If there’s an upcoming writer and director who should be on your radar, it’s Joseph Sackett. Homebody, the subject of our interview, may mark his feature-length debut, but Sackett so skillfully approaches and captures the prismatic nature of queerness—and, by extension, queer storytelling—that it’s immediately clear he has a trained eye and a distinctive voice. Which makes sense: on top of being a graduate of the MFA Screenwriting and Directing program at NYU Tisch, Sackett is an award-winning filmmaker whose projects have screened in competition at the Festival de Cannes, Outfest, and Slamdance (to name a few).
Homebody is a genderqueer story that is part Freak Friday and part Being John Malkovich, telling the story of a young boy named Johnny (Tre Ryder) who transfers his spirit into his babysitter Melanie’s (Colby Minifie) body. The film recently played at Outfest in LA, which, for Sackett, was “an exciting full circle moment,” considering two of his shorts had previously played at the LGBTQ+-oriented film festival. What’s interesting about Homebody is that it was initially only supposed to be a short film. Indeed, in our interview below, Sackett recalls being inspired by the end of his short film Dominant Species, wherein the alien protagonist transfers itself from a human male body to a human female body. The result is a visually playful and emotionally resonant film that digs deeply into the beauty and complexity of queer childhood and gender expression.
For Sackett, in fact, queerness is a sort of superpower “I would encourage queer storytellers to embrace the ways in which their queerness gives them a unique and valuable worldview,” he says in our interview below. And you need only turn to Homebody to see that this is true.
Congratulations on your film, and congratulations on it playing at Outfest! How was the festival? What does it mean for you to be part of such a grand event dedicated to LGBTQ+ films?
Thanks! It was a really fantastic experience getting to premiere Homebody at Outfest. My last two short films both played at Outfest so it’s an exciting full circle moment to have my first feature here. I think it’s a really important thing for queer folks to have a festival like this where we are both the makers and the primary audience. Of course, everybody is welcome, but it’s cool that it’s built with us in mind.
What I loved most about the film was its visual playfulness, particularly in the first act. It feels very prismatic—with the incorporation of different lenses, mirrors and screens, camera angles, etc.—which is very apt considering the film deals with Johnny’s evolution of self-sight and identity. What was the cinematographic process like for you? And would it be fair to say that Homebody, in a way, marries queerness and the camera?
That specific idea has never occurred to me, but I like it so I’m going to steal it! Yes, Homebody marries queerness and the camera. The first act was the section that changed the most during the editing process because it’s less linear than the rest of the movie. Once Johnny sends his spirit into Melanie’s body, acts two and three are pretty cause-and-effect driven. It almost plays like a road movie where Johnny-as-Melanie encounters this person and then this situation and then this moment, etc. But in the first act, I wanted to give the audience a sense of Johnny and Melanie‘s relationship, and the closeness they’ve developed as kid and babysitter.
We actually shot a number of slice-of-life moments between Johnny and Melanie that were designed to go in act one that my editor, Alan Wu, and I ended up cutting. For example, there was this dreamy, slow-motion tag sequence. And a scene where Johnny falls down and Melanie gives him a Band-Aid. Those scenes ended up getting cut in favor of a more distilled, streamlined first act. I like that you use the word prismatic. My DP, Laura Valladao, and I definitely talked about having a kaleidoscopic array of references. In the months leading up to the shoot, we would watch one or two movies a week together, talk about what we responded to or about what visuals we wanted to quote. There was one very memorable week where we watched Mrs. Doubtfire followed by Dogtooth. Those two movies, even though they’re both about family, are super different tonally. But they illustrate the aesthetic worlds that we were trying to straddle with the cinematography. We were interested in making a crowd-pleasing romp that was pop and accessible and also wanted to fold in these weirder arthouse shooting strategies that were exciting to us both.
The film started as a short film called I Was in Your Blood. I understand that you had no initial plans to expand it into a feature-length film. What changed your mind? More generally, where did the story idea come from?
Right, I’d had this idea of doing a story about a little kid and his babysitter for a while, but I’d never intended to make anything but the short film version of the story. Then, when I was working on the short I made after that, which was a queer sci-fi called Dominant Species, I really struggled to find an ending. Ultimately, I decided to end that project with the alien protagonist transferring from a male human body to a female human body. That was a very exciting bit of inspiration for me, and it felt like there was a lot more to explore there. So at some point around that time I thought what if I expanded this babysitter story into a feature and do the Being John Malkovich version of it where the little boy sends his spirit into his babysitter body and that launches us into act two.
Both Colby Minifie and Tre Ryder churn in phenomenal performances! What was it like to have found them first for the short and then to return to each other for the feature?
I agree! Well, I developed the feature with both of them in mind which made the writing process easier. At that point, Colby had acted in three of my short films so we had a pretty solid working relationship. In hindsight, it was kind of a miracle that we found Tre when we did back when we were casting the short. Two days before we were supposed to start shooting, we still hadn’t found the right kid for that part. Tre was the last person who we auditioned. And I remember going into that audition session thinking this kid has to work out, because we don’t have any more options at this point. And, luckily, Tre was exactly what we were looking for. Then, when it came time to officially offer him the part in the feature, we got lucky again in that he had grown out his hair for a different movie. I’d had long hair as a kid, and got teased for looking like a girl. And since this story is largely inspired by my own genderqueer childhood, I loved the idea of Johnny having long hair.
I’d like to talk about the scene in Melanie’s apartment (post-kiss with Tom) because I’m obsessed with it! I’m not sure that words can justly describe how nuanced and beautiful it was because it seemed like this explosive yet understated emotional pivot for Johnny. For me, as a queer man, it brought me back to that moment in my childhood when everything clicked and I felt like I understood that I was different but, at the same time, I knew there was still so much I needed to discover. How did you come up with the idea for that scene, and how important was it for you to include it?
We did a couple of test screenings with Homebody when we were in the rough cut phase, and that scene was consistently the most polarizing. Some people really liked it and some people really hated it because it made them uncomfortable. I get that. Narratively, I like that sequence because Johnny’s consciousness and Melanie‘s consciousness, both housed inside of her body, are working at cross purposes. She wants Tom to leave the apartment for reasons that we can understand, and Johnny wants him to stay for reasons that we can also understand. I like the drama and the comedy generated by that conflict between them. And I liked giving Johnny this moment to assert his desires even if he goes about it in a misguided and borderline disastrous way. In the shooting script, the voice of Melanie‘s consciousness faded out as though they were losing their connection on a cell phone call before the moment you’re talking about where Johnny and Tom are alone together. But in the rough cut it felt too passive. Like just a coincidence and not a choice. In the editing process, I rewrote it so that Johnny was making an active choice to stop hearing her voice and to be alone with Tom.
LGBTQ+ filmmaking and storytelling has evolved tremendously within the last decade. What advice would you give to LGBTQ+ creators and storytellers?
Well, I’m not sure if I have the authority to give anyone advice. But I would encourage queer storytellers to embrace the ways in which their queerness gives them a unique and valuable worldview. Your story is worth telling!
What are you most excited about right now? Conversely, when you look to the future, what are you looking forward to the most?
I’m a big volleyball fan, so if you’re asking what I’m excited about in general right now, I’d say that I’m still riding the high of the US women’s indoor and beach volleyball teams both winning gold at the Olympics. I cried when Jordan Larsen scored the gold medal point. It was so emotional! But I have a feeling you were asking what I’m excited about in terms of film. And I am really stoked about my next feature which is a queer sci-fi rom-com called Cross Pollination. It’s about an alien on Earth struggling to pass as human, but things get complicated when he falls in love with a man and gets knocked up.
