Chicks
A girly, cotton-candy colored slumber party unravels when a shy teen becomes the center of a bizarre nighttime ritual.
Interview with Writer/Director Geena Marie Hernandez
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
Thank you! Honestly, this movie was a direct response to being stuck at home all of 2020. There’s deeper reasons I wanted to tell this specific story, but at its core making this movie was a total excuse to reunite with my best friends and make a movie again! This was our first short after graduating film school together, and I wanted to make something really fun, stylistic, and ambitious. Looking back, I think we pushed ourselves extra hard partly because we had been cooped up so long.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
You can think of Chicks as a bizarre lovechild of cult classics like Mean Girls, Midsommar, and Sorry to Bother You. If you like girly teen comedies, Chicks has that. If you like bizarre feminist horror, Chicks has that. And if you like fun, stylistic “WTF” movies where you’re not sure where it’s heading but you’re totally down for the ride, Chicks definitely has that. Making a movie that would have an engaging audience experience was a big part of the writing process.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
I was really shy and self-conscious growing up. I’d never be caught dead wearing pink and was ashamed to like girly things. Now pink is half my wardrobe. Teen girls, especially “girly girls” in media are often pigeonholed and stereotyped. They’re dumb, promiscuous, evil queen bees, usually serving as the villain to the main character who’s “not like other girls.” Why is femininity demonized? Why can't a female-identifying character unapologetically enjoy glittery nail polish and be taken as seriously as the ones who don’t?
Chicks is a deconstruction of how female friendships are portrayed. We borrow the aesthetic and genre conventions from chick-flicks and horrors to set up a world that you think you know how it’s going to end, flipping the script on you until the very end. It was also important to me to have a main character that was from a first-generation immigrant family. As bizarre as the movie gets, I just wanted to tell a universal story about someone finding a community and feeling empowered to blossom and come into their own as a result of that.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
I write with a maximalist mindset, putting all my ideas into a first draft no matter how outrageously ambitious they might be. The key is to not get attached unless they’re absolutely integral to making the story/vision work, because once we get into pre-pro we’ll inevitably discover that we won’t be able to do some of them… but some fun stuff gets to stay! Or even better, if you have an amazing team of collaborators as passionate about the project as you are (my Producer Chayse Banks and DoP Chris Violette) they help brainstorm how to reinvent these ideas into something feasible that actually turns out WAY better!
I think for Chicks we actually ended up keeping a lot of elements that were pretty ambitious for only 3.5 days of shooting and limited budget. But that’s 100% because of how insanely talented this crew was. Our Production Designer Sky Theis and Art Director Summer Schantz were absolute animals on this movie and their team did unbelievably fast and beautiful work on things we were fully expecting to cut. I’m still blown away.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
We had a packed theatre at the NFFTY film festival and it was surreal to hear the audience gasp and laugh at all the right moments. I’m just overjoyed that we set out to make a movie that engages the audience and we were able to pull it off!
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
By the time you finish post, you’ve watched your movie a trillion times and can’t really tell if it makes sense anymore… so I was very relieved that people seem to get it! It’s funny cause the reactions range from people saying the message was super clear and even drawing deep analyses to details that weren’t totally intentional, and then there’s other people that are left confused and wanting answers. There’s something kinda fun about making a movie that straps you in for a ride and doesn’t really care to answer your questions about why these increasingly absurd things are happening — you just kind of have to be down for it and see where it takes you. I've never made anything like that before and I'm eager to try it again.
On the other hand, I do think an understanding of the tropes of American teen movies and chick-flicks plays a great part in an audience member’s understanding. Some people might want more context about who Polly (the main character) is, and others can immediately recognize the difference between her and these ultra-feminine popular girls and create a ton of assumptions in their head.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
Really talented young filmmakers and cast members put a lot of heart and hard work into this passion project movie. If someone who otherwise wouldn’t have seen their work gets the chance to recognize their brilliance and potential, then I’m happy.
This is my first short film besides from my work in school, so this was a huge leap into understanding my voice, learning and growing as an artist, and discovering the stories I want to tell. I hope people get a chance to watch this weird little movie and see the potential of what we can do next.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
Come one, come all! We’re hoping to find anyone that can help share and promote the film in any capacity. We’ve just started our festival run as of April 2022 and are about to premiere at the Chinese Theatre in LA as a part of Dances with Films. We’re really excited and hoping to do a festival run the rest of 2022 to be able to meet new people, travel to new cities, and hopefully find people that connect with the movie and our message in some way.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I annoy my friends with how much I rant and rave about everything directed by the Daniels, especially Swiss Army Man. I’d never seen a movie so beautifully original, WTF, and unapologetically itself. It completely inspired me to forget about “the rules” and what people might think, and push myself creatively to ask: what would a movie that’s fun, unhinged, and totally “me” look like? And it turned out to be this absurd, girly, hot pink fever dream filled with cult-y chicken and dinosaur imagery.
That’s all to say, my biggest dream would be for someone to watch Chicks and feel the same things I felt about those type of movies. Make something only you could come up with.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
What do dinosaurs have anything to do with this?
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
We’re all breaking into the industry and working in different departments on TV shows/movies across the country. In our free-time, we’re developing some more shorts to shoot soon and working on a feature screenplay of Chicks for down the road, filled with even more feathery fun and girly goodness.
Interview: May 2022
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Chicks
Length:
12:22
Writer/Director
GEENA MARIE HERNANDEZ is a 23-year old Latina writer/director originally from South Florida. She loves to tell bold, femme-driven stories that defy genre and mix humanity with hilarity. Her shorts have screened at festivals like Florida Film Festival, NFFTY, Outfest Fusion, NY Latino Film Festival, and more. She was a WAVE Grant recipient for her newest short "Chicks" and has worked as the Producer's assistant on The Walking Dead (AMC) and Atlanta (FX).
Producer
With the personality of light-up electronic piano, CHAYSE BANKS is a young female filmmaker from South Florida. Her interests range from calculus, CG modeling, to building miniature lego cities. She is an alum of FSU's College of Motion Picture Arts and hopes to use her voice (and budgeting skills) to produce other people's stories and strengthen women’s voices in film. She’s currently based in Atlanta, where she's worked in accounting for Lionsgate on STARZ’s P-Valley.
Key cast:
Nicole Marquez-Davis (Polly), Jena Brooks (Lizzie), Maddie Moore (Kelly), Lilliana Simms (Jazz)
Looking for:
sales agents, journalists, distributors, festival directors
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/chicks_movie
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/chicksmovie/
Hashtags used:
#chicksmovie
Where can I watch it?
Dances with Films/Los Angeles, CA - 6.11.22