It’s essential to entertain and to have the audience thinking about the project afterward.
Sugey Cruz
Sugey:
Borphy is a Guinea pig take on Barney-if you watch the original short that inspired audiences first look at that character. Chris and his daughters are fascinated with guinea pigs—they have like 6 of them as pets. Chris Ruppert, who runs a successful Youtube Channel called “Bad Movie Night” and now BMN Films loves to make comedic, horror films and some of them revolved around guinea pigs.
Anyway, Borphy was originally a Barney-like character that was depicted going feral and going on a killing spree after missing a dose of calming medicine in the comedic, horror short film Fun Time With Borphy, which is available on the Bad Movie Night Channel.
So the Borphy we meet in Merry Pawmas is from the BMN Films universe but not what we see in that previous short. In many ways, Merry Pawmas is the precursor to both Transient and Fun Time With Borphy. The Borphy we meet in Merry Pawmas is pre-feral and potentially just part of Laura’s imagination based on the tv show Borphy that she knows and loves as a child, so that’s why he is the way he is with her.
Within the sweet family story here, there is lingering darkness. This is seen in the arguments between Laura’s parents but also by a shuttering on screen, as if the entire film is just a cam- corded recording.
Without too many Transient spoilers, what was the intense foreshadowing inspired by?
In The Shining the child actor playing Danny was unaware the film was as intense as it is.
Apart from the arguments between Laura’s parents, was the actress-the fantastic Lillian Ruppert- aware of any potential strangeness with Borphy?
Sugey:
In this instance, I'm a big Christmas fan. The two biggest inspirations she sent Chris and Jamie Root, our fabulous cinematographer, were “The Parent Trap” - both the Lohan and Miles versions- and “Last Christmas” with Emilia Clarke.
The shot with the parents at the tea room table was largely thematically inspired by the children’s attempts in the “Parent Trap” to reunite their parents, but visually had a lot of the look of “Last Christmas” (two shot segments and the final color grading).
It was something I was proud of and worked on a lot when I assisted Rich with the edit.
We’d love to know what drew you towards being a filmmaker.
Sugey:
All of us are creative people who just felt we had stories to tell and wanted to find an outlet to tell them. Every adult involved in the production has a hands-on approach to all the areas of film and is involved in front of and behind the camera.
In many instances, all of us have turned to writing as well to create stories we want to tell, and how we want to tell them.
The video of the dancing performance is such a lovely addition.
Was that in the original screenplay or was it something that was added since it worked so well with the story?
Sugey:
We lucked out as a team that Lilly is a talented ballerina as well and was selected to play the lead in The Nutcracker at a local school. We were able to incorporate it into the story then and add that extra bit of storytelling to the script. We had written it into the short script because we
knew we’d be able to get some sort of footage from the event. It worked out that Greg was not able to attend the event so that informed how the scene developed. Had he been there we’d incorporated dialogue or interaction that was a bit different. It was then the first scene we filmed and some of the subsequent scenes were adjusted accordingly.
Many parts of the film are so personal, homemade even, the house and even the dog Cooper.
What are all of the props in the film that are personal to you?
Sugey:
There were only a few items there that were ours personally. Cooper is our friend dog—or his sisters-and we asked to borrow him for the day to improve upon the story. We bought him some specialty treats at a local place named Lancaster Cupcake to help him comply a bit more and he was great.
The house, which is our main Transient location as well, is the John Harris Simon Cameron Mansion in Harrisburg, PA and it was truly an amazing venue. It’s a non-profit museum that has all this grand, historic furniture in it and which for the holidays we and they were able to style to feel more welcoming. What wasn’t already “built” up, we just moved around or added to.
That was a combination of my, Karen Crafton and Steve Wydra’s efforts to make the spaces we utilized feel like someone lives there as much as possible. The main “prop” that is in both films is the small stuffed Borphy Lilly carries with her at all times. I gave Lilly that on the first day of filming for the ‘family’ on Transient and it just became a staple of something her character Laura has with her a lot of the time. It is more an homage to Fun Time With Borphy than anything else.
Marshmallows on a string for the tea room date scene was a great touch the location had for us. It gave it a much more home decoration feel than fairy or holiday lights would have. Again the goal is to make it look more lived-in and less like a museum.
What was the main inspiration to make Merry Pawmas a prelude to Transient?
Sugey:
The main inspiration is that we loved these characters but wanted to explore them in a way that was a bit more complete.
In Transient we will only get glimpses of them as a family, so when we were looking at making a Christmas film, we thought it would be nice to explore that family dynamic in a way that showed the chemistry and care these actors do have for one another.
Looking at our BTS footage or even pictures for Transient and then seeing the scenes you don’t think that what we were making is the same film in a way. The 3 actors-Greg, myself, and Lilly-are always having fun and laughing as soon as Chris yelled cut, so it was fun to give the audience a taste of a family that wasn’t perfect and had its issues, but who at their core do love one another and want to make things work.
There is this real human “dance” in the film of intention (that the family will work things out and realize what matters) versus reality (that too much damage may have been done and that they are just buying time) and how all that plays out. You hope at the end of Merry Pawmas that things will work out for the Blakely and in Transient we will have our answer on what happened and why and hopefully offer some great discussion among our viewers.
Overall, the intent there was to get a more well-rounded view of these people’s relationship with one another and to imagine what their interactions were like before the events that transpire in Transient.
In your opinion as a moviegoer, what qualities are essential to a great film?
Sugey:
The great thing about our team is that we all come from interests in different genres and we constantly teach one another about what makes our genres so enjoyable. Tony likes Crime dramas and Marvel; Chris loves horror and sci-fi; I love dystopian tales, fantasy, and drama primarily and Greg likes human stories where the protagonist is very complex and the audience would struggle to empathize with.
It definitely in our case helps to have these varied tastes. I think it helps us as a team to bring a different perspective when we see one another’s work. We can be more constructive and help the filmmaker who is at the helm at that moment, think about the work a little differently.
In our case, we think that it’s essential to entertain and to have the audience thinking about the project afterward and trying to connect the dots about what our intention was in particular scenes.
Having human, complex characters whom you have to wrestle to understand or empathize with and who will invariably lead to some discussion about where they fall on the good vs. evil paradigm is something all of us on the team find .
If you have five words to describe the film, which words would you use?
Sugey:
Heartfelt, realistic, uplifting, foreboding, and loving.