Pop-Culturalist.com

Andy and Danny Vallentine are two of the industry’s most compelling and dynamic filmmakers and storytellers. Their debut feature, The Mattachine Family, tells a deeply personal tale about a young couple at a crossroads in their lives, inspired by the couple’s own journey to parenthood.

Starring Nico Tortorella and Juan Pablo Di Pace, The Mattachine Family follows Thomas (Tortorella) and Oscar (Di Pace), a couple very much in love. After their first foster child returns to his birth mother, they find they have different ideas about what it means to make a family.

This emotionally poignant masterpiece delves into the complexities of relationships, identity, and the evolving definition of family, capturing the raw and tender moments that shape our lives.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Andy and Danny about The Mattachine Family, the film’s timely themes of chosen family and change, the process of bringing this story to life, and more.

PC: Danny, like so many, you turned to art to understand life better. This film is so raw and emotional. It doesn’t shy away from highlighting those conversations that many, particularly in the LGBTQ+ community, are having. Can you talk a bit about the genesis behind this project? How were you and Andy able to push each other as creatives and fill this space that’s so needed?
Andy: Great question.

Danny: There are a lot of components to that question. I’ll start with the genesis. As you mentioned, I always turn to the arts as a way of understanding things that are happening in my own life. A lot of the movie is based on people, events, and conversations that Andy and I have had and continue to have in our lives.

I felt like there wasn’t a good film that represented the journey we were on as a couple or that our friends were going on. I felt like there was a void. It wasn’t even necessarily that I went into this movie thinking it was going to be made because that’s such a fever dream. But it was more a way of understanding and helping myself understand it.

Writing was very helpful in addressing those larger questions: What does it mean to be queer in this time? What does it mean to make a family? What do we have to leave behind if we start forging a new path, and how do we bring the beautiful things about the queer community and the notions of chosen family into the present, along with the opportunities that are available to us? It was really a way of understanding my own life better. I hope now that it’s made, it helps people also find it for that same reason.

PC: I feel like so many people are going to feel seen through this film. Andy, your chemistry reads were all done via Zoom, and you were very intentional about the order in which you shot this film to give the cast time to build rapport. What was the moment on set when you realized they had everything needed to bring these complex dynamics to life?
Andy: We had scheduled some scenes with Nico [Tortorella] and Juan [Pablo Di Pace] at the beginning. Those were fun, playful scenes where they were smiling, laughing, and doing photo montages. They didn’t really get into the heart of acting until a few days in. Every filmmaker dreams of getting their actors together, going to a cabin in the woods, hanging out, becoming best friends, and then having this great chemistry. For an indie film, we literally had two hours of rehearsal with Nico and Juan, and the next day we were shooting.

I relied heavily on them to build that rapport. It was two or three days into filming when we started getting into the acting scenes and doing more dialogue with them. I started to see this great, playful back-and-forth between them. That was when it kicked off.

PC: Chosen family is such a running theme within this film and within this community. Who were the people in your own lives who have held space for you in a similar way and impacted your own journeys as storytellers outside of each other?
Danny: I stole a lot from our real life and our real friends. I would say that each of the friends in the movie has a real-life counterpart. They’re not exact replicas, but I took a lot of details from our own life and wove them into the movie. We have a Leah who is a really close friend. Our friend Brandon is kind of like Jamie. What’s been really beautiful is that we have our own daughter now, and they’ve become a really integral part of her life as well. We’ve been able to bridge our support system into this new type of family.

Andy: It was fun, right? We’re friends with all these people, and we took elements from different friends and packed them together. We have our really sassy and hilarious friends. We’ll package that together, and there’s Jamie. Leah is our strong-willed, usually knows-what-she-wants lesbian, and we have one of those. We have another one that sandwiches things together. With the movie, we made them cinematic and over-the-top.

Danny: There’s a lot of Thomas that’s a repackaged me. A lot of Oscar is repackaged Andy. You write what you know.

Perfect segue to this next question. I was speaking with a writer recently who, like both of you, created a deeply personal story. He talked about the importance of deviating a bit from his own life to examine it from a new perspective and give space for his ensemble to make it their own. Was that something you were mindful of throughout this writing process? How did that influence your decision to show these two different couples and their unique paths to parenthood?
Danny: The number one thing I would say when people ask a question like this is that it’s very loosely based because I don’t think Andy and I are very interesting. I don’t think if you made a movie about us in particular that anyone would want to watch it or listen to our conversations. That’s part of it. [laughs]

Andy: I would.

Danny: You do want to protect yourself and your own life by putting some distance between you and the character. That was part of it. Then also, the former child star is a much more interesting character to play.

Andy: For us, we took people in our lives, including ourselves, and incorporated small elements from them. This was a discussion we had about whether or not we wanted to become parents. We took those little things and put them into this movie. But then we filled those characters with more cinematic, over-the-top moments or dramatic beats that you need in a movie. That’s always the thing—while it is our story, it’s jazzed up with movie stuff.

PC: Andy, there’s such a beautiful balance between comedy and drama within this film, and it’s so grounded in reality. So much of your cast had a deep connection to this story. As the director, how do you foster that environment on set where they can go to these vulnerable places and explore all these different beats on such a tight filming schedule?
Andy: I am forever grateful for all these actors who participated in this indie film. They weren’t doing it for the paycheck, let me tell you. All of them had some sort of personal connection, whether they were going through similar things in terms of having children. Nico has spoken about that extensively.

