The punctuation in the title of Beth + Jeremy and Steve, Portland filmmaker Daniel Hill’s first feature, is important. The movie’s about an unconventional romantic triangle between Beth (Briana Ratterman), a woman in her 30s trying to find fulfillment, Jeremy (Lucas Friedman), the high school swimmer she meets at a record store and quickly bonds with, and Steve (Matthew Dibiasio), Beth’s husband. Set in Portland and shot at a number of local landmarks, it’s an accomplished debut, with compelling performances (especially from Ratterman) and a script that refuses to draw easy conclusions about any of its characters. It’s a project that’s been over a decade in the offing, and it’s having a Portland theatrical premiere screening this Friday, May 30, at PSU’s 5th Avenue Cinema. I spoke with Hill about the dedication and inspiration that enabled Beth + Jeremy and Steve to come to fruition.  

OREGON ARTS WATCH: Can you just kind of talk me through the origins of the film and your background as a filmmaker?

DANIEL HILL: I’ve been making shorts for the past 20 years or so. I’m from Chicago. I trained there in long form improv, and I moved here in 2005. I trained with Sowelu under Barry Hunt and Lorraine Bahr. Improv was my bread and butter, but I was doing film at the same time.

OAW: Were you a Second City guy?

DH: I was an Improv Olympics guy. I was there right when it was across from Wrigley Field in the early 2000s. There’s a couple people who came through there that went to SNL and that was the big dream of everybody there. I was like, I just want to get good at this, and I just like doing it. I didn’t necessarily want to be on SNL or anything like that. Although, you know, it’d be fun. I loved acting, but I always wanted to make movies too. I think improv is a really quick way to get on stage and do stuff, to be in the moment very, very quickly. It’s more of a battlefield because you don’t have a script to go behind. So I was doing that for years and then I came here and met a bunch of people who were in the improv scene right away. Some of them are my friends to this day, like Nicholas Kessler and Brad Fortier. I did stuff with the Brody Theater for a couple of years. Barry was Aaron Katz’s mentor as well, but Aaron’s a little younger than me, and I got to know him later. I actually worked on his film Cold Weather as a data wrangler. That was how I got my apartment.

OAW: Nice. How did that happen?

DH: My apartment is where they have their apartment [in the film]. I had that apartment for years in Laurelhurst. I loved it. So when I came here, I met Barry and I auditioned for his play because I really wanted to be a stage actor and to learn how to communicate with actors. It was this thing of wanting to wear the lampshade but also wanting to watch. I went to school in Ohio and I think we were one of the last couple classes to actually shoot on true film and use a Steenbeck, if you know what that is. I remember during finals not going home for Christmas break and staying in the editing room for a week straight. So when Barry was wanting to move Sowelu into a film space, we met each other at a good time. I was more familiar with film stuff and he was more familiar with acting stuff. Eventually he made the feature The Further Adventures of Anse and Bhule in No-Man’s Land. It’s this really weird, great movie. I got to play one of the leads. We shot all over Oregon and Barry’s really good with grants and fundraising. I ended up doing a lot on it besides being a lead. I shot second unit, some of it, I edited some of it. I put together the trailer and I even did some special effects. Barry eventually made me a co-producer on it because it pretty much was left up to me and him to finish this film. It was like my Roger Corman school, I guess. And I loved every minute of it. I just knew this is what I want to do.

OAW: The best way to learn is by doing, right?

DH: Yeah, absolutely. During that time I was just tailoring the script for Beth + Jeremy and Steve. We had a really great reading about seven or 10 years before we started shooting, and I don’t remember his name—who’s the guy who made Irreversible? The French director?

OAW: Gaspar Noé.

DH: And he made the movie called Love?

OAW: The art porn film with the actor from Beaverton. Karl Glusman.

DH: Yes! So he read the script. He was the original Jeremy. We had a great reading but my girlfriend broke up with me the morning of the reading so I was just in a state and I didn’t remember him. He thought I didn’t like him, which wasn’t true at all. I was just kind of fucked up after a breakup. So that was the first reading of the film. And then I finally nailed down a job around 10 years later, and I got some money together. Lorraine recommended I go see this Sam Shepard play to see the guy playing the John Malkovich part in True West. That was Matt Dibiasio, who’s Steve in the movie. I showed him the script. We shot a scene as a proof of concept and one of the people who dug it was an old, old, old friend of mine who was living in Paris, who was doing okay for himself. And so he put some money in, I put some money in, and that’s how it came to be.

OAW: So it’s a French film! It’s definitely got a Jules and Jim feel to it at certain points.

