DeeDee Casimir hadn’t been planning to direct “Last Hoorah at G-Baby’s” herself, but given that it was such a personal story she had penned as a screenplay, it was perhaps destiny that plans for another director to take the helm didn’t pan out.
“They had to leave the project, and I was like, ‘I’ll do it, but everyone thought I was crazy,” Casimir said of her directorial debut, hardly looking like it originated as a class project as it tells the story of a recent grad thrust into the dilemma of being able to continue to afford staying in her late grandmother’s rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn when it seems the only way to raise money quickly would be to sell off the items that hold her remaining memories of her. “And I genuinely felt like I truly felt like my grandmother and my mom, who is also deceased, pumping through my veins, telling me to go and to do it until I defy what people were saying, At the end of the day, if I failed, at least I failed in my own time on my own dime.”
Even without knowing the backstory, “Last Hoorah at G-Baby’s” would seem like a triumph, impressively marrying a clever comic premise with touching observations about learning to let go. While dealing with thorny subject of grief, Casimir’s light touch makes a film that’s as comfortable to sink into as the bed that Naja (Armani Greer) finds it hard to get out of in the morning, though it isn’t necessarily because she’s too overcome with loss to face the world. It’s been some time since she lost her grandmother, but after graduating from art school, she’s been busy spending the modest inheritance she received from her passing and now contends with losing everything when her reckless ways have put her in a financial bind. Neither the psychic she sees nor her best friend Val have great insights into how she could improve her future – Val’s suggestion of an OnlyFans seems like a nonstarter once Naja sees the work it’ll take to build a following – but while the solution of selling off her grandmother’s remaining clothes and tchotchkes seems like the easiest way to bring in some quick cash, the process of parting with the items finally forces Naja to see the value they have to her and what’s important to hang onto as she moves forward in the world.
There’s a lot packed into the 14-minute short, with Casimir using both the time she has and every inch of a wide frame to express the range of emotions and history that are informing Naja as she’s about to make some big decisions in her life, from considering whether it’s worth what it will cost her to keep the apartment to the far less healthier things she’s holding onto such as the residual anger towards her ex (Thomas Copeland Jr.) who found professional success after bailing on her in her time of need, and the number of issues that have piled up for the young woman may be ridiculous, but the film sensitively handles why she’s felt the need to disengage. The opposite has happened for “Last Hoorah at G-Baby’s” where the mix of drama and comedy has proved irresistible at festivals such as Urbanworld and the American Black Film Festival and with this week’s regional premiere at Blackstar in Philadelphia, Casimir graciously took the time to talk about connecting with audiences by getting personal with her first film, staging the blowout bash that Naja throws to collect money at the door during an early morning shoot, and the small details that end up meaning everything.
How’d this come about?
It was actually my thesis film at Loyola Marymount University. I was an MFA student there and my grandmother was the first in our family to come to the U.S. from Haiti, and she had bought a multi-family property and for a lot of friends and relatives, her home was like the first point of entry when they got to the U.S.
You’re not supposed to make assumptions, but I just assumed that I would live there after college, but she was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was in college and I ended up moving in with her to take care of her. She ultimately passed away in September 2015, but we kept the property until about 2023 and it was sold. It was a really interesting moment because I remember the last time I went to her home before we handed over the keys, and It was a very somber experience. It felt like all the memories were playing back of my sisters and I playing there, being in Flatbush, Brooklyn with no AC and she didn’t have cable, so it’d be “I Love Lucy” reruns, soap operas and old movies on VHS. Um, soap operas we would watch. Everything just came back [in that moment], and I’m a very sentimental person. I save everything and a part of my work is rooted in ephemera – memory and memorabilia that’s supposed to be thrown out. I went to Morocco and I bought something with glass and they wrapped it in newspaper and I still have a piece of newspaper. [laughs]
When my grandmother passed away, I got a small inheritance and if I’m being honest, I blew through it. I think a part of it was that I was underemployed. I couldn’t get hired, and I wanted to rechannel that into this young woman who’s living this life and has been given opportunities, but doesn’t know what to do with it because she doesn’t even know what to do with herself. And she’s given a deadline, so it’s like, is she going to be able to rise to the occasion or not?
