"The Last DIY Show" - Interview with Jo Gaffney: Directing Her First Short Film and Working with Her Family

Interview by Maria Acosta

Transcription by Mariane Tremblay

On July 21, Jo Gaffney premiered her first major short film at the Fantasia International Film Festival. After meeting her and her family at the festival last year, we were so excited to see her return this year with a film of her own. Naturally, we had to sit down and chat with her, just like we did with her mom, Deanna Milligan, and Ramsey Fendall last year. 

We talked about her experience directing her first major short film, working with her family, and played a little game of This or That: Horror Edition. And little fun fact: both our interviews were conducted on July 25, so we like to think it's becoming our own little Fantasia tradition!

Quotes have been slightly edited for clarity

W SPOTLIGHT: First of all, congratulations on your short film! And thank you for taking the time to talk with me today; I really appreciate it! 

JO GAFFNEY: Thank you, and yes, absolutely! 

W SPOTLIGHT: This is your first short film as a director. What was the experience like?

GAFFNEY: It was like the first major short film that I had made. I made a lot of like micro shorts and done experimentation with shooting on Super 8, and I gained experience in these like smaller versions of production, but this was my first proper, major production where I was able to like assemble a team of really talented collaborators and it felt like it was the first time that I was able to fully realize a vision that I had for a short film, and I'm so lucky to have such an incredible cast and an incredible crew of people that really give a shit about what they're doing and they are so impassioned by each department like, Daisy [Oullette] who did all the costumes for the movie is this amazing like stylist and fashion girl and Kashika [Kaushal] who did all the production design. She's done production design for every one of my films I've ever made, all the micro shorts, and it feels like I've been building towards like making something bigger for a while, and to have been able to shoot this movie with such an amazing team. I will be so grateful forever to everyone because it made it such an amazing experience, and I feel so lucky, and I'm really grateful to everyone that's helped out with the movie, and it's the only way it was able to happen. 

W SPOTLIGHT: It's like a little family.

GAFFNEY: Yeah, it was a lot of people that I was working as production assistants with, and so we would like work on TV shows during the week, and then on the weekend we would scheme about the movie and through that and through everyone's work and through the efforts of people giving their time. I'm so blown away. It's such a great crew, and it was the first time I'd had like a full crew of people, so I was really nervous to like talk to a room of 30 people and tell them exactly what to do, but they made it so easy, and so that made it like such an amazing experience.

W SPOTLIGHT: That's so nice. And the cinematography is also amazing. 

GAFFNEY: Oh, thank you so much!

W SPOTLIGHT: We really love the film's texture. What did you shoot on and how did you create that look? 

GAFFNEY: I'm so lucky that I had my incredibly talented DOP Eily Sprungman, who like is a fucking master of shooting film and like these big beautiful frames. We shot the whole movie on 16[mm] with expired Fuji film and Kodak 500T, and basically a big box of odds and ends of different pieces of film, and we used what we had to be able to make up all the parts of the film. All the zombie sequences are all shot on the expired Fuji, and then a lot of the rest of the movie — more normal parts of the movie — are all shot on the Kodak 500T, which was all Eily. She's so incredible. We were [also] really lucky to have Sublunar come and let us use the Arri SR3 to shoot the entire thing as well. And we used a lot of Dana Dolly actions and played with that a lot in the movie and rigged the Arri SR3 for 16 onto the Dana Dolly, and so the fluidity of the cinematography in part is a lot of the Dana Dolly as well as like Eily's like incredible framing. And the color! How every room has sort of a different color scheme is also something that we talked about early while we were shot listing and kind of like dreaming up the movie. Another reference is Addison Rae. [She] put out a tour around the same time, and so we have a lighting reference in the movie where the light plays from side to side, and that is a reference to Addison Rae's tour that she's doing because she does it while they're dancing. 

W SPOTLIGHT: Amazing! It's nice to know the different things that get you inspired. 

GAFFNEY: Yeah, me and Eily both met up in coffee shops for like a few months before the movie, just to talk about how we wanted to do it and how we wanted to shoot it, and then like we're able to like get the support and the big box of like odds and ends and expired film and just doing everything we could with it. 

W SPOTLIGHT: Talking about what inspired you, are there some films or some music you also drew inspiration from? 

