Tony Bonacci’s feature film debut, The Headliner, is premiering on Saturday March 2nd at this year’s Omaha Film Festival. I’d previously interviewed him when the acclaimed short of the same name made festival rounds in 2018. Even then, he was adamant that he would turn this story into a feature alongside the short’s writer, Christine Burright, and its star, Darrick Silkman. Several years and one global pandemic later, he has. The Headliner follows a forty-something stand-up comedian (Silkman) as he finally gets a shot at making it big when a scheduling conflict arises and he has to choose between his career and his daughter.
I talked with Bonacci again on this week’s Riverside Chats, which you can listen to the full conversation wherever you get podcasts—or read the abridged version below.
So we were just talking off mic a second ago about seeing a comedy in theaters. I feel like that's an experience that's hard to find these days. Even when I've seen comedies in the last few years, for the most part, it's like me and maybe another person or two. Like—I saw Bottoms, and there was one other person there on the other side of the theater. I was laughing really hard. She, I don't think, laughed once. It was awkward. But comedies, they kind of feel like they're disappearing, don't they?
I don't know. I don't know the frame of reference. I went to Bottoms, too. I mean, we should have gone together.
We should have.
I don't know if it's necessarily disappearing or if we're going less or maybe it’s something with the type of comedies we're not going to as much.
It feels like there used to be big comedies all the time and now there are sitcoms.
What do you think of? Kind of like the early 2000s?
Yeah, 90s. Yeah. 2010s even.
Yeah, I don't know what that is. I mean, I'm sure they're still there. What it might be is just a switch to watching that stuff on streaming or something.
It seems to me like there are fewer being made. You know, Adam Sandler does all this stuff for Netflix now. But I mean, you used to have like the Judd Apatow movies as probably the last big wave.
I was a huge fan of those.
Well, The Headliner feels to me like it’s in that tradition, or of Albert Brooks or James L. Brooks—comedies that have heart, that are open and funny and light, and I just don't see a lot of that these days.
Cool, that's awesome. Yeah, I actually wonder about that, because a lot of times when I go to talk about the movie with everybody, I have to explain what it is—and I didn't write it, Christine Burright, another Omaha filmmaker, did—and part of me kind of gets worried about that. I'm actually enjoying hearing you explain what it is to you because I'm so used to the movie now after making it and editing and everything that I want to hear somebody else explain what the movie is to me.
It's not really that complicated, right? But it does have a few layers that it's working with. One is that it is a movie that is for adults. It is funny. It's about funny people who are able to be funny and realistic and have emotional depth, which it seems like it shouldn't be a high bar, but to make a movie like that is more difficult, I think, than people generally realize, because you have to balance a lot of tones. Were all those tones baked in from your initial idea?
I think so. I know that I went to Christine and I wanted to make the short about this guy who was a stand-up comic and she kind of ran with that really basic idea. And her writing style is really witty, kind of dirty, like that rated-R dialogue type thing.
Right.
So I loved her style, and I said, “Don't be afraid to do that. Don't don't try to keep it clean.”
If he's a stand-up, he's going to make dirty jokes.
Yeah, exactly. Were you surprised by that—the fact that we didn't try to keep it clean?
I had seen the short, and I know Darrick a little bit, so I kind of understood what the rhythm was going to be. On that note, did you know it was Darrick from the very beginning?
Yeah, I think so. It's been so long now. I forgot what year that was that I came to talk to you about the short film.
Maybe four years ago?
No, that was like like maybe six now. So this has been like an entire journey. I'm glad that the hard part is over like the movie is completely finished and delivered and entering film festivals.
When you were thinking about it, though, as you're thinking about the tone or what it should feel like, were there models you looked at? Movies you were thinking of and you're like, “I wanna do something like that”?
