Byeeee is a Canadian feature film, shot and set in Ontario. We subsequently had a chance to sit down with writer and director Chell Stephen.
HNMAG: Where did you study film?
Chell Stephen: The University of Southern Maine. I played hockey on their women’s team. That’s one of the reasons I went there.
HNMAG: You graduated from the University of Southern Maine, then you moved to Michigan, or are you just there now?
Chell Stephen: I’m splitting time between LA and Detroit. I like LA, but it’s not a very affordable place right now. Also, it doesn’t necessarily feel like a long-term place climate-wise. After the fires last year. I was wondering how long do we really have? Part of my longer-term climate apocalypse plan is to be on the Great Lakes and of those places where I could afford to live, Detroit seemed like the most interesting one to me culturally. A lot of people from New York and California are moving here right now to afford to be creative a little easier, with the stress of cost of living being lower.
HNMAG: Where did you move to after Portland?
Chell Stephen: After I graduated from Maine I went to grad school in Syracuse. I did my Master’s at the Newhouse School there, then moved to Brooklyn.
HNMAG: Where you started working in film.
Chell Stephen: I worked for a company called Music Choice, which was a music TV network similar to MTV — as in, when artists were promoting a record, they would come through, and we’d film them. It was a great place to work because they had me getting my hands dirty, actually making stuff, almost immediately. I met a lot of amazing people, and I was directing music videos on the side.
HNMAG: When you were growing up in Toronto, did you develop an interest in film and television at the same time as hockey, or was it separate times?
Chell Stephen: I don’t know why TV was always so important to me. I literally had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly when I was ten years old.
Hockey was a big part of my life. I was at the rink a lot, but every Friday, I would be watching TGIF then The X-Files. It was very formative stuff for me, as well as MuchMusic and 90210. I ended up, many years later, directing an episode of Riverdale, which funnily felt like a natural progression given my early passion for teen dramas.
HNMAG: You came out to Vancouver for that?
Chell Stephen: I sure did. I stayed at the Sutton Place, where seemingly everyone in the industry is put up.
HNMAG: You’re in the States, you lived in New York, but your feature film is set in Canada. How did that decision come about to make a Canadian film?
Chell Stephen: I wanted the film’s location to be a little bit up in the air.
It could be Ontario, it could be upstate New York. In that part of North America, it can kind of all look really similar.
HNMAG: Right.
Chell Stephen: But I started making my shorts in Canada for several reasons. One, when I make money down here, which is what I was funding those with, I can make the dollar go longer there. That goes a long way, right? Two, all of indie filmmaking is about using what you have. So, where we filmed Byeeee and where we filmed two of my other shorts is at my family’s cottage. We already had the location at no cost, and I wrote it with exactly that place in mind. It’s sort of a Canadian rite of passage, the “cottage feature.” But what’s the most interesting reason I can think of why somebody would be stuck at the cottage for a couple of days? That was kind of how I back-doored myself into the concept.
HNMAG: Yeah.
Chell Stephen: The other reason why I would shoot things up there is that my family was up there: my sisters working on the films, my mom doing craft services, my fifteen-year-old nephew as production assistant (PA). All my soldiers are up there.
HNMAG: That’s the Mark and Jay Duplass guide to no-budget filmmaking. You start by thinking of everything you can get for free and write the script around that.
Chell Stephen: Exactly.
HNMAG: Did you find a producer in Canada with whom you had a relationship? Did you know Sarah from before?
Chell Stephen: No, I met Sarah a few months before we made this. She comes from business affairs and has a legal background. We were connected through some mutuals. I had the location, I had the script, I had Romina cast, I had the funding, but I needed somebody to help me execute. She’s so valuable and brilliant in exactly that way. It was huge to have a lot of that business stuff off my plate
HNMAG: Did you know Romina D’Ugo already?
Chell Stephen: I wrote it for her, actually. We met on the TV show Nurses when I directed an episode and she was a guest star. Thank god, she’s just amazing, and given how fast and furious TV is, that is so huge. We just hit it off right away. Then I wrote a short for her, which we shot in LA in my apartment in 2022. She did her own hair and makeup, since it was very low-budget. That ended up being a good test run for this feature, as a lot of those similar things were in play. A good indie film is so contingent on great performances. The crew and I all felt pretty excited while we were making it because after every take, it was like, “damn, these guys are so good.”
HNMAG: Since 2000, characters in movies rarely smoke, especially in Canada, but Ryland smokes a lot, and even Andy smokes.
Chell Stephen: It’s so funny because there are so many smokers in Canada. In that area, rural Ontario, everybody smokes.
That’s my experience.
HNMAG: Even inside?
Chell Stephen: Well, inside, no. The inside part is sort of a bit of a cottage thing, and mostly where they’re smoking is in the screened-in porch.
I picture for Andy, this is something she quit a long time ago, but it’s like, “hey, smoke ’em if you got ’em. We’re two days out from death.”
HNMAG: The same with alcohol because she’s been sober for ten years,
Chell Stephen: Exactly. I am sober myself, and as I was writing this film, I was just thinking about things like that. Would I get shitty drunk one last time?
HNMAG: What is a big takeaway from making Byeeee?
Chell Stephen: Hollywood is confused and struggling right now, so I knew I had to go just make this myself. We shot it in twelve days with an incredible group of people who all didn’t really have the resources and support that one might normally want when making a film. I don’t think it looks like we did it as fast and as cheaply as we did, and that makes me proud of us.
HNMAG: good.
Chell Stephen: I’ve always been somebody who just wants to figure out the ways to make it work. I do think that creativity within limitations works really well, especially when we can have fun doing it. I’m just so proud of our crew and our talent. I can’t wait for people to see the performances, especially because these guys should be in everything. I want people to see it and hire them.
Byeeee is currently on the festival circuit and is really worth seeing. It’s an intense drama with some very authentic, humorous moments. Chell Stephen is a very talented writer and director. Canada needs to support her so we don’t lose another great talent to Hollywood. The acting is also very engaging and connected. Romina D’Ugo plays the lead, Andy. You might have seen her as Alana, the video store manager in the Canadian comedy I Like Movies.