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PRO FILES: SEAN HARTOFILIS

The visionary behind Beach Pillows continues to dream big

M
Applaudience
Published in
18 min readSep 1, 2015

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“I’d rather walk a tough road and be strong and smart than get all the breaks and be a soup sandwich.” — Sean Hartofilis

Sean Hartofilis — the writer, editor and director behind the 2014 full-length film debut Beach Pillows — is an auteur of high-level proportions. An All-American and former professional lacrosse player, Hartofilis built his perseverance through years of hard work and dedication.

After graduating from Princeton University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Hartofilis arranged his future toward creating his singular cinematic vision. After encountering the standard finance and foundation issues of any first-time filmmaker, Hartofilis eventually saw his creative vision take form.

The final product is evidence of the love behind it: Beach Pillows, a comedic and poignant story of self-discovery played out between childhood friends Morgan (Geoffrey Arend) and Nick (Vincent Kartheiser) over one Long Island summer. The majority of the soundtrack was executed by The Deadly Syndrome and Deer Tick, while the film was awarded the Van Gogh World Cinema Screenwriting Award at the Amsterdam Film Festival in 2013. Ironically, while Beach Pillows took over a decade to materialize, the actual shooting of the film took place in a timeframe of only twenty days.

While simultaneously working on his next full-length film and adjusting to parenthood, Hartofilis took the time to speak about Beach Pillows, lacrosse, film and love.

SEAN HARTOFILIS

BEACH PILLOWS

  • Distributed by: Gravitas Ventures
  • Produced by: Walls Farm Productions
  • Van Gogh World Cinema Screenwriting Award — Amsterdam Film Festival (2013)

ON FAVORITE DEBUTS

I’m forgetting my roster of influences. They’ve receded in my mind. I’m out of shape interview-wise and otherwise. I have a baby now — Francis Finn — so he’s head and shoulders my favorite debut.

ON ACTING

Yes, that was me in the poster — “Billy DeLongpre” — in Beach Pillows. We couldn’t license Pre, so I jumped at the chance. Acting is kind of on an as-needed basis.

As sensitive as actors need to be, I might even be too sensitive for it. I just can’t give as much of myself as is required to be great if I don’t connect to the work wholeheartedly. I feel like I have a lot to say and I should focus on that. Plus, I’m not turning down any jobs. That’s a tough racket.

ON LACROSSE

I always enjoyed sports. I’m one of four boys, so we played together. I looked up to my older brothers, who are bigger guys than me and were big-time athletes. I really spent a lot of time on it. Then it seemed like a good way to increase my chances of going to a good school. I’d wanted to go to Princeton for a long time.

And I made great friends. I think any sport can teach you about accountability to a team, discipline, the benefit of hard work and focused effort to achieve better results. That’s more in hindsight, probably. I honestly just enjoyed being good at it.

I think what attracted me to lacrosse — and allowed me to excel, as opposed to some other sports — is that you don’t have to be particularly big. I’m not small, but I grew late. I was always small growing up. And I like that you can have total control over the ball.

It’s pretty creative. It’s a beautiful game to play and watch, I think. Guys and girls are always doing new things, so there’s a sense of trailblazing to it.

And, finally — and maybe this makes me sound like Eli Cash or something, but whatever — I always felt an affinity and connection with Native Americans, who created the game. Or I suppose they’d say the Creator gave it to them.

Anyway, it all worked. It was fun. I liked to shoot the ball.

ON BEACH PILLOWS

VISION v. FINAL PRODUCT:

There are always going to be discoveries. That’s what’s so fun about creating anything. But, yes, I think the planning gave me a good sense of where I at least hoped to land with everything. And the independent nature of the production allowed me to essentially have complete control — outside of, you know, certain logistical and financial elements; you can only afford a zoom lens for two days or whatever.

But, as Orson Welles said: “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” So all of the constrictions regarding time and money and locations — those all allow you to be alive and creative; to remain a writer, more or less. And that’s the fun part. That’s the magic.

How closely does it resemble what I was going for? I mean, I like to think pretty closely, because I drew the shots and planned the cuts and all that. But an idea doesn’t really exist, if you get my meaning.

So I’d argue it’s exactly what I was going for, because it’s the only result I can offer.

The actors have every bit as much authorship because they’re putting their spirit on the screen. You have to guide it, but everyone in the crew is creating. You don’t want to inhibit the magic, I guess is what I’m saying.

You want to create a very specific framework with which to foster it in the service of your story.