Actually, not really. I tried to do that, where I would be watching stuff and I'm like, “What do I like? What shows do I like?” All I could think of at the time was that I was obsessed with stand-up comedy—which I still am—and I wanted to do something with stand-up. Basically, I wanted to work with Darrick again as a main character, as a stand-up comic, and that's kind of all I knew.
And so that's where Christine came in and created an entire world of everything that went on in the movie. And I was completely happy with what she did. I just kind of went with that. Like I gave her a lot of parameters, but I didn't have any specific movies I was drawing from.
What are some touchstone movies for you, though?
Like just favorites?
I'm sure there are movies that influence your style and sensibility in some way, right?
They're all pretty cliche. I love like Paul Thomas Anderson. I love Scorsese. American Movie about the two filmmaker guys. I loved Harmony Korine. Gummo and stuff like that. Another favorite is Hook. Heavyweights, the fat kid movie. It really is like a jumble. The closest thing to something like this would be shows about stand-up that I've watched before—on Netflix or something. And like Marc Maron had a show for a while. There was a show called Crashing. I think that was Pete Holmes. We just went with what we thought felt natural.
Did Christine have any particular influences she was bringing?
I don't know, actually. I wish she was here with us. I've never thought about asking her.
When you're about to film a scene, though, you're not thinking about how somebody else might film it or maybe looking at something else and thinking, “Ooh, I like the way they did that and I want to bring that to the set or anything”?
Actually—I don't mean it to sound like trying to be all artsy—I literally did not do that. I was like, “I'm not going to try to make like a mood board. I'm not going to try to find stills from other movies or anything like that.” I did end up shooting it myself, too, doing the cinematography. So we just went as we went and found our shot on set. I did have shot lists, so, every night I would make meticulous shot lists, but there was no storyboard or anything like that. It really was just finding what I would naturally do on set and the shot that I liked and stuff like that and then just lighting it and doing it.
So you're really intuitive, then.
Yeah, I guess so.
Where does that come from?
When you're asking about influences, I would say that that's just probably a natural, internal thing that gets transferred into doing it, if that makes sense. Everything I've watched over the years that I love is probably in my brain and then it’s just a matter of just naturally doing it and having years of experience with filmmaking.
Is this how you've always been or did you get to the place where you're comfortable enough to trust yourself this way?
That's always how I've been, but even less organized in the past, of course. Like doing this movie was the most organized I've ever been. So even just having an entire shot list and then doing it that way, I was the most organized I've ever been.
You have to be to shoot a feature. It's just a lot to try to keep in your mind at once.
Yeah, and it was crazy because we'd shoot all day and then I'd have to come home and produce all night—make shot lists all night and stuff like that so that I had a very distinct shot list for the whole crew for the next day and stuff like that. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. It was nonstop busy all day and then eight hours of sleep and then get up and shoot again.
How many days did you shoot?
We did 12 days of the principal photography, and then we did five pick up shoot days in the following months after that. I think it was like five or six months that we did shoots here and there. And the hardest part about that is just like organizing it. It’s like, “Oh, hey, Darrick, can you come on this day?” And can we make that work again to do another single half day or like whatever it was? So yeah, so it was 12 days, which is super short, as you know, for the main shoot.
You never have enough days, but 12 is fast.
Yeah, it's insane. Luckily it was organized to the point where, like we had the 12 shoot days and I was using a program called Studio Binder. It sounds like I'm doing an ad for them now, but it was like a lifesaver. You can do strip boards for your schedule. You can do all the contacts there. You can do call sheets. And everything you'd need to do is all there. And breakdowns of the screenplay. And you can send sides to actors and everything. And so that was an absolute lifesaver for me to be able to do all the producing myself, too.
When Christine gives you the script, is it totally locked in?
There were three main revisions that she did over the course of probably a year, if not more. There were quite a few revisions that she was doing. So she gave me the first draft and then, of course, I gave her feedback. And then she changed stuff, did it, sent me a second one. So it was over the course of like, yeah, a year, year and a half where she revised it.
How close does the script look to the movie?
