Music Credit: “Slow Air,” performed by Anna Ludlow from the film Little Accidents, used courtesy of Sara Colangelo “The Didda/Fly and Dodger” performed by Liz Carroll from the CD Lost in the Loop, used courtesy of Green Linnet Jo Reed: That was Boyd Holbrook in a scene from Little Accidents—the first feature film written and directed by Sara Colangelo and this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Josephine Reed. Sara Colangelo’s film, Little Accidents, which focused on the impact of a fatal coal mining accident on a small community, was an official selection at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it opened to much acclaim. As the film made the international festival circuit, it continued to find appreciative audiences drawn in by a strong cast, beautiful filming, and a compelling story  —and audiences and critics alike responded to it.  Little Accidents was a frequent nominee for independent film awards, and it was one of the movies chosen for Film Forward. Film Forward is an initiative of the Sundance Institute and the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities, along with the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The goal of Film Forward is simple: to excite a new generation about the power of film; to inform and entertain. And it’s no wonder Little Accidents was chosen. It would be a striking film under any circumstances—but for a first feature film—it’s extraordinary—with a cast that includes Elizabeth Banks, Chloe Sevigny, Josh Lucas, and Jacob Lofland—the child actor who wowed everyone in Mud. It seems all the actors were drawn by Sara Colangelo’s story… Jo Reed: And I want to begin by asking you to give us just a very quick synopsis of Little Accidents. Sara Colangelo: It’s really a portrait of a town, and it takes place in a modern-day coalmining community in West Virginia. The story begins about six months after a terrible coalmine accident has taken place, and as a result, we follow three characters: a young man who is about 26, 27 years old, and he’s the sole survivor of the accident; we follow a 13-year-old boy who’s lost his dad in the mine; and then we sort of go to the other side of the tracks, to a family that is wealthy, and they’re actually coal executives, and we look at their lives. And that was a woman who’s married to a coal executive, and she’s kind of dealing with a lot of the guilt and... a lot of issues of who is culpable. So it really looks at three lives, and really how they become intertwined after the accident. Jo Reed: What inspired this story? Because you’re not just the director; you’re also the screenwriter. So what gave you the impetus to write this? Sara Colangelo: Yeah, it’s interesting. I get the question a lot. I grew up in a factory town-- not in Appalachia; in Massachusetts, actually. But I think I was really interested in looking at the power dynamics of industrial towns, and I was kind of interested in the dramatic opportunities in sort of a one-company town, and in a story that takes place with a group of people that know each other well, and that perhaps all work together. I think that was sort of interesting to me. I like the fact that it could be really self-contained. And when you’ve imagined a sort of close-knit community, there’s a lot of dramatic opportunity, and I think that was sort of interesting to me. But I think, at the same time, I was also wanting to explore industrial America, post-industrial America, and I thought that the mining world was something that, certainly, I didn’t know very much about at first. But I realized that much of America doesn’t really-- unfortunately, isn’t really familiar with it, and familiar with the beauty of the place, and also the real poverty that’s there, and its complete dependence on coal. Jo Reed: Why did you decide to use a mining accident as the catalyst? Sara Colangelo: I think, early on in the writing process, I was interested in this idea of an accident or a traumatic event taking place within a town, within a community. And this is, I suppose, kind of abstract stuff, but I kind of wanted to create a story where this traumatic event has happened, and we don’t see it on the screen, but we’re watching the reverberations of it afterwards, on a group of people. For whatever the reason, that was sort of an interesting challenge for me. And it was something that I had done previously, with a completely different storyline, but I had made a short film, also called Little Accidents, in 2009, and it was a completely different story. It took place in a factory town in Massachusetts, so something closer to where I was from. And it was about a young man who gets in a car accident, and of course you never see it, but he comes back to town. He was off to college, and was kind off to a great career, and he’s sort of relegated to being a factory worker back in his hometown again. And we sort of see him interact with people that he had gone to high school with. And you really start to kind of piece together his life, in looking at sort of the effects, rather than the causes, and I thought that was interesting at