We’ve never been more politically divided as a country than we are now, with the fact we’re in the midst of a presidential election making that clearer than ever. Just about everyone’s probably had a frustrating conversation or two over a Thanksgiving table — but at least you can theoretically escape that. What if you were stranded on an island with strangers whose beliefs sat on the other end of the spectrum from yours? That’s exactly the question Coley Sohn (Sassy Pants), who writes, directs, stars in, and produces the hilarious comedy Mud Key, answers.
Mud Key follows a lesbian couple consisting of anxious, dog-obsessed Jodi (Sohn) and her jealous wife Liz (Linda Bagley), who find themselves stuck with a redneck conservative couple, DJ (Chris MacKenzie) and Amber (Quinn Sullivan), after taking their boat out to a Florida island. Preconceived notions mean there’s already tension from the start, but as the day goes on, broken teeth and torrential downpours make things go from bad to worse. Can these four find common ground? Or is seeing eye-to-eye impossible?
I got the chance to speak to Sohn about how she developed each of these distinct characters, the unique challenges of filming an indie movie, what she hopes people take away from the film, and more.
The first thing I have to ask about is the chickens in the opening shots — those were so fun and quirky. Was that written in, or was it a happy accident moment?
They’re just all over Key West. They’re like how I would imagine it is in the Bahamas or some sort of Caribbean island — they just run wild. They were just there, and we were shooting them. Oh, you know what? Actually, I lied. In the script, it was supposed to be where a chicken is clucking — I was just kind of trying to show the island versus the assholes. So this guy driving a truck, which never ever ended up happening, was supposed to run over a solo cup, and then the chicken gets away. And we tried —- we did our best. There were those cute chicks, too.
It was so funny. It really immersed the audience in the setting right away. Another thing that did a really good job of that was the music. The score for this is so fun. It’s tropical, but there’s something weirdly a little bit ominous about it, which I really like. Can you talk about developing the score? Because I thought that was very standout.
I feel this is gonna sound like the worst pun, but we scored with the score. I Googled “Key West composers” because there are so many musicians there, and while there weren’t any local composers, there was this guy, Ben Wall, who we got. He did a residency at the Key West Studios, which has everything from filmmakers to musicians to visual artists. I just heard his sound and I was like, “Oh my God — that’s the sound of the movie.” I reached out, and he’s so different from me. I’ll respond to someone like a second later, and it took a bit, and I kind of even forgot about it. And when he wrote back, I found out he was a cinephile, and we like the same stuff. We’ve never met in person after all this —- we’ve had many Zooms, many conversations —- but he was amazing. He teaches percussion in the Chicago area, and his sound was perfect.
It weaves through it so well. I’m very much a person who loves talky movies, so I like that this was very character-driven and stuck in one space — I think those are always so much fun. How did you develop the voices for all of these characters? They’re all so distinct. I grew up in Indiana, so I feel like I know every single one of these people to an extent.
I’m glad that you didn’t see much of myself in Jodi, but I feel like it’s just an uglier version of me. And then Liz — my wife, Linda, who’s never acted before; she’s an attorney and was an attorney at Disney for 21 years — played an uglier version of herself out of necessity. But first, to try and answer, I wanted to make something that maybe we could make on our own independent of Hollywood. And we tried to make it for a lot less, and it came out like twice as much. But I wanted to shoot something in the course of a day and in one location. Of course, I picked an island, which doesn’t help budget or schedule, but we ended up shooting it in eight days.
Going back to the characters, we spent a lot of time in the Keys. My wife and I, we’re better boaters than in the movie, but we bought this beater boat and started going to this place, Mud Key. We were always so amazed that we would spend the day with people that, under other circumstances, would probably wanna string us up, and they’re lovely and giving us koozies for drinks and pushing us off when we try to leave. Of course, a movie has to have conflict, so I was like, “Well, in light of the political climate we’re experiencing now, and Key West is like a mish-mash of everybody, and it seems to work, what if I try to write something like that?” I feel like Liz and Jodi are exaggerated versions of Coley and Linda, and then DJ and Amber are people we see there that my friends, LA friends, who act and I think killed it and did an amazing job. My friend who played DJ put on 15 pounds and grew his hair —- he is so not that guy — but I think they were amazing.
