5 Questions with Ursula Ellis
Ursula Ellis (left) with lead actress, Chloe Roe
The raggedy punk coming-of-age drama, “This is Not a Love Song,” finds its teen lead in a spirited effort to get to her first show in the city. We asked director Ursula Ellis how she got into movies, how this project started, and her punk influences.
1) Can you talk a little bit about your background, and how you first got interested in movies?
Sure! I've mainly gone the educational route -- I went to Northwestern University’s Radio/Television/Film program for undergrad, then decided I wanted to do even more film school and got my MFA in Screenwriting & Directing from Columbia University. Both programs gave me the opportunity to make A LOT of short films and develop longer form projects while exploring what kinds of stories I wanted to tell. Outside of school, I’ve worked primarily as a director, writer, and editor on a wide variety of projects (and am for hire, so reach out, people of the Internet!).
But, I didn’t really think about filmmaking as a potential career choice growing up. While I subjected my best friends in high school to endless movie nights, consisting of the best indie & foreign films the Hollywood Video in Madison, Alabama had to offer, I spent most of my time singing and playing guitar in bands or solo (or in my high school choir, though that’s a little less punk rock to admit). However, there was this very formative period of time in junior high that probably planted the seed.
When my dad deployed to Iraq, I would go with my mom, who is also a writer, to the movie theater every weekend. I remember everything we saw during that time so vividly — I can still recall the tears streaming down my face during Dickie Roberts: Child Star. I don't think anything about that movie was especially tragic, but I was just that vulnerable and ready to latch onto someone else’s emotional experience to sublimate my own. Those weekly screenings taught me that film could be an incredible vehicle for empathy, and when I found myself at a university with a great film program, I realized I had stories of my own that I wanted to tell.
2) What about this project? What was the original idea, and how did it get rolling?
There are elements of punk and various other subcultures in a lot of my projects, but with This is Not a Love Song in particular, I wanted to focus on one very specific experience and convey it as subjectively as possible — going to your first punk show as a female fan. I also wanted to explore the complexities of female friendship during the early teen years. I was both a Cheyenne and a Maggie at different points growing up, and I think a really tough learning experience is when a friendship diverges over something seemingly so inconsequential, but that feels critical at the time.
I started developing the short as a part of a Columbia MFA directing class taught by Tom Kalin, who was in the NYC punk scene in the 90s and offered a lot of great insight. One of the biggest hurdles of production was finding an affordable venue to shoot in NYC, but through a friend of a friend, I met Ariel Bitran of the Brooklyn venue Palisades (RIP), and we were able to work it out. Once we had the venue, we knew the rest of the movie would come together!
3) The passion of your lead actress really sold the film for me. So many movies about music fail to capture that raw enthusiasm, but your film really gets the feelings right. Is this a personal story for you? How did you find your lead, and was she into punk beforehand?
Oh yeah! I got into punk right before my dad deployed, and along with movies, it helped get me through a pretty bumpy start to adolescence. I would buy CDs at the mall of bands I’d found online, then scour their liner notes for more bands to check out. I’m pretty sure I discovered The Clash through Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American. Then I got my first electric guitar in 7th grade and starting teaching some of my friends how to play so we could start our own band — we called ourselves The Betty Projekt… with a “k.” I also definitely forced some friends to come with me to local shows that didn’t always want to, though I think they’ve more or less forgiven me.
But yeah, while the crew consisted mainly of friends from Northwestern & Columbia, casting was a lot more intensive, since I wanted to find actual teens who could identify readily with the characters. Chloe was in a test shoot for a feature scene I’d been workshopping in Tom’s class, and I had pretty strong intuition that she would be the perfect fit for Cheyenne -- she's a versatile, emotionally-attuned actor with a real depth of empathy and complexity. But through the audition process, I was able to discover her rapport with Ocean as well. They worked together so naturally, and a lot of my job was just guiding them through the emotional arc of the narrative and immersing them in the world of the story.
Chloe, Ocean, and our DP, Nick Perron-Siegel, had never been to a punk show in the city before, so I ended up taking them to an all-ages show at ABC No Rio, a storied venue on the Lower East Side. It was definitely special to me to share in the experience of their first show, and it brought back all those feelings of immediacy and intensity. Being part of a scene can be a transcendent and cathartic experience at its best. And I think they might murder me, but in addition to developing a soft spot for Henry Rollins, Chloe and Ocean were both pretty into My Chemical Romance at the time (amongst other things, but that's what stood out).
4) It seems like there’s much more to explore here, about teenage rebellion, coming of age, and punk obsession at a young age. Have you thought about expanding this into a longer form piece, and/or what else are you working on at the moment?
I haven’t thought about making This is Not a Love Song into anything longer in particular, but I’m working on a pilot script right now, War is Kind, that has a lot of similar themes and is also based on my experience growing up an Army brat. The protagonist, Ella, is Cheyenne with a more specific backstory and defined world, and there’s a character named Laurel who is somewhat analogous to Maggie. I've been working on various iterations of this story for almost a decade now, and I'm really hoping folks will respond to it in its most current form.
Otherwise, my Alfred P. Sloan grant thesis short, Crick in the Holler, is currently streaming on Seed&Spark, and I’m submitting my latest two, For George on His 30th Birthday and Ava in the End (written & EP’d by Addison Heimann), to festivals right now. I’ve also started working on a feature project, but it’s a little too early to reveal much — though I will say it has to do with early Christian mysticism, grief, and, of course, rock’n’roll.
5) What are some of your favorite movies, new or old, that you’ve seen recently? And favorite music/punk movies, or other influences that you were drawing from for this film?
I recently saw The Last Picture Show on 35 mm as a part of the Secret Movie Club’s series at The Vista in LA, and while I’m pretty embarrassed to say I’d never seen it before, I appreciated both the film and the quality of the print. I also saw this feature called Ghostbox Cowboy at the Denver Film Festival not long ago that I really liked — it’s hard to encapsulate succinctly, but it's basically about these strange American businessmen in China who hawk fake products. But the protagonist really believes in this device he's trying to sell, and his capitalistic pipe dream turns into a distressing nightmare. And then in the vein of This is Not a Love Song, I unexpectedly loved Mid 90s -- great performances and just a lot of heart.
In terms of punk films, Penelope Spheeris is the indisputable master, in my humble opinion. The Decline of Western Civ docs are canonical, as is her Roger Corman-backed punk squatter melodrama, Suburbia. And it’s a bit more on the skate punk side of things, but I am also a big fan of Larry Clark’s Wassup Rockers. His process of devising a narrative around a real-life group of kids that at once doesn’t shy away from their hardships, but also enables them to engage with their fantasies, has always resonated with me. Ghost World was also a huge influence on This is Not a Love Song and my life writ large.
Contact Info:
Email: ursula.ellis@gmail.com.
IG: @ursykay
Twitter: @UrsMaGurse
Facebook: @ursula.k.ellis