It ends up being such a great tragicomic premise – the idea of finding different ways to give away the stuff as you’re able to show all these things the character has to unburden herself of to move forward without completely letting go. Did those things naturally come together at the start as you were developing this?
I was looking at my first draft recently, and I was like, “Wow, the story changed so much.” Just from a writing standpoint, I wrote my first draft in class in May 2023 and I didn’t even show anyone outside of my class, until August. Then we were workshopping again in class in the fall and we didn’t shoot it until February 2024. But it took a lot of people actually challenging me and I realized that my superpower as an artist will be to create work that people really feel. It’s not surface, it’s not superficial. I may be making you laugh along the way, but like it’s rooted in some real shit, and people, if they don’t see themselves, they at least see someone that they know, and [with this], I’m sure you could see objects and people that existed [from my experience] and it made me think of the concept of home and if it still exists, even if it’s not there in physical form. From there, things just took shape.
You can tell and that apartment with all of the grandmother’s things is amazing. What was it like to design?
Despite being based in New York, the film was actually shot entirely in Los Angeles. The plan was actually to shoot outside of my grandma’s old building, and they were open to shooting the exterior shot in front of it, but the interior is actually an apartment in Koreatown in L.A. My producer Christina Ingraldi found all of our locations and it was really important for me to have wood floors [important for that apartment] because even though you can’t really see the floors in the film, details are just so important to me. Even if you don’t see it, it’s like you can feel it. And you don’t have carpet in New York. You have wood floors, especially in a pre-war apartment.
I come from an arts background. I’ve worked in fashion and photography and I saw [the production] as a photo shoot. Something like the picture frames, I remember I told my costume designer Wao Wen to send back the frame she got because it looked too contemporary. I [thought], this is a person who lived in their grandmother’s home and their grandmother hasn’t bought any picture frames since 2005. These photos have been there for years. It needs to feel gaudy, but also woodsy and gold. I was also very particular about the drapes, having the creamy color and some form of design on it that looks a bit whimsical and [now] looking at stills of the film, I look at the bedroom when Najwa’s waking up in the morning and I think, “Man, it looks so much like my grandma’s house” – so much so that when I showed my family a photo of the production design, they said, “Wow, how did you find a Haitian person’s home in L.A.?”
And that’s the thing. It should feel real. There’s an artist, Deana Lawson, who creates such real worlds that depict black life and production design is just such a character in it, I was really inspired by her work, and all of the photos in the film were of my family. I had my sister scan any photo that was taken before 2000, and the person who represents the grandma is actually my great aunt, my dad’s aunt on my paternal side, which is pretty cool. And when my dad saw the movie, the first thing he said was, “Why didn’t she use my mom?” And then the first time my maternal aunt saw the film, she [said], “Why didn’t she use my mom?” And [I thought] “You know what? I’m glad I didn’t use either of your moms.” [laughs] That way there’s no beef.
In terms of the shooting schedule, was the big party scene near the end of the film come first or last on the schedule?
It would have been amazing to shoot the party scene on the last day, but we actually shot over Presidents Day weekend and I could only get my equipment starting with that Friday and our first shoot day was Saturday and in a perfect world, we would have shot Thursday to Sunday, and then we would have shot the party scene on Sunday and then no one would have had work on Monday. But of course, nothing ever goes the way in which you want it to. So [the party] was our second day of shooting and it was our most intense because we had 30 extras and however many people on our actual crew in an actual one-bedroom apartment in Koreatown that was less than 1000 square feet. We had to keep moving video village, and then it was hot because we were shooting at 9 a.m. [for a scene that takes place at night] and we had to black out the windows. It actually felt like a hot house party. It was so chaotic.