The chemistry was so good. I was just home in Indiana, and these conversations happen like that. I love how it’s told in such a comedic way because I feel like often, with these sorts of stories, it’s melodramatic and exaggerated in that direction. Why did you want there to be a comedic bend, and why do you think humor is a powerful tool for these kinds of stories?
I think a lot of that is just my voice. I’m kind of snarky and dark and, if we want to go into deep psychology, maybe that was a coping mechanism as a child. My childhood was nothing bad or major — just crazy parents — and my brother and I are both kind of similarly cynical and sarcastic. Sometimes, when things get too schmaltzy, I hate it. That’s just me personally. I’m definitely the opposite of a Hallmark movie, which has its audience for sure. I mean, I know that anything I do is not going to change the world. I don’t think the ending is a big giveaway, but it’s not something where everything is neatly tied up and put away in a pretty box. I think it’s just easier to laugh at stuff. I don’t know how you’re coping with the political stuff, but I love Bill Maher, I love Jon Stewart. We have to laugh.
Some of my favorite jokes in this are the ones that are sort of poking fun at my community. The queer jokes in this are so funny — the Ellen thing made me laugh; I think that’s such a classic. But I also love that the queer people in this are allowed to be flawed and messy because I feel like, in the push for representation, a lot of times, it’s sort of sanitized, and we’re not allowed to be as messy and flawed as straight people. I’m just curious about your approach to that and allowing us to be represented in a real way because I feel like it’s not something we see that much.
Again, probably a lot of the fucked-up dynamic is verbatim shit my wife and I say to each other. I don’t sing her songs to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I have an inappropriate relationship with my dog, but I don’t sing to him — I have my limits. No one is clean in this. The bubba couple — they’re not perfect, but they have a lot of great sides, too. And the lesbian couple, I wanted them to be so annoying. The chihuahua braces and the acupuncture and the laser therapy — we did that for my dog. We did that. Hearing yourself is so obnoxious. I feel like no one is safe. We did a screening in Key West for cast and crew and friends, and someone, who didn’t know me, I heard them say after, “I couldn’t tell what side the filmmaker was on.” And I love that because I’m not trying to show that right-wingers are bad. Woke is freaky, too, like all extremes. And then we all have parts in the middle, and we can all meet in the middle. We’re gonna have to figure that out. No matter what happens in the next few weeks, we gotta figure that out.
I do want to ask about the gum thing because I’m so curious: Is this a real trick? What inspired that? It was so specific and hilarious, and how it just snowballed was hysterical.
Well, I did really break my tooth — not at Mud Key but in Florida — and it was horrific. I had to get a dental implant. It was a shitshow. But like I said, you have to have conflict, so I was trying to think, “What can happen in the course of a day aside from us getting stuck there?” Raising the stakes with my tooth breaking and then the gum thing… I don’t know. In real life, Linda, my wife, is pretty jealous, but I exaggerated that in the script. I just thought, “What would she go batshit over?” The gum thing just happened in this trying to raise the stakes. Maybe my improv — all my Groundling classes — sunk in because I know that you’re supposed to raise the stakes and start a scene in the middle and blah, blah, blah. So that was fictional, but I’m glad it came off.
That leads really well into my next question because I am curious how much of this movie is improv and how much of it was scripted.
I think the little comments are ad-libbed, but we definitely followed the script for a lot of it. A lot of Amber’s belching was ad-lib — she’s a phenomenal belcher. And she’s hilarious. We followed the storyline, but I used to improvise with Chris, who plays DJ, and he said some hilarious shit that definitely made the cut. And Quinn, who plays Amber — who’s gay, by the way — is from North Carolina originally. So, like your Indiana roots, I’m sure some of that was helpful for her, but she’s hilarious. I’m sure my wife did some improvising, too, and she’s never acted.
But the best part —- I think you’ll like this — was we were doing the brawl scene, and to me, that was the pinnacle and one of the most important scenes. She had gotten some training before we shot — she was all in —- and we did that scene, and she was phenomenal, but it was like a different genre. I was like, “Okay, let’s do that again.” I think I said something like, “The movie is a comedy.” And she was like, “This movie is not a comedy.” So we were making two different movies. But I think she thinks it’s a comedy now.
Indie movie-making is obviously so challenging in so many ways. I mean, the budget, the locations, the working with non-actors.
