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Combining live action and 3D animation, Love Virtually centers on four who are trying to find love in the Metaverse! Director/co-writer L.E. Staiman and executive producer/co-writer Cheston Mizel came up with the idea during the global pandemic. Since there was no big studio behind them, there was no “gatekeeping” for this movie. The pair simply penned a script and went from there . . .
Love Virtually, starring Cheri Oteri, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Paul F. Tompkins, is now available on Digital and On Demand. Full interview with L.E. Staiman and Cheston Mizel is below!
I’m Here with L.E. Steinman and Cheston Mizel, the writers and director of Love Virtually. It’s a strange movie, and I kind of loved it. I don’t even know where to start. Where did the idea or how did this movie get going? Because it’s so strange that I can’t. I’m trying to see who looks at this script and goes, yeah, we’ll make that because it seems so odd and fun. Movies like that don’t typically get made right.
L.E. Staiman: So I’ll answer the second question, and then Cheston will take the first question. Yeah, the script was very odd. There wasn’t really any gatekeeping in order to make it. I mean, this was like a home movie. We made it for completely ourselves. There was no asking permission or like, what do you think of it? It was just kind of like, all right, we have a script. Let’s let’s just go shoot it. You know, in a combination of houses and basements and so, yeah, it really was just like a small little indie project that we did ourselves. I don’t think any studio or any production company would have made it if we had sent out the script. It was just like a let’s just do it ourselves.
Cheston Mizel: One thing I like to say is necessity is the mother of invention. It was about a month into COVID. L.E. was in Florida at the time. I was in Los Angeles and we started talking and L.E. was itching to make a movie and we started brainstorming.
When we started brainstorming the parameters for what can you make without a huge amount of money and what can you make during a global pandemic? At that time, we didn’t know what was going to be possible. We didn’t know if it was going to be six months, a year of lockdown. We didn’t know if Hollywood was open. We didn’t know if we’re going to be filming this on zoom screens and with iPhones, or if we’re going to actually be able to do real production, which, thank God we were able to.
Fortunately, things opened up enough but was still shot under crazy conditions. So we set out to write something that could be filmed with no more than two people in a room at any time. There were a couple scenes that were filmed a year and a half later that had multiple people in it, but the original script, that was part of it. And, you know, once we kind of got into these absurd relationships that are online, which lends itself to this kind of thing, L.E. was insistent that all these couples have to come together, but how do they all come together? The only way they could all come together would be in VR, or in a zoom chat or something like that.
So ultimately, all sort of the bizarre aspects were really borne out of the fact and the limitations that COVID created and our anticipation of how could we fit something around the impossibility of making a movie at that time.
This is kind of like a Magnolia sort of thing, where you got a bunch of different stories that all come together. Steve Tobolowsky’s story reminded me of Escape (The Piña Colada) Song!
L.E. Staiman: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ve definitely heard it. It’s an iconic song. I don’t think it occurred to me that that’s what that song was about until after we shot this. And the people are like, oh, it’s like the Piña Colada song. I was like, is that what that song is about? And so it wasn’t necessarily like a direct inspiration, but yeah, it’s exactly like it’s ripped from that from from that idea.
Cheston Mizel: I think there’s more to, there’s a little more to like. Yes. But what is that idea in today’s world. And it’s just a matter of like people get into relationships and you get into sort of like patterns and habits in your relationships. You don’t really see who’s in front of you. And you’re connecting on a certain level, but you’re connecting based on all the baggage that’s built up and things like that, as opposed to necessarily what is there between two people.
And sometimes you have to take away all the things that we’ve kind of get stuck with in order to see. Maybe the connection was there all along. One of the themes in the movie is how do we connect and what is real connection, especially when technology enters the mix.
***Check out our recent episode of CinemAddicts where we review The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Killer:
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!What’s the writing process between the two of you as you’re going through this? Like, do you just have like a broad idea of the of the certain thread?
L.E. Staiman: It evolved a bit, but it really was. The first one was like the sandbagging story?
Cheston Mizel: Yeah, the first one was the idea of the reverse catfish, because I just that seemed very like funny and absurd that like, beautiful people would make themselves not so attractive so as not to be desired for superficial reasons. We just really kind of looking at the absurdity of things. And that seemed like it was an interesting story, but that wasn’t enough to make the whole movie. So then we’re like, okay, well, what about this other absurd aspect? And some of these storylines came from headlines which were before their time.
I remember reading an article about a woman who was attaching an emotional connection to a chatbot, and that was before. Now with AI the way it is with ChatGPT, these were like very rudimentary ones. It was something that was actually starting to happen. And so I think we just drew from those things and then really talked through each of the storylines and figured out what the connective tissue could be.
We were writing across the country from one another using online tools. It was very much a writing process for today’s day and age.
Was there a lot of improvisation with the movie? That scene with “smash that like button” was funny and felt spontaneous.
