Milo Richards talks the making of short film ‘Fishy’

Behind the scenes photo from Milo Richards short film Fishy Photo by Cassie Wright After moving to Atlanta with his friend Harlow Elizabeth Milo Richards was looking for a way to break into the Atlanta film scene Now having just finished his short film Fishy he might have determined a way Fishy directed by Richards and co-written by Richards and Elizabeth follows a trans woman named Hazel facing down her anxiety as she competes in a local pageant Leading up to and during the competition she becomes overwhelmed by visions that she s turning into a fish Elizabeth stars in the film alongside Atlanta drag icons such as Nicole Paige Brooks and Stasha Sanchez Fishy was filmed at the drag restaurant Lips Atlanta Richards explained he was proud to make a film that featured a cast and crew that represented Atlanta s LGBTQA group It s hard as a filmmaker sometimes to feel seen as a queer person Richards disclosed It can be challenging to abandon various of yourself before walking into the room But percent of our crew were trans identifying and percent were a part of the LGBTQ neighborhood Fishy is now in post-production and gearing up for a festival run Rough Draft Atlanta in recent days spoke with Richards about the making of the film This interview has been edited for length and clarity Before we sort of dive into the film itself I d love to hear a little bit about you and how you got into the film industry and decided that this is what you d like to do professionally Milo Richards I moved to Atlanta in January of after graduating I moved from Richmond Virginia and upon graduating I knew I yearned to move to pursue film In coming to Atlanta it s been a lot of meeting people and finding the people that I align with professionally and going from there This project has been a year in the making I wrote it about a year ago with my co-writer Harlow Elizabeth who plays the lead in Fishy We bounced ideas off of one another and finalized it last year This has been what I ve been working on since grounding myself a little bit in Atlanta How did y all initially meet and what were those initial conversations about the story Richards We moved together from Richmond to Atlanta and both her and I had an upbringing in performance spaces We both started as actors Both she and I are trans and in moving and not knowing anyone our only outlet to have work or gain access into nightlife spaces was to do drag She and I had already done it prior When I started doing it I kind of started to realize that it wasn t necessarily something that I aligned with and that I just craved to be classified as an entertainer or an actor instead of having these intricate labels I think a lot of the time as trans people there s that way of thinking where you have to kind of put yourself into a box to gain access to the work I think she started having similar kinds of feelings that it was deeper than just being a drag queen and she was just a woman I think that was something that she had already known but she didn t really get to fully access that part of herself because she was so invested in a persona I think she and I both had that same like-mindedness and that s how this project was born Drag is a performance but there s also this stimulating tension within that of expressing an inner identity I d love to talk about the fish of it all If I recall in theater there s this idea of flopping like a fish I think someone even says something to that effect when Elizabeth s character is freezing onstage But it feels like there s something a little deeper as well Richards For this film specifically not only was it she s kind of coming into herself like a fish out of water we ve heard these things before but on a more introspective level in the drag population and the trans population at large fishy is a term that is commonly used It s intertwined with passing so that term in itself has this other layer for queer people where people sometimes are called that kind of alluding to You look like a real woman So the whole layer of the fish allegory and the metaphor here is she s trying to become more of herself but she s having these hallucinations that are kind of taking over and manifesting into her life in this way That s really enthralling Correct me if I m wrong I m pretty sure the version I saw has a tentative number effects and that kind of stuff But the fish makeup looks amazing Richards That was about an eight hour process When we were in our space they brought in Harlow and I was like Oh my God I knew it was gonna look great but I had no idea it was going to look that incredible I m really grateful for our special effects unit to have made the illusion realizable because we see Hazel s character in three different lights throughout the film We see her as herself as a drag entertainer and then as this entity of the fish There are a lot of layers especially within such a short film of finding yourself and all of these different layers of herself that are presented throughout the film Speaking of that shorter runtime was there anything that you were working on you and Harlow or either one of you separately that you wish could have made it in the film but there wasn t enough space Or has there been a thought of turning this into something larger Richards That was definitely the conversation from the beginning is that this has prospective to be a larger thing But I think as we made intricate cuts and as we were writing it together we both decided that it might just live as an independent entity because I think we get to the point throughout the duration of the short But there were a lot of things that were sacrificed in the writing of the piece Like I reported this is a very personal story and specific of the actual interactions between Hazel and Chad who is her dresser who is played by Nicole Paige Brooks those interactions are very based on a real situation where she was getting ready and her dresser is trying to talk her off the edge So all of these things are integrated into a real life experience for honestly both of us I assume there s such a big anxiety I in the past few days watched Queens of the Dead and I thought that film did a very good job with the central character portraying the anxiety that comes with going on stage And then with this added context it must be so overwhelming at times Richards Absolutely I think a lot of it can be taken for granted because putting forward a persona is a lot easier sometimes than coming out as just yourself stripping down those layers and coming into oneself This film really is for anyone It is about a trans person but I think that we ve all similarly have experienced moments where we might not feel like ourselves or that the world might perceive us in a way that we don t necessarily align with So I think it s really major that this story is just for everyone You mentioned that you started out in the acting space I d love it if you could talk about making that transition from in front of the camera or on stage to behind the camera and what the challenges of that have been Richards I started out as an actor in Richmond I was doing Shakespeare professionally and that was my forte I was really lucky with experiences as a high schooler to be able to be stepping into a