“Daddy’s Playground,” created by and starring Boni Mata and Ashley Morgan, is a kinetic, darkly humorous tale of feminine agency. We asked the duo, alongside the film’s director, Mitchell deQuilettes, how the project came to be, about finding the right tonal balance, and some recent films they’ve loved…

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

Mitch: Honestly, I've been interested in filmmaking since I was 12. I'm from a rural lake town outside of Seattle, Washington and there wasn't much to do other than sports, drugs, or sit in front of the television. My parents were divorced, and my Indonesian father was the "fun" dad on the weekends and we'd watch 'R' rated films together to connect. He showed me films like Princess Mononoke, Fight Club, True Romance, and The Craft. One time he took me to the theater to see Kill Bill Vol. 1. I instantly became obsessed with the editing, shot choices, and Tarantino's ability to create drama through referential satire. I didn't know how to put what I just said into words back then, but nonetheless, I was shooketh.

Ashley: I'm a performance and visual artist and love telling stories with my body in many forms - so I think capturing this energy is what really led me to filmmaking.

Boni: Both Ashley and I have a background in journalism - we worked for the campus news station and newspaper, respectively, at UC Berkeley. I think our passion for storytelling in any and all forms is really what feeds our obsession with filmmaking. For me personally, I've always been interested in portraying on-screen what I see and feel IRL but that is grossly underrepresented in film as we know it. For Daddy's Playground, we wanted to touch on sex work (usually cast away as deviant or illicit) becoming a common, almost mainstream practice - as easy as riding Uber, for example.

2) What’s the backstory here - the initial seed of inspiration, and how you went about building from there?

Ashley: The main seed for this film was that so many women we know - us included - have experienced or at least considered the notion of sugar relationships as supplemental income. I was also a "work wife" (an assistant) to a couple different Hollywood people and felt discouraged that I had to exist in their world and get my paycheck from them packaging and selling bullshit stories without being able to tell the ones that I saw as being the most important. Boni and I lived together and when we're together we just have this madness energy - so eventually we were just like "oh yeah, we have to make this." I think this project for us has been our outlet through which we have channeled a lot of pent up rage with the current state of the patriarchy. In trying to dismantle it, we didn't necessarily have the tools to understand how to - so we were just like - "okay kill them all." We were also very frustrated with this culture of relationships becoming so transactional under the current state of techno-capitalism.

3) Can you talk about finding the tone for this film - it's an interesting blend, both really dark and stylized, but also weirdly funny at times and self-aware. What was the hardest thing to get right in terms of tone? Were their scenes that you filmed that didn't get used or were significantly trimmed down?

Mitch: I consider myself a chameleon director. Every project is different and I always attempt to mold myself around the emotional core of the film. For Daddy's, I was really drawn to Ashley and Boni's sense of humor and their unconventional storytelling. They're both really funny and self-aware in person, so it was important for me to create a visual language that helped translate their essence. In prep everyone knew the tone going in... play it straight, but have fun with dialogue, which was written to be self-aware and Lynchian. Also, every actor playing a Daddy knew they represented an archetype surrounding the patriarchy, so it allowed them to play it in a more expressionistic approach. For visual palette, I was really influenced by David Fincher's 'The Game'. We cut down half of the bathroom scene with our Daddy Rossi because it started to get a little too preachy, but otherwise everything else is in there. We wanted the edit to feel like we were in the heads of two ADD millennials so if things feel jumpy or disjointed sometimes that was an artistic choice. 

Ashley: A lot of the tone is just stream of consciousness from Boni and I. The darkness was truly what we were feeling and the humor is our way to mask how dire we really felt about the world - I think that's our best defense mechanism :) I think the self-awareness is our way of recognizing that this obviously isn't the right way to be solving problems - but we just have to show it and put it out there. When we met Mitch he really understood this feeling we had too, and has an encyclopedic mind for film so we watched a bunch of movies together and helped us shape this dark vision. We definitely had so much fun with all of our Daddies and wish we could have included more of their performances! 

Boni: We had to unfortunately cut down a lot of the their screen time so as not to sacrifice the ultimate feeling of quantity over depth - it was important that we maintained the message that these characters are largely disposable. We wanted to show a whole spectrum of stereotypical "Daddy" figures while also giving them some redeemable, almost endearing qualities. I think what's especially humorous (and thereby dark) about the film is that the people we murder aren't necessarily evil. They're representational. So in Rose and Teddy's fucked up psyches, it's more of a numbers game than a true revenge narrative.

4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

Mitch: Hal Ashby's 'Shampoo'. This film is a prime example where all the actors know they are playing satires of themselves but it's told so straight and human that it feels fucking real. I love the blocking, the camera movement, and dialogue. So much social and political commentary without hammering any message on the head. I think this is one of the greatest satires ever made. Warren Beatty sacrifices his reputation as a respectable actor to play a sociopath hairdresser, who chases his labido tale around 1970's Hollywood. Robert Towne, who wrote Chinatown, co-wrote this with Beatty. Goldie Hawn and Julie Christie are at their best here. I'm obsessed.

Ashley: Benny's Video - I don't know if this makes me a sociopath, but I think this film hits the nail on the head of desensitization we were trying to channel into Daddy's - that we relate to but DON'T want to feel. 

Boni: Ashley showed me the movie Secretary recently. It's been one of her favorites for years. I love how it doesn't sit well with contemporary feminism. I'm interested in films that can be read as potentially problematic rather than overly safe. I don't think we can ever progress without unpacking uncomfortable truths, especially when it comes to sexuality and gendered power dynamics.

5) What’s next for you?

Boni: We're writing the feature script of Daddy's Playground. In doing so, we're going through a sort of therapeutic process of grappling with our own notions of feminism and where we want to exist in the world going forward. This is a very intense and exciting time for women right now, but there's still so much work to be done. We want to do justice to the conversation while still being provocative in terms of truth-telling. I think now more than ever is a time for women of all identities to be writing their own narratives, writing their own roles, and pushing back against this easily-digestible and non-threatening farce we've been forced into since the Platonic era.

Contact Info:

Mitchell deQuilettes: Website: http://www.mitchelldequilettes.com/ | Instagram: @mitchdequilettes

Boni Mata Website: http://www.bonimata.com/ | Instagram: @bonimata

Ashley Morgan Website: https://www.ashleydmorgan.com/ | Instagram: @fitmothernature