Jordan Tetewsky & Joshua Pikovsky’s debut feature, Hannah Ha Ha, is exclusively available for streaming on Fandor…
“Probably the minority of people were involved in film before doing the movie,” said co-director Joshua Pikovsky, on shooting his Slamdance award-winning debut feature, Hannah Ha Ha. His directing partner Jordan Tetewsky added, “It’s all people we’re close and connected with.”
The more one peels back the curtain on Tetewsky & Pikovsky’s coming-of-age drama, the more it reveals itself as a crash course in barebones, DIY indie filmmaking. Between relying on favors from friends and family to round out the cast and crew, shooting in their New England hometown, and an already short production schedule made shorter by temperamental weather, Hannah Ha Ha is the product of an unrelenting, upstart spirit. One that only persists with fierce ambition and ironclad resolve to push through unwarranted obstacles and will into existence a story you haven’t seen told before.
Tetewsky & Pikovsky are two nose-to-the-grindstone creatives who balanced the very practical limitations of making a low-budget indie film, with their larger visionary ambitions. In so doing, they crafted a quintessential film about holding onto yourself in your 20s when confronted with a status quo that insists upon itself.
Steeped in authenticity, Hannah Ha Ha captures the charms, foibles, and frustrations of country town living, while centering the often overlooked fixtures that make up a community’s fabric. It’s a tender yet confident, quietly profound slice-of-life story and one of the year’s finest debuts.
Hannah Ha Ha hones in on an increasingly pivotal moment in many young people’s lives, particularly in America: turning 26 and being dropped from your parents’ health insurance coverage. After a visit from her well-intentioned yet condescending brother (Paul), the titular Hannah is compelled to re-evaluate her small town life as a community do-gooder and seek out more “stable” employment.
The role of Hannah is played by Hannah Lee Thompson, a musician by trade and old college friend of Tetewsky’s. In 2021, the two and Pikovsky collaborated on “Hannah in April,” Thompson’s official acting debut, which served as a “prototype of the workflow” for their feature. The directing duo continued to put their trust in Thompson for Hannah Ha Ha, a film where she’s in just about every scene during its 75-minute runtime — an increased responsibility coming from the 10-minute short. And yet, Thompson crafts a beautifully grounded performance, bringing a warmth, aimlessness and relatability to the good-natured protagonist. Her nuanced turn makes Hannah into both an embodiment of the larger archetypes and smaller specificities of being a young person in the throes of an identity reassessment.
Tetewsky’s wayfaring camera captures small town life in “blending together” (as he puts it) the various fragments of a community that make it a distinct whole. A faded, melancholic glow casts Hannah’s endeavors in a universality — this can be any 26-year-old in any US town — ultimately, wrapping a timely story in a timeless package.
In a sit-down interview with Flickering Myth, Tetewsky & Pikovsky spoke about the trials and tribulations (and spontaneous moments of brilliance) of indie filmmaking, including their darkest day on set, how they settled on the film’s singular visual style, the appeal and influence of Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy and the ceaseless marathon of an 11-day film shoot. Not to mention that gleaming question for any director(s) of a successful debut feature — what’s next?
This movie was filmed in your hometown, and it stars a friend from college and your dad, Jordan. What made you decide to make a movie that, quite literally, hit so close to home?
Jordan: A lot of it came from pragmatism. We had started doing these smaller scale [productions] as a way of getting our work finished at an expedited rate. And through doing several short films, we found this workflow that really worked well for us and this means. We just really enjoyed writing the material with these things in mind.
Joshua: I really think the pragmatism is a part of it — we have a lot of connections to our hometown, we go there all the time — but also, it’s easier to make a movie if you can just house people at your parent’s place. You know every single street and every turn in town, and there’s friends living all over town who can help you out. So there’s a mix of pragmatism and just our connection we have to the town we grew up in. Probably the minority of people were involved in film before doing the movie. I feel like most people were just impressed off the streets.
Jordan: Even Hannah is not really in film. It’s all people we were close and connected with.
I know this was Hannah’s first feature film, and she’s in just about every scene. As directors, what drew you so much to her as the lead of this story? Were there any ways that her interpretation of the character surprised you from what was down on the page?
Jordan: For me, it was a connection with her for 10 years and really wanting to make something. We had done [the short film, “Hannah in April”] first, and it was sort of a prototype of the workflow, of working with Hannah and this style of filmmaking. It just felt really good while we were on set, and we wanted to replicate that for the summer. We thought Hannah would just be a very compelling person to watch as a sort of representation of things that our generation is going through.
