Pop-Culturalist.com

Whitney Call and Mallory Everton are taking audiences on a wild ride with their road trip comedy, Stop and Go.

The laugh-out-loud film follows sisters Blake (Everton) and Jamie (Call) whose big plans for the year come to a screeching halt when they’re forced to rescue their grandmother and her beloved dog from her nursing home before their reckless sister can get there first. They embark on a hilarious cross-country race against time while contending with a deranged dog breeder, a highly inappropriate nine-year-old, and a clueless Romeo, all in the name of family.

Pop Culturalist spoke with Whitney and Mallory about the creative process bringing Stop and Go to life, writing these eccentric characters, and what they learned about each other.

PC: What was the inspiration behind Stop and Go?
Mallory: If we’re being honest, we were both losing our minds and needed a distraction during quarantine. [laughs] We wanted to make something that wasn’t a huge bummer because everything was such a huge bummer at the time. That was our main motivation. It was like, “We’ve got this great idea.” We were like, “Can we make anything right now?” The main thing that we felt we had in our wheelhouse was our chemistry—this shared language and history. We thought, “There has to be something we can do with a female friendship like ours right now.”

We were talking about an old road trip concept that Whitney had been batting around for a couple of years. It was more of a Thelma & Louise, escaping-the-law situation. We were spitballing and came up with the idea of making it a rescue mission for our grandma. Suddenly, it was like we were going to do a road trip movie and a COVID movie.

Then we realized we had to make this as fast as possible because festival deadlines were three months away. We were in this really weird window where it felt like we could either rush and make this as fast as we possibly could or sit on a COVID movie and maybe make it slowly over the course of a year and then have to live in this COVID movie for that long, which we didn’t want to do. It was such a strange, weird fire that got lit under us when we realized that those deadlines were coming up. Then we shot it. We wrote it in two weeks. We pre-produced it in two weeks. We shot it in two weeks. We got the first cut out in two weeks. It was horrible. [laughs]

Whitney: But that was honestly the only way we would have gotten it done. Our naivete really pushed us through. With this being our first film, we really made it because we wanted to learn how to make movies and to demystify the process for ourselves. If it had been our opus that we’d been trying to make for the last ten years, it would have been so disheartening to come up against roadblock after roadblock. Making a movie often doesn’t go the way that you plan.

From the get-go, we were there for the experience and the idea that maybe this would turn into a story that we could tell people someday. But we pushed through the process until we got to the end and realized we had done it. It’s been an affirming experience.

PC: Were there any nerves heading into this project given the fact that you made this film during a pandemic?
Mallory: Honestly, it was brutal. One of the most brutal parts of the process was the complete unknown. The day before we started filming, our producer’s sister had a COVID scare at work. We were like, “Are we going to have to shut this whole thing down?” It was things like that. Nobody ever got COVID while we were making this, which was a miracle. It was amazing. We did everything we could to stay safe. It was hard to get tested during the summer. It was so scary. The whole time we were like, “Are we putting people in danger? Are we doing everything we can to keep everyone safe?” That was our biggest priority. We were making this as a distraction, not to give everyone COVID.

Then there was this creative panic. “Are people going to watch a COVID movie? Is it going to be too soon, too offensive, too close to home? Everyone is going to be tired of it by the time this comes out.” We were also like, “Are we going to put this on YouTube for free?” We didn’t know what we were going to do with it. We were just making it to learn and to distract ourselves.

PC: Stop and Go does a beautiful job taking this horrible situation that we’re in and bringing humor to it. As writers of the film, was it a challenge to find that balance?
Whitney: We were hungry for that. There was so much darkness and fear at the time. There was so much going on in the world. We were seeing so much ugliness in others. It was our way of trying to find the release valve. It was like, “Can we laugh for a moment? Can we find some lightness that makes it bearable that we’re going to get through this?” We’re both drawn to darker comedies because when you are going through hard times in life, that is how you deal with it. You can’t go through a hard time just completely miserable. You’ll go crazy. Humanity is drawn to the idea of finding some levity so they can breathe for a moment. Mal always says that it was a relief for us to make this, and we hope that it’s a relief for people to watch it.

PC: The two of you did an outstanding job in the film, but along that road trip, we meet these outrageous but relatable characters. Where did you draw inspiration when developing characters like Erin and Jacob?
Whitney: We all have families. We all have friends. I’m not going to name names. Erin’s character in particular is derived from people close to us in our lives. We love her dearly. We never wanted to villainize any character. We never wanted to create division in this movie. In fact, Mal and I made a very distinct choice to not have a fight between our two characters, which is a very typical trope in a buddy comedy. There’s so much division in the world and so much hurt we’ve done to each other. In this film, we were like, “Yes, we can see how crazy people are, but wouldn’t it be nice to also recognize that you don’t have to cut people out of your family?”