GAFFNEY: The movie is definitely my breakup movie and I basically started writing this film right before I got out of a relationship and for a long time the movie was really like clouded and I wasn't sure what the film quite was except for that feeling of being and your art scene and as we're both artists and like how you can't escape each other because the city's only so big and there are only so many of us and that separation and that fear like of seeing them. But it I was also really inspired by like The Return of the Living Dead and the punk kids rattling around with zombies and I was also really inspired by like The Doom Generation (1995), and by Green Room (2015) is also another one that I was really excited about and this like, very fast-paced kind of like punk rock fighting in the venue sort of thing. I mean, the inspirations are also from my life — doing music photography, shooting shows, going to shows, and spending all my time around musicians and at these venues. A lot of it is lifted from life. A lot of it is based on people I've met or conversations I've had in the smoke pit or like people I've known who work at rock shows and how they are usually the people that have to contain the "apocalypse," you know. So, yeah, from life and then also from like a lot of like 80s and 90s like zombie or punk media. I'm also really inspired by like Riot grrrl music, and I know that my sister Vi, who did all the music for the movie, is also really inspired by Riot grrrl like The Slits or The Dishrags or like Patti Smith, which is like I guess, the original Riot grrrl but, you know, like Hole and Lava Hay, and stuff. It's like kind of that rage. And I feel like it was a culmination of a lot. So much collaboration and so much of people like doing what they could and giving that to the movie.

W SPOTLIGHT: The protagonist is a photographer, just like you. And I know you just mentioned this film was inspired by life and your experience, but how much of yourself did you put in the story and this character? 

GAFFNEY: Quite a bit. I feel like Dahlia (played by Shaye Steele) definitely is me, but she's also so many other girls who work in music media and she's so many other girls that I've known in the scene that get entangled and lost in these relationships with artists as an artist and that have to sort of like find their footing again and remember what were the thing they were chasing was, and that kind of fear of seeing your shithole ex at the venue and that loss of knowing how to be, and freaking out and getting weird and being a shitty person. Dahlia is not a good person either — [she is] very anxious and very freaked out. [So what that happens] you get stoned to avoid it and, like,  she's me, but she's also like so many other girls running from facing something that sometimes you just really don't have the fucking energy to face. And [yeah, so] a lot of her and her friends, like her friends being all the people working in the venue, is definitely based off of my life and all these wonderful people that I've met that have worked at rock shows and the community that grows from going to the same Venues every Friday and Saturday or whatever, you know. 

W SPOTLIGHT: It's amazing! Creativity really seems to be running in your family, from cinema to photography and music. What is it like working and creating all together? 

GAFFNEY: I've wanted Violet [Gaffney] to do music for one of my films like forever, and especially like when they started getting into punk music and started playing with their old band Kill Your Darlings. Watching them flourish into the artists that they are and the human being that they're becoming is so incredible. And the movie is also based off of their life and their understanding of the music scene and the DIY scene — they go to Punk shows in basements in Victoria, [so] they showed me the venue where we shot the movie and so much of it is their lived experience as well as mine and the shows they've taken me to with them, [which] we call "research," whenever we go to a show or whatever. 

But for my mom and Ramsey, I'm so grateful that I've ended up in a family full of such intelligent and talented artists and writers. And my mom's like acting history alone; I feel like I can ask her anything about performance. Her career is in this industry, and how different it is now, but then so much of it boils back down to the understanding of performance and the understanding of your actors and the way you communicate with your actors, and that has taught me so much more than anything else ever has. I'm so grateful to have like the coolest mom ever. And Ramsey, who is like... yeah, family and has such a deep understanding of cinematography and editing and all of these like beautiful little tech detail,  but also like different ways to rig up, to shoot film and to make film accessible, like... yeah, I all cry about it because I'm just so grateful to have such like a talented group of people that are my family and who have helped me build my life and it's the reason the movie was able to happen. Yeah, I'm really lucky.

W SPOTLIGHT: You really have the coolest family!

GAFFNEY: I feel like... especially because my sister and I are best friends and that my mom is like... I just love talking to my mom and Ramsey about any movie ever and like [just] talking about movies, and it makes me feel like I'm not a fucking crazy person, but they're also crazy people; we're all crazy people together, and the fact that we get to make movies together makes me like... I'm so grateful and excited and like lucky. 

