Interview — Part 1: Sean Hartofilis (“Beach Pillows”)

From Ivy League lacrosse star to writer-director of the new indie film Beach Pillows starring Geoffrey Arend, Vincent Kartheiser, Annette O’Toole, and Richard Schiff, the career path of Sean Hartofilis has been an interesting one. Recently I spoke with Sean about life as an indie filmmaker and Beach Pillows which has just been released on iTunes and other digital platforms.

In Part 1, Sean discusses his love for movies and how he got to where he is today:

Scott: How would you describe the journey you had from your days at Princeton to coming to work in the entertainment business?

Sean: Well, I started making films at school. We didn’t have a filmmaking major when I was there. I studied politics. But I guess I would consider film to have been a minor. I took all the filmmaking classes that were offered and probably spent more time on those than my other classes combined, writing, directing, and editing movies.

I moved home to Long Island after I graduated in 2003 and wrote the first half of Beach Pillows in a month or so. Maybe two months, I don’t remember exactly. Then I moved to Los Angeles with a friend of mine from high school and wrote the second half. It was optioned pretty quickly thereafter by a company in New York called Iron Films.

I never really got anything going with them, but they sold the option to Reason Pictures in LA. Common story, I’m sure: the chicken/egg paradox as a first time filmmaker. They want you to have done something in order to let you do something, so the first one is tough sledding. We never turned the corner, and that option eventually expired.

I wrote other stuff, worked in production in LA, assisted some directors and producers. I eventually moved back to New York and decided, “Everyone likes this material, responds well to it. Why don’t I just try to attach the actors and make it a real commodity to investors?” Because, again, I didn’t really have much to hang my hat on.

My friend Jesse Hoy from LA randomly shared some pictures from his bachelor party at some point, and I noticed Geoffrey Arend in there. I’ve loved his work since seeing him in Super Troopers in college and thinking he stole the show in that, so I asked Jesse if he could get him the script, and Geoffrey read it pretty quickly — on his cell phone, I think — loved it, and attached himself.

Jesse became a producer for me moving forward. He’s also the drummer in a band called The Deadly Syndrome, whom I’ve loved for years. My hometown friend Mike Hughes is also in that band, and they were kind enough to let me use a bunch of their music in the movie. Deer Tick, a band people might know, also provided a bunch of songs. I got really lucky there, because I love this music so much and it inspired me throughout the whole process, even before I had any relationship with a lot of these people.

Sorry if I’m rambling here. [laughs] It’s been like a decade, so I’m trying to get it all in.

Geoffrey normally plays kind of comedic, second fiddle roles. I thought to myself, “Well, you’re a tall guy.” He does so much physically and with his eyes that I suspected he might be great for this different, quieter lead. He reminded me of John Cazale. And I saw him doing well in the role of Morgan, kind of the artist who speaks less and observes and reacts a little more.

Geoffrey’s married to Christina Hendricks. So I said, “There’s this guy on your wife’s show, Vincent Kartheiser, who hasn’t done anything like this, but some things I’ve seen him do on the show make me think he might be great for the character of Nick.” Specifically, I think there’s a Christmas episode where he dances. Some other, maybe Kentucky Derby episode, where he’s got this choreographed dance where he really smiles a lot. There was just an element of that character I hadn’t seen previously that I really responded to and thought people would appreciate.

Geoffrey said, “This character actually reminded me of Vinnie a lot. We know each other from before Mad Men. He introduced Christina and me and was a groomsman at my wedding.”

So that was serendipitous. Vinnie took a little longer to read it, but he read it, loved it, and signed on. That gave me the cachet to approach investors and raise the money to make it.

It also allowed us to bring on people like Richard Schriff and Annette O’Toole, who enjoyed the script and were willing to give a week of their time. Those two are both such wonderful, real people, and I think they inspired everyone with their work and just the way they carried themselves.

Anyway, it all kind of came together once I said, “Let me just make this myself.” That might be a good lesson to any writers out there. If there’s something that’s not getting done, something that needs to get done to make it happen, see about doing that thing.

This is a business where the more good ingredients you can add to whatever pot you’re trying to sell — to make it a commodity to people or marketable — just makes your life easier. Assuming you have quality work that you feel an actor will respond to, it’s a good route.

I think more and more films are getting made that way and there are more and more avenues to distribute them. That’s where we’re at.

Scott: So it all started way back in 2003, a decade ago when you first had this idea. What was the inspiration for the movie Beach Pillows?

Sean: Initially, the product of a Beach Pillow was inspired by a discussion with my friend Brian Caslin. So it started out as a real thing, an idea we had that we were excited about, and then I thought it’d be a great idea for a movie. Just the creative spirit it represented, I suppose, and the idea of being comfortable wherever you are.

You write what you know, but specifically, this kind of story…I always wanted my first story to be a bildungsroman, a coming of age story, and even the specific subset kunstlerroman, which concerns the development of an artist. Whether it’s something like I Vitelloni, The 400 Blows, Mean Streets, Withnail & I, or even literature like This Side of Paradise, The Sun Also Rises, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, or A Fan’s Notes…those type of personal stories about where a person is from, and whom they’re from, were always very inspiring to me.

That said, I didn’t want a story where you have a main character who’s kind of navel-gazing the entire time, wondering what to do with his life. I always responded to these stories, at least on film, more in the context of brother’s keeper stories, where you have more of an ego and an id, which would be Nick in this case. You’ve kind of got someone to incite and inspire the action. I love The Graduate, but even in that you have this interesting, incestuous love triangle. So it’s not just the one guy banging his head against a wall. This is probably more like Laurel and Hardy or The Odd Couple or even something like Swingers. The Fighter would be a modern representation. Even Raging Bull is a brother’s keeper story. Husbands, Scarecrow, The Big Lebowski, Midnight Run, Superbad…all very much that kind of narrative.

I see Nick and Morgan as two sides of one personality. And they kind of have to learn from each other in order to become full people.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Sean digs into the two lead characters in the movie and some of the story’s key themes.

A Vulture feature on Vincent Kartheiser and his involvement in Beach Pillows.

Beach Pillows is available on iTunes here.

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