Selected for Sundance Film Festival 2024 and SXSW 2024, Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s moving, gently comic collaboration is about the power of live theater to make sense of our offstage dramas and personal narratives. Ghostlight centres on Dan (Keith Kupferer), a melancholic middle-aged construction worker grieving a family tragedy. Cut off from his devoted wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), and talented but troubled daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), Dan finds comfort and community in a misfit company of amateur actors. While moonlighting in a low-rent production of Shakespeare’s most protean tragedy, Dan is forced to confront his buried emotions. Real-life family Mallen, Kupferer, and Mallen Kupferer bring tenderness and authenticity to this poignant portrait, while Dolly de Leon — last seen stealing the scene in Triangle of Sadness — is hilarious as Dan’s irascible, improbable co-star.
With the fantastic dramedy Ghostlight coming to Australian cinemas on October 10, Nick L’Barrow had the chance to speak with the film’s directors, Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan, about casting a real life family for the main family in the film, the power of fiction, and the experience of filming and submitting Ghostlight to the Sundance Film Festival within 3 months.
Nick: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat about Ghostlight! I genuinely though it was such a beautiful and moving film. And I’d love to kick off by talking about casting Keith Kupferer, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, and Tara Mallen, because I was fascinated to find out that they are a family in real life. How did their casting come about?
Alex Thompson: Yeah, it all started with Keith. Kelly wrote this with Keith in mind, and we actually did think if there could be anyone else who could pull off this particular story and character. And we did not think there was.
So, it really began with Keith, and then Keith offered up the idea of us auditioning Katherine [Keith’s real-life daughter], who I’d never met before. I’d never seen her work. And she came into a reading for Daisy. And it was basically an offer right away.
Kelly O’Sullivan: She was in right away. She had all of Daisy’s, you know, access to rage, but also vulnerability. And she was so funny. She was like, 15, but she was the real deal.
Alex Thompson: She very much so had the idiosyncrasies of a much older actor. Like, she really found what feels honest to her.
Nick: I’m curious to know how much of that chemistry their characters had was on the script, and how much evolved due their own natural chemistry as a family?
Kelly O’Sullivan: I mean, it was all in the script. Certainly, the foundation of it, and most of the dialogue was what was scripted. But then they came in and they put magic to it.
Occasionally, they would ad-lib a line or something. Like, the scene in the batting cages where they just talk to each other as father and daughter. They have that natural chemistry that I think couldn’t be written. I think the family aspect of it was embedded in the script, but then they took it to a different level.
Nick: A prominent theme of the film is about how people can be moved by art, or how art can be healing. What is the process of capturing that theme from a screenplay and directing perspective? Is it through dialogue? Character arts? Visual components?
Kelly O’Sullivan: It’s all of the above! I mean, for me, from the writing point of view, it was building an ensemble, very much like a Shakespeare play. You have the fool, and the romantic lead. You want to write characters in a way that they’re going to have different dynamics. Different relationships that shine when they’re put next to each other. You have these leads, but then you care about the ensemble surround them too.
And I’ve done theatre for so long that I had very personal places to choose and pick from, and people I could represent in different characters.
From a directing point of view, you want to cast the write people and make sure that they’re rhythm that’s in the script, and also honour the actors showing up. And making sure that you’re capturing the chemistry that they’re bringing to the table.
Alex Thompson: I think a lot of times actors read a character and they’ll think, “This buffoon is nothing like me. So, I’ll play them like a buffoon.” But the more honest performances come when they do play themselves. And this wonderful character who you might read as a fool, ends up being deeply, you know, rich and interesting, and watchable.
Nick: Ghostlight also highlighted for me about how cathartic performing art can be, especially for a character like Dan. I’m curious to know whether you feel the same way about creating art? Does writing and directing have the ability to bring emotional catharsis?
Alex Thompson: I do think there is an ability to. I feel more at peace… I feel like, in the best-case scenario, it’s like playtime. It’s like how you might have played with you friends in middle school, where you get to set, and anything is possible. You can unearth anything and bring anything in, on the best days.
I think my catharsis is elsewhere, probably. But I think in terms of finding peace, I definitely think I find that through art making.
Kelly O’Sullivan: I think I do find catharsis through, I mean, the writing process. I heard somebody say that you write to find out how you feel about things, and that’s what writing is to me. I don’t even often know how I feel about something until I write about it.
