Below is my conversation with Alex Rodgers, the first-time director and writer of Last Days of Summer, a drama shot in and around Indianapolis. We discuss the state of the film industry in Indiana, the inspirations for the film, and learning experiences from making his first film. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Ben Sears: You’re an Indiana native and you’ve been working in and around the film scene for many years. How do you feel about the state of Hoosier filmmaking today?

Alex Rodgers: I would love to highlight the work that my colleagues Kurtis Bowersock, Zac Cooper, Victoria Britton, Zachariah Haske, and Matt McMahon are doing with A Few Friends. What they do is really cool for the narrative space. Zac’s feature It Happened One Weekend was a real inspiration point for our film. I think it really showed what the community can do when it comes together and works within the constraints of a small budget. Our biggest resources and strengths are our collaborations with each other and I think Indy is really good about showing up for its own. 

There’s also a lot of really interesting work being done in the documentary space by people like Will Wertz, Kolton Dallas, Hannah and Myers Lindgren. Seeing their work really inspired me to dip my toes into the short doc space going forward. A few other people whose work I admire are Jake Huber who continually raises the bar for music videos and spec pieces in the city. Matt Spear’s short film Love, Grandma was one of the most beautifully shot things I’ve seen come out of Indy and just an incredibly impressive narrative debut. I’ve also had the pleasure of being on set with Joe Frank, an incredible DP, cam-op, 1st AC, you name it. He’s the man. Nick Kartes is a gaffer who I got to be on set with once who is just a treasure trove of knowledge and skill. I could go on. All in all, Indy is filled with massively talented people who are producing work that inspires me on a daily basis. My relationships with the Few Friends crew in particular are what led me to be able to do this film at all. They were there every step of the way and just as responsible as I am for getting another narrative feature in the books for Indy. I hope that our community continues to collaborate, grow, and uplift each other while raising the bar for the level of work we are known for. Indy is a great film city. The rest of world just might not know it yet, but we do.

BS: You filmed most of Last Days of Summer in the Indy neighborhood of Woodruff Place. Was there any creative choice that went behind that, or was it more because of logistics?

AR: I lived in Woodruff Place for 4 out of the 10 years that I’ve lived in Indianapolis. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, it used to be its own town, it’s very historically preserved, so a lot of the houses are incredibly interesting and historical. So from an aesthetic standpoint, we couldn’t have picked a better spot. Kurtis, the cinematographer, has lived there with his family for I don’t know how many years, but he knows everybody in the neighborhood, so it was easy to secure the locations and film on the street. It was like we were filming in our neighborhood, so it never felt like we were trespassing in any way, or co-opting a space.

BS: You didn’t feel like you didn’t belong there.

AR: Yea, it felt like we were just making a movie in the neighborhood, and we got a lot of support from the people in the neighborhood. Everybody that we talked to about the project seemed excited by the idea of it. I think people who know of Woodruff, and live in Woodruff, are pretty passionate about it. It’s a real gem in Indy.

BS: Just from driving through the neighborhood, it seems kind of unique here in Indy. It’s a historic place, with really old, really beautiful homes. But there’s a newer vibe to it, without being gentrified, so there’s that extra juxtaposition that you get within the film, which you’d get if you’re in Indy.

AR: I grew up in a small town, and something about the suburbs of a small town was really interesting as a setting to me. And I feel like Woodruff supplied that. It matched the vision in my head. Plus, I was living in Woodruff when I was writing the film, so I kind of wrote with the idea of filming there.

BS: Your crowdfunding page states that you wanted Last Days of Summer to feel like a “love letter to the Midwest”. How did you envision that coming out in the film?

AR: I think, in the small town feel, and the sensibilities of the characters, especially the young characters. In Summer’s character, and Johnny’s character, there’s a sort of sense of something more being out there. Growing up in a small town, I relied on my imagination a lot, like wanting more from the world than you have on your plate. There’s something about that which was interesting to me, and the beauty and simplicity of a small town life. There’s something really nice about knowing all of your neighbors on a first-name basis, but there can be cons to that as well. I’ve always been interested in exploring that within small communities.

