It’s the eve of what is arguably the most important presidential election in modern American history, and though the fate of their country hangs in the balance, Erin Brown Thomas (director, producer, writer, editor) and Kelly Vrooman (actor, producer, writer) are all-smiles and all-in throughout our interview. So much so that it feels a lot like a hangout among artist-friends, getting together on Zoom (these days, a norm), talking about work, exchanging notes about “the process,” and—for a brief moment—a comparison of pandemic-related hair growth between yours truly and Vrooman’s toddler (who makes a special guest appearance).
There is no surprise to the camaraderie and familiar energy they radiate, even through webcams three time zones apart, considering the long-standing collaborative and platonic history between the two: “Erin and I dated a set of brothers in college!” says Vrooman, recalling the first time they met. “And she ended up marrying the one [brother] and my relationship with [the other brother] crashed and burned real bad. But then Erin and I reconnected ten years later, out here in LA, and we just went, hmm, it seems like you have the same work ethic that I do. And we love telling the same stories, and so she and I made a short called Rekindled—that was our first one together—and we went to over fifty festivals…”
“It was over seventy, I think!” says Thomas.
“And we keep coming back because we like telling the same stories, and now we’ve just become best friends!”
The subject, today, is their latest collaboration and current HollyShorts entry Feeling Flush, a film set entirely in a four-by-six bathroom that serves as the defining place in which Vicki (Vrooman) must navigate conversations concerning intimacy and boundaries with her new girlfriend Samantha (played by Scout Durwood).
“I had started dating someone new,” Vrooman says of the inspiration behind the story. “I was like, I have to pee! And he was like, do I have to leave the bathroom? And I was like, yeah? Please? And we came to a head. It became this big fight—our first big fight—about what is intimacy. And Erin and I wanted to make a film that was two people in one location, and we were tossing around ideas, and I was like, well, this happened to me recently! And she was like, that’s our story!”
“When Kelly brought it to me, it was an immediate instinct. I was like: I love it, we’re doing it, we’re doing it with women,” says Thomas. “It gets to feel like two more valid perspectives, rather than a man telling a woman what to do and what’s okay and the boundaries that she should have with her own body. It just felt like a safer and fresher environment to tell the story.”
The film, which relies on conversation and is restricted by the confines of the bathroom space, charts new(er) territory for Thomas, whose body of work predominantly features visuals and movement as tools for narration.
“If you look at my body of work, a lot of it is very visually-driven. Not a lot of conversationally-driven stuff. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to do Feeling Flush. Because—from a pure exercising-the-muscles perspective, even though I consider myself to be a visually- and movement-driven director—I wanted to sink into dialogue. And, further, putting it into such a small room where the blocking—there is blocking—but the blocking doesn’t move far.”
“It was like: sit on the toilet, stand up, walk to the sink!” says Vrooman. “But what Erin does really well with her storytelling is that, even though it was in a bathroom, she adds beautiful movement, whether it’s steam dripping on the mirror or the wind chimes blowing slightly. Even in a four-by-six bathroom, Erin gives such beautiful movement.”
“One of the fun things that I discovered during my storyboarding process, before we shot the film, was—you know, I sunk myself into Vicki’s perspective: this person who is feeling like this safe space is turning into a scary space,” Thomas adds. “So, I leaned into horror tropes—a little bit—because I started thinking about Vicki and the perspective she was in […] so if you notice, there are POV shots when she gets startled that dwarf her and make her look small and make the other person look big—make Scout’s character look big—and we found a bathroom that had a frosted glass door so that you could see the passing of a shadow. And, again, I’m not using horror music, I’m still allowing it to be a comedy, but I’m using these horror tropes to communicate that inner world of Vicki.”
For Vrooman, it’s her background in improv comedy that helped inform her approach to the project: “In the school of improv that I do—I perform out here with UCB—we figure out what the game is, what the game of the scene is, and we play it out. And so, Erin and I, when we were writing this, used some of those stage sketch and improv comedy rules to say, okay, this story is about intimacy, being in the bathroom, whether or not that’s a sign of intimacy. Let’s grow that discomfort, let’s grow what that is, even without sometimes saying the words.”
With Feeling Flush, Thomas and Vrooman take the seemingly innocuous aspects of a relationship—in this case: using the bathroom at the same time—and add layers and layers of thought, emotion, motivation, and conflict. The end result is a nuanced depiction of two lovers moving on to a deeper level in their relationship, at once tender and transformative, yet funny and profound.
What’s especially noteworthy is how the film is also a testament to the intimacy that exists between its creators—as is evident by the way they, throughout this interview, compliment (and, for that matter, complement) each other—and, by extension, the success that inevitably follows when two collaborators—all-smiles, all-in—invite each other into their respective processes. The privilege of interviewing them, even for only a slice of a period of time, was being a guest in their shared space of creativity, vulnerability, and positivity.
“Kelly and I are moving onto features and shorts and pilots and things, so we’re both looking forward to what’s next,” says Thomas.
And though America, at the time of this interview, has yet to decide upon their governmental future, cinema, at least, can rest assured that, with both Thomas and Vrooman in the game, the future is certainly bright.
