World Premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival

Benjamin Howard has been working toward his debut feature film, earning his M.F.A. in Film Production / Directing at UCLA, and honing his craft through directing commercials, music videos, and most notably, several short films. His undergraduate film “Deviant” received a Student Emmy Award in 2019, and his short film “Rendezvous”, which serves as the foundation for his first feature film, was able to tour the festival circuit, also winning a number of prestigious awards.

Not only has Benjamin Howard honed his craft in “Riley”, but the full run-time has also afforded him the opportunity to explore sexual identity and coming-of-age to a complete and unflinching degree. It is unquestionably evident that this raw coming-of-age story is enhanced by Howard’s own vulnerabilities and willingness to explore aspects of his journey that have gotten him to where he is today.

As described by the Calgary International Film Festival, ambitious high school athlete Dakota Riley begins his senior year like most of his peers: within the confines of the steady monotony that comes with adolescence – sports, classrooms, dinner tables, and school halls.

With high expectations for his athletic pursuits, Dakota lives within carefully designed boundaries, a calculated blueprint upon which he’s formed the basis of his identity. But when the reality of that identity is thrown into disarray, Dakota is forced to confront the consequences of denying himself or coming to terms with who he really is.

Filled with terrific performances, including a star-making turn by Jake Holley, this stunning feature debut from writer-director Benjamin Howard eschews cliches, resulting in one of the best coming-of-age films in years.

My conversation with Benjamin was inspiring, as we discussed what makes Riley so “real”, developing a short film into a feature film, and the personal aspects of the film that allow it to resonate so deeply.

Editing a Feature Film and Initial Forays into Storytelling

Adam Manery
You wrote this film, you directed this film, and you also edited this film. Was this a result of the indie filmmaking process, or do you enjoy being involved in all of these different roles? 

Benjamin Howard
It started with the old adage to “write what you know”, so this personal story made sense to put onto paper. In terms of the editing specifically, it was partially “well, I don’t have a whole lot of money to bring an editor on board”, but it was also, “I love editing, I really like editing”. I’ve been a freelance editor for years, and I think I’m a quick editor,  so I thought I could do it. I’ve got this timeline that I’m working with, I can fit within that timeline, and I also enjoyed the process. I could be totally wrong by saying this, but I feel like I’m an objective editor even with my own work. I know when a take didn’t work and that I should drop it. Or if a sequence isn’t playing or landing the way I want it to, so it needs to go. I was able to do that, albeit with a ton of help from folks obviously, giving me notes and feedback. So, ultimately, it was two-sided. Yes, I can’t really afford an editor, but I also really enjoy editing, so let me try and cut this myself.

Before we dive more deeply into Riley, I came across something mentioning that one of the first films you ever made was asking a date to prom. Is that true? Was that a part of your early film experience?

Yes, that’s my true debut! It was my senior year of high school, and prom season was coming around. My buddy and I were thinking of a cool “prom-posal” because they were a big thing at the time and probably still are. We were trying to decide what could be a really cool way to ask our dates to prom and it was early on in my interest in storytelling through film and filmmaking and the process of how that all gets done. So I said, “what if we make a little movie” and he was down. So I wrote it and we both starred in it, with my brother’s help. He was taking film classes at a local junior college at the time, so he acted as our cinematographer and I was directing for the first time. I didn’t even know what that was, but I was doing it. We pieced together this seven-minute short film of two guys trying to figure out a way to ask their dates to prom. At the very end of the short, they approach the classroom where these girls are supposed to be in class. On the actual day, we asked the teachers if we could show the movie in class and they said yes! At the end of the movie, the guys walk up to the doors and the movie ends, but on the day, my buddy and I actually walked in and had signs and asked them out right then and there. So that was my early dive into storytelling and film, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I haven’t looked back since.

Coming to Terms With Sexuality and Creating a Raw and Real Film

Fast forward a decade and you have your first feature film coming out. It stars Jake Holley as Dakota Riley, and you’ve been quite open about this being a deeply personal film. In the end, how similar was Dakota’s experience of being a high school football player and coming to terms with his sexuality compared to your experience at that time?

In some ways it is very similar and then in other ways it’s not so similar. I took some creative liberties and maybe even lived vicariously through Dakota. He’s more of a womanizer in the movie than I was back then. But there are certain elements of talking with your buddies, your football teammates, and guys are having these fun, raunchy, ridiculous, stupid conversations about girls. I’m trying to fit in and I completely remember those moments in high school, so I wanted to pull from that experience and that truth and put it on screen. So, some of those things were definitely pulled from real life, but then the other things, not so much.

What stands out to me throughout the entire runtime is how raw and real it is. There are no moments that felt manufactured. There are moments that are meant to make the viewer uncomfortable because the reality is, you are showcasing uncomfortable experiences. I was hoping you could talk about the decisions you made to keep this film so “real”. 