As just one small anecdote on the matter: the shot where Annette O’Toole is silhouetted in the window as Morgan and Nick are arriving home in the VW from the big night out — the fight, cop, etc. That was initially supposed to be an exterior setup. But it was raining. And it didn’t really match the adjoining scenes. So we shot it from inside the house and had this long continuous take with the guys entering; Morgan’s mom seeing Nick’s battered face.

She’s going to Church, and she slams the door — the mirror kind of shakes which cuts very nicely to the shimmering water in the pool. That’s one of my favorite shots in the movie. And we came up with it on the day.

SOUNDTRACK:

I didn’t get everything I wanted, but I got close to everything. And the new stuff really plays well, I think. The Deadly Syndrome: these are my friends who I used to see play a lot when I lived in LA for three years after college. I had a good feeling they’d let me use the stuff, but it’s still an incredibly generous thing to do, and I’ll always be grateful.

The John McCauley stuff, Deer Tick and Middle Brother: I honestly just got in touch with their manager and asked. I’m guessing they liked the movie, because they allowed it.

But I’ve never heard from a member of that band, besides being a huge fan and going to a bunch of their shows. I, perhaps insecurely, assume that they now think it was a mistake. But who knows. I love the music and it adds a ton to the movie.

Thematically, those were the two big voices — one raw and one a little more spacey — and I think they represent these two very different characters who ultimately intersect. I even wrote a Civil Rights song for the movie, “Change Your Ground.” We tried to get “Change Is Gonna Come” and then “We Shall Overcome” but I think they only license those for, like, the inauguration. And, frankly, I can’t claim to deserve them.

But I really don’t deserve anything. I worked hard and got lucky with a lot of this stuff, especially the music.

J.D. SALINGER-INSPIRED PROMO POSTER:

That was an interesting bit of collaboration. I can’t Photoshop; I’ve tried, and it doesn’t make sense to me. I’d be better off in Word. My producing partner Jesse Hoy — the drummer in the band The Deadly Syndrome — he’s very good with that stuff. So I picked the shot with Nick on the float and Morgan in the background and asked if he could white out the background, which looked nice.

It’s a little bit evocative of Benjamin Braddock in the doorway intersected by Mrs. Robinson’s pantyhosed leg, with the white hotel walls, which is fine. So we’ve got our title font, which is Miller — I’m digressing, but maybe this is interesting to people — because I wanted a serifed font; something classically literary, and that’s the actual text font in The New Yorker.

I’m not sure if that’s legal. I didn’t pay for it. But if they sue me, it will probably be the biggest bit of press the movie has generated.

All that said — please don’t sue me.

Anyway, on to those color bands in the top left corner. So we had the image and text and “Let your goose loose…” log line with the white background. It looked cool but maybe a little plain, like it was missing something. And this doesn’t really exist as a big poster, although my brother-in-law made me one.

It’s going to be a thumbnail on iTunes, Amazon, On Demand on your TV or whatever, so it needs to be a little bit striking. You can’t really even see the actor’s faces. But I didn’t want one of those standard studio posters today where the whole thing is the actor’s face, like a headshot.

Anyyywaaayyy, the bars of color. I told Jesse, “It’d be cool if we had some color bands or shapes like something from Alvin Lustig” who’s a famous designer of book covers from the mid-twentieth century; kind of a forefather of Modern Art. I’m honestly not an expert, but I was aware of this person and these designs and thought something like that might work.

Then Jesse came back to me with the Salinger stripes from Little Brown, like in the actual colors. I thought, “Well, that’s bold.” But I was frankly concerned it’d be a little on-the-nose or pretentious. So I said, “Let’s do them in our palette”, which is more or less the Snow White palette — shades of blue and red and yellow/brown. So that was the compromise.

And on ours, it kind of looks like the sun, and the lighting on the characters is appropriate for that to be the case. We tried bending them in a quarter-circle, but it looked a little wonky.

For me, it’s evocative of a very personal, down-looking-up kind of storytelling. I wouldn’t necessarily count Salinger as a chief inspiration for Beach Pillows, but I’ve read his novels and the Nine Stories, and I think he’s wonderful. I’m sure I was more inspired by things that inspired him and things that he inspired. But I love the writing.

I’ll say that a grand bit of irony is that apparently the publisher threw these stripes on because Salinger had something written into his contract at a certain point that no images would be placed on his covers — just text. He’d had a painful experience with a previous release, and this was the publisher’s workaround. And then we stole that — the workaround — and paired it with an image.

So, in the end, we used it because our main character is a writer, and this is the kind of bildungsroman about where and whom he’s from that he may have been trying to write. It may have been what I was trying to write. But it also gave the poster an easily identifiable, kind of built-in iconic symbol to hopefully resonate with people in an appropriate way as they scanned their queue. I’m not sure it worked.