the time, and I wanted to continue that in a feature form. Jo Reed: In both films, you look at class divide, and I think that that’s one of the other driving forces in your film, and that’s something that really isn’t examined a great deal. Sara Colangelo: No. I mean, I think that’s true. That’s something that we’re a little bit uncomfortable talking about in the United States. And we’re sort of-- now, with, I suppose, the election coming up, we’re talking about it a little bit more, but we’re more comfortable talking about ethnicity and race and... you know, I think, other categories. But somehow, class gets us kind of uncomfortable. So, yeah, it was something that I-- I had definitely experienced living in a factory town, and I perhaps was on the right side of the tracks, in the sense that I came from a family where a lot of my relatives had worked in plastics factories, and then they kind of made their way up. And so, by the time I was born, they were in management or, in some cases, owning a factory. And so I-- it was interesting for me, as a kid, to go to these places, and to interact with some of the people that worked there as factory workers, versus the people that worked in the office, and I suppose it was something I wanted to explore. And I think, while there was never any sort of tragedy in my hometown, I thought that creating this sort of fictional coalmine blast would be an interesting way to see how people along different socioeconomic levels within this town, that have different interests and are struggling in different ways, how they might interact, and how they may kind of cross into enemy territory. Jo Reed: What kind of research did you do? Did you spend time in Appalachia before writing this screenplay? Sara Colangelo: I didn’t. I sort of came up with the conceit of it all first, and... you know, I didn’t know the details yet, but I kind of came up with a story structure. You know, I don’t know what, exactly, I was doing at the time, but I was clearly taking something from other American films, How Green Was My Valley, -- Jo Reed: I love that movie. Sara Colangelo: Yeah. I know, it’s a great movie. I was trying to create this mythic American town, in a way. So it was okay to, I think, in retrospect, do it in an abstract way first. And then, as I got the story and the three characters sketched out, then I went down and I kind of filled in all the details after. But it was pretty amazing. I had to, early on, even before going down there, do a little research online. And one of the things I did do was, the U.S. Labor Department actually keeps interviews with coalminers-- and, I mean, I think, workers on all levels-- whenever there’s sort of an accident. And so I was able to go online, and these things are public record. And I was able to read a lot of these interviews between U.S. Labor Department lawyers and people that survived coalmine accidents. So it was a really great way for me to figure out the idiosyncrasies of Appalachian speech, and it was a really fantastic way to understand the emotional impact of these accidents on folks. And, I mean, even in these sort of formal, legal settings, in these legal interviews, I was very much able to grasp a lot of what these men were, I think, feeling after an accident of such magnitude, you know? Jo Reed: I know that you filmed in a coalmining town in West Virginia. Tell me how you found that neighborhood, and was it difficult to find a town that would open itself up to you? Sara Colangelo: You know, I started location-scouting maybe two years before shooting, and I really traveled all over West Virginia, from the northern area of the state-- Morgantown-- kind of along the Pennsylvania border, and then really started going deeper into the southern coalfields. And the two areas are vastly different, culturally, too. Folks tend to be more Catholic, and it’s kind of Polish and Italian up north; and then down south, there’s sort of a more... I don’t know, Anglo-Saxon, I guess: Irish, Welsh. Jo Reed: That’s Scot-Irish, I think. Yeah. Sara Colangelo: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it kind of manifested in different ways. But I was really interested in these southern coalfields, because they were just a little more isolated. But what I did find was that, due to that isolation, there was a lot more work for me to do, in terms of making folks feel comfortable with the story and with the fact that we were going to shoot there. So it really did take a lot of time. So I went down numerous times before shooting, and then when we went down for prep, which is-- for those that don’t know, it’s essentially just one month of preparation before you begin shooting when you’re down there, and you’re essentially looking for locations, and getting all of the logisticals together. When we went down there, we had to really convince people that we weren’t making an anti-coal movie. It’s certainly critical, at times, of the coal industry, but... you know, I think we had to show the communities that we were fair-minded, and that we were really ultimately making a story about human connection after