age. And that is something that we tried for. We really wanted that. In an indie film like this, you know, I didn’t have the time or the resources to audition 100 young people or even, have a handful of 35-year-olds who wanted to play 19-year-olds to your point. That’s come up quite a bit, and I don’t even care to knock anybody else’s movie. Because I understand as you mentioned, there’s a good reason sometimes why you have somebody who’s much older cast as a younger character.
But it was important to me that within the first, 90 seconds of this movie. I didn’t have you scratching their heads going, wait a minute. I got to watch the rest of this believing that that guy’s 19 because I know I’ve done it. I’ve seen a movie or seen a trailer even and thought, Come on, really? You couldn’t find a 19-year-old? But Mitchell and Charlie are exceptional. They’re really, really good at their craft. And I think that’s becoming more and more common, right? I saw the movie Didi, which won at Sundance and has been making the rounds, and I think is even available on streaming now. And I don’t know that there was like a you know, A list actor in that film or certainly the younger actors were not household names, let’s say. And I think that that’s becoming more and more common because, you know, the other reasons that you’re mentioning that there are really talented people out there young or advanced in their career. And it’s really exciting that independent films can give them roles like this.
But yeah, Mitchell and Charlie were absolutely exceptional. They were great to work with. We did several virtual rehearsals while they were still at school because we had basically their fall semester. We had that time period to sort of rehearse and wait until they had a winter break to film Dirty Laundry. And during all the rehearsals, I was just constantly thinking, like, I really lucked out here. Like, I got two young people who are just brilliant at acting and at acting together as well.
Congratulations to them and to you for casting them. And I wanted to ask you also about shooting a feature length narrative essentially inside a laundromat. I mean, there’s a couple flashbacks that take us outside there. But for the most part, you’re doing the entire script, the entire shoot in a laundromat. I want to know how long does that take, and I want to know a little bit about what some of the limitations or possibilities are of doing this in a single location.
Just like with finding Mitchell and Charlie and the universe putting all that together in a really, really lucky way, we could not have found a better laundromat. From a very technical perspective, it’s absolutely insane that this laundromat, don’t take this negatively, but I don’t think it’s been updated since the ’80s, right? It’s all still coin-operated. It’s got a paint scheme from that time period. It’s got a Miss Pac Man machine. Except there was one major update, and anybody on the technical side of filmmaking will appreciate this. All of the lighting had been upgraded to LED daylight balanced. There was not a flickering light. There was not a light bulb out. And in a lot of ways, we could have if we had a magic lamp, could not have wished for a better set to fil in, unless you’re going to build it yourself or unless you were going to completely relight everything. But we were able to take advantage of some really great lighting diagrams and behind the scenes videos.
Actually, our director of photography looked at some behind the scenes videos from the television series Mad Men, they film in a similar environment where a lot of the lighting was in the actual office buildings and things like that, and they used those LED overhead lights with a lot of other lighting, of course, to to fill in and to really craft and mold that lighting. But you had these spaces that were pretty vast spaces, and in order to see all that overhead light and everything, you worked with it, not against it. We just had such a great backdrop for everything.
I mean, from a story perspective, I think you’re right. Another reviewer compared the film to My Dinner with Andre, which is another film that sort famously features just two people having a conversation for the entire time. And first, like, super flattered, I was like, Oh, oh, my gosh, like, that’s, I don’t think that I ever thought that anybody would compare my work in any way to some of the things that had been compared to so far. So it’s just really really flattering in a lot of ways that somebody would even think of that in comparison. But I do think that that is a challenge to figure out how do you how do you make a whole movie essentially out of a conversation between two people?
And as you mentioned, you know, we cut in flashbacks, and there’s some shenanigans that happen, they’re not just sitting and eating dinner, and they’re not just doing laundry. There are other things that happen. But ultimately, it is one conversation that happens. And to me, I didn’t view that as a limitation, maybe maybe I should have, but I viewed it as an opportunity. I viewed it as an opportunity to really zone in and to say, well, if the theme of this movie, if the theme is really going to be about friendship and it’s going to be a really, really intense look at the relationship between these two main characters, then the fact that the whole movie happens in this one night over this one conversation is actually a great advantage.
It’s a great opportunity rather than a limitation to really dive in and to say, well, that means that every line of dialogue needs to be carefully thought through, it needs to really support the relationship that’s being developed here. Even the magic has to serve only to further the development of the relationship and the development of the characters in their relationship. It was a great risk potentially to swing the pendulum too far and to make the movie too much about the magic, right? People have noted that our film is set in 1997, the same year that the movie Liar Liar came out. And that’s not a coincidence. We had a lot of fun. There’s like little Easter eggs like that throughout the film and even behind the scenes production of it.
