The feature-length mockumentary, “#Blessed” is a wild ride through the embarrassing and painful life of Dallas Mapleshade, a young performer who goes to great lengths to become a star. We asked directors Rich Costales and Kailee McGee, where it all began, the difference between the lead character and actress, and what most inspires them most…

1) This is quite a doozy. What’s the origin story? Was Dallas Mapleshade a character or persona before this, or this was the intro story?

KM: In 2008, I created the Dallas Mapleshade character and set up a Youtube channel. I wanted to participate in the intimate yet public vlogging space and see how far I could push an egomaniacal and delusional character while still convincing people on the internet that she was real. I did this for many years. I made three short narrative films about her in college, which I have never released. In 2012, Rich and I decided to make a narrative feature film together, but we had no money, so we worked backwards on what we could pull off. Dallas was an appealing vessel yet again.

2) Do you see the character as entirely separate from you or is there overlap? In what ways? Those were your own real home videos, I’m assuming?

KM: People always ask me this, which both tickles and scares me. Maybe it means I’m a convincing actor. Dallas is a fictional character who is inspired by several people in my life — all who I love fondly — one of the main inspirations is my mom. Dallas and I are very different, but yes, there are similarities. We are both artists. We both try to connect. She is pretty gullible, and she doesn’t have great taste. But, what I love about her most is her courage to take risks and her capacity to always be herself. And, oh yeah, those are my real home videos.

RC: Kailee has performed the Dallas Mapleshade character for a long time, and I’ve seen pretty much all of it. I feel like even though they are based on real people in her life, there are also certain character traits that developed organically from improvising in Dallas’s shoes on camera so much. To me there are certain true unique Dallas-isms.

3) This was made a few years back, correct? Can you give a sense of the timeline of the thing. Did it play festivals? Do you try for more traditional distribution? How was the process in general for you? Did you have specific goals or hopes that you achieved or didn’t achieve?

RC: This was made on a shoestring, on a prayer, on a whatever desperate euphemism you want to use over the course of three years from inception to post. And to get it finished, we used years of our resources. It was eventually accepted into the Long Beach Indie Film Festival. We had an amazing premiere with family and friends, and it was a great time. In terms of finding any sort of large audience or following, that festival wasn’t really the most helpful venue for our project. But, after years of searching, we’re very excited that this film gets a fresh audience here on NoBudge because we’re incredibly proud of this film. We had humble hopes, but my advice to our past selves is to be more artistically confident in our work and to push harder.

KM: Art is deadlines. We finished this film in 2014. Distribution and sharing is tricky for me. I have had to let go of my initial goals for the project. My new hope is that at least one person stumbles upon this film on the internet and watches the whole thing and feels delighted.

4) What was the process of working as a co-director? How planned out / outlined / scripted was everything? Was this an actual dedicated production where you were doing it full time, or was it pasted together whenever you could find the time? I love the evolution of the story. It went further than I thought it was gonna go. It’s so well constructed and there’s such a natural flow that feels completely real. Can you discuss creating the story evolution?

KM: Thank you for those kind words. It was most important to us that the story felt completely real and even checked out with committed internet snooping. Everyone in the film plays a character with their own name except me. For a long time, my name was only associated with the film as “producer.” We planned on submitting the film as a documentary for awhile but changed our minds.

Rich and I work splendidly together, and we have complementary skill sets. Since we met at NYU in 2005, it’s always been natural for us to ideate and collaborate. Over a decade later, he is still my go-to person for advice and creative feedback. As co-directors, it’s a fun process, but it’s also a constant conversation. We wrote the story outline together carefully. Then I scripted the film, between freelance jobs. When we went into production, we both paused freelance creative work to put that energy into the film. I worked as a busser at a restaurant in Williamsburg at night and produced the film during the day.

RC: Thanks! We had such low resources to make the film at the time. It was completely scripted word for word. We planned and plotted the low-budgetness into the film for both practical and style reasons from the very beginning. The film was designed to be a low budget mockumentary, which freed us in a way and more able to showcase and lean into the unfinishedness of it all. From the purposefully bad audio to the the shakiness of camera work in scenes that seem like they should have been cut out, to the real non-acting people in the back and foreground of the film; these elements of confusion as to its authenticity make up the sweet spot of stories that both of us are interested in. Especially with all of the audio visual content options that people have these days and even had in 2014! Co-directing was a true partnership, so essentially we produced the film together with even task splitting narrowed down into our own personal skill sets. This was rag-tag as fuck but we actually reeeeeally wanted it to show in an authentic but disorienting way.

5) Can you talk about inspiration? What are you most regularly inspired by, in terms of medium: movies, art, social media personas, etc?

KM: Anything that blurs the line between reality and fiction and life and art. But, everyday humans inspire me the most. I love strangers and pretending to figure them out — at the gym, in line at Trader Joe’s, three levels deep in a random Instagram profile. In general, I like people who participate, and I am drawn to art that is extremely vulnerable and personal. Movies are my favorite thing, and I dig memoirs a great deal too.

RC: The inspiration for this film specifically was Kailee and I being like, “How do we make a feature film that is funny and meaningful and very impactful and of it’s time but also we have literally no money?” #blessed is what we came up with. We wanted to show a unique perspective on the entertainment industry that is not what you think when you think of actors or typical Youtube stars. Using Dallas as a character to explore these unexplored corners of our source material, we were able to tap into what generally inspires us outside of this film. Themes like outcasts, underdogs, belonging, finding and making your own community… to scratch the surface. Personalities like Dallas who demand attention but are also sidelined by 90% of the people that they meet are magical because they represent the insecurities that we all have sometimes. What if when we meet people, they see us in a way that we don’t like? We can’t control it. So, Dallas and many of our ideas embrace the fact that for some godforsaken reason it can be so hard sometimes to be yourself, but we can’t control what other people think, which can make you deeply funny to someone else. Bottom line: we should be good people and we should be ourselves and we should be good to ourselves because life is complicated and weird, but it’s also funny. We’re inspired by things like that I guess.

Bonus question: What else are you working on at the moment?

RC: We’re working on a few new pitches for shows and feature films at the moment as well as producing music videos and short films together. I’m also editing motion picture trailers and all kinds of advertising content at Grandson Creative.

KM: Directing music videos and digital content. Figuring out what to do with The Person I Am When No One Is Looking, an intimate short film that I recently made. Perfecting my morning routine. Several new pieces cookin’ at different stages.

Contact Info:

Kailee McGee - @kittypawsxoxo - kittypawsxoxo@gmail.com

Rich Costales - @richcostalesofficial - Rich.costales@gmail.com

5 Questions with Kailee McGee and Rich Costales