There are family projects, and then there is Family Movie — an indie film directed by married actor-filmmakers Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, and starring the both of them in addition to their children, Travis and Sosie Bacon. The plot itself concerns a family of artists making an elaborate movie on a very limited budget — just as the story goes behind-the-scenes. Of course, things diverge a bit from there: Family Movie features plenty of murder and blood splatter, crazy stunts and outrageous comedy. Sedgwick and Bacon can confirm that this part, at least, remains firmly in the realm of fiction.
The horror comedy will premiere tonight at SXSW, the culmination for these industry veterans of a years-long journey to get their scrappy, playful film off the ground. Their comps ranged from Shaun of the Dead to Cocaine Bear, and watching Family Movie, their love for and understanding of that kind of silly-scare tone reveals itself instantaneously.
Over Zoom, Sedgwick and Bacon joined The Hollywood Reporter while on break from the last stages of post-production, which sees Travis’s music being worked into the final mix and the rest of the sound work nearing completion. “I’m just so excited,” Sedgwick says from their office conference room. Bacon nods beside her: “This is really fun for us.”
How would you two describe this experience, from inception of the idea to now? You’ve worked together in different iterations before, but making a movie together start to finish is its own beast.
KYRA SEDGWICK Sublime. It’s always been easy, but it’s been shockingly wonderful. The whole time we were shooting, we kept going, “God, this is just so great. This is so great.” When we were in prep and as soon as we were all four of us together on site, it was better than I could have imagined.
BACON We really both love what we do. I know that Kyra is never as happy as when she’s directing, and I absolutely love acting and love directing. Normally we’d go off and we’d work and then we come home. We’d say “the coolest thing happened today,” and you’d talk about what the process was. Sometimes it was a nightmare, but a lot of times there was a really fun moment. All the moments we’ve shared — all the good ones, all the bad ones, all the exciting ones — that’s really cool and unusual, then to share it with the kids as well.
SEDGWICK I admire them so much. I admire my family of artists so much and got to see different sides. I’ve seen Kevin on set — I’ve seen the way he conducts himself on set, but watching the kids and the way they conducted themselves just as humans and colleagues and artists? I’s very rare that, as a parent especially of an adult child, that you get to watch them in the world and how they behave with other people. They just behaved so well! Anyway, I can’t stop smiling about it. We made something we’re proud of on top of everything else — it’s the icing on the cake.
You’re a family making a movie about a family making a movie — that, in the latter’s case, goes terribly wrong. Where did the idea come from?
BACON We were at our farm in Connecticut during lockdown, we had just flown back from L.A. and the kids were out in L.A. and we didn’t really know when we would be going back to work. So we took our iPhones and made a movie. She shot me, I shot her, we wrote it, we directed it. We got ladders and tape and a couple of janky lights from Amazon. It was that kind of thing. It was a sad kind of ghost story-type thing, but we loved doing it and then we thought, “What if we could make a movie together as a family?” We didn’t really think that the kids were going to be down for that; we called them up and they were like, “Sure.”
SEDGWICK We met with writers…and we decided to go with Dan [Beers]. Because we did it all in-house, the initial development, he spoke to all four of us separately on Zoom, so he got some insider knowledge of the family. There is meta stuff going on for sure. My desire to hurt people that hurt my family is monumental.
You’ve made a film in many ways about the challenges of indie film right now, while obviously making one yourselves — was it difficult? How did the financing come together?
SEDGWICK It took a long time. Four years, maybe.
BACON We’re in a business that is a land of the endless “no,” and that’s exactly what it was. It’s just such a classic situation, especially when you look at our delusions of grandeur. When we thought about how much we would need to make it, we weren’t even thinking about a big piece of money. We were thinking about a very small piece of money, and the piece of money just got smaller, smaller, and smaller, and everybody said, no. I mean, listen, everybody said no until —
SEDGWICK — one yes, then other yeses, and then we cobbled it together and we got an amazing crew that was willing to go above and beyond as one does. What’s hard as a parent for me was having to call the kids and be like, “We got to know a pass from all these people that we admire, all these companies that we admire.” You know: “They pass, they pass, they pass.” It starts to work on your trust and faith in the project, as we all know.