As a director, I’ve always tried to foster an environment that allows the actors to get into the right mood for the scene we’re shooting. I’ve thought about how to get this actor in the mood to reach that moment, whether it’s a comedic moment where we can all be happy and laughing on set, throwing jokes out there, or a more serious moment.

I remember the scene with Emily Hampshire (who plays Leah) talking about her experiences going through a loss, a miscarriage. I played Brandi Carlile, and I had it on repeat because that’s the feeling you get when you listen to some Brandi Carlile songs. That’s the feeling I wanted. Music to me is essential—I built this forty-song playlist for Mattachine that I would constantly go back to and play on set with the speaker. Then right when we called action, I would cut the music off. It was interesting because music was something that all the actors responded to really well from the beginning. They were like, “This is really nice. Andy, can you play this song? This is the song that I have with my partner that will help me get to that moment.”

PC: Danny, there’s such an empathetic quality to your writing where you feel and understand both Thomas and Oscar’s perspectives. It was really important to you that neither of them were villainized for their points of view and how those can change over time. How were you able to toe that line so seamlessly?
Danny: Something we’ve been told a lot is that there’s a universal nature to what was going on with Thomas and Oscar. It’s a very specific story, but everybody has been in a situation where they’re in a friendship or a relationship where people have different ideas about how they’re going to move forward. It doesn’t have to be about children; it can be about anything. We’ve had friends where one wants to move somewhere and the other wants to stay where they are.

It’s an interesting dynamic. In the movie, I recognized that Oscar’s not in the wrong for not wanting to do it. He has a valid reason. It’s about leaning into that complexity and trying to give both of them the room to show their perspectives. When they’re fighting, no one is a villain. People like to tell Juan Pablo that Oscar was the bad guy. I agree with Juan Pablo that Oscar is not a bad person. He just wanted something different, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I tried to really lean into it and give them both time and space in the movie. Also, their histories play a big role. For Oscar, a lot of it ties to the fact that he was this child star. I hope that people will understand that something that’s defined his whole life coming back to him is a big opportunity. That would be a reason to not want to pursue a big life change at that moment.

PC: You both did a beautiful job showing how your wants can change over time. It’s very human and grounded. Andy, you had your daughter during post-production. How did your relationship with this script change during that time? Did it impact the editing process and the themes you wanted to get across in the film?
Andy: Oh yeah, it definitely impacted the editing. It took a lot longer than I wanted to. Florence, our daughter, was born a month after we shot the movie. It was very weird. We made a movie about a character who wanted to be a dad. I wasn’t a dad when we shot it. I wanted to be a dad. Our wonderful surrogate was pregnant. We knew it was coming. Then after filming, that’s when everything hit.

One of the things that I’ve learned, as a feature director, is how much of the story is crafted in post. It’s so challenging because I had never done that before. Sometimes people put these first-time directors on a pedestal where they have to make the best, perfect film. For a lot of us, yes, we’ve made shorts and I made music videos, so I knew how to shoot a scene, I knew how to shoot coverage, I knew how to work with actors, but then taking all of those things in post and really seeing, “This scene needs to move over here, this scene needs to move over there,” took me a little bit more time to figure out.

I also think it was because Florence was born. I was up late, and we were doing feedings every three hours and learning that process as well. But when I look back, there are some scenes that weigh heavier on my heart because now I understand a little bit more what Thomas was feeling, especially with that last montage about creating a family. I had tears in my eyes as I was editing that because now I’ve done that. I had a baby waiting for me at home. It was incredible.

PC: This is another question for both of you, but this is your feature film debut in your respective roles. What was the most surprising part about this overall experience for each of you? What will you bring to the next project?
Danny: The first draft of this was written before the idea of having a child or making a movie seemed possible. Moving forward, what I really learned throughout the process was what Andy was talking about—how something that works on the page doesn’t always necessarily work in the finished product.

Seeing how story beats that I thought there were no other ways to assemble being moved around to different parts of the movie and how it made it better, and also the experience of having actual people reading the lines and the people whose main job is to look at the story from this character’s perspective and take all this feedback to make it even better, was something that I really learned on the job. Going forward, it’s going to be a much different process of writing, taking feedback, and thinking about the logistics of how to make this and what it will look like. It’s a lot of the nitty-gritty filmmaking parts. That’ll influence how I write going forward.

Andy: For me, it was similar to Danny. We would read his script and do table reads beforehand. We were like, “This is great. This is perfect. We don’t need to change this.” Once you start shooting, you’re also like, “This feels really good.” Then once you get to the edit bay, you’re like, “This is too long. We don’t need this fight to go on longer than six minutes.” It’s like, “Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.” You find these beats that you can take out, and it makes the film stronger. Even though as a director, it’s difficult. I’m sure as a writer too, to be like, “We cut these lines or we cut this awesome scene/montage.” But it makes it stronger.

How I would apply that to the next one is that I would definitely storyboard. I had worked with this incredible storyboard artist for Mattachine. We did maybe a fourth of the film. Then I built these animatics in post where I could see these montages play out. Going forward, I would definitely storyboard the entire movie and put it in a timeline and make an entire movie out of the storyboard. It’s just so that we could try to find those problem areas before we got to set.

Make sure to follow Andy (Instagram) and Danny (Instagram). Watch The Mattachine Family wherever you stream movies.

Photo Credit: Sam Ramirez