And then I feel a lot of catharsis in witnessing other actors’ performance. Like, there would be times that I would be crying at the monitor because of how incredible Keith, or Katherine, or Tara were. So, I find a certain amount of catharsis there.
Nick: The foundation of the film is around Dan’s connection with Romeo and Juliet. I’d love to know how fiction played a role in either of your lives. Has there been a movie, or book, or play that has stuck out to you by having a connection a to it in a profound way?
Kelly O’Sullivan: Oh, massively! I love Lady Bird. I love Lost in Translation. I love Marriage Story, Manchester by the Sea. Like, Alex jokes that all of my references are from around the same year when I started writing this, but it’s true!
I constantly turn to comfort watches too, you know? I turn to different things when I’m in need of different things. If I’m curious and wanting to feel something new, I’ll go to the movie theatre and see a movie I’ve never seen before. And then if I’m anxious and want to feel comforted, I’ll turn on something I’ve seen a million times. Stories are incredibly powerful and have this ability for us to learn more and to feel a sense of comfort.
Alex Thompson: I grew up in a house where every Friday night and every Saturday night, and every Saturday morning, and every Sunday morning, we would watch movies. We would go to Blockbuster, pile up six or seven VHS tapes and then just go through them.
And my family was very generous, where if my sister wants to watch The Italian Job, we watch The Italian Job. If I want to watch Birth, we watch Birth! It’s just all stories. And there’s something very comforting about the three-act story, and just watching a story for two and a half hours and coming out the other side.
Kelly O’Sullivan: There’s something about experiencing those stories, like, if you watch it with a family member and you don’t even necessarily have to talk about it, but you have an emotional experience together in the same room, next to each other.
I’m just thinking about the times that my family and I haven’t had deep conversations about a movie, but we’ll experience something in the same room, and I think that’s very powerful.
Nick: That’s a testament to the power of movies! I find a lot of my emotional understandings comes through film. There’s a lot of levity in this film, and one moment I really enjoyed was watching Dan witness theatre warm-ups for the first time. Having experience in the theatre, Kelly, how much fun is it bringing that to the screen and expecting audiences to have a similar reaction to Dan who may not have seen something like that before?
Kelly O’Sullivan: Oh, it’s so fun. I mean, up until recently I was teaching theatre where you play all of those theatre exercises. So, I’m so immersed in it. But then, when I describe to people who aren’t in theatre, it’s hilarious to see them try and figure out what the purpose of it is!
But it’s also really fun to go in and teach those exercises to adults and to theatre professionals who just haven’t done them in a long time. But they had a blast doing them. And then it’s really fun to watch audiences – I mean, it’s cliché – but it’s fun to watch people have fun. As you’re watching those actors in the film do something ridiculous, but have fun doing it, I can hear people responding in a really joyful way.
Nick: Another form of levity in the film – and this is something I’m a big advocate for – is the fart joke during the deposition scene, which is a very dramatic scene in the film! How important is using a gag like that to create levity in such a heavy moment?
Kelly O’Sullivan: I mean, I just think that in some of the most serious moments of my life, something ridiculous has happened. And I think that anytime something feels a little too self-serious for me, it helps to undercut it with, “remember, this is just life!” We’re just humans and there’s always going to be something that undercuts moments from feeling incredibly dramatic and serious.
Also, Shakespeare had great fart jokes! I oftentimes just feel relieved and seen in movies when a moment is undercut with “people fart”!
Nick: I read that you filmed Ghostlight in October of 2023, then you premiere the film at Sundance in January 2024. I don’t know loads about filmmaking, but I do know that’s an insane turn around for a production! How did you pull that off?
Alex Thompson: I mean, we just kind of committed to the timeline. Our editor was cutting as we shot, so we had an assembly cut or a rough cut that was two and a half hours long that we submitted. And then we just kind of had to get it down and convince Sundance that we weren’t going to show up with a two-and-a-half-hour movie about this construction worker.
I felt very lucky. I heard someone say that we were the last film accepted. But that’s too bad for them, because now we’re very arrogant and we think we could do it again! This is just how you make movies, I guess [laughs].
Thank you so much to Kelly and Alex for their time, and to Vendetta Films and TM Publicity for organising the interview. Ghostlight is in Australian cinemas from October 10.
