“I hope people not only see, but also feel hopeful that this isn’t really the end, in the end, and that we are all just friends walking each other home.”
–Kate Jean Hollowell
I loved this interview. It was actually very cleansing because I’ve also recently dealt with grief. Kate Jean Hollowell’s short film “Say Hi After You Die” looks at death through a hopeful lens. The premise seems ridiculous on paper: a friend who tragically passes away comes back in the form of a porta-potty. What? I initially thought, ‘Gross, but tell me more.’ What I ended up seeing was a soulful comedy celebrating the people we love. This interview was conducted prior to the Sundance Film Festival, but Kate would go on to win the Short Film Jury Award for U.S. Fiction. I’m so happy they chose an unconventional film like this one as their 2024 winner, and I’m very excited to follow Kate and her career.
“Say Hi After You Die” has already premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, watch the film online starting tomorrow!
Our Sundance and Slamdance 2024 coverage is sponsored by the Gene Siskel Film Center. One of the last arthouse theaters in Chicago, they present a curated collection of international, independent, and classic cinema reflective of Chicago’s diverse community. Learn more.
Can you talk about the belief that people you love who pass come to visit you? I find that is true as well. I lost two people last year that I feel the same way about.
It’s strange to think about death, but it’s something that we’ll all be faced with some day. It’s a natural human thing just to wonder what happens when you die. Personally, both of my parents passed away from cancer a year apart when I was 23. I think that has just led me to have this curiosity about the after life. Like, do we have souls? Are these bodies just temporary?
I honestly do think, and I said this in my Sundance video, that people can visit you and send you signs from the after life. I think that is the biggest thing that I realized over time. There is so much that we can’t see, and we can’t understand. A really good analogy I always use is that we look at a flower, and we see a flower, and then a bee sees a flower, and it sees it totally differently. The bee knows that flower is there from miles and miles away. It knows pollen, and it knows what bees have pollenated already, because it has these visual senses. Both realities are true, but they are different. I think that is a perfect way to think about the after life, that there are other realities that we cannot see. And I think it’s important just to stay open.
Can you also talk about your collaboration with Ruby Caster?
Well, she’s amazing, and I love her. I was lucky that my commercial agency was really supportive of making a short film of mine, and I had all of these short film scripts, but then I just felt really drawn to writing something with Ruby. We’ve had a natural energy together and just have fun with each other. So we got together, and in the afternoon, we just “flushed” out the idea.
Can you talk about working with your choreographer Kathryn Burns?
Kat Burns is an incredible choreographer, and she and I were in a comedy dance troupe together in LA. We had always wanted to work together, because we had just missed performing with each other in the troupe at the same time. She had just left when I joined. But we knew each other from the internet and from the dance squad. We had always wanted to collaborate together. And the strike was happening at the time when we made the film. We were able to get so many great people because we were able to give people SAG days through a waiver we received from them, which is why we got such great dancers. No one was working at the time, so we were able to get people excited about an indie project that had a really good message behind it.
Do you want to talk about any of your behind the scenes people?
We shot all the house scenes at my house, and there is an open field in front of my house. I have to give credit to my DP, Jordan Black. We were looking at all of these home locations, and then he was like, ‘Why don’t we just shoot at your house? We’ll make the field at your house like an empty lot.’ We were able to get away with so much more by making it like a construction site, because there was no location management. We were just driving around on a fork lift. My producer Miranda Kahn literally drove the fork lift all around the property to move it in and out throughout the scenes. Not even a PA, but the actual producer.
So it was a cool time because no one was really working and we were just making this weird art. And I’m sure that is the story that everyone is talking about with the strike. I think a lot of people made self-funded short films. I’m really proud of the film.
You should be! I know people are going to love this film. What do you hope people see in your film?
I hope people not only see, but also feel hopeful that this isn’t really the end, in the end, and that we are all just friends walking each other home.
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