Monique Sorgen
June Filmmaker of the Month
Monique Sorgen is an award-winning comedy writer-director, who completed the Sony Pictures Television Directors Program, and is currently in the BlackMagic Collective Filmmaker Advancement Initiative. Her dark comedy short, Sorry, Not Sorry starring Wallace Langham (CSI), Jessica Oyelowo (A United Kingdom), and M. Emmet Walsh (Blade Runner) was picked up by the prestigious Omeleto.com, where it amassed more than 100,000 views and 4000 likes in its first month. Her newest short film, Rock A Bye Baby, an action-comedy, starring Mo McRae (Den of Thieves), Scott Krinsky (Chuck), and a baby, has won multiple comedy awards, including “Just For Laughs” in Montreal. It will be released in June of 2022 as a “Daily Pick” on Film Shortage and on Little Dot’s “Created by Women” platform. Before that, she directed three branded reality series in the Philippines for Fashion One TV, and made music videos that were picked up by the Disney Channel and the Jonas Brothers. Her first short film, Pants on Fire, starring Cress Williams (Black Lightning) and Ronny Cox (Deliverance) garnered international distribution and played on television and airlines around the world, including on the prestigious ARTE Network in Europe.
As a writer, she has developed screenplays with Imagine Entertainment, DiNovi Pictures, Jay Stern (Horrible Bosses), Chris Moore (Good Will Hunting), USA/UCP, Morgan Freeman’s Revelations, David Oyelowo’s Yoruba Saxon, and scripted several independent films, one of which took place in China. In TV, she’s written for “Blind Date,” Comedy Central, VH1, and worked in a think tank for ABC. She has also written for Sony Brazil’s hit rom-com anthology, “(Des)Encontros,” and developed a sitcom set in Mumbai. Currently she is completing a sitcom pilot starring sock puppets, based on her unconventional family dynamics. She also volunteers as a host for the Writers Guild of America’s podcast “3rd & Fairfax,” and teaches the next generation of up-and-coming filmmakers at her alma matter, UCLA, and other schools.
FILMMAKER INTERVIEW
Tell us your backstory. How and why did you get into filmmaking?
I was raised in a hippie house in the Castro district of San Francisco, so there were always lots of people around, and as a kid I liked putting on shows for them, so when it came time to go to college, I decided to major in theater, film, and television at UCLA. While I was there, I found out that I was really good at writing, and I enjoyed directing even more than writing or acting, so that's when I realized I was going to be a filmmaker. From then on I focused on classes that would help me stand out as a director, and I pushed the department to let me direct a one act play. The play was well received, so the professors recommended me to be the assistant director for a bigwig guest director who came to our university to direct a multimedia play. She turned out to be a television director, and since I was graduating, she hired me to work as her assistant on network television shows such as Star Trek and a bunch of sitcoms on Paramount’s now defunct network, UPN. It was the best professional training I could have asked for, and I was hooked.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
I can get inspiration from anywhere. I’ve gotten inspiration from a conversation at a party, where somebody said something I'd never thought about before, or it could be a random thought that I wrote down in my journal and then discovered 5 to 20 years later when I was re-reading it, or I could be inspired by a unique person I encountered, who made me wonder what was going on in their brain. But I’ve noticed that the thing I am most often inspired by is whatever is making me angry in the world. I want to fix the problems through my scripts, which find solutions and happy endings. This often leads me to tell stories about feminism or racism or people misjudging and misunderstanding others—because those are the things I worry about in life. As a comedy filmmaker, this is a good way for me to channel my anger and communicate my message in a light-hearted and inoffensive way, where people might actually hear the message because hopefully they're laughing at how ironic and stupid our world can be.
What is your favorite aspect of film production?
My favorite parts of film production are the very beginning and the very end. At the beginning you get struck by inspiration and you're so excited about this new idea and feeling high about everything it could be and everything it could communicate. Then in the middle you go through a million different ways of feeling like your ideas will never work and it's stupid and people won't get it. In fact, along the way you'll get notes on your work, and find out that people actually really aren’t getting it. Then you change it and make it clearer and make it better, and that part is really hard work, and it can be demoralizing. So, it's not the funnest part. Then at the end you've accomplished something, and often made a film that's better than what you thought you could do, and you get to share it with audiences, who have nice things to say about it and really relate to your message and your comedy. Finally you feel appreciated for all the hard work you put in along the way, even if they have no idea quite how difficult the journey to get there was. So yeah, I'd say the beginning, the initial inspiration, and the end when you share it with appreciative audiences are my favorite parts of filmmaking.
Why did you choose to submit to the Breckenridge Film Festival? What do you look for in a festival where you hope to show your film?
I wanted to submit to Breckenridge because I had heard good things about the festival and the town. My fellow filmmakers recommended it highly and they never actually told me why they recommended it, but they just kept telling me to go. And I'm glad I did because I had a blast. The town was beautiful and the people who live in Breckenridge are great. So many people are there by choice, because they liked it and wanted to create their lives there. They didn’t end up there by accident. It's rare to be in a town full of people who came there deliberately to be by the mountains and live in this little community of fun-loving cool people. The happiness of the people who live there really came across to me when I was at Breck Fest. Of all the festivals, this was one where I connected the most with the town's people. Don't get me wrong I've been to festivals in other towns that had good people, but I generally had to go back a second time to really feel connected to them, whereas with Breck I felt like part of the gang after one visit.
What are the next project or projects you are beginning work on?
Currently I have a few comedy features which I am working on with producers to find financing and attach a cast. It can often be a challenge to find independent financing for comedies because people are used to seeing comedies come out of the studio system-- especially high concept comedies like the ones I tend to gravitate toward. But the studios aren’t really making comedies anymore, so there’s an opportunity right now for low budget high concept comedies to be independently financed, because audiences still want them, and new distribution avenues have opened up with the streaming platforms, on which most people actually prefer to watch something lighthearted than something dark or difficult. One of my projects “Gone Glamping” is about a group of Beverly Hills housewives—types, who accidentally end up on a hunting and fishing wildlife adventure, where they are totally out of their element, but they end up really finding themselves on the trip. It’s in $3-$5 million range, so it’s very reasonable for the streamers, and it’s a really commercial concept with funny female characters, so there should be a great opportunity for ROI. I also have a project I love called “Bad BFF” about a 40-year-old woman who has lost all of her friends to their marriages and families, so she pretends she's getting married in order to get her best friend to hang out with her as her “maid of honor.” It’s also a low budget, highly commercial comedy about women finding themselves and being themselves, so I guess I have a theme.
