Sometimes while covering a film festival, there is so much to see and do, you skip right past the short film screenings. But sometimes, while trying to see and do it all, great short films find you.
MovieMaker connected with the filmmakers behind “The First Date” two days after its world premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival while waiting in line for a glass of delicious Plinth wine at a sunset cocktail party in the charming Lido Marina Village.
The chance encounter illustrates the immense value of this Southern California film festival, which offers plenty of opportunity for genuine human connection in addition to screenings. Attendees enjoyed regular Q&A sessions with talent, as well as networking parties, where you never know who you’ll meet and where a conversation can lead.
In this instance: discovering writer-directors Will Crouse and Ashley Crowe, and getting a private link to watch their 15-minute queer awakening love story about two young women who meet at a bar and decide to drop LSD for the first time.
Intimate and moving, the dialogue-driven short feels like a trippy blend of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Lena Dunham’s Girls, indicating a bright future for the creatives behind the project seven years in the making.
“I think it was so affirming and such a high compliment to be programmed alongside the other films in our block,” Crowe tells MovieMaker over Zoom after the eight-day festival wrapped. “Everyone was also just very friendly, and so there was so much gratitude for our work. Will and I have been working on this for the last seven years, and we’ve been in our own world with it, and it really was the perfect place for it to premiere.”
“It was my first film festival,” she adds. “I feel absolutely spoiled.”
Crowe, who stars opposite Alex Nolan in the film, met co-director and co-writer Crouse while acting in one of his earlier short films, “The Reception.” With six shorts under his belt now, he says the Newport Beach Film Festival ranks as one of his favorite film festival experiences, so far, because of the programming, the people, and the SoCal beach vibes.
“The other shorts were so good. They were moving. They were all different from each other and from different parts of the world,” he says. “I really felt honored that our movie was with those other movies. That felt like the best affirmation of the film, in a way, to see what it was programmed with at an amazing film festival.”
“The First Date” was sparked from a rough idea Crouse had about two people meeting and deciding to do psychedelics together, but it all clicked during a conversation with Crowe before the pandemic.
“She was telling me about how she was in love with this woman, and how it was the first woman that she’d ever dated, and how that had been this new experience, and it was so beautiful for her,” he explains. “I was like, oh wow, I wonder if the little idea in my head of two people who do psychedelics, if it’s actually Ashley and another woman. It kind of just all hit me from Ashley’s story.”
They began co-writing the project together before Covid derailed film production in 2020. And then a series of personal setbacks in Crowe’s life — including a breakup with that first love that inspired the whole thing — almost made her ditch the project entirely. But she decided to hang on.
“The origin story of this partnership with Will is just as much a big part of the film,” she says. “I think that is an exciting part of it for me. When you really have a creative partnership and collaboration that you just get to be yourself, it feels like a deep exhale, and that was really the driving force behind this getting made.”
They shot for four-and-a-half days in Chicago in 2023, and then let it sit for months before Crouse found their editor, Kat Webber, while attending the Dances With Films festival in New York the following year.
“A lot of people that I work with, I have actually found through festivals,” Crouse says, adding that he also met First Date composer Dario Forzato at one, as well.
The final cut of the short was finished this past summer, leading to its Oct. 17 premiere at The Lot as part of the NBFF’s Short, Sweet, & Queer presentation.
“One of the things I’ve learned about submitting is you need to find festivals that really could work for your piece of art,” Crouse says. “Newport is a great festival for us, it’s got that kind of California chill vibe. You get the sense that they would be interested in films that are very vibey. You feel like they would have programmed Dazed and Confused back in the day.”
Reflecting on the whirlwind experience, Crouse and Crowe say that when they returned to their respective homes in Chicago and the Cayman Islands, they were more inspired than tired.
“We were moving like crazy; it was a busy, busy few days, and I came home rejuvenated. Like, let’s fucking go,” says Crowe. “I was fulfilled.”
Everyone knows short films aren’t money makers, but they do lay an experiential foundation to build from. Most importantly, Crouse says, it’s an accessible form of artistic expression, rather than attempting the daunting task of trying to make a 90-minute feature right off the bat.
“You can really express yourself in a day or two, and do a five- or eight-minute short, and really get yourself out there in a way that is actually feasible,” he says. “Even if you don’t make a career in it, if you want to make art, you can just make art. And you can get it on YouTube and your friends and family can see it, and that’s beautiful.”
Follow Crouse @mad.sage.productions and Crowe @ash.m.cro to keep an eye on where The First Date screens next. And you can read more of our film festival coverage here.
Main image: The First Date.” Courtesy of the filmmakers.