a coalmine accident, and that we didn’t have an anti-coal agenda. And I think a lot of these communities were used to, particularly, documentary filmmakers coming in, and I think they felt like their communities were being ripped apart onscreen, and I had to convince them that we weren’t doing the same thing. Jo Reed: I’d like to talk about the characters in the film, but I’d like to get into them by talking about the actors first, because you have-- for a first feature, you have some big-name actors. You have Elizabeth Banks, you have Josh Lucas, and you have Chloë Sevigny; and then you have brilliant-- if lesser known-- actors, like Boyd Holbrook and Jacob Lofland. How did they all get involved? Sara Colangelo: Yeah, it’s interesting. The first person to really get involved was Boyd Holbrook. I had met him via the Sundance Directing Labs, which is a really fantastic program where you’re able to workshop five scenes from the script, ahead of time. So we did this, maybe, a year to a year and a half before shooting. And in that program, you’re able to cast for the workshop. And these are actors that you may or may not use for the film later on, but I had heard of this fellow, Boyd Holbrook, who hadn’t really established himself yet as a big-name actor, but who was really hungry and really interested in the script, for whatever the reason. And we met for coffee, and I came to realize that he’s actually from coal country along the West Virginia-Kentucky border, and his dad was a coalminer for 30 years. So it was certainly a story that meant a lot to him, and it wasn’t just sort of that he intellectually connected with it. I think it was something very palpable to him, and that was something that I really liked, and I thought I could, you know, work with that. And he could help me, too. He could read the script-- Jo Reed: That’s just was I was going to ask you: if he said to you at any point, “You know, actually, I think this would really work better this way. This would seem more authentic if you did that.” Sara Colangelo: Yeah. That sometimes happened, and especially with--figuring out what the dialect would be and what the speech would be like within this town. You know, there are places in West Virginia, if you kind of drive 20 miles, you’ll have a small town that talks in a completely different way. So, in fact, Boyd and I, kind of early on, sat down, and we said, “Okay, this is going to be the flavor of this town. This is going to be how people communicate, and these are the words that are going to be used.” And it was really helpful when we brought the other actors on, because we really created a history of speech within the town. Jo Reed: And how did Elizabeth Banks and Josh Lucas and Chloë Sevigny get on board? Sara Colangelo: I actually think Chloë was next. She had somehow, through her agency, read the script and liked it, and we had a meeting. And I actually thought she wanted the role of Diane Doyle, who is the coalmine executive’s wife, but she didn’t, to my surprise. She wanted a smaller role, which is the mother of the two boys who have lost their dad. And I was really touched by the fact that she wanted to come on board, and I was sort of humbled by the fact that she didn’t really want the starring role, that she liked the project enough and felt it was a really important story to tell, that, you know, she was happy with something smaller. And it was really the perfect role for her. It was somebody that I had really imagined when I was writing the script, so it was sort of a dream come true. I’m such a fan of hers, generally. And, you know, for Elizabeth and Josh, I think a few months after Chloë was on, they had read it. And Elizabeth and I had an initial Skype meeting, and she said that her roots are actually in drama, even though her comedy career has been pretty meteoric. She said, “Really, my love is drama, and I don’t really get to do it much, and I’d really love to do this.” I think she was really excited about the challenges of the role. So it worked out really well. And Josh was somebody that I’ve admired from afar, so when he got involved, I was equally <laughs> pleased and flattered. Jo Reed: And Jacob Lofland, who was really stunning. Sara Colangelo: He’s just incredible. Jo Reed: And this was what? His second role. He was in Mud. Sara Colangelo: Yeah. He’s just so special. You know, I had seen him in Mud, and he kind of stole the show for me in Mud. I just think he has just a natural quality to him. And when we went out to him, he said, “Well, I think this is something I can do.” One thing that he-- it was very cute. One thing that he said to me was, “Well, I’m not really comfortable playing an older brother. I’m an only child. So can we maybe work on that?” I’m the eldest within my family, and he said, “Can we just have a few phone conversations, and can you just tell me what it was like?” And that character, as well-- the character of Owen-- has a younger brother who has Down syndrome, and that’s something that’s autobiographical to me, that I put in the script. And so we-- Jacob and I worked a lot on that, as well, and