Anyway, that’s the poster.

STORY-BOARDING PROCESS:

I storyboarded everything until a certain point when I ran out of drawing time. Drawing takes a while. It gets where you’re like, “Well, maybe I could just explain this and spend my time a little more productively.” So then we just shot what I would have drawn anyway. But most of the movie I drew.

AUTEUR THEORY:

That’s nice. I admire filmmakers in that mold. I like when you can tell who made the movie without seeing the credits; kind of a signature in the tone or aesthetic or any number of things. I’d like to establish a career in that vein. But I think you have to make more than one movie, or more than a few, to achieve that status, so I guess we’ll see.

I like when there’s a clear author of the work, someone who writes and directs and edits and has an idea for how the rest of it should go. That said, Martin Scorsese hasn’t written a lot of his scripts — or even someone like Hitchcock — but they’re still guiding the process.

The auteur theory, of course, was applied retroactively by the French film critics (and ultimately filmmakers) who began to see the value in Hollywood directors from the studio system, where a lot of control — in terms of the stories they were telling or casting or editorial decisions — was perhaps not in the hands of the director by a long shot.

But if you have a vision and a way of working, communicating with people and establishing an atmosphere and an eye, then they can’t really extract your essence if they tried.

Orson Welles: a number of his movies were taken from him — quite painfully I’m sure — but you still realize no one else could have made them.

I believe the creative process, in any artistic form, should be directed by one voice. That’s where I see the clearest and most moving results. But film is highly collaborative, and I love working with people.

TRUTH WITHOUT SACRIFICE:

I take that as perhaps the highest creative compliment anyone could offer. Truth is the best thing I can offer. I want the movie to be funny. I thought the script was funny. I think that’s why the actors wanted to do it. But I didn’t direct them to be funny. They didn’t perform to be funny.

If you can make comedic material real, then I believe it can affect people on deeper levels, so it’s not something disposable; it’s something they can take with them. I’m not sure how you’d quantify what’s real or what’s not other than to say I wanted to always make sure people were communicating to each other, and of themselves. Not kind of going through the paces on their own accord, but moving each other, you know?

But you’re really complimenting the actors. The movie and I benefited greatly from their talent and commitment to these characters.

And for me, I needed to be real, too. About the way I wrote. About how I communicated with my collaborators. About how I cut the film.

Sometimes real can be uncomfortable — but uncomfortable can be a stronger and more valid feeling than any other, because you’re shaking a person from their status quo and literally saying, “Feel this!”

Movies are great at that, even these days, perhaps more than ever, because there are almost no other opportunities to be away from the internet, other than in Church or maybe swimming in a body of water or on a hike or something.

I live in Queens though, so there’s not a lot of hiking.

IMPROVISATION / BEACH SCENE / CAMARADERIE:

“Ed”, who is my friend Pete Ianne, will be thrilled. He was very worried about that scene — and he remains worried, because it was his first day doing professional acting of any kind. There were select bits of improv that you maybe discuss and approve throughout the film. And you do so because they’re incredible. I really love all of those moments.

But it’s mostly, and I’m paraphrasing another director here, emotional improvisation. I’ve given them the words so they don’t have to worry about that, about thinking too much.

It’s their job to feel. That’s why acting is so difficult and takes a really special, vulnerable individual to do it well. I really admire it.

The camaraderie? It was great. It’s really like the most fun and purpose-filled thing. The only bummer is saying goodbye, because you’re so close for what feels like so long, but I guess it actually isn’t that long. It feels wonderful though, to all be pulling in the same direction. I can’t wait until the next one.

CHEATING SCENE:

It was about having your heart broken, on camera. That can happen to someone in a phone call. At a party. Over a coffee. I don’t know, wherever. But it probably needs to happen to everyone to grow and learn how to love themselves enough to love someone else.

The scene itself, that’s another example of improvisation from the post-production side. I had boarded, framed and we shot that scene to be split-screen. So you’re seeing Morgan while you’re seeing what’s in the room, knowing more than he does. It’s the old Hitchcock thing: give the audience more info than the character, that’s suspense. Otherwise, it’s just surprise. A bang! And a bang is fun, but the build is what makes it a little more profound.

Anyway, it cut well in split-screen. The timing and framing worked nicely. But I think some of the tension dissipated. Your eyes are kind of shifting around and there’s not as much focus.

