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Robert Ingraham got his start making home movies while passing time in the long shapeless days of midwestern homeschooling. Along with that free, untethered lifestyle came the paradoxically rigid structures of conservative religion. When you’re encouraged to explore your “God-given” creativity and plumb the depths of human experience, but at the same time your own personal experience is itself aggressively repressed, let’s just say it saddles you with a philosophical tension you can never quite shake. But you can laugh about it. Eventually. After a lot of therapy.
The production was a family affair from start to finish. Not only were Robert and and his sister Margaret co-writers and producers, but the rest of their family members were also instrumental. Siblings slotted in everywhere from carpenters to PAs to background actors. Their aunt and uncle let them shoot in their house in southwestern Michigan. Their dad picked people up at the airport in his beloved minivan. Their mom cooked 3 meals a day for the whole cast and crew, and still somehow found time to become everyone’s best friend (and also came in under budget).
The strength of the script and its unique point of view attracted an array of professionals who would otherwise have been way out of our league. We were lucky enough to work with Mark Hapka both in front of the camera and behind it as a producing partner. With only a few weeks notice, Mark worked tirelessly to wrangle an incredible cast including Jim O’Heir, who loved the script enough to trek out to the middle of nowhere, Michigan.
Jim’s performance raised the caliber of everyone he shared the screen with, and his generous sense of humor raised our spirits throughout. Our cast and crew ended up being a mixture of local Chicago talent and LA folks coming out to play in the Midwest. We were surrounded by gracious and talented collaborators -- both seasoned professionals and absolute newbies -- who all came together and contributed something essential to create the special sauce of this film.
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