As Hollywood finds its footing in a post-strike world, indies like The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick are shattering the industry’s arbitrary rules of filmmaking.
Following the film’s SXSW premiere this month, the film’s star and co-writer Zoë Chao told Deadline she felt “really baked into this film” thanks to co-writer/director Pete Ohs‘ “Table of Bubbles” method, which brought the actors into the writers’ room.
“It’s like our whole everything was asked to contribute, and as mostly an actor, that was a new experience for me,” said Chao as she sat down with Ohs and her co-stars/co-writers. “So, it feels like a real sharing because this project was presented as a process-over-product experiment, where we hope that there will be a movie at the end of this, but that’s not really the true aim. The true aim is to gather open-minded people together, and just see what we could make in two weeks and have fun doing it.”
The film stars Chao as Yvonne, who travels to visit her friend Camille (Callie Hernandez) at her bucolic country home following an unexpected tragedy. Upon her arrival, she’s put off by the presence of Camille’s two close friends Isaac (Jeremy O. Harris) and AJ (James Cusati-Moyer). Although resistant to the group’s hospitality at first, a tick bite in the woods quickly changes her perspective of the sinister visit.
In addition to the movie’s unapologetic queer themes, The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick also attempts a “queering of filmmaking,” as Chao put it.
‘The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick’ stars James Cutasi-Moyer, Callie Hernandez, Zoë Chao, Jeremy O. Harris and co-writer/director Pete Ohs at SXSW.
Glenn Garner/Deadline
“We’ve been told that there’s a certain way to make a film, Pete didn’t want to do that anymore,” she explained, adding: “I do think we are not a very normative group, thank goodness, and I think part of feeling so safe was that it was really kind of a queer space.”
As quoted in the film, Cusati-Moyer references the opening line of Larry Mitchell’s 1977 book The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, which feels particularly relevant to the underlying themes at play.
“The first revolutions destroyed the great cultures of the women. Once the men triumphed, all that was other from them was considered inferior and therefore worthy only of abuse and contempt and extinction. Stories told of these times are of heroic action and terrifying defeat and silent waiting.”
Read on about co-writer/director Pete Ohs’ “Table of Bubbles” method with The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick cast and co-writers Zoë Chao, Callie Hernandez, Jeremy O. Harris and James Cusati-Moyer.
DEADLINE: What would you say the ticks represent in the movie?
PETE OHS: Fair question. Sometimes with artists, you wanna be David Lynch and just be like, “no,” but that’s not me and you gotta be yourself. So, what do they represent? The fun place for how I make movies and how we made this movie, is we didn’t worry about stuff a lot and trusted that there was stuff in there just because we’re doing it. The tick in the movie is literal, it’s a tick. They’re biting them. What do we know about ticks? They carry diseases. These are the literal things that are actually happening. But then everything that is real also can be a metaphor if you just look at it that way. For me, when I later start to think about these ticks and what are they, certainly they are fear, they are trauma. I think they’re very much trauma. I think they’re the things that happen in our lives that we didn’t choose. Unfortunately, we walked through that field. Unfortunately, we grew up in this time, in this city, in this town, in this state, in this country, and it changes us. It kind of fucks us up. It is this element that we have to deal with and it can hold us down, destroy us. We can’t get rid of it. The best case scenario is that we find some sort of value within it and that makes us stronger, that makes us more able to move through the world in spite of the fear of it. This is what the ticks are for me.
DEADLINE: I’m also curious about the whole “Table of Bubbles” process that you use. Can you tell me how that was for you as actors, being able to contribute and have a say in the script?
OHS: There is this weird thing where the normal way is like, your ideas are not encouraged or something.