I think DePalma’s really the only one to ever make it work. I can’t think of any other split screen that I like all that much. Maybe Tarantino does it well, but it’s more in the service of montage in most cases. DePalma, I don’t know, he made scenes like that. It kind of seems like he made whole movies like that.

So I had to decide, “Well, I pulled this off and that’s something to feel good about. But is it just better with straight cuts?” And it was. I got good advice there that I gratefully took. Sometimes you take advice and you’re like, “Wait, why did I listen to that?”

But this was a good one. And the actors nailed it, and I love the shots and moves. My friend Mike Hughes composed great music for that scene that we also use later in the movie.

I think that one works. It probably needs to for the rest of the movie to work.

JOSEPH WALLS:

He’s my mother’s brother, my Uncle Joe. He died a few days before we started shooting the movie. He always said, “I couldn’t be scundered with useful cubs.” But he was never particularly scundered.

He was a remarkably joyful and loving human being. In many ways, he seemed to retain the spirit of a child throughout his life, even when he got sick. So that’s a big part of the movie. “Lest ye become as little children…”

He means a lot to me and my family, and we all mean a lot to each other.

ON GRATIFICATION

I think there was frustration throughout the process. To think there wouldn’t be after it was done would probably be naive. But I probably was naive. With a single-minded focus to make something, it’s never really about, or wasn’t for me, “Then what?” I thought — and always kind of operated like — this stuff I’m making is good.

I’m obviously biased, and art is subjective, but I believe it’s of more value than a lot of stuff getting noticed, so I’m sure it will get noticed.

And you ultimately realize: No, you’ve got to worry about everything. You’ve got to carry the thing up the mountain, then you’ve got to set up shop, build signs and start feeding it to people.

This analogy has gone awry. What was I bringing up this mountain?

The point is I learned a lot and am still learning a lot. Would I have liked to get into Sundance and sell it for five million dollars and get it distributed in a bunch of theaters with a promotional campaign behind it? Yes, I would.

Because I want people to see it. But it will always be available for people to see. People are finding it every day. And that makes everything worth it.

I don’t really operate from a place of regret. Because if you avoid difficulty, you’re not getting the benefit of the education that the difficulty provided. I’d rather walk a tough road and be strong and smart than get all the breaks and be a soup sandwich. Because I need to be strong and smart to accomplish what I’d like to on this planet.

ON FUTURE PROJECTS

I’m ready to go. My casting director from Beach Pillows is trying to get it (The Night) to certain actors to attach a lead. That’s how you finance these things. I feel like it’s an important story, though, and that people are ready for it. I’ve written of tons of things since that one, too.

A feature set in Spain called The Poor Boy. Jesse and I are trying to package a TV pilot that I wrote. I wrote an animated pilot. I’m writing a new feature at the moment. You’re always kind of pushing everything at once.

Or at least I am. So any delay will never be for a lack of material. These things just take a while. And you ultimately have to make a living and provide for your family. But I don’t mind that. I love it. And I’m always learning and getting more prepared for the next one.

I consider all of it constantly. I don’t really separate any of these creative pursuits. In my mind — and maybe only my mind — I’m a storyteller. I write and record songs. I write short stories. You know, you submit them to The New Yorker and The Atlantic and hope you hear back around Christmas and your life changes.

Art is a unique business — if it is that — in that people don’t see most of your work. They only ever see a very little bit. And even the stuff they see, they don’t necessarily know all the failures it took to achieve it. So I’ve been at it long enough to understand these things a little bit and not be waiting to be discovered, as it were.

And, fortunately, just making the work is it’s own reward.

It may sound like a platitude, but it feels good. I’d rather be creative than successful. I’d love to be both, but success to me has never equated to money. I like to think I’ve accomplished a fair amount in my life thus far, but I’ve always been broke. I feel good about what I value and how I approach it all. In general, I’m very grateful.

Remember: Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. And he was friends with the collector’s brother, so there was some nepotism there.

I’m not saying I’m Van Gogh. I mean, he painted.

ON LOVE

I feel like my answer — if I have the good fortune to share it — will be my work. But my driving force is love. My goal in life is to share as much of it as I can. Again, I hope to do that most effectively through the work.

My wife and son are everything to me. The concept of a family tree is something I take quite literally. I feel absolutely connected to my family, and if I was cut off from them, I might as well be dead.

I don’t want to get too far into it here, but for me, having a child is empirical proof that Heaven and the opportunity for eternal life exists.

And, as far as creative focus, he just makes me more focused.

I think the great film critic Richard Brody said something to the effect of: You’re more productive when you have a child, because you’re not wasting your time on stupid stuff.

Written By: Matteo Urella / September 2015

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