It only makes sense that two of the writers for this year’s most anticipated summer TV comedy, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp‘s Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, would make a movie about summer like Fort Tilden. In some ways, the film embraces the joy of childhood summer vacation that adults have to sacrifice for responsibilities, but it’s also a satire about 20-somethings delaying their adulthoods—especially 20-something hipsters like their main characters, Harper and Allie.
With a desire to make the most of the quickly passing summer, they take the day off to go to Brooklyn beach Fort Tilden and face a multitude of obstacles along the way. We spoke with the partners about making a female buddy comedy, filming in Brooklyn, and filming with cats.
Lesley Coffin (TMS): Speaking with Bridey and Clare, they mentioned that the parts were actually written with them in mind. What made you select them?
Sarah-Violet Bliss: Clare is a friend from Oberlin College, and we’ve been friends for a long time and acted in a lot of my short films, so I always think of her when I’m writing a character. Once we’d decided we should cast her, we started writing in her voice, and Bridey had these sketch videos on YouTube that were so special and funny. She isn’t necessarily like the character, but she is such a smart and funny person, we immediately invited her for drinks at the Ace Hotel.
TMS: Besides writing with them in mind for the roles, where did the original premise for this kind of road trip come from?
Bliss: The seed of the idea was “two girls try to get to Fort Tilden,” and we immediately knew what that meant, who those characters would be, and what made that premise inherently funny. As we were writing it, it became more and more about a co-dependent relationship, and the theme started to emerge as we were writing it.
Charles Rogers: We also put a lot of ourselves into this story and a lot of our friends. We took a lot of stories we’d heard from people, and we’ve both had friend break-ups.
TMS: Why focus on two women, rather than two men or a man and woman?
Bliss: For me, the most intimate relationships I have are with women. Most of my friendships are with women, and there’s also just something not as funny about a couple. It’s funnier when friends have co-dependent issues, and the way these two characters interact with each other feels very female.
Rogers: As a gay guy, my most complicated, intimate relationships also tend to be with women, and if it had been about a gay guy and straight girl, there would have had to have been more of an explanation. And the spirit of complicated relationship—making it two women provides a quick shorthand.
TMS: Because we only see them together, did you feel like this is just one version of them, and when they aren’t around each other, they’re perhaps a bit more together and functional?
Bliss: I think that’s a good point, because they definitely have their routine and aren’t judgmental with each other. That’s why they can be so shitty with each other. They understand they aren’t really shitty. It’s just a shorthand they have with each other, and they might be like, “You’re just like me. We don’t want to get off the couch,” or whatever they’re doing. And I think they have to sort of separate in order to grow. They’re spending too much time together and unintentionally holding each other back.
Rogers: We see them at a point when they feel very safe with one another, but they just don’t realize that they’ve outgrown each other.
TMS: Do you feel that the fight they had is a game-changer for them, or was it just one of many fights they’ve had?
Bliss: I think they’ve probably had a much smaller type of argument before. They’ve probably bickered before, but they’ve probably never gotten to the roots of those issues the way they do in the scene with the kittens. I think it very rare to tell someone exactly how you feel, and this was their moment.
Rogers: I think they have a pattern of fighting, and what they say they’ve always implied but they’ve never said directly, and I think this will change their relationship forever.
TMS: What does it do for the film to set the movie in Brooklyn and go from the epicenter of their kind of hipster world and travel to the outskirts?
Rogers: They are two people who are very safe in their privilege and comforts, and they consider themselves to be very cultured, well-traveled, and sympathetic to other cultures. But the second they set foot into other neighborhoods, their actual cultural sensitivities are challenged, and that’s probably a very common thing to see. People love to show postcards of where they’re from, but part of white privilege is that most white people only interact with other white people. And it only takes one small journey for them to show their inconsistencies.
Bliss: And Brooklyn is so neat in the way there are so many different cultures and neighborhoods. You can travel a day through it and wouldn’t think you were in the borough, and then ending up in the Far Rockaways, there is this weird separation from the rest of Brooklyn.
TMS: How did you two meet? Had you worked together before?
Bliss: Never. This was actually our thesis project for NYU. We were just hanging out and talking about funny things. And we wanted to do something over summer together, and then while we were hanging out, we thought of this premise. We decided to make it by the end of summer, and there was no discussion about how we would work; it just seemed to kind of happen.
Rogers: The only thing we sort of preplanned was when I said the day before filming ,“We have to be a unit.”
TMS: I’m always interested in how screenwriters collaborate. Did you split the work up or did you sit in a room and literally write together?
Rogers: We sit together. We share a laptop, and since we’ve both acted and improvised in the past; we’ll act scenes out, and she was always Allie, and I was always Harper, for whatever reason. I think it would feel inconsistent if we divided things up, and I feel there is something a little more artistic about working on it together, because both of our voices are heard.
Bliss: And it’s good if he says something that makes me laugh. I can kind of feel what’s working, and we have an audience.
TMS: Did you find yourselves taking ownership of your characters and defending what they were doing?
Bliss: I think we were pretty much on the same page, and it was never a case of “Harper would never say that!”
Rogers: Not my Harper!
Bliss: We created the characters together.
Rogers: I think we ended up in the same place, but the only difference is we had different references for those people in our lives. The Harpers I know are not the people she knows, but the Allies she knows are not the Allies I know. So we both had a different internal reference.
TMS: The big scene in the movie seems to be when they just let their bike get stolen. Where did the idea for that come from?
Bliss: When I was 11, I saw someone steal my socks and saw them do it and did nothing to stop it. But even now, there are things that happen in my own life where I’m just like, “I just don’t want to deal with this.” So I think I would rather have my bike get stolen and watch that happens rather than have the confrontation. For them, there’s the added humor that they’re standing in line and seem like they won’t get out of line to protect their bike, but I don’t know anyone who’s had their bike stolen.
TMS: I’m so curious; how did someone steal your socks?
Bliss: I was in gymnastics class and didn’t have my socks on, and my mom was so angry because they were apparently expensive, nice socks.
Rogers: But also living in New York is a daily celebration of the bystander effect. Everyday. I took a cab here and saw someone getting put into an ambulance and all I could say was “oh no.” There are so many times when you can’t participate.
Bliss: I was just on the subway, and there was a guy with his bag on the seat next to him and another guy had his legs spread open, and the guy with his legs spreads said, “Someone might want to sit there.”
And then that guy was like, “You’re spread out!” But the bystander effect is very real. And in this movie, it’s a little different because it literally is their bike, and that 12-year-old kid stealing it isn’t really a threat. I’m sure had they said, “Hey that isn’t yours,” they would have been fine.
TMS: I’m always curious when someone uses cats in a movie, because you can’t really train cats, and that can make them difficult to work with. How were the kittens on set?
Rogers: They were definitely not movie cats. They were from a pet store in the Rockaways, and we were supposed to have mangier looking cats, which would have been more appropriate, but they pulled out at the last minute. So, we had to get the cats from the pet store, and they were like the perfect-looking kittens. They slept the entire day, woke up for the scenes they filmed with Allie and Harper holding them, and then fell right back to sleep.
Bliss: They were the sleepiest kittens.
Lesley Coffin is a New York transplant from the midwest. She is the New York-based writer/podcast editor for Filmoria and film contributor at The Interrobang. When not doing that, she’s writing books on classic Hollywood, including Lew Ayres: Hollywood’s Conscientious Objector and her new book Hitchcock’s Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System.
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