Mental health and how it is reflected onscreen has always been something I’ve been passionate about elevating. I wrote about my own personal journey with mental health in 2019 with Not just Gilda, but Rita too and covered films that have portrayed women onscreen with mental illness in a real way as in “Pink Skies Ahead,” directed by Kelly Oxford. I also had the opportunity to interview Alex Heller about her film “The Year Between,” where she takes us on her journey of being diagnosed in college with Bipolar.
Recently, I had the opportunity to screen the short film “Hoodie” for the Salute Your Shorts Film Festival. The film is directed by Renée Felice Smith and Chris Gabriel, and is about a young woman who struggles with depression, but the twist is that her heather grey hoodie sweatshirt plays a character that lures her into a toxic relationship that reflects the push and pull of what it feels like to have depression. The film is so clever in how it shows this relationship. Renée and Chris have done several projects together around mental health, and they tell their stories in humorous ways in order to make non-triggering films that may lead to open and healing conversations about mental illness. I’m grateful I met them virtually, and am looking forward to their upcoming feature. The film will screen again this October at the BendFilm Festival in Oregon.
What was the main inspiration of this project?
Renée Felice Smith (RFS): Mental health seems to be a main focus for us in our work. I feel like whenever I see someone portrayed and struggling with mental health onscreen, it generally looks like someone who is a train wreck on the outside, like “the crazy girl” who just doesn’t have it under control. From my experience, I’ve dealt with anxiety and with depression. On the outside, most of my friends think that I’ve got it under control. They say things like: ‘oh yeah, Renée, we don’t have to worry about Renée.’
I think the film is about wanting to tell a story from a really honest place. We aim to try our best to de-stigmatize mental health in a way that feels original and fresh and that people can connect to and that uplifts in a way. We then collectively can laugh at our misgivings, and our demons on our shoulder. I think it’s really healthy and therapeutic to share in that conversation.
Chris Gabriel (CG): When you see someone struggling with a mental illness in film and tv in a very literal and dramatic way, it is quite often the last thing you want to see if you’re struggling. It’s triggering and feels too real.
So one of the things we always try to do when we’re talking about heavy subject matter that a lot of people can relate to is go through it in a different way, from a different angle that makes it a little bit more accessible and palatable to watch. Then when we laugh at it, it takes the power away from our own depression and anxiety. And then for the audience, we hope it pulls a little of the power away from it being the thing that triggers you. You can then look at these reflections and dissect them cinematically, but do it from a place of humor. Then what we see feels almost medicinal.
RFS: And that is what “Hoodie” is supposed to be. I struggled with body image for a long time. I was a dancer growing up, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to the feeling that your body doesn’t look the way it once looked or the way that you remember it looking. You feel like you have to uphold this image of yourself that other people have in their mind. And you really are not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for everyone else. So that was a topic we talked about with what happens when you say “fuck it,” and jump into the hoodie and give in. It feels really good at first to just throw caution to the wind, and say ‘okay this is what I’m doing, I’m ordering pizza, drinking wine, and I’m watching things that can fill me up in a certain way.’ But then you realize that you’re just still really empty.
CG: In the beginning, depression lures you in, and feels like, ‘ooooh, this is what I need, I just need to get away for a while.’ By the time you realize what’s happened, you are so far in that it feels like you’ll never get out.
RFS: In that conversation that she has with Hoodie in the beginning when he is part of the laundry pile, Hoodie says, “don’t you feel tired and want to relax? Peel off those control tops.”[laughing]. That’s really what it feels like in the beginning, it feels really comforting. In my own experience and our collective experience with depression when you give in, at first it feels like, ‘yes, this is what I need.’ But then very quickly, it traps you there, and you can’t escape. So that’s really what we tried to bring to life. We personify this voice of depression.
Can you talk about the special effects you instrumented with Hoodie? And talk about that scene when Renée, your character, dances with Hoodie. It was such a cool scene on a special effects level.