ZOË CHAO: Well, when we were watching the premiere, I realized that I was so much more nervous than I normally am. And I’m like, “Why? You are so proud of this film, and you love these people, and you would do this all again. Why?” And it’s because we are really baked into this film. It’s like our whole everything was asked to contribute, and as mostly an actor, that was a new experience for me. So, it feels like a real sharing because this project was presented as a process-over-product experiment, where we hope that there will be a movie at the end of this, but that’s not really the true aim. The true aim is to gather open-minded people together, and just see what we could make in two weeks and have fun doing it. If anything, if there’s a product, it’s this memento of two wonderful weeks together. And so, it does feel like an offering, and in that way, more vulnerable.
OHS: Because by doing process-over-product, you feel safer, and thus, you expose more and put more of yourself into it.
CHAO: Yeah, and when I was watching it, I saw things I’ve never done before on screen. It feels, in a way, exposed. There were moments that are exposed that are really tender to me, and to share that with a bunch of people, what was so special about the set was that it was just six of us, mostly five, and now it gets to be shared with many more than five people.
JAMES CUSATI-MOYER: I didn’t feel the pressure. Of course we wanted the film to be seen by people, because without an audience, it’s not complete. A film has to be watched by people who weren’t involved, but when we were within it, I wasn’t thinking about what they were gonna think about it. I didn’t care because I was tapped into our mission and our joy of doing it. And I think that, hopefully, translated into a sincere genuine place and way of speaking to each other.
JEREMY O. HARRIS: I think that of the four of us, I was very excited about thinking about how an audience would meet it, in a real way, I think because my day job is generally writer. And what became really fun about this is that it became like the best writers room ever. We would have coffee in the morning and walk around, and Cherry, who is Callie’s dog, who stars in the movie as well with us, was barking and we let her out, and then we just pitch, like, “What if this happened, what if that happened today?” And no idea was a bad idea. And because no idea is a bad idea, that’s how we get to the ending in the best way. … You err on the side of poetic, so we can put it inside of this while also still keeping it fun and alive and trying to make something new. For me, it became one of the most fulfilling processes I’ve ever had. Also, I think that it’s very easy to imagine that like four people got together, when you see the actors wrote it with the director, it’s like, “Oh, it was chaos. They were improv-ing and just saying things.” No, Pete is such a visionary where he’s like, “Well, that’s not Tick, that’s another movie. It’s a great idea, but it’s not Tick. Now, let’s get the Tick ideas.” And as you build it, you’re building it inside of this universe that’s basically in his mind. He’s like this great showrunner and we’re all like the amazing staff writers who also are performing inside of this thing, and I’ve never had an experience like that.
CALLIE HERNANDEZ: Well, we worked together on Jethica before in 2021, so I was familiar with the “Table of Bubbles,” but today has been so fun talking about it because I’m learning more about it as we’re talking about it. “Table of Bubbles” is a concept that comes from a very Pete brain, and Pete’s brain is very much so … computer science makes a lot more sense because that’s what he studied. What you don’t necessarily see, this kind of looks like anarchy, right? Because we’re saying, “We’re gonna do this however we want to do it and we’re gonna make whatever we want.” The thing is very alive. It’s a live thing that you have to keep taking care of and feeding while it’s happening, which makes it very active. It’s a very active filmmaking process that I don’t know would be possible in this exact way. There’s a million and one ways to make a film, and there’s a wrong way to make a film, and that’s what makes the world go round, and that’s great. But it isn’t really a chaotic experience, working with Pete, because the computer brain has all these invisible systems that you don’t necessarily see at first. And then, all of a sudden, there’s always a system for that. He’s also an editor, so while you’re shooting, he’s in his brain editing it. So, it’s a really unique experience of filmmaking, and I think it takes the right people to come together and be able to just be willing. It’s so built on intuition and what feels good and what doesn’t feel right. And so rarely are we given this kind of opportunity. Our industry is in a really gnarly place, to say the least. Nobody really says, “What do you want to make? What feels good? What seems interesting?” Unless you’re a writer and you get to write whatever you want. But it’s a really rare opportunity. And as anarchy, and as punk as it is, this particular way of making it is actually very streamlined and very thoughtful. It really is process over product, because the thing is alive and you just have to keep it alive for that time.
CHAO: It’s like a sourdough starter.