L.E. Staiman: It’s a combination. I’m going to smash that like button was in the script. Peter Gilroy ad libbed a ton. Cheri (Oteri) and Stephen did some ad libbing, but a lot of that stuff was on the page. It was all tightly structured. The process was more like, all right, let’s get everything on the page. Aside from Peter, who kind of like really did his own thing, which made it very challenging in the edit because everyone’s shooting up against blank screens essentially, and working off of performances that are shot weeks apart. So that was challenging, kind of putting it together. But for the most part, yeah, we stuck to the script and then would do like ad lib takes after the fact. See if we got some gold.
Like, let’s just shoot it how it’s written and then . . .
L.E. Staiman: and then let’s play. Let’s do one where it’s just let’s, you know, I wanted to give actors an opportunity to do that. Some took advantage of that. Some were like, this works. Let’s let’s keep it. Yeah. There’s there’s definitely some ad lib ad libbing in there throughout the movie.
There’s a lot of animation in this obviously given the what the movie’s about. But it’s also an indie movie. What kind of challenges did you guys have with that? Because I imagine there’d be more than one challenge that presented to you, as you say, the animation.
Cheston Mizel: With the animation, We kind of figured out how to put together with bubblegum and bandaids ourselves, and then find someone who could actually make it look good. So we actually were I had L.E. in my basement in a mo-cap suit, and I’m, you know, messing around on a computer, not knowing what I’m doing. But somehow we managed to animate at least the initial 30 something animated scenes, and we found some great guys who helped really clean it up and make it look good.
But in terms of the VFX shot, outside shots, outside of the animation, there were like 600 shots. One VFX artist who worked on it for over two years. It was really a mom and pop kind of a production.
Oh wow. So who is this? Who is this warrior? Because that sounds insane.
L.E. Staiman: Ken O’Donnell. Yeah, he was the MVP. He put in a lot of a lot of hours. There was a ton a ton of VFX in there, a lot of hidden VFX also, just in terms of screen replacements. And I mean, there’s just so much stuff in there. But yeah, it was one guy.
A lot of the characters in this are avatars, so you can definitely get away with, like you don’t need Pixar level animation or Star Wars level animation. It’s like, oh, it’s a bit janky. Well, yeah, they’re avatars. They’re supposed to look like that. Did any of that come into writing this?
Cheston Mizel: We knew that we weren’t going to be able to do Pixar level animation. So even when we brought on the animation company to take the animation we had done and sort of do the cinematography and clean it up and do some of the facial stuff. We’re like, go ahead and lean into some of the janky stuff. Because it was supposed to be the metaverse, and the metaverse may be a little bit better than it was three years ago. But it wasn’t intended to be some believable reality somewhere else. It was supposed to be a believable trip into the metaverse.
I’m hoping that we managed to pull that off, especially when you see that we use some stock and mixed characters and we did stuff we created ourselves. Some of them look better than others, and there was kind of a diversity of the way things look. But I think that’s kind of how the metaverse, at least in its current iteration, is, is that there’s different quality avatars andsome move better than others. And, and I think that, you know, we tried to at least lean into that as being a reflection of what that experience is. So hopefully, you know, hopefully it sells.
I’ll end on this. We have a what’s in the box segment, and we have people put movies in the box that they think are underseen, or maybe it’s personal to them or they just think is really good and no one talks about. Is there a movie each of you would like to put in the box?
L.E. Staiman: Maybe I’d like to put in the box. It’s a good question. I really like Cha Cha Real Smooth. That was that came out. Yeah. I like to plug, like, you know, indie filmmakers. Well, he’s not I mean, he’s like, I mean, he blew up, but. Yeah. I thought that movie was great, and I loved the entrepreneurial spirit of it. So I’m going to plug that one.
Cheston Mizel: The truth is L.E. is the movie buff. I don’t know that I have anything to put in the box that’s under seen and under appreciated. But what I’m going to do is I’m going to bring back a really old movie that everyone should have seen. And if they haven’t, because it’s generationally, a lot of people didn’t. A month before we made this, we had and really, I think inspired us and setting us the moment we had a viewing in my basement of Airplane! and that’s an old classic that maybe the younger generation hasn’t. We showed my oldest son the film. And I think that kind of actually got us thinking in terms of the absurdist genre and satire and things like that. I think it was part of the inspiration for making this film.
Even though it’s not unseen, maybe it should be seen again.
Cheston, I was looking at your IMDb and you have a movie called Ohr (Light) and I was looking for that. I cannot find that. Is there a place that that online that that can be found, or do you just have to stumble across it, a DVD store?
Cheston Mizel: No, no, it’s currently not on any of the platforms. Maybe we’ll consider putting it back out. It was in several film festivals. It’s a it’s a documentary, very moving documentary, which L.E. also helped out with in a great way. Perhaps it’ll we’ll we’ll put it on platforms, but we haven’t done that as of yet. Now if you reach out to me, I can send you a link and you can watch it privately, but it’s not available to the public.
One thing that will be available is Love Virtually which is now available on digital and On Demand. I really enjoyed the movie and congratulations to both of you and cannot wait to see more that you do, because this was very inventive and very fun to watch.
L.E.Staiman and Cheston Mizel: Thank you so much.
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