Joshua: I feel like Hannah, the character on the page, is a little more introverted and passive, and I think Hannah stuck close to that, but there were times where her own personality came through more, even just in her facial expressions. Even though she never totally strayed from who the character’s supposed to be, Hannah in real life is more of a fighter, and I think you can see that in the glint in her eye in certain scenes. I think that adds a really compelling quality to the performance.
One of the first things that I noticed while watching the movie is its distinct visual style. How did you settle on Hannah Ha Ha’s aesthetic, particularly the faded focus, melancholic glow? And Jordan, how much convincing did you need to do to Josh to make that happen?
Jordan: None.
Joshua: This time none. But in the past some. That’s a great question.
Jordan: [Sarcastic] It’s like when you get used to bad things you start to like them more.
Joshua: Jordan’s just bludgeoned me into [liking it more].
Jordan: It’s almost like a form of mind manipulation, brain-washing. It’s like that allegory of the cave. Josh hasn’t seen things that look different than this.
Joshua: I’ve only ever seen our movies, so it’s hard for me to imagine [anything else]. You can get yourself to like just about anything. You know? If there’s an album you really want to like that’s challenging, you can listen to it over and over again and eventually convince yourself it’s good. So that’s sort of been a slow process.
Jordan: And I’ve also been victim to this thing, too.
Joshua: But yeah, that’s a great question. Jordan, do you want to… you love this question.
Jordan: I do like [the visual style]. I think it’s a funny story to have afterwards. I like it for what it gives you as a story afterwards. I do like the blooming highlights, I do like the impressionistic feel. I think we’ve also solved the softness thing with our follow-up picture. I like how colors bleed into each other, and I like that there is this soft, hazy quality.
Joshua: I was rewatching part of it recently, and I feel like one thing I really liked about the hazy look is that, especially watching it in the dead of winter, it made me really miss summer. Because the haziness does feel like the mugginess in the air. It was really hot for a lot of the shoot and that aspect really makes you feel the summer heat. It’s really nice, I think.
Hannah Ha Ha is masterful at nailing not just authenticity, but this authentic absurdity that you usually find in the corporate and professional world. I think of Paul’s home office set-up and him behind his standing desk while talking mumbo jumbo on the phone. Or Hannah’s start-up job interview. And it’s so real and ridiculous. How do you ride that line between this authenticity and then this, almost, absurdity?
Joshua: Yeah, that’s a good question, because we are even right now writing another script. We’re always trying to walk this really fine line.
Jordan: Everything though, as cartoonish as it can be, is just very real. There are too many people who just have this cadence and speak like that. It does almost read as satire, but it is also direct quotes. Both are true. Humans have become satires of themselves.
Joshua: And it’s funny, sometimes we’ll do direct quotes. And it’ll be like, “This reads way too insane. This reads way too on the nose, even though it’s real.” There’s a lot of difficult decisions. It’s a very hard, intangible line where if you put too much of that stuff, you start to lose the feeling of realism and sincerity, and it starts to feel like a very cynical, satirical thing. But it’s a weird gut feeling. Sometimes you feel like this is too ridiculous, but that is something we’re always struggling with because, at least for me, nothing is really complete without sadness and humor and the sincerity and the poking fun at the world. But it’s very hard to balance the two of them out.
I can’t get over Roger Mancusi in this movie as this NPR-listening, millennial rise-and-grinder. Paul is at first this obnoxious disruptor in Hannah’s life, but the conclusion I came to, is, well, he may have a point. What is it about that archetype of a person that you found so compelling? And then, what made you decide to add shades to that archetype to make Paul more human?
Joshua: I think that’s kind of the interesting thing, just about most people. Even in regular life, you can find yourself interacting with people where it brings you a lot of satisfaction to just make fun of them after with someone and to flatten out into a caricature. But then, also, a lot of these people, if you do end up talking to them one on one, it doesn’t diminish their negative qualities, but you do start to realize that the portrait is more complicated. So even someone like Paul, I find him utterly detestable in a lot of ways, but I do think that by the end of the movie, he does become a more complicated character. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything he does is right. It just means the usual kind of messy reality, where people are always, for good or bad, more complicated than you think.
Jordan, you have said that Kelly Reichardt has been a guiding influence in your career, in terms of your own aesthetic. What dimensions or shades of her films resonate with you and how did you fold that influence into Hannah Ha Ha?
