a film by E.E. CassidyFilmmaker Magazine
November 4th, 2008
25 NEW FACES OF INDEPENDENT FILM
We Are the Mods, E.E. Cassidy‘s debut feature, is full of cinephilic pleasures. Yes, it‘s a teen drama that references (with, by the way, both imagination and restraint) the classic “good girl corrupted by the bad” storyline familiar from films like Thirteen and Poison Ivy. But it‘s also an affectionate and good-hearted homage to not only seminal films of the 1960s but also to the heady rush of young artistic discovery familiar to any sensitive ex-high schooler. Cassidy‘s tale of the contemporary mod subculture — teens in geometrically balanced dresses and suits who listen to British-flavored rock and ska and drive Vespa scooters — is full of knowing nods to Antonioni‘s Blow-Up, Godard‘s Bande à part and the films of William Klein.
“The movie came from my interests in high school,” explains the California-born writer-director. “I was into ska, I had a Vespa and the video I watched over and over was Quadrophenia. When I went to college at UC Santa Cruz there was a little a mod culture there. Then when I moved back to L.A. in the late ‘90s, mod-inspired clubs were suddenly going strong, and everything sort of melded together.”
What congealed was not just Cassidy‘s interest in the mods but also a desire to make a classic teen movie (she cites as favorites Valley Girl and Fast Times at Ridgemont High) about “girls doing something. [The mod scene] is a male-driven subculture — I wanted to make a movie about girls who weren‘t just sitting on the sidelines.” After writing a script about a shy teen photographer seduced into a love triangle by an alluring mystery girl with bangs and a strangely sexy foot deformity, Cassidy set it up with a succession of producers. “Nothing was happening,” she says. “We had some money lined up and it fell apart. I knew that if I didn‘t make it then I‘d just have to abandon the idea so I decided to do it with credit cards.” With Rob Poswall she produced We Are the Mods on a tight 21-day shoot, impressively packing the film with a boatload of style in addition to nuanced and charismatic performances from leads Melia Renee and Mary Elise Hayden.
Cassidy recently attended the IFP Rough Cut Lab and is in the final stages of post. She‘s also thinking of other projects, like an adaptation of Heather Lewis‘s novel House Rules and a doc, All American Dog, about pit bulls that‘s intended to burnish the reputation of a breed once owned by both Teddy Roosevelt and Helen Keller. “I have two rescue pit bulls,” Cassidy says, “It‘s amazing what people will say to me when I walk them down the street.” — S.M.