It goes back to wanting to tell the truth. Those uncomfortable instances on screen were certain aspects of what I actually experienced ten, eleven, twelve years ago. A lot of gay and queer men have seen the film and it has resonated with them so much. Friends and friends of friends who have caught the film have said “oh my gosh, this was me in high school. You were doing that too?”. But, it’s also a universal thing – straight and gay. I’ve had straight friends also relate to what was happening. And maybe we are allowed to talk about it, maybe it’s not so weird that it happened, and maybe it’s totally normal.

To the point of the uncomfortable element, that’s what it was back then. It was just so terribly awkward and uncomfortable, but also exciting to be discovering these things about yourself in real time with your close friends. I wanted to take that and not be a provocateur in doing so, but tell the truth. That’s just how high school goes sometimes. It’s kind of like the unrated version of Love, Simon. It’s going to be a little more awkward, a little more down and dirty. It really comes back to what happened back then. That’s what I want to tell. I want to tell the truth, and that’s what happened to me. That’s what happened to a lot of people. Let’s try to tell that story.

Adapting a Short Into a Feature and Working With a Talented Cast

That’s why this is a story that needs to be heard and needs to be shared. Before this feature film, you had a proof of concept short film called “Rendezvous”, also starring Jake Holley as Dakota Riley. Did you always know it would carry into a feature film?

“Rendezvous” was initially made as a standalone. We made that short thinking it was going to be it. We went through the process, a four day shoot, I cast Jake Holley, we got J.B. Waterman, and he was wonderful. We make the film, and that was basically that. And then when it came time to decide how to get a feature off the ground, I liked being in the world of “Rendezvous” and exploring that element. So maybe we just stay in it and we see if this character of Dakota has more to say. Is there more that we can explore with him? I wrote the feature version and it was always like “Rendezvous”, just four times as long. That’s how we approached the feature and “Rendezvous” essentially turned into a proof of concept. It was the nuts-and-bolts version of what Riley came to be.

You got to work with Holley and Waterman in both “Rendezvous” and Riley, and they gave very strong performances. Besides those two, the performance that really stood out to me was Connor Storrie’s portrayal of Liam. How did he come on board, and what was it like working with him?

You’re right, Jake and J.B. are stellar. Just incredible actors and artists to work with. Getting on set with them every day was just a playground of “let’s try this, let’s do this, what do you think?”. It was incredible. They’re the best.

When it comes to Connor, he’s a scene stealer. People who watched early cuts asked me, “who is this guy?”. They were insistent that I don’t touch anything. That it’s just perfect. Everything with Connor was great, and he was awesome to work with. He was actually a late edition to the film. We had a casting call go out, and we had a handful of actors come in. The role called for something specific and I wasn’t completely sure if I was getting that from the guys who were coming in. Connor was one of them, and he read, and he was excellent, and I wanted to go with him, but the role was calling for something else. It was a back-and-forth with my casting director. I was ready to pull the trigger on an actor, but I wasn’t totally convinced that I was going in the right direction, and that I might show up on set when it was time to shoot and have a gut feeling that it wasn’t right. So, I had a phone call with my casting director, and I was 60 seconds away from sending him and email telling him to lock someone in. I call Paul and tell him that I’m having second thoughts. What do you think we need to do? What do you suggest? And Paul said that whoever had the best audition, regardless of what the role is calling for, regardless of what you think it needs to be, or what we want it to be, or whatever it is, who had the best performance? Well, that was Connor. The best performance. The best audition. So Connor’s the guy.

It was a quick pivot into getting Connor locked in. The role was originally going to be in Spanish class instead of a French class, so the character was going to have to be fluent in Spanish. So I really needed someone who speaks this foreign language. Connor just so happens to speak French fluently, so it was really easy. It was perfect. It was serendipitous. Everyone loves what he delivers on screen, along with all of the other actors, and I want to work with all of them a lot more.

Intimacy Coordinators on Set and Coming Out to Yourself First

Something you’ve talked about before, and has been a hot topic in the media over the last several years, is the role of intimacy coordinators on set. In Riley there are obviously a lot of sexual scenes, both implicit and explicit. Can you talk about what it’s like to film those scenes and the role that your intimacy coordinator played?

Adrienne Couper Smith is her name and she’s incredible. We had an intimacy coordinator (IC) for “Rendezvous” as well, so that person came in and showed us what the role of an intimacy coordinator involves. It involves a lot discussing and prep and talking about what the script calls for. All of these conversations happen individually, and I’m never really a part of those early discussions when an IC comes in and speaks to an actor. The IC explains what the director is going for, how much we’re going to see, what is being asked of the actor, even how much tongue you need to use, whatever it is. They have those nitty gritty, awkward conversations so that everyone’s on the same page. They’re saving me so that I don’t necessarily have to have those conversations.

