Hey friends. Barbarella here, coming at you from deep in the heart of Texas. That’s right. It’s spring, and I’ve been SXSWing hard this year. One of the films making a splash here is EDIE ARNOLD IS A LOSER. This high energy comedy about Catholic school girls who form a punk band only has one more screening at this fest.
I took a break from the movies, music, and mayhem to sit down with the the film’s directors Kade Atwood and Megan Rico (who also wrote it) and actors Adi Madden Cabrera (Edie) and McKenna Tuckett (Francis). Check out our conversation!
Barbara: I’m going to start with the Catholic school question, because when I was a kid, my dad was in the military, and we moved around a lot. We lived in El Paso for a couple years, and he didn’t want us in public schools there so they sent us to Catholic school. We’re not Catholic, so it was a weird thing because we were not allowed to do the religious stuff. We were really outcast. It was a very uncomfortable, bizarre experience. I would like to know, what is your experience with Catholic schools?
Megan: I went to an all-girls Catholic school in Miami, Florida so a lot of stuff from the script is pulled pretty directly from that experience. It is a weird experience. I feel like as an outsider, you probably noticed it even more. It’s a lot of arbitrary rigidity. It was like, why are we putting so much emphasis on this? This doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I feel like it took me a little while to realize that because it really seeps into your body.
Kade: I didn’t go to an all-girls Catholic school. I grew up in a pretty conservative, religious community, and what Megan was saying, there were just certain thing, like if you listen to this type of music, you’re going to have sex and then go to hell.
McKenna: I think you mean h-e-double hockey sticks
Megan: There’s such a big emphasis on sex. Just like, “Don’t have sex.” I was like, “I’m fourteen; I wasn’t gonna. Don’t worry. I’m not having sex,” and they’re like, “Okay, ‘cause we’re watching you.” "I feel like you almost want me to have sex."
McKenna: Growing up in Utah kind of gives a different perspective on a private Catholic school environment. Just living in that community is almost like always being in that private Catholic school cause with the religious dominance, everyone’s always trying to act certain way. Living outside of that, there’s kind of a microscope on you. I wasn’t raised in the religious majority. I was Catholic, so it was very interesting to be the bad boy. I was just a different flavor of Christian.
Megan: You were the goth flavor. Catholicism is so goth. I didn’t realize it until I went to Utah for the first time to do work. I was like, “Whoa, this is pop music, and Catholicism is hard-core.”
Adi: I didn’t go to Catholic school or grow up Catholic, but my grandpa‘s super Catholic, so I went to Catholic mass every now and again. My dad went to Notre Dame, so that’s my Catholic experience.
Barbara: What’s the experience at your first SXSW been like for y’all so far?
Kade: It’s been crazy. Megan and I attended Sundance as fans, when we were working in Utah together. I do think most filmmakers make a short film or a couple short films and then they move on to a feature. We just went on to a feature, so all of this is new to us. We’ve never been on the festival side as a filmmaker. I feel like most filmmakers have a short film, and they kind of have that introduction, whereas we just kinda jumped into the deep end, so it’s been a little overwhelming but also super fun. This has been the greatest week of my life.
McKenna: It almost doesn’t feel real. I got here, and I’m like yeah. You know when something really good is happening, and your brain is trying to play it down? The reality of being at in Austin, Texas for a movie that people are liking, and my brain is like, “Yeah.”
Megan: We love film festivals. To be on the other side of it is so cool. This sounds so lame, but SXSW is so punk rock, and it feels like a good fit. I feel like I’m a part of something. It just feels like you’re welcomed into a community, and that has been my favorite thing; I feel like I made it into the club.
Adi: We had our premiere last night. Before the premiere, I’m still a nobody. I’m still the me I was before, but we’ve been recognized, and that changes a girl. Now my face is all over this film. It’s also on random posters all over the city.
Kade (jokingly): Immediately after we got recognized, Adi‘s personality changed, she became a total diva.
Megan (jokingly): She said, “Can I see your hand?” and then she spit her gum in my hand.
Barbara: Do you have a favorite Nundead song?
Adi: I really love “Edie is a Bitch,” and it might be because I don’t get to be in it. When Megan first sent me the song, I thought, “Damn, this is so good.” I really love that song. I’m not in it, but it’s so good.
McKenna: There’s a lyric in it where it says “she’s sucking on a dick.” When we did ADR, Megan‘s like, "Can you just say, "She sucks on a dick?""
Megan: We went back-and-forth for a long time on this .
McKenna: It’s really graphic, “sucking on a dick.”
Megan: It’s not very specific. But we know which one she’s talking about.
McKenna: I’m hard of hearing, so I read lips, so I’m like, “No if it’s a little off, that’s gonna bug me so bad.” I made this choice while we were filming, so it’s “sucking on a dick.”
Megan: You know, I feel like it is the better choice now; it’s funnier. My favorite original song in the movie is not one of the Nundead songs. It’s the song Walter Boyd is listening to in the car that he’s like singing along to.
Kade (singing in the style of Creed): Jesus was born on a…
Megan: The way that we did that was we just had Lucas, who plays that character, sing like you’re singing along with something, just mumble. He just improvised and mumbled lyrics. Then, we had our musician write the song to that and record Creed-style vocals for it.
