Interview: "Tell Me I Love You" Director Fiona Mackenzie

Fiona Mackenzie’s new film, Tell Me I Love You, is silly but at its soul is about best friends together making their careers happen in Los Angeles. Together, they find themselves and the solutions to their problems in a happily ever after.

Ashley Parker Angel is not a name I expected to see rolling on the credits. He was in a boy band called O-Town that was popular when I was really young. What is the story of him ending up in your film?

Hi Nicole.

So ironically at the time I started prepping Tell Me I Love You, I shared the same agent at Gersh, as Ashley Parker. When we were looking for someone to play "Steven" as this is such a music driven film, my agent suggested Ashley.

Ashley came in to read and was so nice and easy going and we all loved him for the part. I really wish we had found a way to get him singing in his role! But it just wasn't part of the script. I will say that his character was much appreciated by all the extras. In the club scenes, all the girls were asking for selfies with him. He definitely has that heart throb thing going! 

These people are all friends trying to make it in the entertainment industry. What realities are in the career storyline from your own life and your friends’ lives?

Well this is about a group of musicians, a band that functions like a family, trying to get their first break. And before I became a filmmaker, I was a music journalist based in Europe and in New York. During those years I spent time with all kinds of musicians, some very established and famous and some just trying to get their foot in the door. So I kind of witnessed firsthand "the journey" they were all on. Even for the highly established artists, sometimes their new album would come out and bomb, and they would be really devastated, and we would talk about that. So I really just wanted to write a story that supports artists (of all kinds) pursuing their passion, following their dreams, and trying to make it in a world where art is subjective. Getting "no's" is part of the process for any artist. Myself included. You just have to keep working on the work, the writing, the playing music, creating your art in your own voice. Eventually the right team will align and hopefully you'll be able to make your film, album, book, stage play, TV show...become a reality. 

What does the film capture best about LA life to you?

What I love about LA is that it's a city that is all about creativity. Music, Film, TV....is the lifeblood of LA. Here you meet people from all over the country, and the world, who trying to create that lighting-in-a-bottle. As an artist myself, it's one of the most comfortable places I've ever lived. I'm not having to explain why I do what I do, to a community where the idea of creating films, or writing for a living, is completely foreign. Creating art and music and films are all pretty normal in Los Angeles and that makes is a very positive place for me.

How much did your film cost? 

It was a very very tight budget. And so many favors were pulled in from friends, camera houses, actors, the crew...Everyone worked at much lower than their usual rate because cast and crew believed in the message of the film and wanted to help me to get it made. We had several locations that should have cost thousands per day and which were, thankfully, offered by for extremely reduced fees. With so many locations in this film, the generosity of several key people allowed us to keep up a rich production value, within an extremely tight budget. 

How were the expenses allocated between talent, filming locations, the crew, and other items? 

This was a film with a lot of cast and a lot of locations. We had very few visual effects and no stunts or big action sequences. So our budget was more focused on our cast and our locations, and having enough time to complete some very dialog driven scenes- which can be challenging for the actors. Each actor had his or her own rate, so I don't recall what each cast member or crew member got paid, but we knew it was a micro budget film. Several actors (friends of mine) literally flew themselves out from New York on miles, and put themselves up in LA, to help us keep our costs down. And I will forever be grateful to them for that. And as mentioned, the locations we ended up with; Malibu beachfront, several gorgeous homes, some of the top recording studios in Los Angeles, were pretty awesome and added a lot to the overall personality of the film. Most of them did not cost anywhere near what they should have, given we had a friendship with the owners.

Do you have any advice for people on budgeting their own films based on this experience?

Well if you have a dialogue driven film, be sure you have actors who can handle a lot of dialog, just in terms of just memorizing a lot of lines and being ready and having a handle on giving multiple, different types of takes. There is of course a huge technical side to acting too - working out camera moves and creating a choreography with all the other actors, blocking out the scenes in the best way, to delivering the most authentic body language in a scene. This film had a lot of dialog, a large cast with speaking roles, and a huge number of locations for a small film- so it was extremely (and I mean extremely) challenging to make it all work. But we did. I think I lost about 10 pounds during shooting. It was pretty exhausting. But worth it.

The film ends happily. Why do you believe things in life always work out?

I don't know if I believe things always work out exactly the way we are expecting it, but I think the journey of getting there, is what we are here for. The unexpected part, the surprises along the way, can often be the most extraordinary and the most fulfilling.

The characters create an elaborate lie. When has a big lie ever snowballed into something crazy for you?

Well I try not to lie as a rule, but I remember in high school, my parents went out of town for a weekend, and of course, I decided to have a huge party. When my Dad came back, I had driven his car, and forgotten to slide the seat back (so he knew I had taken it for a spin). And when he asked me if I had "something I wanted to tell him"...I said..just that I'd had a few friends over to "study". And at that exact moment, we were talking outside, and he had his hand on the front garden gate. As he pushed it, the entire top of the gate snapped off in his hand. So, I had to fess up- that I had hosted a pretty crazy party, some of the guys had broken the fence. We had all tried to, unsuccessfully, crazy-glue it back. And, voila, my Dad snapped it off with one little push. So clearly, my elaborate "study group" story didn't fool either of my parents. I think i was grounded for about 2 weeks. 

Is the story realistic of you believing in love happening for everyone?

I guess I do believe there is someone (or several someones...) out there for everyone. If you look back on relationships you may have had, how different was your high school First Love to maybe your college years Significant Other, to the people you maybe dated after. During each of those relationships, they each may have seemed perfect, and during that moment in time, they probably were. But I think as we grow and change, our relationships do as well. So, we may find our perfect love at 20, 40, or 70. You just can't predict when that thunderbolt hits!