Mary Dauterman knew what it was like to have an idea grow on you as she worked on “Booger,” initially conceiving of a woman who starts to take on cat-like qualities when her own feline goes missing. It would be undoubtedly amusing to observe two investigations occur at the same time as Anna, eventually inhabited by Grace Glowicki, would put up “Missing” posters around her home in Brooklyn and looking inside herself for reasons why her hair is suddenly standing on end like whiskers, but when Dauterman was confined to her own apartment during the COVID lockdown not long after the idea came to her, the soul-searching part of “Booger” got a little deeper when the writer/director considered what it meant to lose such a meaningful companion and abruptly start living alone, making Anna’s quest not only about locating the cat but getting her arms around something equally elusive when her chase occurs after the death of her close friend and former roommate Izzy (Sofia Dobrushin).
While Anna becomes consumed with the notion she’s become what she can’t find out in the world, Dauterman understands the answer is inside, uncovering all sorts of unexpectedly complementary contrasts in the dark comedy. Having a fearless actor in Glowicki, who has shown cat-like reflexes in her own films such as “Tito” and in her collaborations with partner Ben Petrie (“Her Friend Adam”), the writer/director creates an appropriately frisky narrative where Anna has to venture deeper into the wilderness to make a way out of it, pushing away those around her from Izzy’s mother (Marcia DeBonis) and her boyfriend Max (Garrick Bernard) who she hopes won’t see her in a such a fragile state, though the physical and psychological changes she’s experiencing may push her towards landing on her feet of a new normal.
Not only does “Booger” feel like it’s daring new territory for audiences, but for Dauterman as well when there was a time when Dauterman thought she’d be applying her skills for visual storytelling strictly for commercials while at the University of Texas at Austin, but began making short-form projects on the side such as the Rachel Sennott-starring “Wakey Wakey” and “Unfinished Business” that sold herself on her talent and had no problem from there getting others to buy in. With the film now out on VOD and a special hometown screening coming up soon at Spectacle in New York on October 18th, Dauterman graciously spoke about making “Booger” on the other side of the pandemic, finding a collaborator as eager to push the envelope as she was in Glowicki and learning that her own kitchen could be cinematic.
How did this crazy thing come about?
Yeah, a very crazy thing. I had been making short films for a while and a lot of crew members [said], “Mary, you need to just make a feature,” which is easier said than done, but I started writing “Booger” towards the end of 2019. Then I triple committed to it when COVID lockdown happened and I had nothing to do but write and it went from being a silly movie to more of a grief movie just based on my emotions at the time. I met Lexi Tannenholz, the producer, at the end of 2020, and she was really ready to make her first feature too, so when the two of us came together, I had [also] met a financier through a film festival circuit with my shorts and we had like the beginnings of a movie. Over the course of another year, we gathered our cast and the rest of our financing, but it was very much Lexi pushing me and we finally got it all together and made it in a kind of crazy way in 2022 with a lot of help from friends and crafty maneuvering.
I know when you bring on Grace, it isn’t merely hiring an actor, but a creative force. How’d she get involved?
Yeah, Grace was in my lookbook from the beginning. I love her as a performer. First of all, she has incredible range, but then what she can do with her body is so surprising and interesting and I knew that the actor for this film had to be operating on another level. It’s not just a comedian or an incredible dramatic artist [that we needed], it’s all of that and I saw her in “Her Friend Adam,” a short that she did with her husband and then “Tito,” [which had] a really physical strange performance and I [thought], “I think she would get this.” When we finally met and I got the script in front of her, we just really vibed and she was like, “I love crazy stuff, I love grossing people out — playing an animal sounds really fun to me” and we just hit the ground running and started breaking down the script and by the time we were shooting, we just felt pretty mindmelded, which was amazing. With an actor this strong, I [also] felt pretty solid about committing to this strange tone [where] as long as we are on the journey with Grace [as] Anna, we can experience the full range of anger, annoyance, joy, disgust, and just be with her every minute of the film.
The other bit of casting that it was surprising to learn of was that your own cat was in the film as well as a more seasoned professional. How did that come about?
When I understand you shot the film in your own neighborhood and sometimes in your own home, was it interesting to reenvision these familiar places as locations for a film?