You can find a way to get along. They can have the worst opinions in the world. They can be unhealthy and it may be dangerous what they’re doing, but you can get through this with them. That was intentional for sure. When Julia Jolley, who played Erin, was brought onto the set, she lit that character up. The same with Stephen Meek who co-directed with Mallory (he played Evan, the character who breeds dogs).

Both of them have such a lightness, it was easy to cast them in roles that could easily have been very hated. Their characters could have easily angered or annoyed people, but because of the innocence and joy Julia and Stephen brought to their parts, it was easy to help people realize that there are good people everywhere, even if they make terrible decisions sometimes.

PC: Both of you are wearing multiple hats for this project. Was that a challenge?
Whitney: Yeah. Luckily, Mal and I had been training for this for a while. We were on a sketch comedy show for a long time. We left that altogether so that we could start our own company and make content ourselves. But leaving that and starting our own business meant we were already having to wear a lot of hats. We would play producer, writer, director, editor, and also wardrobe, location, and props. When we made this movie, we had a lot under our belt already. That’s what helped us get it over the finish line.

We had a fantastic crew. Our DP, our unit production manager, our sound guy—everyone was the best of the best that we knew. They came in clutch for us. Mal was finding locations with Stephen the night before we would film something. After a long day of filming, they’d have to drive forty minutes away to find something that looked like we were in Eastern Washington. We knew it would only be for two months, and that kept us going.

Mallory: We all say that we can do anything for six weeks or for two months. That is definitely how this process was. It was like, “Man, we wish we had known a lot more before we started this process, but we’re learning it by having this hell storm. You just take it a day at a time and try not to die.

PC: Speaking of that learning process, what would you say is the biggest takeaway that you learned from this film experience that you’ll apply to future projects?
Mallory: It taught me the true value of not being so precious. We used what was at our disposal—our friendships, our chemistry, Whitney’s car—and decided we were going to be resourceful and make what we could. Whereas with a more traditional project you would be like, “This is the script, the script is the Bible,” we learned to be loose and less precious. That was the key to enjoying the process.

It wasn’t about making the perfect scene. It was about making the scene that we could make as well as we could and using all the elements we could. Some days, it was like, “We were planning a different location. Now we have this one. We’re going to rewrite this slightly differently because of the blocking. It’s going to be great.”

Whitney: Going off that, it was about getting out of our own way, at least for me. I feel like there were so many reasons why I hadn’t made a film up until this point. I always relied on those reasons to hold back. But gosh, both of us were driven to such a breaking point during the pandemic that nothing was really holding us back anymore. We thought, “If we pay for this bill ourselves, what can we do?” Once we started putting one foot in front of the other and doing the work, that’s when things started opening up for us. We were able to get a process trailer because we asked. We were able to have an investor jump on board because they were really excited that we were halfway through production already. We said, “You can invest or not, but we’re making this movie.” There were things like that, but if we hadn’t decided to take a step forward, nothing would have happened.

Mallory: Like-minded people are attracted to positive energy and momentum. When you have something moving and you feel good, it tends to be contagious in a really great way. People around you say, “I want to get on this train before it leaves the station. I’m going to come along.” We’ve had so many people along this process, like our VFX team, who relieved so much pressure for us when they came on. If we had approached them earlier on, we might’ve even been able to afford them. But because we were moving so fast, they wanted to get on this train.

PC: The two of you have been best friends since you were nine. Did you learn anything new about each other during the process of making Stop and Go?
Mallory: That’s a good question.

Whitney: Really good question. It was a deeper dive. We’ve been roommates. We’ve lived together. We’ve worked together. We’ve been in those pressure cookers before. But because it was a pressure cooker situation, that turned the volume up on all of our traits. None of it was surprising though. We’re basically sisters at this point. That was maybe a blessing that we knew each other so well—that nothing blindsided me at least.

Mallory: I’ve always known that she would be a great person to be in this muck with, but I learned that a hundred times over. She is my trench warfare friend. On the absolute worst days and in the worst conditions, I know that I can depend on her. She’s amazing.

Make sure to follow Whitney (Twitter/Instagram) and Mallory (Twitter/Instagram). Watch Stop and Go wherever you stream movies.