Interview with Andy Vallentine, Director of The Mattachine Family

In advance of The Mattachine Family's New York premiere at NewFest 35, I sat down with the director, Andy Vallentine.

Watch the interview using the video player above, listen to the podcast version below, or scroll down to read the transcribed interview.

If you want to watch the film, you can buy tickets here for the NewFest 35 screenings.

Thanks to Ambula Bula, Brian Skuttle, Joseph Davis of ⁠⁠⁠⁠SiftPop⁠⁠⁠⁠, Matthew Simpson of ⁠⁠⁠⁠Awesome Friday⁠⁠⁠⁠, and Thom Blackburn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for supporting Austin B Media on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

If you want to become a Patron, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/AustinBMedia⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠AustinB.Media/support⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information.

This episode was produced during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, The Mattachine Family wouldn't exist.

Austin: Hello, people of the Internet, and welcome back to Austin B Media, or whatever you want to call this. Whether you're watching this on YouTube, welcome back to the channel. I also upload this as a podcast, so welcome back to yours, I guess, but today I am here with Andy Vallentine, director of The Mattachine Family, so It's premiering at it's having its New York premiere on the 15th at the 35th edition of NewFest, which I'm covering, and I'll probably have my review out somewhere around there.

You premiered at SIFF Seattle International Film Festival this year, and just a cavalcade of other ones, like Frameline 47 stuff like that. But for those who don't know what The Mattachine Family is about, how would you describe it?

Andy: I like to say that it's indie dramedy that follows a gay couple and their journey to parenthood. Yeah, so lots of, there are, there's lots of comedic moments. In the film, it stars Emily Hampshire from Schitt's Creek, Heather Mazzarato, Nico Tortorella, and Juan Pablo Di Pace.

So, there are lots of humorous moments. And then also there are those, you know, tear-jerking moments, you know, as, as the film progresses and our, our characters, you know, decide whether or not they want to become parents.

Austin: Yeah, it was really interesting. I made notes about it when I was watching it because I was making the questions and writing the review notes at the same time.

And it didn't click until just now that even though I wrote this down, Heather Matarazzo was from Princess Diaries, and I just, that just now clicked for me. And Nico was from Scream 4, which I just watched a few weeks ago. But the thing I wrote down was it manages to kind of walk this line between. I think I wrote it down like the comedy feels so natural, as do the heartbreak and conversations is how I wrote it down.

I probably had a more whippy, snappy version of that in my head but, but yeah. But first of all, thank you so much for coming on. It's gonna be a busy week for you. For both of us with NewFest, so, let's get back into your background a little bit because this is your, not directorial debut.

This is your feature debut for those who don't know; you've directed music videos in the past for people like Charlie Puth, Patrick Starr, Tritonall, and a bunch of other people who I'm sure people know. So, I guess my first question is, How did you handle that transition from going to music videos to directing films?

And how is that different from from each other?

Andy: Sure. You know, music videos is, you're trying to cram a lot in within three minutes. And so you're also trying to create this like visual spectacular three-minute thing that can be cut down into TikTok. Oh, and you want to get the viewer's attention as quickly as possible where, like a film, you're allowed to kind of you still want to get the viewer's attention right away, but you like start revealing certain things at throughout the throughout the movie, and it's like at different moments of the movie right like you don't give everything up front.

So, like, you know, that was a big learning curve, I think. When you know, like, I develop the scripts and like, understanding how I want to shoot it, like all of these things, like, are they had to happen at the right moment, you know? And so you figure that out, I think, in the development process, a little bit while you're shooting, but then also heavily in the post, you know, post-production phase, there was like with Mattachine, there were many, many scenes that were moved around that were meant intended to be over here and ended up being over here just because it felt more natural and it felt better. You know, so, yeah.

Austin: Yeah, it's funny you talk about the TikTok thing, because as you were talking, I was thinking about what was the last music video I remember. And it feels weird to say this is a throwback, but, like, That there was a period in which music videos were shooting at the same place in LA.