BS: There is that kind of feeling when you grow up so close to family and relatives. One of the biggest takeaways I had with the film was in the generational trauma, passing the mistakes of the adults down to the their kids. That’s something that’s kind of midwestern, but not exclusively so.

AR: Exactly. I think an example of that would be in Summer’s character, and her mom, Kim, has a really bad taste in men, and I think Summer kind of reflects that.

BS: When I was watching the film, it reminded me a lot of some of Sofia Coppola’s films. And you had listed on the crowdfunding page that The Virgin Suicides was an inspiration for the film. Would you say Sofia Coppola has been an influence for you?

AR: Absolutely. I think, especially her earlier work like The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation are some of my top films of all time. The Virgin Suicides was maybe the single biggest influence on this movie, out of any other film that we were influenced by. It influenced a lot of the creative decisions we made, from certain frames to the colors. The tonality of The Virgin Suicides, some of the storytelling techniques, like looking back on an event that had such an impact on some of these characters and this community, those were some things that I took in the writing process pretty early on. Initially, the narration was going to be from Ricky’s point of view, but that changed over the course of production.

BS: What made you want to shift the focus of that?

AR: I don’t remember what we came up against, but there was some limitation from Ricky’s point of view, so it didn’t make sense for him to have all of the information I wanted the narrator to communicate. So making the narrator omniscient, or making it someone from the neighborhood that’s telling it from a future perspective, after they have all the details, that made more sense from an informational standpoint.

BS: Much like The Virgin Suicides, adding the omniscient narrator, and looking back at something which is, in essence a tragedy. But there’s also something kind of beautiful about it all, and there’s that juxtaposition within Last Days of Summer.

AR: I think that film just has so many things I admire. I just rewatched it again recently. It’s so heavy, but it’s so good at communicating these feelings of love and yearning and being young, but feeling trapped. I was really drawn to how it was able to communicate those things. The parents’ relationship to the children in that movie is really fascinating. They love their children, and they’re trying to do right by them, but it leads to the worst outcome. I think there’s something really interesting about trying and failing within those relationships.

BS: Last Days of Summer is your first feature, and you’re working with a lot of newer and first-time actors. Did you learn anything about yourself while making this, or what to do/what not to do on future projects?

AR: The whole process was a lot of learning, and trying and failing on my end. This was my first time working with a team of this size, and being at the head of the ship. We were super blessed with who we got; I’m incredibly proud of the cast and the performances they gave.

My buddy Arman, who plays Johnny, we went to college together. We’ve been friends for 10 years now, and he’s been in anything I’ve made since then. He’s like the De Niro to my Scorsese, so I always write with him in mind, and his younger brother Refik has been getting into theater, and I was able to see a couple of his performances. So when I wrote the film, I wrote it with them in mind for the brothers. We used Backstage to cast a lot of the talent. That’s how we found Celina, who plays Summer, and Teresa, who plays her mom. We were able to find people who had more experience than what I was used to working with, so that was really cool to work with them and see their ideas and methods. With every actor, and every crew member, everyone’s got their own mode of thinking, and their approach, so a lot of the directing was communication and people management. Trying to figure out what the person needs from you to get to their best place. I don’t know if I have any specific takeaways, but I think it’s a case-by-case basis, and I think for us, the relationships were such a huge part of this movie. It was like a family dynamic; we shot almost every day for 20 days, so everyone got really close really quickly.

I wish we had more time for rehearsals, I think in the future, I’ll do more rehearsals, and a lot of the people I worked with on this liked that idea. So that’s one thing I’d be curious to do, trying to work out some of the kinks in a safer environment. It’s a high-wire act.

Last Days of Summer will premiere as the opening night film at Indy Film Fest on April 24 at 7:30pm at the Living Room Theater in Indianapolis. Buy tickets here. Alex Rodgers’ documentary short film Daniel will also screen at the festival and can be watched virtually and in-person. Buy tickets here.