I also felt very scared and protective of the family. It’s still a very vulnerable place to be in. We’re going to go out there and just be like, “Hey, here’s everyone I love most in the world, so go ahead, take your shot.” (Points to Bacon) If he’s in a movie or I am, we support each other through the hard times. The feeling of worry about the family hurting came early in the process because we’ve got so many no’s — because one does get so many no’s. It always happens.
BACON We’ve got pretty thick skins. And our kids may know: Our son’s a musician, our daughter’s an actress. They’ve come up against it many, many times even in their short life.
Kyra, without spoiling anything, this turns out to be a really fun, wild part for you to play — while you’re also directing.
SEDGWICK It’s a great part and I knew that, so there were times where I was like, “I have to take off my directing hat.” She’s a great, hard character to get right. It’s a needle to thread, but I think that I love that she is fantastically schizophrenic. I just love that she is both the loveliest, warmest, archetypal matriarch that you’d ever want to exist in the world and also a fierce warrior for her family. I kind of can relate. It was super fun, super straight comedy — and that’s something I don’t get to do a lot. I really got to use a lot of my instrument.
What felt especially memorable to shoot, for the two of you?
SEDGWICK I loved doing the intro scene — that long one take scene. It was so great and so exciting. We admire movies like Babylon and The Player and other movies that show movies getting made and just giving people a taste of what that really feels like.
BACON I love, as you can imagine, trying to put together the puzzle of blood and stuff and all those kinds of things. I’m totally into that stuff. It was so fun trying to decide what was going to be practical, how we were going to intercut stunt people with real actors. On one big scene, we only had one day, and it was a pretty complicated sequence to shoot. That’s my happy place.
How did you actually work together on set? What was the delineation of duties? Did you always agree?
BACON Our approach is built on so many years of being on sets and making movies in the practical sense. Even before we started to have the money, we talked a lot about the ways that we shoot things — we started blocking with tiny little figures, we went to a hobby store and bought all these tiny little figures and started setting up shots. We would rehearse stunts in our living room, flying around and talking about the way things could be done. Talked casting, looking at other movies, thinking about comps, all that stuff.
SEDGWICK There were a couple of times where we didn’t agree and then he figured out I was right. (Laughs.) Logistically, when I was not in scenes, then I mercifully didn’t have to get into hair and makeup and just could come trotting over to set while he was getting prepped and start working and setting up shots and vice versa. That’s really what happened. Looking at playback, when we were both in a scene, actually, we asked Sosie to come to set — during this big barn scene, we asked her to just direct us.
We see things pretty similarly and are drawn towards the same kinds of things, whether it’s in our feelings about acting or feelings about directing or feelings about shooting. Our desire for each scene is to tell a story, to have it be propulsive, to have it be funny, all those things when it has to be — and then stopping and getting really real in those family scenes. We made sure to make all those decisions before we came to set because you’re running and gunning insane 25 days, which actually was more than I’ve had on a lot of things, but we had stunts and storms and animals.
Right, there are a lot of components here. You mentioned the faith that you felt in the project as you were getting these rejections. What lane did you see this movie in as you were developing it and trying to sell it?
BACON The movie ends up being funnier than it does horrific. We really wanted it to have as much heart as possible and to be a love letter both to horror and to independent filmmaking. A lot of times people don’t think of us as being indie. We’re not like indie darlings, so to speak, and that’s probably because neither one of us have had an indie movie that’s really taken off. But we’ve done a lot of indie stuff and we have continued to. Kyra was talking about the 21-day schedule on the last movie she did. And we love that. We love that world, so this is kind of a tribute to that.