Oh, was it She's So Mean for Matchbox Twenty? Like the warehouse with like the square lights and everything. Where it was just like They're just standing the bands are standing around in this like empty warehouse with spill lights and everything like that. Yeah. But yeah, it is interesting to see kind of, how that's kind of shifted over since, I guess, the TikTokification of everything.

Yeah, especially, I guess. Since I brought it up with Charlie Puth and his kind of workflow now where the, what if it sounds like this or that, and then, but we're not here to talk about TikTok. But I guess, you know, you talk there, there's this, there's a stylistic flair to The Mattachine Family where I wrote it down.

It, there's this, these narration bits by Nico, and I wrote it down like it was almost like a Polaroid style, kind of true crime documentary kind of thing. Yeah. And I wanted to ask were there any, was there any like inspiration for that? Like maybe a specific film, maybe a director you were looking at for that?

Andy: I mean, the, like, idea of, I guess, like, the, you know, the narration sequences with photos, they're not, it's not necessarily, like, incredibly original. I mean, it's, like, we, we looked at Beginners a lot as, like, a, as, like, a reference, you know, for, for those moments, but it was, It, it, it helped us kind of to a give like the film like a interesting like unique hook and then be allowed us to get into the characters mind a little bit more and then see it like knowing that the lead character is a photographer like seeing his photos and seeing stuff like through his lens.

It just like lens like a little bit more like you understood the character a little bit better, you know, so. Yeah. And that was like that whole process of like figuring out what that was going to be. You know, it, that took a while to like. Is it just plain photos on screen? Is it like a gimmicky type of like, is it within a Polaroid frame?

Is it like in a film strip type of thing, which is where we ended up landing on? You know, it was like, we went through like many iterations of being like, well, what's cheesy? This is too cheesy. This is not, you know, okay, it can be a little bit cheesier, you know, but yeah.

Austin: Yeah, and there's a certain line, which I won't spoil.

Near the end of the film where he talks about how he shoots pictures that really kind of neatly ties everything together. Because you talk about, you know, through his lens. I mean, he's literally through his lens.

Andy: Yeah, he feels it's like a photographer when they take those photos. It's like we were trying to say that even though it's like he's not in the photo, it's like he's still part of that story because he's participating and he's and he is like capturing that moment, you know, and so his mind, it's like, this is something that he wants to remember, you know, it's like, it's like, what was it friends or what was it like, no, it was I'm trying to remember what show, it was like, it was something about like, you know, it was like, oh, they took like a Polaroid, you know, it was like a little gimmicky thing where they like, took a thing, they were just, you know, they didn't have a Polaroid, but they just went like this, so that they knew, like, they would remember the moment.

I'm trying to remember what that's from, but anyway, something like that, anyways.

Austin: I had a similar moment with one of the quotes in the movie; sometimes stairs are just stairs was one I wrote down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where do I remember that from?

Andy: Yeah. Yeah, that's a funny; I like that line a lot because I think that there's like, within movies, there is like a lot that you can analyze and like look deep into certain moments, and then some other times it's just, it's just stairs like it's just, it's the simple reason, you know, which I like about cinema just in general because you can get really deep in one in, in some specific area that the filmmaker intended this like very specific thing that's, that's, you know, the subtext is like hidden within, or it's just like, it's red because there was a red shirt on, on set.

You know, it's like, you don't know what, you know, what the intentions are, but anyways.

Austin: Yeah. And I guess going back to the seeing things through the through his lens. I don't think it's entirely lost on me that this movie is about family, and you made this with your husband, Danny, I believe.

So I guess I want to ask, what was that process like collaborating together on the story, and how did you maybe put yourself into this?

Andy: Yeah, so the movie was kind of based on real conversations that Danny and I had had about fatherhood. You know, we had dated for a while, and then we got married, and then it was like, you know, I think that Danny had wanted a child as soon as possible, you know, it was like he was ready to become a dad.