RFS: We were thinking early on about having this character that was personifying my character’s depression. We settled on the hoodie as the image and fell in love with the idea of this disembodied hoodie floating around without legs and arms, but yet, it’s floating and gracefully dancing and kind of controlling her through the dance. And then she tries to break away, and what that looks like. Then the hoodie strips her down.
CG: It was fun to take the dance scene seriously. For the whole film leading up to that point, you’re seeing the push and pull of depression on the woman. Through showing the dance in a dramatic way and showing that push and pull, you are drawn to the hoodie. But also, you are trying to escape, and ultimately, the hoodie swallows you up again.
RFS: We treated it like a real dance. We had rehearsals and worked with my sister Monika Felice Smith, who is a choreographer. Chris and I also helped choreograph through the lens of the story. We were all kind of contributing in this very collaborative way. We worked with an amazing dancer, Adrian Hoffman. They were in the hoodie, and then Chris did all of the VFX effects to remove legs, which was a real undertaking.
CG: We’re very scrappy filmmakers. We kind of always have been. To do things properly you often have to wait a really long time for people to say yes to you. We’re like, you know what, let’s just figure out how to do everything, and then we don’t have to wait for anybody. And that’s how we make films and always have.
That’s kind of like the Chicago-style way of making films, being scrappy and just doing the work.
RFS: We love that! If we weren’t scrappy, nothing would ever get done. We’re like, ‘you know what, we’re just going to do it ourselves, we are just going to figure it out,’ and luckily, Chris picked it up and was able to do the effects.
CG: I come from a music background. With my experience with the recording software and being a music engineer as well as a composer, I can luckily pick up other editing software pretty quickly. I edited this film as well with Joshua Wilmott. I had a little experience with doing VFX, enough to know how to shoot everything so that I would be able to VFX with my limited knowledge of it. It’s a ton of work, and really time consuming, but it was worth it, and luckily, it all worked out.
What do you hope people see in your film?
RFS: We hope that people can relate to it and see a piece of themselves in it. Not that I wish depression on anyone else, but-
CG: You realize that everyone has some experience with it.
RFS: Even if you are not clinically depressed, you’ve had bouts of depression-
CG: Or know someone who has it.
RFS: Exactly. So I hope that it can offer some comfort to those who can see a bit of themselves in it.
CG: Also to de-stigmatize it a little big more by giving your mental illness a name and a personality, and maybe a reason why it’s doing what it is doing. It is not necessarily evil, but maybe it is co-dependent, like Hoodie. Looking at it from another angle like that helps to de-stigmatize and de-mystify it, and takes a little bit of the fear away from it. I would say that was our main goal with the film.
Any future projects you can talk about?
RFS: We actually wrote a surreal mental health “traumedy” I like to call it. We wrote a pilot for FX that sadly during the pandemic fell by the wayside in terms of their schedule, but it was released back to us. So we are transforming that into a feature right now.
CG: “Hoodie” was sort of an off shoot of that idea. Our pilot is about anxiety. But that puppet we saw as a kind of Dobby-esque naked mole rat type creature which would have been much more intensive and expensive to make. So we pivoted to depression. We were like, ‘we can actually do this on our own.’
RFS: That’s why the short is featuring depression, but the feature version will feature anxiety and depression. They work together, hand in hand.
Renée Felice Smith and Chris Gabriel are native New Yorkers who met during their 6th grade class elections. Today, they are writing/directing/life partners. Smith was a series regular on CBS’ hit, NCIS: Los Angeles, completing over 250 episodes of network television. Gabriel is an accomplished composer for film, television and theater. Smith and Gabriel began creating work together as an outlet for their own brand of weird. Their first feature, THE RELATIONTRIP, premiered at SXSW and is now available on Hulu. Smith and Gabriel have developed television with CBS Studios, FX, TBS and Awesomeness TV. Together, Smith and Gabriel also co-wrote an award winning children’s book, HUGO AND THE IMPOSSIBLE THING, published by Penguin Random House and currently available wherever books are sold.
