Where in the Hell

  • Director

    Laramie Dennis

  • Country, Year, Length

    United States, 2024, 01:27:16

  • Category

    Narrative Feature

  • Format

    Digital

  • Festival Year

    2025

Synopsis

When her girlfriend disappears mid-road trip, sardonic prop master Kasey is left stranded in a California backwater. Panicked, she hitches a ride with cash-strapped actor Alan on his trek to an audition in Canada. Together, the unlikely duo dodges Reno psychics, stale corn nuts, and border security on a quest to find a missing soulmate and maybe validation.

Film Screening & Ticket Information

When & Where to See this Film!

…COMING SOON…

Film Information

From the Director

Director Statement

In 2020, I was frustrated creatively. Covid had forced me to shelve a different project, and I felt lost. But after driving up Highway 395 on a two-day escape from LA, I got interested in capturing the lockdown. I was inspired by the visuals of empty, open roads. Trash. Birds. The absence of humankind. Misery became opportunity.

I stole the premise for Where in the Hell from a short story by Sam Shepard, plucking out the straight male protagonist who’s been abandoned by his wife and replacing him with a queer female character, newly abandoned by her partner. Though I don’t identify as queer, there’s a lot of me in Kasey. Through her, I’m exorcising my demons. Exploring a suspicion that I’m selfish in my relationship, putting my own needs and aspirations first. And to what end? My life partner/producing partner, Ricky de Laveaga (who does identify as queer), often rails against Los Angeles, advocating that we move away—to Colorado, to Canada, to Uruguay. “What would I do in Uruguay?” I say to him, dumbfounded. In the movie, Kasey says to Alan, “What would I do in Montana?” torn between going after her girlfriend or going back to LA to salvage her career, even as the movie industry is crumbling.

Alan is my comedic interpretation of the mysterious, dark-haired woman who appears in Shepard’s story. I wanted to force Kasey into close quarters with this straight, square-seeming actor guy, someone she wouldn’t be friends with in a million years. I wanted to make them both uncomfortable, and see what would happen when they set off on a road trip together. My intention, I thought, was to magnify the unsettling dystopia of the lockdown, and delve into what the pandemic was doing to human relationships. What came out was a buddy comedy. A surprising, life-affirming story about two people reluctantly being there for each other.

A movie I studied early on was Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women. I admire Reichardt so much. Her stark, arresting visuals. The way she stays out of her actors’ way. (I admire Debra Granik for this too.) But our movie needed laughs. An elevated sense of fun. Laughs are my way in to the emotional core. Alexander Payne’s Sideways became a touchstone. Further sources of inspiration include Morvern Callar, Paris, Texas, and Y Tu Mamá También.

In shooting Where in the Hell, we set out to capture kinetic images that put the focus on the characters, favoring a handheld camera that roots us right there with them. Lingering inside a simple two-shot or an expansive wide, we’ve made space to discover spontaneous behavior and emotional truth. My hope is that our audience will find the movie funny and moving and, above all, human. The script, the setting, the camera work, the acting, all of it is in service of embracing our humanity.

Director Biography

Laramie is a writer/director based in Los Angeles. She got her start in New York directing and developing new plays, most notably at the Flea Theater, where she was a resident director, and at Soho Rep, where she co-founded and chaired the Soho Rep Writer Director Lab. Laramie’s background in theater continues to inform her moviemaking. She prioritizes close collaboration with her actors, workshopping and rehearsing scripts weeks in advance of shooting, and borrowing details from her actors’ lives to enrich their characters. Where in the Hell, completed in 2024, marks her feature film debut. Life on sMars, another feature project, earned her a spot at THROUGH HER LENS: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program, along with a development grant from the Tribeca Film Institute. Laramie has made finalist for Script Pipeline, the SFFILM Sloan Fellowship, the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, and the Women in Film Production Program. Her shorts have played festivals including the Vancouver International Film Festival and NewFilmmakers New York. She has a BA from Wesleyan University, and an MFA from USC.

Credits

    • Laramie Dennis
      Director
      All Ages, Greasy Heart
    • Laramie Dennis
      Writer
      All Ages, Greasy Heart
    • Laramie Dennis
      Producer
      Greasy Heart
    • Ricky de Laveaga
      Producer
      Greasy Heart
    • Hector Ceballos
      Producer
      East Los High, All Ages, Remember Me in Red
    • Cam Killion
      Key Cast
      “Kasey”
      Grown-ish, The Sex Lives of College Girls
    • Joohun Lee
      Key Cast
      “Alan”
      Shifter, Under the Boardwalk