But now in hindsight, it was actually a lot of fun. We were playing music we knew we weren’t going to be using, like 21 Savage and Playboi Carti and it like felt fun and at the end of that day is when we shot the argument scene between Naja and her ex-boyfriend [Nate] and we shot that in 15 minutes because we had run out of time. Our nucleus wasn’t working on our focus, so we were on manual throughout the entire day and we were moving so slow. And the actor, Thomas Copeland Jr., [who plays Nate] got the wrong version of the script, so it wasn’t until we were setting up that bedroom for them to shoot that he realized, so he learned that scene in literally two minutes, and then shot it in less than 15. And, man, would you believe that by looking at his performance?
You’d never know. And you’ve got great actors all around with Armani Black and Cecelia Friday as these best friends. What was it like to cast this?
Kim Coleman is a casting legend and an industry giant, and she cast “Snowfall,” the pilot, and “BlackKlansman.” And I was lucky enough to have met her at an Academy Gold event a few summers ago because she’s the governor of the Academy’s casting branch and my producer Jordan Shanks said, “Let’s go up and talk to her,” I told [her], “She’s not going to want to talk to us,” because “They Cloned Tyrone” had just come out a week before and that had Jamie Foxx and John Boyega. But I went up to her and told her, “Hey, I’m getting my MFA here and I went to Howard for undergrad…” and she’s from Baltimore and her daughter went to Howard. So she said, “I love Howard people,” and she just gave me her cell number. And I asked, “Do you work with people at my level?” – my producer said the worst she can say is no. And even if she says no, she’ll probably send it to one of her casting associates to do. And she said, “I work with people with talent,” so I sent her my script and a week later, she got back to me and said, “I’d love to cast it and I’d love to EP it as well.”
These are the stories that I love to hear.
And Armani and Cecelia are so wonderful. Just as people, they’re so fun and they’re so talented and this was Cecelia’s first time doing comedy and the [two of them] really sold being friends and you would have thought they’d known each other before. Even I’m watching them through the monitor, it felt so natural and then they ended up just going into their own dialogue, so certain things they’d just improv and things where they’d [say], “This doesn’t sound like us, we would say this…” and I’m like, “Girl, do your thing.” Because sometimes you write something, but then it doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way, and with them, they were then able to really like get into character and just start quipping back and forth with each other. I’m not precious about the dialogue, and they felt so in character that they could come up with things that felt natural to them in that moment.
It came out so well. What’s it been like putting this out into the world over the last few months?
It’s been really great and it’s been very humbling just to have the opportunity to have my film in film festivals. Of course, you apply to a bunch and you’re not going to get into all of them, but it’s been really great just to see which festivals have seen me and I would say like the Black community has been the base. All the festivals I’ve gotten into have been Black-led and run, and Blackstar being one of them, people call it the Black Sundance, and I’m like, what an amazing opportunity. We just had our filmmaker meet up on Zoom, and some of these people have been doing this for years and are just mega talented and so respected in the indie space and have gotten so many awards, so being in community with them has been such a blessing.
And the reception [in general] has been so wonderful. The way people have just like come up to me and opened up to me about their lives and their feelings. I remember someone coming up to me and just holding my hand and [saying], “My grandma just passed away last month. I feel this so deep” or [someone else saying, “My mom was a single mother and a teen mom and my grandmother passed away and she took care of both of us, and when she passed away, she left my mom in the house and my mom didn’t know what property taxes were. All she had to do was pay the property taxes and she didn’t know what those were, and by the time she learned what they were, the home was foreclosed.” He spoke about how this had a domino effect on his life and I’m like, “Wow, even for him to like feel comfortable enough to say that to me, I don’t take that lightly. It feels like a really big honor for people to feel comfortable enough to share their stories with me. This was my first film I ever directed. I’m not trained in directing. So this was my first film and to just be able to have conversations like that, this has surpassed my expectations.
“Last Hoorah at G-Baby’s” will screen at Blackstar Film Fest on July 31st at 5 pm EST at the Perelman Theater at Kimmel and will be available to screen virtually for 48 hours from 6:30 pm EST.