HERNANDEZ: Yeah! You gotta feed that baby.
DEADLINE: I’m also curious about the whole biodynamic family unit in the film. I think that’s interesting, especially because there’s not a lot of queer representation this year at SXSW, so it was nice to see something super queer. And also, the message of living without fear is very profound. Can you all tell me the importance of that queer representation in this movie?
CHAO: We were talking about this process being a queering of filmmaking. We’ve been told that there’s a certain way to make a film, Pete didn’t want to do that anymore. Also, we didn’t have the resources. When we were shooting this film, it was the height of strike—thank you to our union for letting us make a micro budget film—but something I love so much about this process is, what do we have available to us? what is here? We’re not going to reach for something we don’t have. And who are we? And how do we bring that out and into this piece? How do we lift our essences and infuse the story with them? I do think we are not a very normative group, thank goodness, and I think part of feeling so safe was that it was really kind of a queer space, insofar as like, “Bring your whole self. Come as you are.”
OHS: Well, the other aspect of the “Table of Bubbles” is that there isn’t a script, and there’s some ideas, and there’s an outline of at least half of the movie. But there’s so much we don’t know, and we didn’t go there saying, “Let’s make a queer film.” And where the second half of the movie goes, we discovered halfway through the shoot too. We were happy to discover it, because it is all being made on intuition and trust. When I sit here and hear this question, I think about it and how did this come to be. It certainly came out of the product of these collaborators that I brought together, but for some reason, these are the people I wanted to surround myself with. And when I look at my past films, I’m like, “God, they’re so straight.” And when I thought about it, literally right now, I got sad. … I’m certainly straight as hell, but I’m weird. I’ve been weird my whole life, I’ve been “other” my whole life in all these ways. I feel like “queer” is this word that also just means different.
HARRIS: If there’s LGBTQIA+, you’re definitely the plus. … He is like an American Hong Sang-soo, an American Mike Leigh, he really does allow his collaborators to—it’s like he’s a blind person who’s letting us lead him where we wanna go. And he knows where he wants to end up in some ways, but he’s letting us carve the path with him.
Even though James and Callie were supposed to be having some kind of sexual affair in the movie, at one point when we were ideating, James did make it the most loudly queer when we played the parlor game.
CUSATI-MOYER: Yeah, when we played the parlor game and I chose the book, suddenly there we were. Just the timeline of when we made this movie, during the strikes, politically and what we knew was coming ultimately, another Trump term—I think when asked about this, as a queer actor, you’re like, “What queer cinema do you want to see? OK, we have to do more normal stories that are more heteronormative.” Or, “We have to do a story that has no oppression and no AIDS.” And what I love about this queer movie that has queer former relationships, current relationships, biodynamic relationships, is that there’s no comment from the outside world about it. It simply sits exactly where it is in this place down there. … To make anything with heart and valor and compassion is revolutionary in this moment.
HERNANDEZ: I feel like everybody always says, “we’re in a weird time,” but we are actually in a really bad time. And we feel it, and we make responses to that, etc. But we made the decision to make this film, it was an intentional film that we set out to make.
So, I finished an HBO show, and then I got off the show. and I was just feeling anxiety. The strike hadn’t happened yet, I could just feel something shifting or something, my little witch vibe I guess. So, I rented this house for one year upstate, with the intention of making as many micro-budget films as possible in this house for one year. … The whole thing was an experiment just to see—I had worked in the studio system for a number of years, and I’ve worked on a number of independent sets. There are things that work from everything. The other feature that we made in that same exact house, in a very similar way, was also very, very, very different.
It really is a response, but it’s also just a curiosity of, how many different ways can we try and make this?
OHS: Thinking about the queerness of this movie, because you were talking about how these films are made as experiments … and something about how the machine, capitalism, whatever, doesn’t want us to experiment. They want us to do it the way it has previously been done before. Isn’t it when you spend some time experimenting that you find out you’re queer? [LAUGHS] That’s why they don’t want us to do it! They don’t want us to experiment.