And I was like, not necessarily against the idea, but I was like, I, I feel like this is like, this is something like down the road. And especially with LGBTQ+ folks to have children, it is like a planning thing, right? Like it is not. So the majority of us, you know, not for, not in case for everybody, but the majority of us, it's like a financial planning, whether that's adoption or surrogacy or foster care or whatever that is like, you have to be set up to be able financially to be able to do those things.

So, I think that my mind, too, as being like the more like practical person, you know, the practical spouse that I was like, okay, well, it's gotta be later when we like actually start making money and not when I'm making, you know, 300 directing, editing, producing a music video. But it was like to, to work with Danny, you know, on, on that was just incredible.

And, you know, we really put in a lot of our relationship into the lead characters as well as like a lot of our friends, and our lived experiences are all like sprinkled throughout the film, you know, so it's. It is, it is fun too when we watch the movie back or when we're at a screening, or we're with, you know, with our friends, you know, who come to a certain screen depending on what city we're in.

It's like, oh, these moments from remember when in high school or whatever that is, you know, there's a lot of that like fun, fun little nuggets sprinkled throughout.

Austin: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, especially some of the stories that were told. I really felt like. Came from maybe personal experience. But yeah, and I guess getting to that something that really, and I, I don't know why I keep talking about this movie so much because I keep bringing it up in interviews.

I don't know if you saw it at last Tribeca, the one that just happened. Our Son kind of dealt with this similar thing where we're seeing a lot of more mainstream movies where couples are already married instead of that kind of typical thing where, Oh, this is the meet-cute. Although that is still happening.

And there's nothing wrong with that. But I, I just kind of wanted to, I guess, ask how you wanted to portray a married queer couple in, in terms of like, you know, it's, it's, kind of been, in my opinion, new or at least put in the mainstream this year. So yeah, any thoughts? Yeah.

Andy: Yeah. I think that like a lot of queer cinema is like based on the idea of like accepting identity.

Or it is the coming out phase. So it is like. Those are like crucial, you know, crucial aspects that all LGBTQ people go through, but that's what it had been our focus in media for so long. And then film and TV, you know, so we liked the idea of managing family, which it kind of like pushed past some of those things.

And yes, we like to touch on like. Accept like a little bit of accepting identity and well, like, honestly, like what identity is in terms of like being a gay dad, like, what is that like, but you know, we wanted to like, push past that and like, see a, you know, a gay couple that were, you know, for the most part, like, You know, like you said, there's like the meet-cute at the beginning, but then for the most part, like they're together, like in a relationship, you know, and, and are having to deal with big questions on whether or not they want to become parents or not, you know, and these aren't necessarily.

Things that we have seen previously and of course, we've had like Modern Family like representation is great, and we've had Modern Family, you know, Modern Family wasn't necessarily like asking those like hard questions like it wasn't, you know, it kind of went, you know because it's a comedy show so it went past kind of the bigger, the, the big questions the big fights for just, you know, everything else so yeah,

Austin: yeah, it didn't really get into the interior spaces is kind of what I'd refer to it as is where and I guess where I come up with the comparison with Our Son is it also dealt with for those who haven't seen it, I feel like I'm plugging this all the time now.

Even though it doesn't have a distribution but, it dealt with Billy Porter and, oh, gosh, the new Gaston... Luke Evans. Yeah. A divorce, which is. I'll be honest. I hadn't really seen that before. And I think you're doing something similar here where it's like, oh, you don't really have to see how they met, or this is how they are now.

And here's the because, and I don't think this is spoilers. It starts with Arthur already being what would the proper term be given away?

Andy: Like going back to his home. So I, the movie, it's like, we're Matt, our two characters, Nico Tortorella and Juan Pablo Di Pace Oscar and Thomas, where they had, had a foster child for a year.

And so they were just fostering the child for the year. So it's his foster child, Arthur goes back to his mom. So, and then there's all of those complicated feelings of of what that means.

