“If you didn’t have fun in high school, you’re not going to like this,” Sarah Kelly says about her feature-length film “The Lather Effect,” which will make its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival June 26 in Westwood Village. Kelly, who grew up in Pacific Palisades, wrote and directed the comedy about a group of high school friends in their mid-30s who reunite for one final weekend at the house where they spent most of their teenage years partying. The set is modeled after her parents’ home in the Alphabet Streets, and two scenes were shot at Palisades High School. The story was inspired by Kelly’s own nostalgia about her teenage years in the 1980s, and her desire to address the issues that she and her friends are now experiencing. Those issues include the responsibilities of marriage, balancing career and family and the pressure to have a baby. Kelly, who is happily married to fellow Palisadian Steve Prough, wanted to make a movie that speaks to her generation the way Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 cult-classic “The Big Chill” resonated with those who grew up in the ’60s. “I was trying to figure out how to do that reunion movie without a funeral or high school,” says Kelly, who made her directorial debut with the 1997 documentary “Full Tilt Boogie,” about the making of Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Til Dawn.” Two years ago, around the time of Kelly’s 34th birthday, her parents were going out of town, so she and a friend decided to throw themselves an 80s-style birthday party. The invitation, which is still on her refrigerator, was an old photo of them dressed in ’80’s attire that dared everyone to “come as they were.” “Everybody raged,” Kelly says, explaining that people came in costume and with an adolescent mindset. She realized that so many of her peers were feeling the same way she was’missing their youth while dealing with “grown-up” emotional issues. Being an adult “is much harder work than anyone told us it was going to be,” says Kelly, who now lives in Mar Vista. “We were a privileged generation but maybe we weren’t quite prepared for even minor stuff hitting the fan.” Cleaning up the mess at her parents’ house after the party, Kelly realized that she had a movie to make. She wanted people to know that “it’s okay to have dichotomies in your life’to be married and miss an old boyfriend. It’s okay to admit it.” In order to bring her characters together, she set the film in her main character’s family home, which had recently been sold. Kelly’s own parents still live in her childhood home, which had a tree house, hot tub and “rat room,” where she, her younger brother Dominic, and their friends used to hang out. Kelly admits she longs for the Palisades of yesterday, from the House of Lee and its popular Wing Ding Room bar to the Hot Dog Show and The Hacienda Galvan, which she claims had “the best taquitos in the world.” She remembers that her parents, Andy and Marea, used to bring home end rolls of blank newspaper from the Palisades Post’s backshop so she and Dominic could draw on them. Kelly was determined to make her movie within a year, in part because she had spent six years after “Full Tilt Boogie” trying to sell her script of a teen film in the mold of John Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club.” That project, called “The Blessed Virgins,” was based on Kelly’s experiences at Marymount, an all-girls Catholic high school. Several studios showed interest but were deterred by Kelly’s insistence that one of the characters die in a car accident, as had happened to one of her friends in real life. For “The Lather Effect,” Kelly collaborated with co-writer Tim Talbott, and wrote the first draft in a month. The plot centers around characters who reminisce about their years at PaliHi, which Kelly describes as a place that “seemed like this dream place to go.” Her husband, the son of former Palisades bookstore owner John Prough, graduated from Pali in 1984; Steve and Sarah met growing up in their Alphabet Streets neighborhood. The main character, Valinda, is Kelly’s age (36) and is named after “a cool baby-sitter” who took care of Sarah and Dominic when they were kids. In the production notes, Kelly writes, “If two of those John Hughes kids [from “The Breakfast Club”]’namely Molly Ringwald [who played the prom queen] and Ally Sheedy [the basket case] combined’survived enough Saturdays in detention to make it to their 30s, it’s very possible they would have turned out something like Valinda.” “She’s me, but they’re all me,” Kelly says of her characters. Valinda is played by Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights” and the TV series “Spin City”). Ione Skye, who starred in the 1989 teen classic “Say Anything,” plays Zoey, who is married to Valinda’s high school boyfriend Jack (William Mapother). Kelly’s friend and mentor Eric Stoltz, an actor, producer and director, plays Valinda’s older, laid-back neighbor who still likes to crash high school parties. “He sort of believed in me a long time ago,” says Kelly, who worked as a production assistant on several of Stoltz’s movies, including “Killing Zo’,” “Kicking and Screaming” and “Pulp Fiction.” “He treated me like a filmmaker even when I was aspiring.” “The Lather Effect” also stars Sarah Clarke, Tate Donovan, Peter Facinelli, David Herman and Caitlin Keats. Kelly says the film’s metaphorical title means “rinsing and repeating your past,” then describes that “sudsy” feeling one gets when intoxicated: “You have to be aware of the extra bubbles.” The movie was filmed in Studio City over a span of 18 days, and Kelly says directing it was “everything I though it was going to be.” Dominic, a composer, wrote the score for his sister’s film, which also includes a host of ’80s hits by bands such as English Beat and Violent Femmes. “I can’t believe it’s playing in Westwood,” Kelly says, laughing. “Talk about nostalgic. That’s where I went on every date with boys in the ’80s.” But she adds that making “The Lather Effect” was therapeutic in helping her get over some of her teenage nostalgia. She has begun writing a new screenplay, “50/50,” an ensemble comedy/drama about modern marriage, and still plans to develop and direct “The Blessed Virgins.” Rated R for language, “The Lather Effect” was produced by Rachel Rothman, David Grasso, Gary Bryman and Mike Jackson, and edited by Darren Ayres. It opens June 26 at 7:15 p.m. at the Mann Festival, followed by screenings on June 29 at the Landmark Regent and June 30 at the Laemmle Sunset 5. For tickets, call (866) 345-6337 or visit www.lafilmfest.com.
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