MOVIEMAKER
In ‘Fire Fucking Fire,’ a One-Night Stand With a Rock Star Burns Too Bright
“Fire Fucking Fire,” a fast-burn comedy about a one-night stand that quickly blurs boundaries, has some of the strongest Santa Fe ties of any of the films playing the Santa Fe International Film Festival — co-writer/director Julia Eringer lives in the city, and debuted her first film at the festival in 2015.
But “Fire F—ing Fire” isn’t a Santa Fe story: It’s about romantic aspiration and the perils of putting people on pedestals, universal ideas that play anywhere. Though it’s about the dynamic between two women, anyone will get it. And anyone will get quickly pulled into it accelerating madcap energy.
The film was inspired by a real DM session between co-writer/director Rachel Paulson and a rock star who will go nameless. It took place while Eringer and Paulson were filming the 2019 feature Good Kisser, directed by Wendy Jo Carlton.
In reality, the DMing didn’t go anywhere, but in “Fire Fucking Fire,” it does. In the film, Paulson’s character, Ally, ends up bedding her rock star crush, Meg (Calico Cooper), lead singer of the fictional band Fire Fire. But in the morning. Meg decides not to leave. And things quickly get wild. The film deftly plays with ideas about invasion of privacy and making too many concessions.
Given that it’s about a messy dynamic with a rock star, music is an essential part of the story. The Santa Fe-based editor of “Fire Fucking Fire,” Alexandria Bombach, who recently directed the moving Indigo Girls documentary It’s Only Life After All, found two key songs in “Fire Fucking Fire”: “First Love” a collaboration between singer Buglet and songwriter Hunter Merriman, and “Snake Gladiator” by Albuquerque band Karen.
“Fire Fucking Fire” plays today at SFiFF’s Queer Shorts block at an especially cool moment in the life of the festival — just before the start of its current 16th edition, it became one of the rare festivals to achieve elite Oscar-qualifying status.
The short has had an impressive festival run that started with its premiere at Tribeca and next includes a stop at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
We talked with Eringer about collaborating with Paulson, playing to all kinds of audiences, and how to build a fire.
MovieMaker: Can you talk about how you and your fellow writer-director Rachel Paulson started collaborating?
Julia Eringer: Rachel and I met on the set of the feature film, Good Kisser. We were starring opposite one another, playing lovers. We hit it off instantly and became fast friends, which was lucky, because the feature was entirely dependent on the chemistry between the cast. Chemistry is something we have in spades.
The film came out during the pandemic and garnered a nice little fan base. Some of the fans asked us if we were working on anything else together so we started talking about it. Rachel came to me with an idea for a feature film which we wrote and is currently in development and I pulled out a script for a short film that I had written for her to star in while we were on set for Good Kisser. We brainstormed it and “Fire Fucking Fire” was born.
MovieMaker: What sparked the story?
Julia Eringer: Rachel was DMing a pretty famous rock star who was playing a gig in Seattle, which is where we were, on location, shooting Good Kisser. The rock star asked Rachel to go to her show and to hang out afterwards. Rachel tried to persuade me to attend with her but I was pretty reluctant to be the third wheel on a date that could go wildly wrong — plus we had an intense, tight shoot schedule and were shooting nights.
Rachel didn’t end up going, but we spitballed about what might have happened if she had gone and all the things that could have gone wrong. I grew up in a house that had a recording studio in the basement, from which my Dad ran a record label, so I had a lot of experience with musicians coming and going through my personal space. I went away and wrote the first draft of what would become “Fire Fucking Fire” based on that sketch idea and my own experiences.
MovieMaker: How did you figure out how to ramp up the scenario in a way that felt realistic, then comically insane?
Julia Eringer: I love this question. I always talked about this piece as an anxiety dream which gave us creative license to get a little surreal and indeed insane. But I wanted it to start out as a fantasy — because essentially the message is about not projecting your fantasies onto others, so it had to start glowy and romantic and realistic. I needed the audience to buy into the idea of Ally and Meg as a couple the way Ally herself has bought into it. As she says, she really thinks this could be a real thing.
Ultimately we are tracking Ally’s point of view as her rose-tinted version of her dream girl deteriorates, and she experiences Meg as the nightmare she is. It was interesting to tow that line between fantasy and nightmare and feel out where it tips over for Ally.
Story-wise, I found that it was easy to keep ratcheting it up because of the nature of the two characters: Ally is a people pleaser who desperately wants to be loved, and she has Meg on such a pedestal that there’s almost nothing Meg could do that would make Ally throw her out. While Meg is damaged, needs constant attention and commotion to drown out the voices in her head, and is always testing the people around her, pushing their buttons in an effort to have some sense of validation and safety.
The combination of those two essences meant we could push the comedy pretty far and examine the consequences of not having or holding personal boundaries. I wanted every single layer of the filmmaking process to reflect that descent from fantasy to nightmare, so the way we constructed this “ramp up” was holistic.
You’ll notice the colors become more saturated and bolder, the lighting more intense, the camera work wilder as the film progresses towards the crescendo. The music also ratchets up from sweet and romantic to overwhelming and invasive. In terms of costume, Ally remains in her underwear, while Meg’s outfits and make-up get more and more demonic. Everything was intentionally crafted to create that de-evolution from fantasy to comically insane nightmare.
MovieMaker: The movie seems to play on the joke/stereotype about lesbian couples moving in together quickly. Did you write it with the idea that most audiences would know that stereotype and be in on the joke? Did you write it with any particular audience in mind?
Julia Eringer: The film plays on that trope a little bit but I don’t think it’s exclusively for a queer audience. Interestingly, we’ve played more mainstream festivals than queer ones! I think the film is really about how we project fantasies onto others without actually knowing them and how we give our power away by doing so.
Because it’s harder to hold a boundary with someone we’ve placed on a pedestal, harder because we’ve attached our own validation to being with them. It leads to desperation and allows for extreme toxicity. Ultimately I think it’s something that everyone can understand and relate to no matter their gender or sexual orientation.
Of course, representation is extremely important to me, but I think we are at a time in storytelling that we can have queer characters without it necessarily being a queer story, meaning that the conflict doesn’t centre on the fact that the characters are queer, they just are.
MovieMaker: How did you connect with your editor, Alexandria Bombach?
Julia Eringer: Alexandria and I connected a number of years ago in a writing group. We became friends and I was actually at a test screening of an early cut of their Indigo Girls doc — such a beautiful film. Alexandria expressed to me that they’d be interested in editing narrative projects and I jumped at the chance to work with them.
I have to give credit where credit is due, their editing on this film was outstanding — the film would not be the same without them. And their secret skill is music placement!
If you’ve seen the film you’ll agree that those song choices couldn’t be more perfect.
MovieMaker: Can you tell us about your Santa Fe ties?
Julia Eringer: I’m so incredibly excited to be screening at the Santa Fe International Film Festival. It’s sort of a full circle moment for me. The first short I created (as a writer, producer and actor), “In Honor Of,” screened at the festival in 2015 and that is where I ended up meeting the man who would later become my husband.
We now live in Santa Fe with our twin girls so it’s really a special moment to be able to return to the festival, this time with a piece that I’ve directed.
You never know where life (or film festivals) will take you!
By Tim Molloy