But Liar Liar—not that this is a criticism of it per se—but it’s a movie where the the shtick, if you will, becomes very much the movie, right? Like, you see Jim Carrey struggle with the fact that he can’t lie really is what that movie is all about. It’s what sells the movie. And you can say, well, but there’s also this, like, you know, heartfelt family themed message behind it. It’s like, Yeah, but you’re really just there to see Jim Carrey not be able to lie. Dirty Laundry is the other way around. You know, the magic is there, the curse or the spell is there. But we were very careful to make sure that it only served the purpose of facilitating the relationship for the guys.
One of the things that keeps the visual from feeling claustrophobic in the laundromat is we’ve got the very expressive sketchbook that Kyle (Mitchell Wray) keeps and the artwork that he’s doing. He’s proposing a business doing kind of a prop shop of sorts. And so a lot of his drawings become animated, and they’re the source of the really clever opening title sequence, which I liked a lot. We’ve got a little Zuma thrown in there to keep things lively right off the bat. That’s a lot of fun. Can you talk a little bit about the graphic design for the film, too?
Yeah, that’s the work of our brilliant art director Eric Thaddeus Andrews. He and I have worked together for years and years and various projects. This is the first opportunity that I’ve ever had though to basically say to him, I love your art style. I love the way that you sketch oftentimes without even knowing what you’re going to create in the end. It’s very stream of consciousness. It’s our art journaling, which is exactly what I imagined Kyle would be doing. He’s not got an art degree. He’s probably only had some basic high school art classes. So everything that he does from an artistic perspective is pretty raw. And really, it’s an extension of his subconscious and his inspiration, his dreams getting out there on the page.
And similarly to how you mentioned earlier, oftentimes we have people who are not the same age playing actors or playing characters in movies. I’ve also seen movies where a sketchbook is a key prop or the art of a character is a key aspect of the story, and the DP has to shoot around the fact that there’s not actually anything in that notebook. That’s hard to do.
Yeah. Absolutely, right.
And we said right from the beginning, like, There are a few things that we can do really, really well, even with an independent film budget and an independent film timeline. And one of them is that we can make sure that these props are exceptional. We can make sure that if Kyle is flipping through his sketchbook, that there are sketches on all those pages. We can make sure that when we say that these guys want to start a business with for party backdrops, that they’re going to hand paint or they’re going to build themselves. We can make sure that the audience really believes that that’s what they’re going to do because of all these layers of things that we can create and put in the film. And so Eric, anything that you see that was drawn in the film, Eric did that, whether it was in the Sketchbook, the animated title sequences that you mentioned.
A lot of movies nowadays don’t start with opening credit sequences. So we really wanted to go back to the 90s and say, like, let’s have all the stars, all their names are at the beginning. We’ll use a really upbeat song. We’ll let people know what they’re getting into here. They’re getting into a 90s film. But every one of those titles. So when you see Mitchell Wray’s name come up on the screen or Charlie Schultz’s name come up on the screen or Deborah Asante’s name come up on the screen, Eric, our art director, drew four of every single one of those images. So every image that’s there, he hand drew from scratch, so that when they’re all layered together, you get this like sketch effect. Yeah. That’s not done in post. Those that’s really what it is. One frame per second repeated four times.
It’s really, really cool.
That was his idea and contribution to the opening titles, which I thought was just fantastic. But yeah, to your point, it was really important that all of that felt very real and felt very again, supportive of these two young guys and their relationship and the reality that we wanted this all to kind of be based in despite.
They look realistic. They look like Kyle plausibly could have created them himself and that they are good enough that other people might be willing to pay for him enough to run a fledging business. So yeah, I think that works really nicely. So is it in a couple of weeks that you are making your world premiere with this, is that right?
That’s right. Sunday, October 13, at 5:00 P.M. At New Fields, which is the art museum here in Indianapolis where Heartland International Film Festival has they hold a lot of their premieres there. It’s the biggest venue at Heartland International Film Festival at 530 seats. I think at the time of this recording, there might be 30 left. So we are expecting a huge turnout for the world premiere. Then we have two more screenings as a part of Heartland International Film Festival, which we’re super grateful for because it’s a great festival. One of the top 25 coolest film festivals in the world according to MovieMaker magazine, right here in our backyard in Indianapolis.
And then some other festivals after that, but we really want to get it onto streaming as soon as possible. We’ve developed a really great and supportive and’ excited fan base. Online, people, I think are really thrilled that we have this movie based in the 90s and they’ve seen a lot of the behind the scenes or the trailer, and they’re excited to watch it. We want to give it to them as soon as we can, and that means getting it onto streaming. Hopefully, fingers crossed, by the holidays.
Thank you so much, Rocky for taking the time to speak with us at Film Obsessive today. I’ll just wish you and your Dirty Laundry, the very best of luck in the future is people can see it at Heartland International Film Festival on October, beginning the tenth, and at other festivals, and hopefully on streaming services following that.
Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
