Kevin Smith Opens SModCastle Film Festival With Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s ‘Dead Man Walking’ Meets ‘Thelma & Louise’ Film, ‘Shelter in Solitude’ [Exclusive]
When it came to finding the perfect movie to open his first SModCastle Film Festival, filmmaker Kevin Smith chose Saturday Night Live alum and indie filmmaker Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s darkly funny feature, Shelter in Solitude.
Smith is a “huge, longtime fan” of Hogan’s and was thrilled to “showcase Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s world premiere of Shelter in Solitude on opening night!” he shared in a press release.
The love is completely mutual. “I’m a huge fan of Kevin’s,” Hogan told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “There’s the irony that he paved the way and was one of the first trailblazers for independent filmmaking, with Clerks at Sundance so many years ago.”
How did Siobhan Fallon Hogan and Kevin Smith connect for his SModCastle Film Festival?
Hogan and Smith connected through a short film she made with his filmmaking partners Ernie O’Donnell and Jeff Swanton. “They were partnering with Kevin and were going to open this theater,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s amazing.’ And so when the festival happened we weren’t finished editing Shelter in Solitude. They started taking submissions for the festival.”
But Smith was determined to feature the film. “We talked and they said, ‘If you finish, would you do a special screening?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ So we’re not in the competition, but we’re the opening night, special screening.”
What is ‘Shelter in Solitude’ about?
Shelter in Solitude gets the Dead Man Walking comparison, but Hogan said her film has more of a humorous arm. “It’s more like a Dead Man Walking meets Thelma Louise,” she mused. “Because it’s there is a lot of humor. There’s also the Country Western aspect of it.”
Shelter in Solitude is about a Z-list country singer, who loses all prospects of singing during the pandemic and her only work option is to become a prison guard at the local penitentiary. She befriends a death-row inmate who is living his final 10 days. Hogan described the film as a love story in a prison, with a hell of a soundtrack.
Hogan hadn’t planned to dive back into writing when the story came to her. She had finished the critically acclaimed film Rushed and planned to take a break.
“We just finished the edit on Rushed and I had no plans of really writing anything,” she said. “I was kind of taking a break. And all of a sudden one night I was kind of laying there. I was like, wait a minute. My father was a lawyer and he defended a lot of people in prison up in Syracuse, New York.”
“I was always kind of a little obsessed with prisoners and what their life was like,” she pondered. “And, I always just wondered what are they doing in there? And because the penitentiary is kind of near where I grew up and, actually we ended up filming there. So I was a little obsessed with that because there’s barbed wire and everything around it.”
“My father also wanted me to be a country singer and I loved to sing,” she shared. “So it was kind of a combination of sort of the two. And then I kind of thought, what would it be like for the prisoners during Covid? Especially the beginning of Covid, and how this would affect their lives.”
Who saves who in ‘Shelter in Solutide’?
Shelter in Solitude isn’t the typical prison guard meets prisoner film. “The interesting thing is that you’d think maybe this is white savior movie. But it’s not,” she said. “It is the opposite because my character is a single wannabe country singer. She performed in Nashville once and she’s kind of like the Miss Havisham of country singers.”
“She’s kind of stuck in the past of her one night of glory,” she laughed. “The only two sources of employment in the whole town are the prison and a bar. So what happens to this woman, when her whole lifeline is shut down because of Covid? She intends to save him, but he actually saves her.”
Hogan, who starred in SNL, Seinfeld, and Men in Black said there was no way she could write a movie without some of her signature humor. “There’s a lot of humor in it, like Rushed,” she said. “I think that when really sad and tragic things happen to funny people, sometimes it’s even sadder because they’re not used to it. You’re used to being sort of the entertainer and the clown, and then suddenly you’re thrust into hell, and what happens? So at the beginning and throughout, the character keeps her sense of humor. But it’s like, how does someone extremely funny deal with this stuff?”
Siobhan Fallon Hogan sings in her new indie film, premiering at the Kevin Smith’s SModCastle Film Festival
Fans know Hogan as an actor/comedian, but now they’ll experience her musical side. “My son is the music supervisor on it, as well as being an actor in it, Peter Hogan,” she said. “We went to Nashville a year ago and recorded songs with two amazing singer-songwriters, Todd Cameron, who has a great song in it, and Justin Biltonen.”
“I always wanted to be a country singer,” she admitted. “And then here I am. My son finds fabulous things, we go out to Nashville and I’m in like a sound booth and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ My mother had always said, ‘Oh, Siobhan you can sell a song.’ And I was like, ‘My mother had better be looking down on me.’ So I’m like in the booth thinking, ‘OK come on, where’s my Loretta Lynn?'”
The Shelter in Solitude world premiere is at 8:30 pm on opening night, November 30th at Kevin Smith’s first SModCastle Film Festival 82 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716. For tickets go to smodcastle.com.
For more information about Shelter in Solitude, follow Siobhan Fallon Hogan and Shelter in Solitude on Instagram. Hogan’s film Rushed is currently available on Amazon or Apple.