W SPOTLIGHT: That's so amazing! Now, I'd like to go with more "general" questions. If you knew you would be attending your last concert, what would it be? 

GAFFNEY: Oh, is it like which band? 

W SPOTLIGHT: Yes, like any concert. If it was your very last concert to attend, who would you like to see? 

GAFFNEY: Oh, this is really good... Patty Smith. Patty Smith, a hundred percent. I read like every book she's ever read. I have all her records, and I have a giant image of her and Robert Mapplethorpe in my living room. She is the fairy godmother of punk rock; she invented shrieking on stage. I haven't gotten to see her live yet, and so if I could see anyone last night on earth style, it would be Patti for sure. I'm indebted to her, and like reading her books was sort of what got me into like counterculture as a teenager, and the way that she writes about the world and the way that she writes about life and the way that she writes about how it feels to be like a broke artist is just awesome. And I would I need to see that diva play. I need to see her.

W SPOTLIGHT: You will, one day! 

GAFFNEY: Yeah, I hope so I really manifesting! 

W SPOTLIGHT: Which film scares you the most? 

GAFFNEY: Scares me the most? Holy shit. Probably any kind of like forced surgery movie. Like those are like that hits for me in a weird way, like American Mary (2012), that shit is scary. Oh, but also Saw, like gore for the sake of like, ugh, yeah, or like Tusk (2014), actually Tusk. 

W SPOTLIGHT: What movie made you fall in love with the horror genre?

GAFFNEY: American Psycho (2000) by Mary Harron, a hundred percent. It was like one of the first introductions into horror thrillers that I ever watched, and that movie is such a perfect satire; it really expanded on what a horror movie could be for me instead of just like jump scares. It's also like... Wall Street guys... and Mary Harron's a genius and Canadian legend, so that helps!

W SPOTLIGHT: If you had to spend 24h inside any horror film, which one would you choose? 

GAFFNEY: 24 hours... Okay, maybe the Lucid universe. I think that would be so much fun to trip on some lucid and see what kind of things I could confront and just go on an acid trip for 24 hours.

W SPOTLIGHT: Great answer! And now some this or that for fun [and to get to know you a little bit more]! Gore or suspense? 

GAFFNEY: Gore.

W SPOTLIGHT: Ghost stories or slashers? 

GAFFNEY: Slashers.

W SPOTLIGHT: Practical effects or CGI?

GAFFNEY: PRACTICAL!

W SPOTLIGHT: David Cronenberg or David Lynch? 

GAFFNEY: You're upsetting me right now. Oh. Oh fuck. Cronenberg, Cronenberg, Cronenberg, Cronenberg. I can't help it, I just love his movies so much.

W SPOTLIGHT: Wes Craven or John Carpenter? 

GAFFNEY: John Carpenter.

W SPOTLIGHT: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) or Halloween (1978)? 

GAFFNEY: Texas Chainsaw. 

W SPOTLIGHT: The Fly (1986) or The Thing (1982)? 

GAFFNEY: Fuck me. Oh, fuck me. That's such a tough one. Maybe... ah, man, that's a really brute; both of them are my favorite 80s classic SFX movies. Maybe The Fly, because I love The Fly so much, but The Thing is so iconic and amazing too.

W SPOTLIGHT: Maybe both! 

GAFFNEY: Yeah, maybe both!

W SPOTLIGHT: Jennifer's Body (2009) or Ginger Snaps (2000)?

GAFFNEY: Oh my god, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps. That's a really hard choice, but I think Ginger Snaps. 

W SPOTLIGHT: Good! Well, that's about it for our questions. 

GAFFNEY: Okay, sweet!

W SPOTLIGHT: Thank you so much!

GAFFNEY: Thank you so much for having me. I'm like so grateful that you wanted to talk about the movie.

W SPOTLIGHT: Yeah, it's an amazing short film. I can't wait to see a longer version of the film! 

GAFFNEY: Me too, I'm rewriting it and like I'm really I'm really fucking excited for what the feature is gonna be. 

W SPOTLIGHT: I hope it'll happen soon! 

GAFFNEY: Me too! 

W SPOTLIGHT: You have all of our support!

GAFFNEY: You will be one of the first people to see it, like seriously. I am so grateful and excited and just like thankful.