Posted in: Exclusive, Film Festival, Interview, Movies, SXSW | Tagged: Edie Arnold Is a Loser

Edie Arnold Is a Loser: Directors, Stars on Coming-of-Age Punk Story

Edie Arnold Is a Loser directors Megan Rico and Kade Atwood, and stars Adi Madden Cabrera and McKenna Tuckett talk coming-of-age punk film.

When it comes to a female-led coming-of-age story, all too often, the protagonist is mainly defined by whether she can find love, but that's not the case in the punk-meets-Catholic school setting of Edie Arnold Is a Loser. From Infigo Films, the film follows Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera), who finds her place in life singing in punk along with her best friend Frances (McKenna Tuckett) in a band called NunDead, along with two other girls at their Catholic School. Along with the pains of focusing on the work of becoming relevant in the local music scene, Edie has a variety of struggles growing up in life including trying to make sense of her feelings with school crush, Walter (Lucas Van Orden), practicing with her band in secret since she's borrowing her church's instruments, and dealing with her overbearing, protective mother (Cherish Rodriguez). While promoting the film at SXSW, Cabrera, Tuckett, and directors Kade Atwood and Megan Rico, who also wrote the film, spoke to Bleeding Cool about Rico's 10-year journey to get the film made, Cabrera and Tuckett making the most of their leading opportunities, and their approach to performing the music featured in the indie film.

Edie Arnold Is a Loser: Directors Kade Atwood and Megan Rico, and Stars Adi Madden Cabera and McKenna Tuckett on Coming-of-Age Youth Comedy

BC: What's the inspiration behind Edie Arnold Is a Loser?
Rico: I wrote the script like 10 years ago. It was like the first future script I'd ever written. I also went to a private Catholic school, so I definitely was like working through some stuff in the process of writing it, which I didn't realize at the time, but like reading it now as an adult, I'm like, "Whoa! That was…" I was really working through a couple of experiences.

Adi, McKenna, how'd you get involved in this, and what's it like working with Megan and Kade on this?
Cabrera: For me, at least, I had started getting into acting earlier, the same year that they sent out the casting call. I did like an acting program with Bryson Alejandro, who's our producer, and he ended up sending me the casting call a couple of months after we finished the workshop, which I did with him. That was how I got involved, and working with Megan and Kade is the best ever. I feel like I have lifelong friends forever, and also, they're the coolest people on planet Earth.
Tuckett: Yeah, I had been with an agency in Utah for like three or four years before I booked this, and it was the first time I had ever been called back for anything. I remember getting a call back and being like, "Okay, well, here's my shot," and in my head, I was like, "The people who are in charge of casting are going to be in a white room wearing all white, and if I try to say something funny, they're going to frown." I needed to be ready for that. I walk into the callback, and immediately, it was Megan, Kade, and Bryson, and I was like, "Oh my gosh! These are the coolest people!" We played a warm-up game. It was so friendly and so collaborative from like the call back that like instantly, it was like, "Well, if nothing else, I want to find a way to be friends with these people" [laughs].

Aside from the script, how many opportunities were there to improv? I can't imagine how difficult it was to move around with a drum between your legs.
Tuckett: You know, the way that Megan wrote it, and the way that Kade and Megan had directed it, everything had such a rhythm to it. It was so innately funny that, with just like a little bit of prompting, I was able to…I think we were all able to click in on their vision and go for it, but there wasn't a need to improv.
Cabrera: Yeah, I think so. When we did like rehearsals of every scene before we shot it too, which I think was helpful, because if there was ever a moment that felt like, "Oh, maybe this didn't flow quite as much as we expected it to," then there was room there to figure out a middle ground. Then, when we were filming, I don't think we felt any pressure to improvise anything, because we all loved the place where the script was.

How much fine-tuning did it take to get those band scenes going? How much did you all rehearse? Were there any other songs you've considered doing aside from sticking to "Gloria" for the film's first song?
Rico: Yeah, "Gloria" was a last-minute choice, because we had songs in mind that we'd wanted to do, and it all comes down to like, "Can you license these songs?" We were getting close to the shoot date, and we were like, "We are not going to be able to license like any of the songs that we had intended," like any Ramones songs, which is early classic punk, and so then Kade and I had to think, "What's a song that like these girls would know?" Because they are coming into the punk world for the first time. They are like dipping their toes, discovering it, and so, we're like, "Well, they sing this song every day at choir practice or at church," so, we had some friends of ours do a punk rendition of it, or a punk arrangement of it, but it was pretty down to the wire. I feel like that might've been the song that we rehearsed the least out of all of them, and it was also the one that we shot first, so very stressful [laughs].

What went into the stylistic choice to incorporate so much of the animation? There are Edgar Wright vibes in there, and I'm wondering if there were other styles you were playing around with before settling on that animation style?
Atwood: Yeah, I will say that Megan drew all those animations frame by frame herself, and it took weeks and lots of work. It was something we had discussed, but going into production, we weren't going to do that, and then in post, we found these moments that brought something to it. Initially, when we were talking about it, it was like, "Ah, it kind of detracts from it," and then we kind of found this like rule, essentially that they only pop up when the girls are in their world the most. It felt like it really added to those scenes, and so we ended up doing it.

For more on Edie Arnold Is a Loser, you can check it out here.

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