Honeyglue is a completely modern love story, and a quite good one at that. It tells the story of Morgan, a middle-class twenty-something with terminal cancer and three months to live, and Jordan, her gender-fluid artist love interest. They meet at a dance club on Morgan’s birthday, and begin a passionate romance during Morgan’s waning days. It won a whole bunch of awards at film festivals last year, and is opening across the country gradually. This weekend, it opens in Seattle and Portland.
Honeyglue is the second feature film from Zombot Pictures, a production company made up of James Bird (who wrote, directed, and produced this movie), Adriana Mather (who stars as Morgan and produced the film), and Anya Remizova (who produced and composed the music). I think it’s great to see a company like Zombot be successful in making their own films.
As Morgan, Adriana Mather gives a brilliant, immersive performance and is perfectly paired with Zach Villa’s Jordan. The whole movie is beautifully-acted, and I think that is a big reason I found it so compelling.
Ahead of its opening at SIFF Film Center this weekend, I spoke by phone with Adriana Mather to learn more about her and her new film (and forthcoming YA novel!). She’ll be at SIFF Film Center at the 7:30pm screening on Friday, June 17 and noon screening on Saturday, June 18 with Anya Remizova and James Bird.
I was wondering how did the movie come about? I know that you starred in it and you produced it…
You mean how the concept of the film came about?
Yeah yeah exactly.
While we were shooting our previous film, which is called Eat Spirit Eat, while we were on set one of the producers, Anya Remizova, her father passed away from cancer. He had spent the last five months of his life in a hospital and so after we finished that film, which was actually a comedy, the writer James Bird, was had spent a lot of time thinking about it and one of the ways that he was processing was to write about it and so the concept of the film actually was inspired by true events, almost like a rewriting of history and homage to Anya’s father, that if you didn’t spend the last few months of your life in the hospital, what would you do? How would you live? The film itself is actually very much about living, not dying.
I mean also the one of the things that our production company, Zombot Pictures, really cares about is diversity. We’re very particular about having diversity on camera as well as off because there’s just as much prejudice behind the camera as there is in front. We like to tell stories with content that we truly believe in.
Yeah, I really I think that’s one of the things I really liked about it because you don’t see a lot of people like the Jordan character in films these days.
No, there really aren’t very many gender-fluid romantic leads in films and so yeah that was something that we felt strongly about.
I’m wondering I guess can you maybe talk about how you shaped the Morgan character, the one that you played also? Did it change from how it began?
Sure. Well there’s always a change because from words on a page to actual embodiment of the character, there’s always changes but that character required a lot of research. Because she was going through a terminal illness and she had a brain tumor, there were all kinds of things that I had to understand and learn how to do and one of the things that was important to us was not sugar coating the cancer aspect that people so much of the world is affected by cancer. There’s almost no family that it hasn’t touched so we wanted to make sure that when my character was on screen that people could actually feel like oh this is a real portrayal of what could happen to someone so I had to research seizures and speech impairment and movement impairment and all kinds of things for this character that are not typical for roles. Then I shaved my head, which was actually a fascinating experience. It was one of the biggest things that wound up being part of my character that I didn’t even realize it was going to be and kind of took me by surprise. I wasn’t worried about shaving my head in general.
That didn’t bother me because it’s just hair. You know? But when I actually went out into the world after I shaved my head, people in the streets and cafes and everywhere I went constantly were reminding me that my head was shaved so they would treat me as though I was ill and they would look at me longer and touch me and they would speak slower to me. I realized that all of these things that people were doing were out of kindness but just the same that if you outwardly look different in the world at any point that people will never let you forget it. Had that been not for something like a shaved head, had it been something else that people were potentially being discriminated against, I can only imagine how hard that would be. That was a real life lesson for me.
It’s really interesting to see how you notice how the people treated you differently since doing that. I find it amusing that people need to point out to you that you’re bald, like that’s something you would previously be unaware of.
Yeah absolutely. It was interesting because I was so used to my own experience in the world, meaning as Adriana to take the things I have for granted and how privileged I actually am in certain ways but you know in the way that people interact with me and so on so that was a real eye opener, especially in the realm of privilege.
That’s one of the things I really thought about while I was watching this. One thing that I wanted to ask about is that the major roles that you played were films from your production company that you produced and starred in. Is that are you going to keep doing that and making your own movies and tell the stories you want to tell?
Yes. To do a major role in a feature film is a significant amount of time. It’s not just the time that you spend on set but it’s the time you spend memorizing and forming the character and it takes a better part of a year to do all of it. If I’m going to dedicate myself to a project like that and acting which I absolutely adore and I’m going to do something I love then I want to do something I love that has a message, that I can stand behind, that is a film that I support so on and so forth.
Do you know what’s going to happen with this movie? I know it’s getting kind of a wider release now. I know it opens in Seattle on Friday I believe.
Yes it does. It opened initially in New York and then it came to the West Coast to LA and then San Francisco and Berkeley and now up to Seattle and Portland and it actually just went on iTunes so people can rent it if they live in states where it is not playing.
Excellent. I’ll just ask a couple more questions but I saw also that you’ve got a book coming out real soon. Can you talk about that?
Sure. I have a young adult novel called How to Hang a Witch that is being released by Knopf Random House on July twenty-sixth, which is actually my birthday.
The book is takes place in modern day Salem and it is about a girl that moved there from New York City three hundred years after her relatives hanged witches there. It’s a mystery and there’s ghosts in it and there’s some romance and lots of fall themed pastries and all that good stuff but it also parallels modern day bullying with the historical hanging of the witch and witch is used as a labeling word in the story.
Are there any other projects that you’re working on that you want to talk about at all?
Well, right now we’re touring with Honeyglue and then my book comes out next month and then after that we are going to start on a film called We are Boats, which is up on IMDb if you want to go check it out.
I will. Is there anything else that, before I let you go, that you want anyone to know about your movie or anything that I didn’t ask about?
Sure. I guess the biggest thing is that we hope that when people see the movie that they walk away with a sense of hope that moments count, not days and that to build as many wonderful moments and memorable moments as you can. To use your time wisely. I think one of the biggest lessons in my own life and in the film is that the biggest decision that you’ll ever make is how to spend your time so what are you going to do, how are you going to do it?
You are also going to be at the Seattle screenings this weekend, is it Friday and Saturday?
We’re going to be there Friday for the seven pm showing and then Saturday, at the noon screening; it’s on honeygluefilm.com.