That you’re married to.
That you’re married to! There’s another level there. I’m curious what the biggest challenge that you faced was. And then, on the flip side of that, what do you feel is the thing that you like learned from this movie that you’re going to take away and be able to use on future projects?
Well, first, from your mouth to God’s ears —- I hope there are future projects. I think the location was a massive challenge. You hit on that, and we shot on the actual Mud Key one day of the eight, and I naively thought beforehand, “Oh, we’ll take a boat out and back each day and everyone will bond and blah, blah, blah.” And someone was like, “What about bathrooms?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah.” The one day we shot there, we rented this really cool double-decker boat with a slide, but it had our food on it and a toilet and all sorts of stuff. Otherwise, we went up the Keys a little, and there was this Airbnb on a beach —- like two houses —- and we rented big plants from this garden center and all these things to make it look like Mud Key. I know Mud Key really well, and aside from knowing which day we shot stuff, it’s hard to tell [which is which]. But that was a huge challenge.
When I booked the Airbnbs, they said they allowed events. I didn’t say, “Hey, can we shoot a movie here?” The cast and crew, there were just like 10 of us, so I was like, “This is going to be fine.” And we pulled up, and the car with two DPs was there first, and they were looking at me like, “Uh…” And like the caretaker came up, and he was like, “You can’t shoot a movie here.” We flew everyone in, and everything was riding on that. I don’t know how we ended up making nice, but Chad, who was one of our producers, and DP was like, “Watch, this guy is going to become our best friend.” And he was! We thanked him in the special thanks. He ended up getting us fish for the fishing scene and taking it off the hook and raking the beach in the morning. So many things! If they put the kibosh on it, I don’t know what we would have done. That’s a different movie. So much can happen and go wrong when you’re directing your wife, a boat, water, a dog in eight days.
You’re working with all of the things that they tell you not to work with.
No children — no children in this one.
True! I’m curious what the timeline for this was. It’s obviously super relevant during an election year, but there’s a timelessness to it, too. But the COVID stuff, the insurrection stuff — I’m curious when you first wrote the script and then when you ended up filming.
I first wrote it in 2022 when Roe v. Wade was overturned — two summers ago. I was so distraught, and I didn’t know what to do, so I opened up Final Draft. Again, I wanted to write something that maybe I could make because — I’m sure you know — you write so many things to sit in a folder on your desktop. I was just trying to see their side of things. And the abortion stuff in the movie is just a tiny part now, but it really was the impetus for it —- just how divided we are. They’re as passionate as we are. I have different writer friends, so I would send drafts to them, and then in November of that year, we did a table read at my house. I don’t know about you, but some of the things I’ve written never see the light of day after that. I was really nervous thinking, “Maybe there’s something here, maybe it’s not.” And then it was like, “Okay, we could do this.” We had a different DJ that night, but Quinn was there and killed it. I was like, “Okay, this is her movie.” She was awesome. But then, after that, there were more rewrites, and we started rehearsing with actors, and then, in the summer of ‘23, we shot. There was a lot of post-production and fixing and stitching and all that. But that was the timeline, and here we are.
My last question, and I think you sort of touched on it, but I want to know the message that you hope people take away from this movie at the end of it.
I feel like it’s just so timely right now. Maybe I watch too much CNN, but things are so disturbing. I feel like we all need to learn how to coexist. I’m also trying to say that we’re all the same, you know? We’re all the fucking same. We want the same things, at the end of the day. I think Kamala said once that “we’re more alike than different,” and I completely think that. Everyone just wants the best for their families or themselves in their life, and everyone’s just struggling. Drop the sword. Drop the fucking sword.
I love the fact that they bonded over hating where their taxes are going. One thing we can always agree on is that part.
We crisscross on things, you know? There are a lot of things where I’m like, “Oh, I get that” or I get conservative about something. Some things go way too woke for me, and then some things I’m like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I have my cross to bear; they have theirs. We’re all different. There isn’t even a set blue and a set red — we’re all individuals. Key West’s creed is “one human family,” and I love that. That’s the motto of the town, and no one’s any better. We’re all completely equal. It’s very cheesy, but I believe it.
Mud Key is now available on VOD Platforms and DVD.
— Taylor Gates