Jordan: I think a lot of it has to do with how she focuses on characters on the fringes — none of them are stable or living stable lives. They’re just on the fringes of their life almost completely falling apart. The limited options and the lack of mobility of the characters she’s focusing on, specifically in Wendy and Lucy. Old Joy, which is another big reference for us — I like the complexity and the dynamic between the two guys, who are in very different places in life.
Joshua: A big guiding idea for us is how can we do as much as we can with very little. And especially Old Joy and Wendy & Lucy are movies that are very simple in terms of what they are about… and the movies do so much with very little it seems, but they end up being way more emotional, complex, and thoughtful, and overall beautiful experiences. So, that idea of focusing on simple character relationships and then finding all the complexity is very inspiring for both of us.
I always love indie filmmaking war stories, and I know that this movie was shot in 11 days. Can you tell me about your darkest day on set — like a horror story from shooting a movies in 11 days? And then, if you can tell me about a positive, serendipitous moment that happened on set?
Jordan: There were like two or three. We lost our restaurant location and were scrambling for that. We obviously lost our actor [for Paul] right before we went in, but that ended up being… not a good things [laughs], but it elevated the movie in some ways. I don’t even want to go there. There were dark days. There were like four days of rain right at the top. I love that shot of Hannah in the rain, but it almost limited things that needed to get done. 11 days would have been a very reasonable schedule, if it didn’t become basically seven because of four days of rain.
Joshua: Also, just the days were very long, and it was very hot. And for a lot of it we were just kind of stuck in this house where we were shooting all the house scenes. All of our moods were on rollercoasters, I would say.
Jordan: Bad days had great things within them though. One of my favorite scenes shooting-wise was the bonfire stuff at the end of the movie and those all happened at a location that was hard to be around.
Joshua: The classic serendipitous moment was that we were shooting some of the blue hour footage around the house and [production designer Charlie Chaspooley Robinson] was telling us that if you throw rocks up into the air, bats will swoop down. We were just trying to get all of this kind of nice blue hour, summery, nostalgia town footage and we were having a long day, but then Hannah, Charlie and I just started throwing up rocks and bats were swooping down to get them. Jordan was trying to catch them really quickly. It felt like being kids again for a brief moment, before reality crashed in later and we had to scramble to get a bunch of scenes.
What does that constant churn of film production look like at the end of the experience? After an 11 day shoot, are you exhausted? Do you need a week to take time off or are you heading right into the next stage now that you’re in post-production?
Jordan: We headed pretty much straight into the edit because we were trying to turn it around really quick.
Joshua: I’ll tell you exactly what happened when the shoot ended. We shot a stressful scene in the morning, then we got breakfast, and then everyone left, then Jordan and I went to my mom’s house where we shot the big bonfire scene, where we had burned a hole in the yard, and my mom was not pleased. So we’re sleep deprived, exhausted, we’re sweaty and tired. We drove to Home Depot, got a big patch of grass, dragged it to the car, drove back, put it on…
Jordan: Sewed it into the ground…
Joshua: That was the first thing we did upon finishing the shoot.
No time for celebration. Not yet.
Joshua: No time for celebration.
Jordan: We had a nice tea. We had a nice tea with your mom.
Joshua: She was very supportive… I would say we got very tired. Each one of these [feature film shoots]… they’re very stressful and very tiring for sure.
How do you feel now? It’s behind you, the movie’s had a theatrical run. It’s on Fandor streaming. When you look back at Hannah Ha Ha and watch it for the 100th time, are you able to sit back and enjoy it or are you still workshopping it in your head?
Joshua: It’s a mix for me. I feel like there’s a lot of it I enjoy, but then, there are certain scenes I still am thinking about.
Jordan: I’ve seen it a lot more.
Joshua: Yeah, Jordan you’ve seen it a lot more times than me. Because Jordan goes to all the screenings.
Jordan: Every export needs to be checked.
Joshua: But when you watch it, Jordan, do you fixate on the things we didn’t quite get?
Jordan: No, I’m thinking about the next one.
That leads me into my last question. What’s next for you guys, in terms of your feature filmmaking careers?
Jordan: We have a second feature that is wrapping up post right now, and [we’re] trying to get a third one together.
Thanks to Jordan Tetewsky & Joshua Pikovsky for taking the time to speak with Flickering Myth.
Justin Cook
