Most directors would freak out if they found out their lead actors playing newlyweds had no chemistry at all. Gregory Barnes did not, at least in the way you might think.
“The first shot we shot of the movie was them making out on the bed in the hotel and I was anxious to see what it was going to look like,” recalls Barnes when the camera first rolled on his latest short “Together Forever.” “It was so fucking awkward and I was like, ‘Okay, we’re good.’ They really nailed it and I’m grateful for actors that make strong choices. It makes my job easier.”
Barnes also makes it look easier than it is to do what he does, skewering the hypocrisy of the Mormon faith he grew up in while being deeply respectful of those find something of value in it. After his previous comedy “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” about an anxiety-ridden missionary concerned with what he must confess to a church elder, he reunites with lead actor Samuel Sylvester for another moment of truth as Sylvester’s Caleb must consummate his marriage to Sydney (Lindsay Normington) after a grand wedding, but neither have much of an idea of what to do upon getting back to the bedroom when sexual education was hardly a part of their upbringing. It also doesn’t help that Caleb has eyes for the male DJ at their reception downstairs, but Sydney is eager to strip down while Caleb intends to keep his long underwear on, creating the need for a compromise that needs to be seen to be believed.
From the jingle jangle of the room keys to the choice of song that plays over the film’s big climax, the attention to detail Barnes and crew shows throughout makes “Together Forever” that much funnier when something is clearly amiss even when not a hair is out of place. With a pair of fearless actors in the lead and a few rolls of celluloid, the film really feels like something special and unspooling in the heart of Utah this week at the Sundance Film Festival, it surely will be the talk of the town. Thankfully for us, Barnes generously took some time ahead of the festival to chat about how a contest made us all winners when he was gifted some film stock, having a cast and crew that was comfortable with getting uncomfortable and being a part of this year’s swan song in the Beehive State.
How’d this crazy thing come about?
There’s two sides to this. In a very practical way, my producer friend Alex Bendo came across this “Anora” Kodak film competition that was hosted by Neon and Kodak and Sean Baker and Drew Daniels, the DP of “Anora” [where they] handpicked eight or so films, and recommended to me that I apply. I wasn’t going to because it was the last day and it was Halloween and I was working on my costume, but he bullied me into opening up the application and I was already doing a bunch of apps for screenwriting competitions, so I could just copy/paste everything. I [thought], “Oh, this is going to take me five minutes,” and thank God I did, because then I got to make the movie.
I’m just so grateful that I did and grateful to Kodak and Neon for picking this film to have it be made. They gave us tons of 16 millimeter film, which was really exciting to shoot on. I was a little nervous because I [thought], “Oh, that’s a lot less takes,” but I was stoked for the look of the film and I always thought it’d be very fun to do a movie about a couple on the wedding night. Because I grew up Mormon, it was second nature to make them Mormon and tackle this idea of intimacy and purity culture. In Mormonism, they believe that it’s important to stay virginal before marriage and what ends up happening is it’s this thing where your whole life you’re told not to do it, not to engage and it’s such intense repression. Then suddenly you get married and then it’s like, “Go, go, go. This is what you’re meant to do.” What ends up happening for a lot of Mormon couples I feel like is when they first are building intimacy together, there’s no touchstones. The water hasn’t been slowly warmed up, so they’re kind of inventing sex as they go along. They haven’t had other partners and culturally, very few people talk openly about that, so I thought that was just all really fun fodder to have two characters trying to learn how to figure this out. Obviously, one of them isn’t into it and that made it all the more interesting.
I don’t want to spoil what occurs in the climax in any sense, but was it actually inspired by anything real?
I grew up Mormon in Chicago, and there’s not a lot of Mormons out there, so it was a different thing, but then I went to Brigham Young University for undergrad, and when I moved to Utah, it was a complete culture shock, coming across all these sex loopholes, like people trying to get as close as the line as possible without crossing the line. That ends up being way kinkier than if you just had regular vanilla sex, or what a lot of people’s first sexual experiences are. So what’s in this movie, I heard from a friend’s cousin and as soon as I heard it, I was like, “I’ve got put that in a movie. It’s unbelievable.”