Kade: Mine also is “Edie is a Bitch,” because of the process of that song. It went through such a journey. Filming it was really difficult because it was shot in two different locations, and there are two different actions going on at the same time. Megan and I worked on it. There’s behind-the-scenes photos of us where we’re at set, and we’re still trying to storyboard the scene, trying to figure out the scene. We shot it, and it was good, but it was still not working. It took so much time in the edit to figure out how to get all of that to go together. I think what we landed on, Megan and I were both like, “Yeah, it’s fine.” Then we watched it with other people, and it was everyone’s favorite song, and I was like, “Well, I guess we nailed it.” All that time fixing it was worth it.
McKenna: I think “Eat Me” is so so cool. The lyrics are so sick, and it’s just I watched it yesterday. Watching yourself sing is very disorienting. Throughout the whole thing, I was like, “This is weird” but you can see the band so into it, like they found their voice and found their moment together. Getting to see that as an audience perspective, as well as being a part of it, was just good.
Barbara: I would buy a soundtrack to this film if you released it.
Megan: That is actually a dream. I'd love do a vinyl pressing.
Barbara (to Adi and McKenna): What was the audition process like for you?
Adi (sarcastically): Cool. It was not stressful at all.
McKenna: It was really awesome. We started out with the self-tape, but then we did a similar thing to The Outsiders where they read the other character, and we read with them, and if they liked you from that, then we went into a chemistry read. That was a really awesome opportunity, because we really got to understand the characters. It was way more like a workshop, and we got to work with them and how their directing style is. We got to play with a bunch of different characters, and it was a lot less about trying to be perfect. Instead, it was trying to find the right fit.
Kade (to Adi): Is that the first self-tape you submitted?
Adi: Yes
Kade: Like your first ever?
Adi: Yeah, and here’s the embarrassing thing. I was so new to acting, I had never done it before. I filmed it vertically, and I’m really embarrassed about that fact alone because everyone knows you’re supposed to horizontal self-tapes. I did it vertically so I’ve been purposely not showing anyone because I’m pretty embarrassed about that.
Megan, I feel like it’s so interesting to hear you agonizing over it, because something that Kade and I really wanted to take into account was the fact that it’s two different skills. To make a self-tape is a different skill from acting on set. We knew we were gonna find a lot of inexperienced first-time actors, so we wanted to make sure that we were looking past the inexperience to see what they could really do. (To Adi) Truly, I don’t care if your self-tape is vertical or horizontal. (To Barbara) I got to see what she could do as her confidence grew. I watched her settle into the character and blossom as she received positive feedback and the nerves subsided. This one (gesturing to McKenna) walked in and was nailing it from the first minute.
Barbara: Were you injecting her with caffeine because her energy level was crazy high.
McKenna: I don’t drink caffeine ever.
Kade: I don’t know how she does it. We had overnight shoots. At 2 AM, we were shooting a scene. She had to be super energetic, and we kept doing a bunch of takes, and I wondered at what point McKenna’s gonna be like “I’m done.”
Megan: There’s a video in-between takes of her [doing physical activity].
McKenna: It very much was like a train that had to keep chugging on the track. I think there are probably some people in the crew who think that I’m at an 11 all the time. At home I nap a lot.
Barbara: So you store the energy.
Megan: It’s like a hibernating squirrel approach.
McKenna: Guys cast me in something. I’ve been hibernating a lot!
Barbara: I really enjoyed the little touches of an animation in the movie. What inspired that?
Kade: We did not plan to do that in the beginning. Shout out to Megan. She hand-drew all of those herself, frame by frame. It took her months.
Megan: I think the first one we decided on is that sequence where they’re bored at choir practice and the eyeball and stuff. Kade was the one who was like, “Wouldn’t it be fun if we, to really get across what they’re doing, do some animations.” I feel like once we started those, we found a bunch of other moments where it felt like it was additive to the story-telling process.
Barbara: What was your favorite day on set and why?
Adi: I feel like one of the days that I remember loving was the day where we stole the instruments. We did many scenes that day, but I just remember in that moment turning to McKenna and just feeling so happy. It was far enough in the shoot where I wasn’t really nervous anymore to be on set. It started to feel more natural. It just truly was so fun the whole time. I think we started working really well as a team, not just the cast together, but also all the crew.
Megan: I think the day that we shot all of the stuff in the chapel. I had a similar experience where I was far enough into the shoot that I was like, “Okay, we’re figuring it out. We’re finding our rhythm.” Also, it was so amazing to see the stuff that we were getting in that space. I think it was one of those moments where I was like, “This looks like a real movie. This is gonna be a real movie.”
McKenna: This didn’t happen while we were filming. I ended up missing my homecoming because I was a senior when I was doing this. We did a homecoming theme wrap party, and hair-and-makeup bought me a Dollar Store crown, and they named me Homecoming Queen.
Barbara: Oh that’s nice.
Kade: I think for me, it was the scene in the hallway with the bulletin board and the flyer. It was three, four pages long. It was basically two shots, and it was really fun to figure out all the blocking for that and how to keep just two shots in one very long scene interesting, as opposed to just doing twenty different set ups. You only have two angles to cut between, and it ended up working. That was just so fun to find a creative solution to the really challenging problem of making an indie movie and not having any time.
EDIE ARNOLD IS A LOSER has one more screening during SXSW. It's a fun flick. Well, folks, I'm heading back out there into the chaos of the festival.