DH: It’s funny, because I went for his wedding and I actually finished the final draft literally in the cafes of Paris. The actors who had played Beth and Jeremy dropped out, so I auditioned new people. Brianna, who plays Beth, was in our workshops at the time at the theater, and Lucas, who plays Jeremy, was the son of an actress that I was working with around town. And so we were off, you know?

OAW: Would you say that what made it really kick into gear was finding your cast, and being able to really visualize the characters?

DH: Yeah, because then I saw what they were bringing to it. Mike Pritchard, the cinematographer who shot Anse and Bhule, was on board, and I had my sound guy, Colin Robson, who I got on with really well. It’s an all-Portland crew, which was great. Aileen Sheedy, who is the assistant director, came aboard and her partner Evan Gandy ended up producing it and he brought on some crew. We had a three-week shoot schedule, and then we did some pickups, so we do all that…

OAW: When was the shoot?

DH: I think it was in the summer of 2018. So then Covid happened, which definitely added two to three years. It just put a lot of stuff on the back burner.

OAW: Was there ever a moment where you just thought that this is never going to get done, considering the way the world was and the way the film industry was at that point?

DH: I knew I’d come out the other side, but I was worried that no one would care. It felt like each week there was some article about how independent film was dying, Hollywood was dead. I still had an idea of what I wanted to do, I just didn’t know if it was going to matter to anybody.

OAW: I loved seeing all the Portland locations, playing that game: My gosh, that’s My Father’s Place, or that’s the Tonic Lounge?

DH: Tonic Lounge! You’re the only one who mentioned that to me. It’s like a document now, since they leveled that place about three months after the shoot.

OAW: Was the script inspired by anything in particular from your life? I have to ask.

DH: Yeah, there’s definitely real-life stuff. I’ll say that. But there’s exploration as well.

OAW: Despite all the practical experience working on the earlier films, were there any unexpected challenges that came up when you were actually preparing to make a feature?

DH: Yeah, I mean, God, there’s all sorts. This is where Evan was really great as a producer. I just had to get used to things like not having a location yet, but just moving forward. Say we’re set to shoot at Jeremy’s family’s house on this day, even though we don’t have a location for Jeremy’s family’s house yet. That was rough sometimes. But Evan was good. He was like, we’ll figure it out, you know? And I needed to hear that.

OAW: It can be tough to just keep moving forward and trust the process.

DH: Absolutely.

OAW: Coming back to the French angle, there were some interesting moments where you used some very Nouvelle Vague editing, jump cuts and so forth. Most of the film is very naturalistic and then you just have these moments where that happens.

DH: Yeah, you can see the influences in there. I love the A plus B equals C in editing and with jump cuts specifically. I love Dede Allen. She did Bonnie and Clyde, she did Dog Day Afternoon, she did Serpico. It was a very distinct style that I really liked. And between that and of course, the New Wave guys, Godard, Truffaut…

OAW: So once the film was complete you hit the festival circuit. What was that process like?

DH: It was tough. Initially, there was a longer cut that was being submitted and that was a process. I made myself trim the film down even more. No one was biting really, and then the Santa Fe Film Festival was the first. They gave Briana an award, which was great. And then the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, which was a nice one. And then Bremen, Germany contacted me. They said yes right away and they loved it so much that they flew us out, and it was the opening night film, which was amazing. They were honoring John Malkovich that year and I didn’t get to meet him, but they told him about the film and he had some funny stuff to say. Something about how his kid was going to school in Eugene and that Portland is a place where if you’re in a monogamous relationship, it’s looked upon as a perversion. It was this beautiful, beautiful theater and it was filled with people and I was pinching myself. That was a very affirming feeling.

OAW: And now it’s getting an American release, which must be affirming as well.

DH: About the same time we got into Bremen, we also got into a festival in Los Angeles, and someone there really liked it and set us up with a sales agent at Roadhouse Films, and he got us a distribution deal with Freestyle Media. It’ll be available on all the usual on demand platforms.

OAW: And to commemorate, you’re screening it in Portland. Will this be the first time it has shown here?

DH: We had a private screening at one point, but publicly, yes.

OAW: The inevitable final question is, what’s next?

DH: I have a sort of vigilante thriller that I’m tuning up. It’s done and I’m just starting to show it around. It’s another high school kid, you know, I need to get that high school out of me.

OAW: Well, here’s hoping your French financier steps up to the plate again. Best of luck.

(Beth + Jeremy and Steve screens at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 30, at 5th Avenue Cinema.)