They come in, do a few days of rehearsal, and it’s basically choreographing this dance that happens on the bed. The IC works with me on how it plays and what we’re going for. “Maybe the leg can come around this way?”, “Is this what we’re going for?”. It’s a step-by-step dance, where the actors memorize this choreography and then they execute it on set. It’s a truncated process of knowing the logistics of it. In a sense, it almost takes some of the intimacy out, but in a weird way, it’s helpful because we’ve already had these conversations, we already know what we need to do, we already know how the camera is going to be shooting. So when we’re onset, it’s just about executing the game plan and continuing to have conversations like and checking in. Adrienne was great, and Jake and JB had done it already in “Rendezvous”, as had our cinematographer, Michael Elias Thomas, who is my go-to-guy. He and I already had this shorthand. We had essentially filmed this scene already, let’s just do it again, only a little different. The process was made simple because of Adrienne.

There are many emotional scenes in the film, but the one that hit me the most was the final conversation between Dakota and Skylar (Riley Quinn Scott). You see this person who is so close. He’s almost there, and it’s beautiful seeing that step, even if he’s not 100% of the way there. What led you to that conversation?

My intention there was to show a side of coming out. Sometimes the hardest part is just coming out to yourself. I think that’s what I was trying to do there because I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want the pride parade sequence at the end of the film where he’s living his best life. That’s a few movies down the road. I wanted to explore the really personal aspect of everything. The fact that it took me a good amount of time and pondering and thinking to come to terms with. It didn’t happen overnight, it happened over several years. So by the end of the movie I wasn’t sure if he was going to come out. Maybe we don’t need him to. Maybe he’s not even sure yet, but he knows something is different and he knows he just wants to live a life. I wanted it to be left up to interpretation, but in the end, it was important to explore that sometimes the hardest part is coming out to yourself.

Pushing Past Vulnerabilities and Inclusivity in Film

Have you always had the confidence in yourself to put a project like this out there for the world to see? This film is raw. It’s intimate. I imagine that it requires a great deal of vulnerability to pull from your own life experiences. Is this something you have always been able to do or has it taken time and work to be able to do so?

There’s certainly an element of vulnerability here. We had a little friends and family screening some time again, and before that, I was sick to my stomach. I was questioning whether I wanted to do it, and I had never felt that way with my films. I’ve had short films, and I’ve done the festival route with them, and I’m always excited to show the work and talk about it. But this one was different. I was like, “I can’t eat right now”. It was a different feeling than I used to feel. It was more like track meets in high school, where I wouldn’t feel like running the 200m. I would rather be doing anything but this.

I think it’s because this story is so personal and it’s scary telling that and putting on screen. In a weird way, there’s an element of narcissism too, I’m sure. I think all artists have to be narcissists to some extent, otherwise why would they think they’re worthy of writing their story, or painting their picture, or whatever they want to do? Of course, though, I’m not making this movie because of my narcissistic tendencies. I want to tell a story that is important and I want to tell something truthful for kids who are currently going through what I was going through. I want them to know that, “hey, a lot of other people are going through this too, and it’s going to be okay”. That’s what it came down to for me. It’s not about wanting to tell this story of mine, it’s more about this being an important thing for kids that are struggling with their identity to see and realize they’re not alone.

Before we end, I wanted to ask you about your work with Options for All: Film and Media Studios. The community disability services world has been a large part of my life, and I would love to hear more about how you were able to bring together the world of disability and film. 

I graduated from San Diego State and out of college I got a job teaching young adults with developmental disabilities filmmaking techniques and was so stoked. I love teaching, I love being geeky and passionate about these things, so finding a job that’s within my industry, within this passion for teaching, and working with this demographic, it was wonderful to have that opportunity. I loved every second of it. I had to leave to go to UCLA, but when it came time to make this film, we knew we wanted to shoot in San Diego, and I still had connections at my old job. So, I hit up my coworkers and asked what the collaboration would look like and how we could make it work. I was able to work with Options on getting some of my former students on set. We had Joseph, who was an assistant in the art department. Brandon and Blaze were a couple of our onset production assistants, and then we had a handful who came in as background extras as well. They were in the shots in the classroom and they were in the bleachers in some of the big game sequences. Being able to work with and collaborate with those students of mine was really special for me, and I think it was special for them as well. They enjoyed the opportunity to be on a larger scale of a shoot than what we used to do. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we would put together small projects together, but this was much more involved. This little indie movie shoot.

In the end, I just hope that people go into the movie with an open mind and for the younger viewers who might be struggling with who they are, that they know that things are going to be okay and that they’re not alone.

Check out Riley, Benjamin Howard’s feature film debut, premiering September 24th at the Calgary International Film Festival. Benjamin and Jake will be in attendance to answer any questions you might have. 

TICKETS HERE: CIFF