Oh, it's almost exact. There are a few throw-ins of different actors where they felt something would be more like their voice or more something and they would say that instead of the exact line from the screenplay—which is good, because you know how it can be where something sounds a little like stiff or weird. And then, if somebody makes it their own and kind of gives it their own vibe, then it just sounds way more natural. And then, of course, like the stand-up is not in the screenplay.
Did Christine want to try to write the stand-up?
No, I don't think she did at all. Although I think that was maybe a question when I had talked to her about writing the movie. She was like, “Oh, are you expecting me to do the stand-up?” I think she did ask. And I was like, “No, don't worry about that.”
Have you ever done stand-up?
I haven't.
Where does the stand-up obsession come from?
Man, I can't even think, because, of course, I had kind of a normal stand-up fandom when I was younger. I feel like everybody kind of watched certain specials that would come out. But, in the last like five to eight years, I've been way more obsessed. Probably just starting to go to local stuff here in Omaha and then when I went to the comedy store for the first time out in LA, I was just obsessed right away and I was like, “Oh man, I wanna go here at least once a year.” Yeah, so I don't know. I don't know exactly where it comes from, but I just really like it.
Have you ever had a chance to direct a stand-up special?
No, but I've been talking to some people about doing it. I think that that might be something that's in the future. So that would be cool.
So I’d already mentioned that The Headliner felt sort of like something along the lines of James L. Brooks or Albert Brooks to me, and an element of that which stood out was the music, the score. It's got that kind of like lighthearted, but emotional score that I think of for 90s and 80s comedies and that I don't hear very much with a comedy now.
Matt Walker did the score. He composed it all. I knew that I wanted an orchestral score. That was my idea. I thought it would be weird to do like an old-school—like you said—90s score for the movie instead of most the indie movies that come out now that are all synthesizers doing some simple little beat or something like that. And I just thought it would be like cool because I love orchestral scores and also I wanted it almost a little bit over the top, so I hope that that came across.
When you watched it, how did that come across? Because I know my sisters told my mom like, “Oh yeah, some of the score stuff was a little over the top and cheesy.” And I was like, “Well, we did do that kind of tongue-in-cheek on some of it.”
Having these elements of heightened emotion that the music sort of guides you toward is fun. And it helps tell the listener, the viewer what to do with some of those scenes, too.
That's a good point. Matt is such a good like composer, and he was explaining all that to me. He was like, “What do we want to make the audience feel?” He's such a professional. He was going through all these scenes with me and playing me stuff. And he's like, “Oh, I went this way because I wanted them to like feel this way.” And he would talk to me about “How do you want them to feel at this moment?”
So that's that's cool that you're saying that about the score.
Well, it's kind of a testament to the fact that it's a movie that has these different tones and energies and feelings. And so you get to sort of build that emotional response a little bit more, I think, than you would in a simpler type of movie.
Yeah!
It's funny, I worked with Darrick on one project. Will Forget, the lead in that also co-wrote it with me, but he's really bad about actually memorizing his lines or really knowing the script. And so what I kind of learned to do with him is trusting that he'll get the beats right and I have to just sort of let him do his thing and I'll figure it out. And it's more work in the moment. But Darrick was in a scene with him where it starts off really pleasant and then he offends Darrick and then Darrick basically beats him up.
[laughing] Yeah?
Will had never met Darrick before. And Darrick's like the sweetest guy, but also he can look imposing.
Yeah. He's big.
Well, Will was late that day. And so I'm talking to Darrick. And I say, “You know, Will . . . he'll know the scene, but he's probably not going to say all the lines exactly. Or maybe at all.” And then Darrick looked at me with this really serious face. And he says, in this deep, scary tone, “I don't like improv.”
[laughing]
I said, “Alright, I'll tell Will to learn the script on his way here.”
That's so funny.
What's your process with Darrick like?