Do a lot of people working on the film have a similar background to you or do you have to explain things to them? The level of detail in the production design, for instance, just seemed down to the bone.
A lot of the people on the crew are. My editor is ex-Mormon, my co-producer is Mormon and the production designer actually his mom’s Mormon, but he didn’t grow up Mormon, so he understands it a little bit more. The title designer is Mormon, so he knows all the fonts. That’s very vital to making something that feels authentic. But I have this terrible compulsion about talking about Mormonism. It’s like one of the only three things I can talk about, so I’m happy to have non-Mormon collaborators so I can just sit them down and explain it all to them.
How did you find these wonderful lead actors?
Sam was a friend of a friend I met a couple years back and he was on my first short. He’s getting his Ph.D at the University of Texas in comp lit, but was in film studies and he speaks English, Italian and Polish, so he has a very interesting way of approaching acting. He’s not classically trained and then oddly enough, I was an extra in a documentary short with Lindsay [where] they were doing these recreations where the actors had to verbatim follow a court recording, like a therapy scene where everyone was divulging their experience in this self-help cult. I was impressed by everyone because the actors had to match every breath and every little tick in the vocal performance perfectly. And Lindsey blew me away. Even though [the performance] wasn’t in her voice – she was lip syncing to the recording – I completely bought it. I wanted to work with her after seeing that.
Did you actually rent out a hotel for this?
Everything was locally shot. There was one splinter unit where we went to the Mormon temple and secretly shot the Los Angeles temple for the first shot in the film, but the the hotel luckily had beautiful gardens that we could shoot for the reception and we were like on like the 21st floor and had a whole suite and a couple rooms [for ourselves] and took over a floor.
When you’re shooting on film, you probably cut this film together in your head before even going out to shoot, but were there any discoveries you made in the edit?
I can’t thank my editor enough Jordan Michael Blake — I think you interviewed him last year — he’s one of my best friends and like a brother to me. And shooting on film certainly has its challenges, but I’m really glad. It was all very storyboarded out and not like how I’d shoot digital, where I can do long takes and just throw lines at the actors until I get exactly what I want, so it was way less footage than [on] anything I had made before. But it was just finding how it all fits and we had to crack it for sure.
The song “I’ve Got to Find Out Who I Am” is a showstopper, one of those incredibly earnest ballads from the 1970s. How did you find it and think about the music in general?
I find myself even now not sick of it. [laughs] That comes from an old Mormon VHS I had to watch when I was a kid. My parents would always put them on Sunday, and they were so god awful, but now I have a strange affinity for them. I find their style to be actually like pretty far out, peace and love, pretty groovy shit. That song comes from the Old Testament video they put out – this idea you have to go and read the Old Testament to find out who you are, but the idea of that song works for the film. Growing up Mormon and having a lot of cognitive dissonance was where this movie came from — my struggle in trying to find out who I was outside of the religion — so it’s beautiful to find Mormon content that fits what I’m trying to say.
What’s it like just getting to this point with it and getting ready to share with audiences?
I’m just so grateful. Utah is the hotbed for Mormon culture, so it just means a lot to get to premiere in Utah close to the subject matter. I am really excited for people to go out and see it and it’s very rewarding when you hear back from people that like your work, especially for people that grew up in similar situations. When they reach out, it just means a lot, so I’m stoked and really excited to be part of the last Dance.
“Together Forever” will screen at the Sundance Film Festival as part of Short Film Program 2 on January 28th at 3 pm at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City, January 29th at 10:20 am at the Megaplex Redstone, and January 30th at 10 am at Holiday Village Cinemas. It will also be available to stream from January 29th through February 1st on the Sundance virtual platform.