But more than that, its about something deeper.
Its about domestic abuse.
Why use the world of gaming to help tell this story?
Mateo Mpinduzi-Mott and Lorena Jorge in ‘Chuck and Fern’By Association / Henry Alexander Kelly
HENRY ALEXANDER KELLY:Yeah.
Its a heavy story, but I like making entertaining stories that also have medicine in them.
Theres this aspect of this little boy escaping into games.
For me, seeing people playing video games… everybody has something going on in their lives.
DEADLINE: Where did the writing process start for you?
Were these two ideas of video games and domestic abuse bifurcated, or did they always mesh together?
KELLY:Originally, this started as a play.
It has to be just what you see on stage.
So, both ideas happened in the inception.
DEADLINE: This film had its world premiere at the LA Shorts International Film Festival.
Whats that feeling been like?
The journey of getting here has been insane.
KELLY:Where do I start?
Do we have eight hours?
Im still in the mindset of doing black box theater all my life.
Ive always had to make do with my small budget and be creative.
Like, how am I going to make this talking animal happen?
Oh, we have a sock puppet and googly eyes thatll be entertaining and carry that message across.
The challenges forChuck and Fernwere like, OK, I want to set it in a video game forest.
Every time I asked, something would open up and make itself known, which made the process easier.
It blew my mind.
However, in the meta-verse of it all, they are friendly towards each other.
Why not make them pure enemies?
And can you talk more about finding your cast?
KELLY:Yeah, its very meta.
Chuck is the villain and Fern is the hero, but really, theyre more like coworkers than enemies.
Let me be real too, the two actors had incredible chemistry when they were on set.
It was the most incredible thing Ive seen.
Fast forward to 2023 and Im like, Its happening.
She knows this character in this world.
She also displayed a great range of frustration, sadness, anger and all these other emotions.
By the end of the short, our villain is the hero.
Shes inspiring Fern to just exist in his job and what he does.
And then something happens, and youre like, Oh, what I do really matters.
What I do is literally changing somebodys life.
He was just so wonderful to direct and work with.
And he looks at me and goes, I understand tough times.
Ive been through tough times.
And I was like, Youre nine years old.
So that was impressive.
So, Adargiza helped him hold that space for these big emotions.
I would cry on set when I saw the dancing scene between them.
Everybody was so lovely to work with.
DEADLINE: As for your crew, you found some of them on Instagram or cold emailing?
How did you pull those pieces together?
I messaged Adriel via Instagram, and I was like, Hey, dude, I have thisZelda-key in-inspiredmovie.
Do you want to collab?
And hes like, Bro, this sounds dope.
So, the vibes were very immaculate.
And it was just so easy to work with him, just so fun and wonderful.
My composer, Charlie [Rosen], I messaged him in 2021 or so.
It was a cold email.
Charlie did the orchestrations forMoulin Rougeon Broadway.
And this musical calledBe More Chillthat I love so much.
His video game music is so layered and beautiful.
Would you be interested to post produce?
And this company called Flawless Post was like, Were down.
We will help, and well make this.
And yeah, thats how all that happened.
DEADLINE: What do you want audiences to get out of this short film youve made?
And I was like, My God.
And by the way, this movie is a love letter to my mom.
Shes the reason I play games.
She and I playedZeldaas I was growing up, so it was such a beautiful, connective thing.
I also set out to make this Afro-Latino short film.
This entire cast is Afro-Latino, and so much of the crew was Latino.
The vibes were great.
Not just in the cultural sense, but even in the nerdy video game sense.
It wasnt just that these people were Latino, but they were Latino people who fucking loved video games.
