Husband-and-wife filmmakers Matt Cascella and Jen Cordery moved to Portland from New York City in 2020 and immediately were inspired by their new home. They decided to shoot a film here called “Hangdog,” with Cascella as director and Cordery as writer.
The film is about a man frantically looking all over the city for his girlfriend’s dog, which he lost. The boyfriend is played by Desmin Borges, who was in the FX series “You’re the Worst” and has a recurring role on Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” The movie was shot around Portland in 2022 and begins streaming Friday on Prime and Apple TV.
“Hangdog” will also play at the Portland Museum of Art next week, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Cascella and Cordery will appear as part of the 3 p.m. screening on Sunday, Nov. 3. Just days before the film’s streaming release, Cascella took a few minutes to answer our questions.
What were some of the things that made you guys want to make a movie in Portland?
First of all, it’s just a city you don’t see on film a lot. It’s dynamic and has a lot of range to it. On the Eastern Prom, you’re looking at the ocean and all these islands. Then you’re in the Old Port, with the cobblestone streets. We were feeling burnt out in New York City, where oddly it’s hard to film things. But here, since it doesn’t happen often, it was easier, and people were a lot more excited to help us out. So it just made sense to us, and we were feeling inspired to tell this tale.
What parts of Portland, visually, do you think became the stars of the movie?
I love the scene where our protagonist is on the (Peaks Island) ferry. The ferry is just so photogenic. To see the city skim by in the background, with the characters in the foreground, is great. A lot of movies feel like they are hermetically sealed or something, all done on a sound stage and half the background is computer generated. I love films that take place in real places, and this is just a great city that doesn’t get seen enough.
Have you ever lost Jen’s dog? Is that where this story comes from?
I met Jen over 10 years ago, and when we started hanging out more, I had this recurring vision in my head of losing her dog (a dachshund named Ollie) or having him stolen. I thought that was such an odd thing to fixate on, and also this notion of almost competing with him for her affection. So that idea kind of hung around, and I just thought it would be sort of a funny foundation for a story.
How did you find the dog who stars in the film, Mr. Tibbs? Had he done a lot of acting before?
We found him through an animal trainer in Connecticut named Bill Berloni, and this was his first starring role. We almost started thinking about the dog first, before a lot of the cast, because a dog can really trip you up. With a small indie film like ours, if the dog’s not working out, you don’t have a lot of time or wiggle room to find another one. We wanted people to buy into it, we didn’t want him to feel like a stage dog or a movie dog that’s always looking off camera for a treat.
A lot of filmmakers say they’d like to shoot in Maine, but find they can get more financial incentives from other states, like Massachusetts. How were you able to make it work, financially?
I think it’s because we were a small crew and had such a small budget (under $400,000). So even though the tax incentives weren’t as great as they would be in, say, Massachusetts, the pluses outweighed the minuses for us. We used our house (in Portland) as a base camp, for instance. If we had filmed somewhere else, we’d have to rent a place. We just really wanted to try our best to make it work here.
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