Austin: Yeah. And, and I guess going back to I keep zigzagging, but you know, we were talking about stories earlier, and there's this character.

Oh, gosh, what is his name? The person who lives with Nico's character of the best friend,

Andy: Jamie, Jamie,

Austin: There's. Yeah. Like, there, I guess what I'm getting at is there's different, it's not just Oscar and Thomas, there's also points where you go into a lesbian mom party and kind of go into I think all, not all the spectrums sectors but I think you really kind of go out of your way to show, hey, there's, here's the entire spectrum of, there's this one line.

I wish I wrote it down. But I think Thomas says why do I have to be gay? Why can't I just have, say I have sex with men? Yeah. I think it's like later on, but I guess I just kind of wanted to get into how you want to. I know this is a really cliche question, but to talk about the different sectors of here's how different, gosh, sorry.

Here's how all these different people interact with one another. Like here's, yeah. Here's how Thomas interacts with the, the, this lesbian couple. I forget their names. I, I, I see the actors' names, and then I forget...

Andy: good. Yeah, I think that, like, one of the other kind of big themes of the movie that we wanted to hit was the idea of chosen family and within the queer community.

You know, whether or not you're rejected from your actual family, like, no matter what, you tend to form a chosen family, so you have that, like, core group of people that you, you know, they're your friends, but they consider, you consider them family, so, you know, we wanted to explore that as well and see how, you know, the idea of parenthood affected all of those chosen family members, so, you know, throughout the movie Thomas, Nico's character, like, encounters and, like, hangs out and has, like, you know, emotional scenes with his chosen family, you know, and we get to kind of experience, you know, a little bit of what that looks like as, like, the, as a friend, as the best friend, you know, so Nico is there. So Thomas is there as like the shoulder to cry on when necessary as you are with anybody in your family or chosen or, you know, chosen family.

Yeah. So,

Austin: yeah. Yeah. And sorry for the long wind-up and everything. Yeah, you're good. It's, yeah, to be completely transparent, I'm still figuring out how, like, This is kind of, recently, this year has been kind of a learning experience for me in really just kind of trying to sit with learning, okay, how can I represent a, how can I talk about LGBTQ+ cinema as somebody who is by all means straight.

It's, it's, it's kind of that thing that where I've just kind of been trying to learn over the past few months, especially with Our Son. I was trying to learn the terminology. Yeah. And so if, if at any point, I'm just, no, not at all. Anything that I need to cut out, you just, you can just yell cut. Because I don't want to ask like cliche questions, you know, I, I don't want to ask stuff where, you know, an AI could have come up with it or anything like that.

But but yeah, I, I, I definitely think. The Mattachine Family is a really interesting one because, kind of going back to the narration, it kind of almost breaks it, the movie up into chapters. The note I made was it kind of makes it almost like a TV show in the sense of like, Hey, here's the end of that one arc.

Let's go to this next arc. And I guess I just wanted to talk about how you approach writing that how kind of structuring it out because it's not a three-act structure.

Andy: Yeah. I think it's like, I looked at, oh, I can't really like, I mean, when Danny and I like set out to write the movie, like we just, we wrote it in the, you know, and Danny wrote the majority of it. I did more of the story, but it was like, we, we put it together as like a traditional movie, I guess, of like how, how it unfolds.

And, you know, this is when this beat should happen. This is when this beat should happen. And then when we got it in editing, we realized that, like, some of those emotional beats were in the wrong spot in terms of, You know, of getting the audience on the character side and what that all looked like.

So, you know, it's interesting that you thought of it as chapters. Cause I also like debate it, whether or not putting like chapter markers in the, in the film and literally writing like chapter one, this, you know, which is like a device that like filmmakers do, you know, sometimes they're like, yeah, to write, to like to break things up or to you know, do interesting things for it.

But I ended up not doing that, but the. But still, like, so I broke them up into these moments, you know, so it is, you know, the first 20 minutes like this is how what this establishes. These are the scenes that we that we hit that have that have the like emotional beats necessary to sustain like the audience attention for these 20 minutes, and then we move on to the next 20 minutes, you know, so, yeah, good, good analysis.