I don't really have like a very distinct process because it literally is like, “I'm trusting you and I know you can do this script.” Like I told you, we stuck with the screenplay, so there are very distinct lines. I only told him a few times, “Oh, can you add a little bit more of a beat in between that line,” or something like that. But I don't remember any times where I had to specifically be like, “Oh, you're going the wrong way with this,” or anything like that. So the process is basically: he knows the screenplay and he has it memorized. And he was so good with that. I don't even know if there were any times where he didn't know them. So that was convenient. Everybody was so good with memorization and stuff but also giving it that good, natural feel.
So yeah, process-wise, I mean, we definitely had conversations, because we're actual friends in real life. So we would just be having a drink, talking about the character and stuff like that. It was a really natural, comfortable, open conversation with him about the character and how I wanted him to play it. And then, of course, he knew what I was going for and everything he brought to it was just perfect to me.
Was he involved in crafting the character from the short to the feature?
Yeah. Yeah. We definitely had conversations with Christine all together, where we got together and we were just talking about different ideas. I can't remember specifically. I'm sure he would remember some specifics that he brought to it, but I don't remember. It's all a jumble now to me of what we all thought and brought to it.
Were you able to do rehearsals at all?
We did have a full cast read-through, but no no full-on rehearsals or anything like that. It was like super hard just schedule-wise and especially with no money for rehearsals or anything like that—and just stuff where everybody's busy. They're like, “We'll do the movie and like we'll know our lines so . . .” Yeah, I was actually amazed at how well everybody did and came prepared without having done rehearsals besides a couple table-reads.
Filmmakers often have different perspectives on how prepared you should be. Like should you know all the beats from rehearsal and go in and shoot it exactly like that? Do you want to discover something new in the moment? It sounds like you like it to be some mixture of the two.
Right. Yeah.
Do you think more rehearsals would have been helpful or do you like the fact that you had to kind of build it on the day?
I think rehearsals can always be more helpful. But, the thing is, I absolutely love that process of discovery. Obviously it can be really stressful sometimes, especially with blocking and, for instance, there was a bar scene early on where the daughter and the friends come to see a set at the bar and there's a huge conversation, like multi -person conversation up at the bar. And that day I just remember we were like, “Oh my God, we need to figure this out as far as shots and blocking and stuff like that.” And it took a long time, but it ended up just fine.
Did you do a lot of takes?
Not a ton of takes. Usually the takes were, there was a lot of coverage for a scene like that where it was like the camera had to get on almost everybody at different angles. But I don't do a ton of takes. No, I'd say probably like three to five if you had to average it out.
How do you know when you got it?
Man, how do you know? Usually, you just know that it was a clean read without like much overlap and you can just tell it worked based on the shot and the performance, but, of course, sometimes you feel rushed when you're trying to like meet the schedule or if you got set back for some reason.
Making this movie has been a long process. I imagine at some point you're sort of like, “I just need to make this. I've been sitting on it for so long.” Because you guys, you guys were about to film it right before COVID, right?
Right before, yeah. So we had it planned. And then of course, just like everybody else's things, it got delayed. And so that's several years.
So when did you guys finish filming?
We shot December for those 12 days, December of 2022. So just over a year ago. And then we followed it up, like I said, with the pickup shoot days the following five or six months. And then, yeah, so into 2023. So probably halfway through 2023, we fully finished shooting. And then I had been editing until just recently when I fully wrapped up editing and everything.
Did much get cut, or was it pretty much what you thought it would be?
You know, I mainly cut stand-up. So there was a ton of stand-up and, as you saw from the movie, there's already a lot of stand-up.
Right.
I actually wanted to talk to you about what you thought about that because there's a lot of stand-up. I know we cut a ton. I cut as much as I could, basically, with the narrative that was left to keep a little under 90 minutes, but the movie's almost like partially like a secret stand-up special, too, featuring my favorite Omaha comics.
That's the world of the movie, so it's like an establishing shot, but it's stand-up.