what it might be like to have a sibling with a disability. Jo Reed: And clearly, the actor who played James has Down syndrome. What was that like, bringing him into the cast, and him working with the other actors? Sara Colangelo: it was really one of the enormous joys of the process. It took us a long time to find Beau. He’s from North Carolina, and we had done a pretty exhaustive search, all over the country, for a little boy. And we found him, and it was really fantastic. He really wanted to do the role, first of all. <laughs> You know, he’d be practicing his lines constantly, and he really loved Jacob Lofland. And we really tried, before shooting, to have them hang out with each other, and get ice cream, and kind of spend the day together. And they ended up becoming very good friends, and now their families are really close, as well. So that was really nice to see. Jo Reed: How old was Beau? Sara Colangelo: Beau, I believe, was nine, turning ten, the summer that we shot. And, you know, it’s always difficult to shoot with any nine-year-old, so-- but he was a real trouper, and... like any child, you know, got distracted at moments, or got overly excited at moments. But I have to say it was such a lovely process, seeing how, also, the rest of the cast and crew took to him and interacted with him, and how he really taught all of us a lot, throughout the process. Jo Reed: What was it like for you to work with a cast that had such a wide range of experience? Sara Colangelo: Yeah. I mean, all of these actors came from quite different backgrounds, so it was a little bit of a juggling act for me. But, really, I see my job as a director as kind of making everyone feel comfortable, and really creating an environment where everyone does their best work. So I would just ask, you know, “Jacob, what helps you in this situation?” versus, “Elizabeth, how would you like to do it?” And sometimes, when there would be a conflict, we’d sit down and say, “Okay, well, it helps Jacob not to do many takes here, so what can we do to make this feel spontaneous, but still practiced and thought-out and focused?” And sometimes it would just be a matter of having a conversation. But I think one of the nice things with working with such an established group of actors, like Elizabeth and Josh and Chloë, is that they’re just real pros. They get it right on the first or second take, most of the time. Jo Reed: The characters are so interesting because-- especially with Owen, the character played by Jacob Lofland, and with Amos, who Boyd played, it was about, “Do they tell the truth?” And that was true for Josh Lucas’s character, too. It was about, “Do they tell the truth?” And I was just so impressed by the complications, particularly with Amos, because for him to testify may cause the mine to be shut down, and people-- his friends, his neighbors-- to lose their jobs; whereas not to testify means the company literally gets away with murder. And he’s put in this position when he’s still kind of shell-shocked from the horror of the accident. Sara Colangelo: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he’s... he’s somebody that is-- I like to think of it as, you know, he’s a reluctant hero. He really doesn’t want to make a decision here, because he’s really caught between a rock and a hard place. And he has all of the cards in his hand, and in a way, he is the most powerful character, in terms of what he can do-- and what he can ruin, as well-- within the town, and he just doesn’t want to be there. And I suppose, when I wrote that character, I thought that was kind of an interesting irony. Jo Reed: Little Accidents, again, for a first feature, is very big in scope. Was that a challenge when you were trying to get the film made? Sara Colangelo: Yeah. I mean, it certainly was. I-- you know, there are moments when I kick myself now, and I say, “Why did I write something so big?” But I think there was something kind of fun and exciting about the ambition of it, and the fact that it does try to encapsulate all sides to this town, and all sides of this conflict within the town. But it was really challenging. Because there were three storylines, it was, in a sense, triple the work. We had three hero houses, three cars. There were a lot of moving parts to the project. Also, you know, just shooting in a functioning coalmining facility was incredibly difficult, and there were a lot of safety precautions that we all had to take. We all had to take, actually, a safety class, in order to go in the mine. A lot of these elements that we were really juggling around, and it was certainly a lot to bite off, for a first feature. Jo Reed: Well, you developed Little Accidents in a Sundance Screenwriting Lab. Did anybody try to say-- and this I’m just curious about-- like, “Sara, Sara, this is your first feature; maybe not a coalmine”? What was the process like? Sara Colangelo: No. I mean, and I think that was sort of what was tough for me, is that throughout the whole Sundance Lab experience, everyone was really cheerleading the project, and saying, “No, it’s great that you’re doing something big. Embrace