Who do you hope sees this movie?

Jen: I hope Queer kids see this movie and know they're not alone, and I hope everyone else sees it to learn to not just tolerate what makes you and others different, but to celebrate it. Rob: The world needs more empathy, less division.

Jen: So everyone IN THE WORLD should see it.

What is your favorite memory from set?

Jen: Lunch. And not just the food, but the times Icould sit down randomly at a table and have real, meaningful conversations. I might not have known someone's last name twenty minutes ago, but we unpacked some real stuff in that time! I think the material brought out the realness in people and I love that. Human connection at its best.

Rob: A big thing for me is the empathetic education I received. We all knew this was an opportunity to understand one another and we all wanted to. If I got someone's pronoun wrong, I was mortified, but the grace shown to me was beautiful: I was corrected, I apologized, used the right pronoun, and we moved on. No shame, as long as no harm was intended. It sounds so simple, but I've adapted it to many areas of my life.

From a filmmaking standpoint, the fireworks scene was a highlight. Ihad watched fireworks with my daughter and thought the reflections of explosions in her eyes would make an amazing shot. I took some pictures, and showed them to my D.P., Justin Yaroski, who loved the idea. When we found the Immersion Room in Toronto, an interactive projection facility, I thought we might just be able to pull it off.

In low budget filmmaking, you get used to settling sometimes, or not making "the perfect the enemy of the good", but this was an instance where Justin and his team and Matt and his team at the Immersion Room exceeded my expectations with that shot.

Did you prioritize LGBTQ crew?

Jen: We did. Ultimately, we hired the best people for the job, and many of our key crew has worked with us for years. Not all identify as LGBTQ, and we didn't make it a mandate for hiring, but we had a number of LGBTQ crew and our set was so much the better for it. A movie like this benefits so much from a set filled with allies and community members. We absolutely insisted on allyship. We had a code of conduct, detailing that NO HATE would be tolerated. We used people's pronouns on call sheets, if desired, and made sure to have resources available if anyone felt triggered by difficult material. A safe, respectful set can be achieved at any budget, and I'm very proud of ours.

Why was LGBTQ casting important to you?

Rob: It can't be said enough: representation matters, and queer kids need queer role models. Also, so many LGBTQ actors have been denied opportunities in the past, and the community tells their stories most authentically.

how is it as a married couple on set?

Jen: We're probably more cohesive on set than we are at home! We often work together and the boundaries are always the same: no ego, what's best for the movie wins. Rob is laser focused, uber prepared, and was literally moving trucks on set fi we were losing light, and Itrust his instincts completely. Thankfully, he trusts mine as well, so we can have conversations instead of confrontations.

Rob: Jen was the Mama Bear on set, and only she could have seen it through with such kindness and compassion. We dealt with difficult material, and had difficult conversations on set, but Jen made sure it was handled with sensitivity and vulnerable people's safety in mind.

why did you make this movie?

Rob: An awakening started in m e with the Me Too movement and Jen's involvement in that. I always thought of myself as an ally to all, but I never really knew what that meant. I started thinking about all the privilege I was afforded by a power structure whether I deserved it or not and I wanted to do something about it. Allyship, I realized, was not a passive state of intellectual or emotional being. It was a state of action, and I needed to take action. I dug in to doing the work of being an ally and Iwas disturbed by how many biases, assumptions and false narratives Ihad been taught, or simply accepted as truth. And I'm a "woke", liberal, democrat. It made me wonder: how many others need to see how damaging we can be?

The LGBTQ community has always been important to both of us. Both personally and professionally, our lives are immeasurably better because of our involvement with the community. We have watched in horror as the community has been persecuted for no other reason than who they love. In talking to our 2SLGBTQ friends and family, organizations, and of course google, and we found that having ONE supportive adult can mean the world of difference for a Queer kid. Literally the difference between life and death. When we thought about how any kids across the world don't have that, we tried to give them something in the meantime: a story of hope.

Jen: Making movies is the best way we know to reach people, so Ireached out to a brilliant LGBTQ writer l'd been working with, Allie Jennings. We needed an authentic LGBTQ voice, and Allie delivered a funny, poignant, heartbreaking and heartbursting script that blew us away.

Rob: We wanted to tell the story of building a bridge between two people who seem at first to have nothing in common, but end up being just what the other needs.