Yeah, and so that's part of the thing I can't be objective about is: is that boring to people? I mean, to me, I'm not gonna lie, since I've seen it like 100 times. When I go through the stand-up, of course I know all those jokes and I'm kind of like, “Oh, here's more standup.” Like in my mind, I'm like, “Okay, here's the standup.” But I just hope that, for viewers, that's fun or that's cool, so I don't know.
I think it is and it gives you different energies. Your characters have a certain energy, the drama has a certain energy, but then here's just funny people being funny, also.
That's a good point, yeah, like a whole different vibe and energy to them. Yeah, that's a good point. I've never thought of it that way.
That's kind of along the lines of what Apatow does in Funny People, right? You get away from the craziness of Sandler with, you know, Aubrey Plaza or whoever doing a stand-up set. And I thought about Obvious Child as well. Did you see that one?
Was that the abortion one?
Yeah. And Jenny Slate's character is a stand-up comic. And I don't think that one cuts to other people, but it has these interludes of her doing sets and then her emotional life spilling over. It seemed like something that mixed up the tone and energy and pacing, maybe in a similar vein as some of what The Headliner is doing.
Nice, that's awesome. And yeah, I just liked the idea of featuring all of my favorite Omaha comics. Although it's funny because one of the comics, Carmela Anderson, who was in the Pageturners scene—she came up to me a couple of times ago when I saw her and she was like, “You cut too much out of my scene.”
I was like, “Oh sorry—I cut everybody's down because everybody had like more than ten minutes each of material.”
There's a discipline of a movie that's 90 minutes—or how long is the movie exactly?
I think it's like 87 or 86 something.
I love when I see that. It's not that I dislike long movies, but, especially with a comedy, there's something about the discipline of saying, “It's going to be somewhere between 80 and 90 minutes when we're done—we're out and we're not going to overstay our welcome.”
Exactly. Yeah. And that's what I wanted from the beginning. Like I knew I wanted a 90 minute feature. I don't need to try to do some epic long movie for my first thing.
Sometimes people are like, “Oh, that's really short, I wish it was longer.” And I’m like, “I don't know with a comedy.” There's a point at which you get used to the rhythms of it and there are diminishing returns.
Yeah. Yeah. There was something I watched recently that was two hours and still funny, though.
Was the Omaha Film Festival the place that you wanted to premiere The Headliner all along?
Yeah, because it is Omaha. And I was like, okay, it would be awesome for this to be like the world premiere, quote unquote, for everybody here that would want to support it and come to it.
It's a weird process that people, if they've never done it, they really have no idea what the festival submission thing is like, because it takes forever. It costs a lot of money. You have no idea what's going to happen.
It's been a ton of money. We've submitted to 40 so far, and I might do like another 30 or 40, depending, throughout the year and stuff. So, yeah, we'll see. And hopefully we'll have some decent luck getting into some stuff. But it's a long process, and even the process between when we had our private screening for everyone involved until like now is just just sitting on a finished movie. And I feel like you lose momentum. People are like, “Does the movie exist? Did you just give up on it?” So many people, yes, are like, “Oh, so what's up with the movie? Can I stream it?” Or like, “Where can I watch it?” And it's like, “You can't, yeah, sorry.” It literally is years of just telling people, “I swear it's real, it'll come out sometime,” or “It'll be at the festival” or whatever.
We'd started the conversation talking about the idea of seeing it with a crowd, seeing people, everybody laughing, everybody wants to have fun with it. So you did a screening at the Ruth Sokolof Theater.
Yeah, we had our private screening there. And then the official premiere will be the Nebraska Spotlight at the Omaha Film Festival. That's what they're calling it.
Oh, that's nice. So now that the movie is done, you're trying to figure out what to do with it, and there's kind of the question of what happens with a movie like this because the landscape is kind of weird for independent movies right now.
Yes, it's hard.
Do you think people watch comedies differently when they're streaming it versus in person with other people?
Yeah, I definitely think so. It is kind of like a communal experience being at the theater and laughing—not performatively—but like it's almost funnier when you have a bunch of people around, too. There's something weird about it, about how you laugh more when you're in a theater.
Just a bunch of happy people in one room is nice.
Yeah, it's like a joint experience with everybody else. It was way more fun to watch it, of course, in the theater.
I think people underestimate comedy.
Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to do good comedy, first of all.
But also, if I just think about the kind of movies that either will get awards or people will say is the best . . . usually comedy is not allowed to be on the best of lists, it's allowed to be on the favorites list. It always has to be a serious world event or something that wins or something like that. No offense to Nomadland or The Zone of Interest, but I'm probably going pick a comedy more often if I’m going back to something, you know?
Yeah.
Are you like that?
Yeah, I like all that stuff. I like every genre. I loved a bunch of movies this year and I'm so glad that cinema is at least good still, because like I'm such a hater on modern music. I do like some new music, but I'll always be ranting about it. It's so crazy to me how all the mainstream music is not even remotely as good as it used to be. But I feel like movies hold up.
What happened to music? How would you explain the fall?
Dang it. I don't want to get too much into it because I don't want to be a hater.
You can be a hater. It's fine.
[laughing] I don't know. That's the thing. I literally don't know what happened. I mean, there's still good stuff, but like, I just feel like it . . . I don't know if it's because it got too pop-y or what. I feel like labels are literally creating people, but I'll be watching SNL and be like, “Who is this like nondescript person with this like nondescript dance singing in this average voice?” See, I don't wanna get on a tangent.
That was a fun tangent. You don't think movies have had the same fall in the sense that there's still personality, basically, in movies?
Yeah. That might just be because I'm in my own bubble of like, “Oh yeah, Film Streams and Aksarben.” Sure. They're showing cool movies and, but I feel like all the top movies of the year, every year that are like are really good still. My girlfriend and I try to see almost everything, like as far as all the contenders, like the Oscar contenders.
They say Kubrick would try to watch every movie there was.
Really? Oh my God. But then back in the day, it probably wasn't as many.
Yeah, imagine Kubrick scrolling through Peacock all night.
Oh, actually that's a good point, because there weren't as many releases, but you would have to actually go see it.
There was some tweet that was going around where people were saying that Kubrick wouldn't have liked most movies that are out, but the writer of the tweet said that he would have liked The Zone of Interest. And I remember him doing an interview where he said some of the storytelling he admired most was beer commercials.
That's awesome. Yeah. I actually want to see The Zone of Interest. When I saw the trailer, I was like, “Oh, Okay. It didn't really peak my zone of interest.” But, recently, I saw a bunch of people saying it was amazing. So I was like, “Okay, I gotta see it.” Yeah, my favorite this year was the Alexander Payne movie, The Holdovers because it's like real life mixed with funny things.
Is Payne somebody you think about in terms of forming your visual grammar with these kinds of stories?
Maybe not visual, but I absolutely, definitely realize he's one of my favorites. That's absolutely what I would like to do—personal stories that have such funny aspects to them and weird characters and stuff like that.
There’s a kindness in his movies now, like the second half of his career has gotten nicer, whereas Citizen Ruth and Election—those are hilarious, but they're mean movies.
I want to rewatch some of them. And you know what's crazy is I've never seen The Descendants.
Oh really?
Yeah. I started it, but I had to be somewhere or something.
The Holdovers is one of the only examples of that type of movie doing well post-COVID, right?
Yeah.
In that sense, The Headliner is kind of a throwback and also it's kind of a test, right? Like are audiences looking for this kind of thing again? Can we bring it back?
Yeah, I think it's kind of weird, so I'm not sure. Like I think it's kind of a weird movie, mixing the stand-up with the narrative and everything, so we'll see. We'll see how it's received, but I'm excited just to get it out there.