it.” And then, of course, prior to shooting, we did have to cut scenes, or we did have to cut a few locations that were just really untenable and unrealistic. And so it was a little harder for me, right before shooting, to lose that stuff, because you just tend to be really precious with all of the scenes, and in your head, they fit together so perfectly, and, “Oh, no, if I take one out, does it make everything kind of collapse like a house of cards?" But it never does. I think these are just the neuroses of writer-directors. Jo Reed: Little Accidents was chosen to be part of Film Forward. Can you just describe that program a little bit? Sara Colangelo: Sure. It’s an initiative that the Sundance Institute started with a number of partners: the NEA and... the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities, and the NEH, I believe, and-- but it’s a really fantastic program. It selects a number of films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and we really travel around the country-- and all over the world, really-- are able to screen the film to various audiences. And in my case, I was able to go into a number of classrooms and talk to film students, as well, students that were interested in writing. And it’s a really special program that tries to promote cultural dialogue through these screenings and through these conversations. Jo Reed: Where have you presented the film? In what parts of the country, or the world? Sara Colangelo: I’ve been to Miami. I’ve been to Texas. I think that’s it, within the United States. There was a trip planned to Jordan, but it became too unsafe to go. Jo Reed: Fraught. Sara Colangelo: Yeah, unfortunately, but that would’ve been really great. I’m not sure what’s next. There may be other locations, later, that we may go to. Jo Reed: What’s the interaction like, with the audience? Did you learn things that you hadn’t expected? Sara Colangelo: Yeah. I mean, it plays really differently throughout the country. I think it plays really well in rural areas, and certainly within areas that have a mining history. It played particularly well in Utah, locally, because there is just so much mining there, and it plays really well in Pennsylvania and in West Virginia, where… and in Kentucky, I suppose, where there is this culture of coalmining. But I think other places-- for instance, I heard, recently, my distributors were saying that a lot of people in Florida were buying it online, and they couldn’t figure out why. The numbers were just incredibly high in Florida, and that was sort of funny to me. I think a lot of people don’t really know or understand these coalmining towns, and it’s sort of a subject right now-- energy, in general-- that is so fraught with controversy and with incredibly strong and angry opinions. And I think it’s been kind of interesting for audiences to see what life might be like there and what the challenges of these communities are. If the coalmine industry does fall apart-- and it’s looking more and more like it is, lately-- what is the result on these folks that live in these places where coal is really the only form of employment, besides Walmart, and how does it affect these people’s lives? And how do we help Appalachia perhaps transition to another industry? So I think a lot of people are really interested in that conversation, and I think that certainly has been the most gratifying part of traveling around with the film. Jo Reed: And tell me what’s next for you. Sara Colangelo: Well, a number of projects. I am working on a TV series that takes place, actually, in the oilfields, so looking again at American industry. And then I’m also working on an adaptation of an Israeli movie, which is pretty exciting, to actually not write something from scratch, but to be adapting it. That’s been a really fantastic process. And then I have a few other ideas in the pipeline, as well, and they’re just outlines, but it’s an exciting time. Jo Reed: You must be having what the first-time-feature-filmmaker fantasy is, because it has been so well-received, straight across the board. Sara Colangelo: Well, thanks. Yeah, you know, I think... it always, you know-- makes me thrilled when people respond to it and resonate with the story, especially on an emotional level. As a writer-director, you pick it apart endlessly, and you wish, “Oh, if we had a little more money, we could’ve done this,” and-- but I’m really pleased with it, and so many people really helped me along the way. And that’s been, really, the nicest part of the process, too, is that it really is a group effort, and a lot of people put their love and time into it. It’s really great. <laughs> Jo Reed: Well, good. I hope you’re enjoying the moment. Sara Colangelo: Thank you. Jo Reed: Sara, thank you.            Sara Colangelo: Oh, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. That was filmmaker Sara Colangelo—she wrote and directed Little Accidents. You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts.  To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAarts on Twitter. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.