Goodbye Horses

Los Angeles, California | Film Short

LGBTQ, Experimental

Charlie Stuip

1 Campaigns | California, United States

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This campaign raised $6,000 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.

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Goodbye Horses is about solitude versus loneliness. Chris is self-sufficient in their solitude while Nina is lonely and wanting. Rejection from Chris, the harshness of the landscape, and a desert-dwelling spirit force Nina into confronting herself.

About The Project

  • The Story
  • Wishlist
  • Updates
  • The Team
  • Community

Mission Statement

Our goal is to capture big concepts like isolation, queer tension, and communion with nature in a way that is surreal and intimate. Our production collective HIGHBALL media uplifts underrepresented stories and artists, but not to check a box. We just find the work more compelling.

The Story

Nina, a failed painter, rents out the barn of Chris, a butch misanthrope living in the desert. 

Nina sets up the barn as her live-in art studio. Instead of painting she falls into strange dreams triggered by bones she begins to find on the property. These dreams reveal slices of her past, involving a miscarriage on her twentieth birthday in a Reno casino.

Chris and Nina brew a steady tension–imbued with cruelty, isolation and desire–all the while they are observed by the keeper of the land, a shadowy figure with an orb of red light in her mouth. 

One night, deep in the desert next to a pile of horse bones, the tension boils over. 



Nina (played by Camila Rozo) is paralyzed by old heartbreak. The night of her twentieth birthday haunts her. In a Reno casino she miscarried a baby she didn’t know she had. Right after the miscarriage, her older boyfriend disappeared into the slot-machines and roullette tables forever. This memory may just be a recurring dream itself. But Nina clings to this story–attributes it to her loneliness and her inability to paint. She perpetually mourns this night and fantasizes about her lost man. Then she meets Chris, who is not a man but is everything she wanted men to be. But Chris sees Nina as childish and entitled. 

Chris (played by Midas) is a true desert dweller. They live off the unforgiving land, always working on their loner's paradise. They are perceptive of Nina and her craving for connection but don’t know what to do with it. At the end of the day, their curiosity is trumped by not wanting to be bothered. Chris is harsh and quiet and sexy (a dirty white tank top kind of sexy). But their anti-social tendencies are also strange and self-involved.  

The Orb Woman (played by Shubhra Dubey) haunts Nina’s dreams after the resurfacing of old horse bones, of which she is the protector. She mourns the wounds of the land, the creatures and the wildness that are baked into the earth. When Nina discovers the bones the Orb Woman mourns Nina’s wounds as well. The orb in her mouth is the pain of the land and in the context of this story, Nina’s pain, her fetus, and her soul in rebirth. 


In quarantine I wrote a lot of short stories about strange, profane and lonely people. That’s how Goodbye Horses came to be. The story became a capsule for the ways I felt vulgar, isolated, beautiful, hallucinatory and funny.

When turning the story into a screenplay I had an image of my characters being watched by a spirit that mourns the ghosts of the desert–a woman with an orb of red light in her mouth.

This story is also inspired by my experience with compulsory heterosexuality, which spurred me to fantasize about and place my sexual value in cis men, when in reality I found what I was looking for in women and nonbinary people. This is part of Nina’s confrontation with herself. 

I have encountered many didactic, cookie cutter stories about sexuality and rebirth that don’t incorporate the surreal and dirty parts of knowing oneself. I want to make a film incorporating queerness that is decidedly unprecious. Films like Mulholland Drive, Knife + Heart, Handmaiden, and I Shot Andy Warhol do this well. 

 

 

In terms of other film and literature, I am inspired by the storytelling of Ottessa Moshfegh, the psychedelic symbolism of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, the natural world of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, the cinematography of Andrea Arnold’s American Honey and the dreamy intimacy of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho.

Goodbye Horses should give you the strange sensation of waking up from a dream you thought was real. Of confronting land so bare and beautiful it pokes a hole in you. The june beetle buzz of unconsummated sexual tension. The fear of seeing something supernatural out of the corner of your eye. 

The style of Goodbye Horses relies on deliberate light in places it shouldn’t be, a spotlight in the desert, or a red orb of light in a woman’s mouth for example. The film will balance sparseness with surreal bursts of production design, costume and lighting. 

Overall, the tone and style should evoke an uncanniness – a psychedelic and spiritual rebirth.  

 

We are raising 6000 dollars in 45 days to shoot this film in Spring of 2022. We can do it with your help! Your generous pledges will pay for:

  • Our Crew
  • Camera and Lighting Rentals
  • Sound Equipment
  • Costumes
  • Production Design
  • Transportation
  • Catering and Craft Services
  • Location

...and the many miscellaneous costs that go into making something as wonderful and absurd as a movie!

We are currently late in preproduction. Our wonderful cast and crew are assembled and we will soon move into acquiring our location! As we recieve funding we will be honing our creative visions for the film. After production, we have plans to submit to NoBudge and Outfest. 

As far as COVID safety our entire cast and crew is vaccinated and we have a vaccine requirement for all future collaborators. When we shoot in the Spring, we will make sure everyone has a negative COVID test before shooting. 


MAKE A PLEDGE

Any amount helps! We are young, broke and talented. Be our patron saint and give us money.

Our budget will go towards equipment, stipends for cast and crew, travel, accommodations, COVID testing, location, set decoration, costume and more. It's expensive to make a movie and we need your help!


STAY IN TOUCH

Check us out on instagram @goodbyehorsesfilm and spread the word. You can also become part of the HIGHBALL media community by folowing us at @highball.media!

To amplify our project, all you have to do is copy, paste and post. Here's some social media language you can use:

These up-and-comers are making a psychedelic short film about isolation, queerness and inner-profanity. Check out @goodbyehorsesfilm on insta! 

 

Wishlist

Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.

Location

Costs $1,000

This covers costs for securing our desert location.

Sound Equipment

Costs $300

This will cover renting sound equipment.

Transportation and Lodging

Costs $400

This will cover transportations and lodging costs for cast and crew.

Score

Costs $200

This will pay a sound artist to compose a sparse and uncanny score.

Cash Pledge

Costs $0

Stipends for cast and crew

Costs $1,500

This funds payment for cast and crew. We believe it's important to pay your artists!

Camera & Lighting Rentals

Costs $800

This covers all of the equipment we will rent to shoot and light the film.

Production Design

Costs $500

This will fund set decoration for Chris' house and barn and the sculpting of horse bones.

Costume Design

Costs $500

This will cover clothes for our two leads and a custom garment for The Orb Woman.

Catering & Crafty

Costs $800

This $$$ will feed our incredible cast and crew!

About This Team

All of our crew is a part of or in collaboration with our production company HIGHBALL Media. Our past work includes a radio play festival, creative producing on Ghost of you with Black Dove Productions, zoom plays, variety shows and more.  

Our company uplifts underrepresented stories and artists. Our cast and crew is queer and diverse, but more importantly they are brilliant and passionate. Our work is always about finding the rawest, funniest, strangest truth–not checking a box. 

Here's our crew!

Charlie Stuip - Writer/Director/Editor

Junyoung Kim - Assistant Director

Lucy Urbano - Producer/Costume Designer/Still Photographer

Michelle Jihyon - Director of Photography

Tom Sosnik - Assistant Camera

Roma Edwards - Production Designer

Chloe Xtina - Producer

 

Current Team

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