Guest Post by Chelsea Frei
I’ve always had a hard time sitting still. I need to be working on the next thing, checking things off my to do list. I think that’s why I gravitated toward sketch comedy. My writing partner, Noam Tomaschoff, and I started a digital sketch comedy platform after we graduated from college. Between our side jobs as servers, receptionists, and children’s party clowns, we’d think of an idea for a sketch, write it, film it, and release it — all within 24-48 hours.
I see sketch writing as a quick fix for the performer: quick and easy validation. A sketch being featured by Funny or Die would give us a high we could ride on for a few days — until we thought of the next idea. It also meant that no single sketch held importance. If one didn’t do well, we’d just do another! It was fleeting, chaotic, and insanely fun.
Our time in the sketch world led us both to a breathtakingly original next step: moving to LA. Before we left, we’d had this idea for one last sketch. The two of us would play exaggerated versions of ourselves — a pretentious, privileged theater couple who go to upstate New York to start a theater company and wreak havoc on the townies. We got some of our talented friends together, hired a cinematographer for $150, and shot some improvised scenes over a few hours. It was a perfect ending to our time in New York.
The resulting short was programmed at SeriesFest, a film festival in Denver. After it screened a young man who introduced himself as a producer approached us. “Do you think you could reimagine this from upstate New York to Fargo, North Dakota?” he asked. Noam and I looked at each other. “Sure?” We had no idea that this encounter would turn into a pivotal moment in both of our lives.
A few months later, after a pitch to some Fargoan business people interested in bringing indie filmmaking to their town, we were greenlit to write a script. It would be a feature film based on the two characters we’d played in the short. We’d never written a feature, but these characters were literally us, so, like, how hard could it be?
Turns out, hard. I was stuck, unable to transition from sketch writing to crafting fully-fledged characters, and for the first time, something we were working on did hold a great deal of importance. It wasn’t fleeting, and it wasn’t just for fun. It was serious. Our investors had committed money to the script and were expecting a compelling feature, with the hope of producing it later that year. Noam and I — along with our investors — were committed to writing parts that would attract a high caliber of talent, a world that was also new to us.
The thing I’d wanted for years, to be paid for my writing, was happening, and it was turning out to be the greatest challenge of my career up to that point. I wasn’t getting instant gratification, but rather endless rounds of notes. In the middle of this spiral, I hesitantly asked our producer, Matt Cooper, if we could have an extension on our draft. We took a break. Instead of beating the script to a pulp, we took a moment away from it.
I went on a few hikes — I lived in LA now, and I had learned that’s what you do when you need to think — and I thought about myself, what I’d learned, the story I wanted to tell about our protagonist, Sandrene, a young female artist like me. I decided that something I’d always wanted to explore in a character is how some women can lose themselves in relationships. This happens to men in relationships as well, no doubt, but I have found nothing more devastating than seeing friends of mine, and myself, so wrapped up in another human they lose sight of their own wants and needs, and seeing their likes and interests shift based on their partner.
With Sandrene, I wanted her to start from a place of utter devotion to her creative and romantic counterpart, Tucker. But as she returns home to Fargo, where she grew up, she’s reminded of who she was. She’s definitely no longer that person, but she also doesn’t recognize the person she’s become. This disconnect gives her a newfound sense of purpose: to figure out who she is and what she wants.
I was also sick of seeing a female character who is just the pitcher of jokes. She never gets the punchline — she’s always just setting them up for the male lead. So on top of Sandrene being lost, I wanted her to keep her ferocity and ability to go neck and neck with her partner. That gave me somewhere to start.
Noam and I got together and started from scratch. We outlined a new story based on the motivations of the two main characters rather than on the funny bits and comedy moments we wanted. We found the comedy again, but this time it came from objectives and purpose. I didn’t get to check “Write ‘Tankhouse’” off my to-do list, and I didn’t get to feel “done” for a long time. I had to sit in the uneasiness of not being finished, and that was okay.
We shot our quirky weirdo indie film, “Tankhouse,” last September in Fargo, North Dakota. It’s now out to all the major festivals. I’m proud of the work we did, and I’m confident it will find a home and an audience.
“Tankhouse” wouldn’t exist without those years shooting ridiculous sketches, learning how to produce, and not treating anything as precious. But “Tankhouse” was created in the moments where I let myself take a beat. In the moments where I questioned what I wanted to say and thus, who I wanted to be. I hope to always be able to find that balance.
Chelsea Frei co-wrote and co-produced “Tankhouse.” She stars in the Fox comedy series “The Moodys” opposite Denis Leary, Elizabeth Perkins, and Jay Baruchel. She is currently shooting the second season. Frei can currently be heard as the school mean girl, Bethany, in MGM’s animated reimagining of “The Addams Family,” and be seen opposite Tracy Morgan in this season of “The Last O.G.” on TBS. She will also be seen in “Shrill’s” third season, premiering on Hulu in 2021. Frei created, produced, and starred in the survival-job themed web series “Hostess,” which was released on both Funny or Die and WhoHaHa.