It’s so weird. I gave our production designer [Pili Weeber] full reign of my home and the girls’ apartment was our producer’s uncle’s apartment, [which she] had to transform a middle-aged man’s apartment into a twenty-something roommate situation with 50% of it being my own stuff. It felt like an alternate reality of my home, and then my own home being transformed into the boyfriend’s apartment [made me think], “Oh yeah, I’ve never thought to put the couch there. I should’ve.” So it was a trip for sure. It also is like a trip to watch the movie because not only is it my script, but there’s so much of my own self in the design of the film in a very funny way, but it all works so well. I’m really happy with how Pili re-imagined all of these spaces.
One of the things that struck me was that how much [material] you had to shoot — you build this entire iPhone history with the friend not only in pictures, but videos. Was it interesting creating all of that for Grace to work off of?
What’s so crazy is it would have made sense to have that be the very first thing we did, but [while] we did a little bit of the friendship videos ahead of time, in the edit, I realized I needed and wanted so much more, so we did the bulk of that in a pickup [shoot]. Everyone understood what the movie was [at that [point] better because we had an edit, but I also was backtracking to create their friendship and what elements I really wanted to pull out to explain Anna’s emotional journey more. It was a bit backwards [production-wise], but ended up helping unlock some things about them, like their codependency coming through stronger.
Was there anything that either happened on set or even during the edit that you may not have expected, but took it in a direction you could get excited about?
So much. Everyone [says], “You write it, then you shoot it and then you edit it and you’re rewriting it every time.” And that’s really true because what I had in mind in the various iterations of the script was a bit removed from what the film ended up being, but I learned so much more about character and horror. Those friendship moments were like a learning [process] and a rewrite helped that story. I also did a pickup of a moment close to the climax that was a rewrite where I wanted the moment of [Anna] remembering the search for Booger to have a bit more of an emotional hit rather than be a full horror moment, so the barfing up of the giant hairball was an addition I really surprised myself with once we were in the edit.
Sound was used incredibly throughout this. Was that an exciting element to work with?
It was really fun and crazy. Moving forward, I want sound to be so involved in the edit, but [because of] the nature of the film, it was a lot of experimentation and then one big master pass on the sound with Vinny Alfano who did the mix. We had talked about how I wanted it to feel ahead of time and were able to capture some stuff on set that was going to be used, and Vinny also has a crazy library of sounds and was able to amplify it in really fun ways, like what does it feel like to hear things when you’re getting cat sensibilities? That was really fun to pull ever so slightly as the film went on.
When it is your first feature, even though you’ve got this wealth of experience to draw, and was it what you thought it would be?
It was harder, honestly. The main thing that’s so crazy, especially about making a small independent film is that the scheduling is crazy. Lexi, the producer, and I were just figuring out how to make a movie like this in New York with all these locations and all these different times, like me wanting to shoot a sunrise that when you’re actually making the film, you realizing the stamina it requires. That was a big learning curve for me, just how it’s all on, but I feel so much more prepared for the next time I do it.
I can’t wait for that. From what I understand, you actually didn’t go to film school at the University of Texas, so what was the bug that bit you for this?
I literally kick myself every day for not doing film at UT. It’s such an incredible department and the professors there, but I did advertising creative at UT and have been a lover of film my whole life. But I was a pretty practical 18 year old and [being] concerned about the finances of being an adult, I worked in advertising for a long time and started being on set all the time for commercials and [realized] “Okay, though this has seemed scary, like I get how it works now.” Being on set all the time gave me the confidence. And then I met Penny Sulemanaga, the DP on this film and [said] “Would you want to make some shorts with me? I’m trying to figure this out and see if it’s something I’m good at.” He was just so down and supportive and learning alongside him gave me confidence to keep going. I feel like I’m really lucky that I met people at the right time in my life who were down to experiment. I really was taking it from I want to just make some stupid one-minute sketches for fun for myself to getting to direct some stuff for Adult Swim and then getting to do some commercial work and actually get paid to do it. Honestly, it surprises me every day that I’m here, but it’s been a really cool, incremental journey.
When you grew with your collaborators, were there elements you could try together that you had a foundation for when you had the larger canvas of a feature?
It was so exciting. There were a couple of times where we were all just cheering [where] we’d never tried something so hard before and then getting to really realize it was really exciting. The other thing that’s nice about having worked with my team a lot is we’ve done a lot of experimenting together. We’ve done some commercials together, definitely a lot of shorts and there would be [a moment like], “Hey, I want this to look like that commercial, but like, “I want it to be disgusting now.” So there’d be some things we were building on and it was cool to feel like we’re like building and learning together.
“Booger” is now available on iTunes, Prime Video, Fandango at Home, Google Play and Microsoft. It will also screen in New York at Spectacle on October 18th.