Austin: Yeah, I, because I tend to overthink things. I was just talking about this. On The Creator podcast, where I was talking about overanalyzing things, you know, I always talk about how I figured out the ending to Arrival 10 minutes into the film. Yeah. So I'm just overanalyzing a lot of things that probably nobody nobody is, even cares about but me, like, I was editing a podcast.

There's that same podcast the other day, and there was. Less than a frame extra audio in DaVinci Resolve on the audio than the video. But I was like, nobody will notice if I just delete this millisecond. Yeah. But if you do, yeah. But anyways, yeah, yeah, it's a good, it's a good movie. I hope people check it out at NewFest.

I think you're playing virtually. Yes, we're playing. Yep.

Andy: Yeah, we're playing on Sunday, the 15th, at 1 o'clock in New York, but then also virtually, I believe, for like an additional week. Yeah,

Austin: something like that. That's always kind of how it works. Yep.

But yeah, I hope people check it out. Especially if you like, I don't know, maybe you have a free weekend, and you just want to watch a bunch of movies. You can go check it out. I'll have the link to all the NewFest movies and virtual lineup in the description of all the places I post this.

Andy: Yeah, check it out. I'll be there. And then as well, Nico Tortorella will be there as well for a little Q&A after the film.

Austin: But really quick, I wanted to ask before we go. So is, so what's the...

So you've got NewFest, and then what do you got coming up after for Mattachine Family or whatever else you're working on?

Andy: So we have, this weekend, we have NewFest, and then we have, we're actually in Newport Beach on Friday, in California. And then next week, we're opening Outshine, which is the LGBTQ film festival in Miami.

And after that, I believe we have the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. And then I think... Maybe a few more in the spring, but for the most part, that's it. So we've done our, this will be, I think NewFest will be like our 30th film festival that we've been in. So, Yeah, it's like coming, it's more coming to an end, I guess, with this, this weekend's kind of our, I feel like this next week with those three film festivals are kind of our last, it's our last big week.

Especially I think that these will be some of the last ones that I'll be attending. And then, hopefully, Mattachine Family, we're still having active conversations with a number of distribution companies. So we're hoping to like to have a bigger announcement, I think, in the next like two months or so when everybody can go check it out.

Yeah, if I,

Austin: I don't know if MUBI people are going to be there...MUBI sales representatives, but I would think those would fit right in the wheelhouse. Yeah, it just seems like, I don't know, it just seems like something MUBI would release and maybe like do a little MUBI Notebook article on it, and everything would be nice.

They've been releasing a lot of good movies, and I think they should pick it up, just based on what I've got from the movie itself. I hope people check it out, whether it's virtual. I hope people actually, actually go to NewFest physically because I know I've covered all these festivals virtually from pretty much right where I'm sitting now.

But I, I don't know, I, I, I kind of want to go to festivals again. When when it's a little less crazy. When it's a little less crazy schedule-wise, maybe AFI Fest. Anyway, that's not the point, but I hope people check this out. I'll have links to everything - trailer, ticket links, everything in the description of the YouTube video.

Let's see Spotify for Podcasters, article, you name it, it'll all be in there. But yeah, thanks so much, Andy, for joining me and taking so much time out of your busy schedule today.

Andy: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for chatting as well and watching the film. And for anybody watching or listening, you can follow MattachineFamily on Instagram or AndyVallentine on Instagram with two L's, where I will constantly be posting about the movie until the end of my life.

I feel like I will now just, every year, I will be posting about Mattachine, and this year, I just post about it every day. But Mattachine Family's Instagram is where you'll find all the latest news and other interviews and stuff about the movie. So go check it out.

Austin: Yeah, I'll have links to that in the description as well.

You on threads yet?

Andy: We are on Threads, yeah.

Austin: I'll put that in the description too. Yeah, cool. But until next time!