During the 2022 SXSW Film Festival, this writer saw plenty of great movies, but one of the biggest surprises was director Pete Ohs’ Jethica, which ended up being so different from what I had been expecting going into it. Starring Callie Hernandez, Ashley Denise Robinson, and Andy Faulkner, Jethica’s story is centered around two high school friends coming together to deal with a stalker, but once the supernatural elements of the story are introduced, the film takes some unusual turns that left me delighted as a viewer.
While in Austin last week, Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with Ohs about his unconventional approach to creating Jethica and how his cast was far more involved with the creative process for the project than how movies are usually made. Ohs also chatted about how Jethica’s primary location dictated aspects of the film and what parts of the filmmaking process keep him motivated as a creative as well.
Great to speak with you today, Pete. I’m curious, where did the genesis for this story come from? There are aspects of it that seem area-specific, you used your cast very smartly here, and there are a lot of really great components in Jethica that I think work well together and make for a very unexpected viewing experience.
Pete Ohs: Oh, I like that it wasn't what you expected, and I feel like part of that is because we went out to make this movie without expecting anything, either. So, the way we made it, we just set out to do the best we could without expectations, such that I would even say to the actors, "Don't even think about the fact that we're making a movie. We're just playing dress-up. We're just trying to have some fun. There’s no pressure on anything." That was my way of trying to create a very freeing environment because then it's more enjoyable for everyone. The mission for me is to enjoy making movies, enjoy the process of making movies more than even trying to make a good movie. It's like, if it's bad, oh well. But if we enjoy ourselves, then our life is being lived in a good way at least. The genesis certainly is location-specific because I found that trailer on Airbnb.
Oh, really?
Pete Ohs: Yeah, I saw a picture of it, and it's out on that ranch with all that yellow wheatgrass everywhere, and I was like, "This is an incredibly cinematic location." So, then I just started imagining, “What could be done there? What's the story there? Who lives there? Why are they there?” Just kind of asking those sorts of questions. So, it was all built around that location. Then it was also built around the actors, knowing I wanted to do something with Callie [Hernandez], who was a friend. And also, I wanted to do something with Andy [Faulkner], who I did a previous movie with. I started thinking about these people and working towards getting to the initial framework of what the idea was, which is a woman who's had some sort of traumatic thing happen and she's dealing with ghosts in some way, and she reconnects with an old friend from high school. These are like the bare bones that I knew. I essentially pitched that to the actors, and then from there, we just started having conversations about who their characters were, and what other fun things could happen. I was able to make an outline of the first half of the movie or so, and that's what we started with.
That's incredible. Did you approach your other movies like this, or did you take this route with Jethica because of the nature of how this one came together?
Pete Ohs: So, my first narrative feature, which is called Everything Beautiful is Far Away, was this robothead sci-fi movie that stars Julia Garner and it premiered at the LA Film Festival back in 2017. That was a much more traditionally made movie, where I wrote a script, got a small indie budget together, a small crew, and we went out for a small number of days, made the movie in a really traditional indie type of way. And I'm really proud of that movie. It was really hard, as it can be hard to make movies, but it wasn't really that fun. And it just made me be like, "Okay, what am I doing? Why am I doing this?” And for me, the reason I do it is because I loved making videos with friends when I was a kid. And I said, "Can I do that as an adult? Can I still do that? Why can't I?" When you’re a kid, you don't worry about budgets or money or even scripts or festivals or any of that stuff. You just get a camera and get together with friends and try to do something because it's a fun thing to do with your friends.
So, I used that approach and made this movie called Youngstown. That was a joy to make; it was two weeks of shooting in Youngstown, Ohio. It's a witness protection comedy, but I made it with this exact same approach, where there's like a loose outline of the first half of the movie and we shoot for two weeks and we figure it out as we go. It was very much just like an experiment, like a test to see if this kind of an approach would work, and it was really fun to make and the film is watchable, too. So, just the fact that this approach created a cohesive thing that even works at all felt like number one, a miracle and number two, that maybe this approach does have some legs. Maybe this can work. And so then I was like, “I'm going to try it again. I'm going to test that theory again with Jethica.” And it worked again.
As you mentioned, you're working with people who you're friends with for Jethica. But was there something specific about them in terms of what made them right for this idea that you had? Did you create characters with their personalities in mind, or did you reverse engineer everything? I'm just curious how those elements came together.
Pete Ohs: I think that a little bit of it came from knowing roughly who they were, so I felt confident that something like this could work with them. But then the rest of what their characters are was made with them in mind because it came from their minds, too. It was made with them. So, how these characters are is a reflection of who these performers are, the things they're interested in, or the ways they would navigate different kinds of situations. Literally, so much of the process I was just having conversations with them and asking them things like, "What do you think about this? What does this make you think of?" So, it was very much built with them, and in that way, everything we did in Jethica was very much catered to them because they catered it to themselves. They were the ones also coming up with all the ideas. It wasn't necessarily me creating a character and then saying, "Do this for me." It was like, "What do we want to do? What do we think would be fun?" So, I think that's a big reason why they fit their characters as well as they do, because they were part of the creation of their characters.
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Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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