professional setting at a young age But I do think that as I was kind of coming into myself there were a lot of other layers throughout college that I felt as an actor were a little limiting There are not enough roles for trans people a lot of the time and a lot of the time it fits into a very niche box of someone presenting this uncomfortableness A lot of the time I m not interested in playing those roles I m more interested in the fun the delight and the messy in between That s how this film had its break This is my third film that I ve made but this is the biggest one in terms of production and budget and having all of these things solidified I made the transition from acting into directing like in high school I was directing plays That was where I determined my niche And in college I realized I could do it on a bigger scale and do film and TV That really resonated with me because while I still love the theatrics of everything I think I ve really detected a visual language that resonates with me behind the camera that feels so intimate and that can be something that I can keep for the rest of my life That was really special to me Speaking of that visual language did you have any cinematic references or were there movies that you were thinking about as you were making Fishy Richards Absolutely The A movie Aftersun was a really big piece of inspiration for me Just the cinematic stillness of being away and the isolation that film really encapsulates was a big one for me Same with The Holdovers if you ve ever seen it That film for me did the same thing That s the inspiration for the beginning of the piece When we get into the pageant I would say a reference was Hedwig and the Angry Inch That was one we looked at a lot Then as I started sending the script off to people people were like This really reminds me of Black Swan I was like That s honestly a good point I never thought about I rewatched Black Swan and was like This is a fantastic point of reference for this film An enthralling thing with this piece has been seeing it grow and develop throughout the duration of it It s a totally different script and story all throughout each stage of production We ve had actors coming into this space who are definitely of this lived experience As drag entertainers and drag queens they are coming from a unique perspective that is more grounded in the room and what the situation may entail It was a blessing to have Nicole Paige Brooks and Stasha Sanchez They both have such a large district impact on this film Stasha Sanchez is a pageantry legend She s a former Miss Continental and she s had a show in The Heretic that is the longest running Black cast in the United States She just has such a large locality footprint and such a great impact on this story She brought such an force I can t say anything but good things about her She brought such a unique presence to the room She was on HBO Max s Legendary It was awesome to have her Nicole is a hoot and holler She is so funny and very much to my point has the same kind of relationship with drag She s been in the tournament for a very long time It was really fundamental to me that these were not just actors and these were people who even if they didn t have the experience really on camera in this vein they were present throughout I feel like if you re a performer even if you re not used to being on camera you re aware of how your body works You re aware of what you look like so it s easier to make that transition Richards I think that the transition for selected of them it was I can t speak for everyone but in directing them I think there was a little layer of no the camera s rolling right now This is happening This is it This is the moment right here When we shot this stuff on the stage it was perfectly fine because everyone knows what they re doing But when you re out of those kinds of intimate moments and there are not people there to applaud it s a entirely different ballpark It was a little more heavy lifting but it was so worth it We shot this throughout four days The entire film was shot in four days and it was a tough four days But it was absolutely incredible How exactly did Stasha and Nicole end up on board How did you make that contact Richards Since I had been performing in Atlanta I knew of these people I reached out to Nicole and she already knew my face Truly when I sat down with her she s so funny she noted I m supposed to be meeting with a director And I mentioned That s my script That s my script in your hand Laughs She was really interested in the project and was saying how it was critical to her to be involved especially with her trajectory right now on Drag Race and coming back for All Stars I think she was honestly the perfect person to consider for the role I really saw Stasha perform at The Heretic and I had been looking for this role for a really long time I just saw how she commanded the room And honestly at the show that I was at it was kind of early on into the night and there weren t as multiple people there So the interactions that she was having with the people really stood out to me I emailed her after I saw her that night and she took the role Wow that s amazing Inevitably send the email Richards Right Unfailingly send the email It s fine to get a no every now and then but just send it It s been a super eye-opening experience for me honestly just to feel trusted to be able to tell a story like this I m so grateful that we were able to get them You filmed at Lips Atlanta is that correct And you used to bartend there or you still do Richards I still bartend there right now That s the other thing just the group tools that you might not think are available to you I was writing this and I was like I think it necessities to happen here That has to happen It was honestly incredible that we were able to tell the story at Lips because a lot of the queens also work there I think it all speaks to a bigger thing that these things are authentically happening in the south and there is still nightlife available and accessible to people even with everything going on What is next for this film as you look toward the future Richards We just won a grant from Film Impact Georgia They gave us various money to be able to have our first screening at the Tara Right now we re in the process of submitting it to festivals We re hoping to have its world premiere early next year and we ll have the screening available to people at the Tara We ve submitted to South by Southwest and Sundance and the Atlanta Film Festival We re gearing up for more submissions as we approach that final cut It s really rewarding and I think that I have a good head on my shoulders about the whole process I think that it will be an impactful film and a vessel for educational purposes just to be able to talk about this more Especially being artists in the south it s very significant to spotlight these things because I know there are so numerous people who might feel this way or have this awkward in-between phase where you might not look how you d like to present yourself It s central to continue these conversations and honor those spaces where people might just not feel how they present The post Milo Richards talks the making of short film Fishy appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta