Montecito at the Movies

Ifn previous years, many of the films in SBIFF have only had something of a tangential connection to the Santa Barbara area, maybe a producer or an actor, or below-the-line production crew. But you can’t get more Santa Barbara, and even more specifically, Montecito, than Relatively Normal. This full-length feature is having its world premiere at SBIFF. Remarkably – unlike many films getting their first public screenings at the festival – Relatively Normal is not full of newbies to the biz. 

Rather, Relatively Normal is rife with a rash of industry professionals, many of whom are returning to the filmmaking fold after years of pursuing other endeavors. These seasoned Tinseltowners were enticed by writer-director Amy Wendel’s original story; that of a teenage girl coping not only with the stay-at-home requirements of the pandemic, but with her decidedly dysfunctional family, as well. The dark comedy stars Chloe Coleman (Marry Me, My Spy, Big Little Lies, Young Lo’ak in Avatar: The Way of Water, among many others) as Hannah, whose method of managing the mayhem is to hunker down in her bedroom closet, while the madness erupts outside the door, and often just steps away from her room. 

Other actors in the 90-minute movie – whose interiors and exteriors were shot almost entirely on location in a house in Montecito’s Hedgerow neighborhood – include longtime village resident Pamela Dillman as Hannah’s eccentric mother Miriam in her first film role in more than a decade, and the prolific writer/Emmy and Golden Globe-winner Cheri Steinkellner, whose actual acting credits mostly date to the 1980s, playing Miriam’s mother, Mimi. 

Relatively Normal actually began life as a potential podcast. 

“I have three boys, and my oldest at the time was in ninth grade at the early part of COVID, and the pandemic was really brutal for teens,” explained Wendel, a 15-year Santa Barbara local who is married to local native Dan Meisel. “I figured a narrative podcast could get on its feet fast, but I realized I really wanted to make it a film.

It had been a while. Wendel’s feature directorial debut, Benavides Born, which she co-wrote with Meisel, premiered at Sundance, winning awards there and at the Nantucket Film Festival, and later debuted on HBO as All She Can. But Wendel moved mostly into raising their family. 

That’s also what the film’s Montecito-based co-creative producer Jill Levinson (formerly Jurkowitz) was largely doing in the same time frame, having moved back to her hometown following collaborations with Northern California industry giants Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm, and her own independent production companies. She developed and produced entertainment properties, including the short film The Face (which won Best Film at the Palm Springs Film Festival) and Taking the Wheel with then-Montecito resident John Cleese. 

Levinson and Wendel had known each other for years. “We sort of raised our kids together,” Levinson said. “We spent the years as moms, also talking about coming back to our careers in a more substantial way. This seemed to be a perfect moment.”

So it was a no-brainer for them to come together again for Relatively Normal, with another of Levinson’s longtime friend and collaborator Allison Coleman (who is also Chloe’s mom) serving as a co-producer. 

“We were all around and available last summer, and we decided to just go for it,” said Levinson. The co-creative producer’s philanthropic credits happen to include a four-year stint as President of the Board of Crane Country Day School, and raising millions as the founding President of the Board for MOXI: The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation. “Everything fell in at the right spot at the last minute – including Chloe, who is the right age to play Hannah. We loved the scripts and were available – so we decided to leap off the cliff together and make it ourselves and not wait for the big filmmaking machine to get going again.”

We’ll leave the plot points of Relatively Normal to be discovered by the audiences during screenings. Suffice it to say the film veers from humor to sadness, anger to sympathy, fighting to friendship – evoking both distraught headshaking at human behavior and a gentle bowing of the heartstrings. 

“There’s a lot of tension between all the characters,” Wendel said. “When you take people who normally spend most of the day at work or school, put everyone in the same house and facing a very different scenario day in and day out, that provides its own engine. It’s like when you take atoms and turn the heat up and limit their space, they bounce off each other.”

Still, the over-the-top antics and situations didn’t come from Wendel’s own experiences, she said, but rather myriad stories she heard and read about. In fact, while the mom in the movie makes a big deal about her prized piano, Wendel is the only one in her home who doesn’t play the instrument, although the family piano was moved to the Montecito house for the shoot. 

Speaking of which, the Montecito/Santa Barbara roots run even deeper, including a number of below-the-line production crew, and local singer-songwriter-guitarist artist Emi Grace, who provides the musical soundtrack. 

Relatively Normal has its world premiere at the brand-new SBIFF McHurley Film Center February 6, with additional screenings on February 7 & 9. Given all the local connections, expect large crowds at the theater. Especially on opening night. 

“We just finished the film,” Levinson said. “We haven’t even had a friends and family screening. The festival is going to be the first time that anyone, other than those of us working on post, sees the movie. So get there early.”