A house party, like life itself, is what you make of it. For some, it can be an oasis from the hell of responsibility that comes with newly-adult life. For others it can be a prison, reminding you with every moment spent inside that you’ve outgrown shotgunning Lucky Strike and talking to friends-of-friends about their upcoming trip to Japan. The people you meet in the sea of red solo cups can become best friends, mortal enemies, or strangers you’ll never see again. The winding, messy, bittersweet experience of the 20-something house party is exactly what writer Will DiNola and writer-director Aaron Bartuska bottle in These Are My Friends!, the latest entry in the canon of mumblecore-adjacent indie flicks to arise from the piss-soaked streets of our beautiful town.
These Are My Friends! chronicles a night in the lives of 14 friends as they drift aimlessly through the same Philly house party. Each partygoer arrives with a different dilemma: couple Carmine (Nick Paparo) and Pat (Vivi Mikhael) debate their compatibility, friends Hannah Belle (Olivia Basile) and Johanna (Maddie Walsh) question their bond, and Rhys (David Petka) and Alia (Tessa Barr) try to form a new connection as Rhys struggles to stay sober. As the night goes on their paths all interlope, bringing change to each relationship across the group.
The Philly Plain Dealer was able to speak with Co-writer/Director Aaron Bartuska about the process behind creating These Are My Friends! “We [Bartuska and co-writer Will DiNola] were going for the vibe of films like Can’t Hardly Wait and Dazed and Confused.” Bartuska said. “We just loved these sort of slice-of-life films where you get to hang out with a bunch of different characters for a little while, so we were really trying to capture that energy – but with the people we know in our personal lives. We knew we wanted to make something that got everyone together again [after the pandemic], and we also just wanted to make a movie that felt good.”
“I love Alice-Heart. It was another eye-opener, because it was just like people I’m mutuals with made this, and now it’s at Slamdance.” Bartuska said, speaking about the recent rise of Philly-based movies making splashes in the indie film scene. “I think people just want to make movies in unique places they’re familiar with, it goes back to mumblecore. These cities aren’t really on camera as much as New York or L.A. or Atlanta, and so it lends a unique feeling. We went to film school in Philly, it always made the most sense to film there, but I don’t think we would have if we didn’t see the beginnings of some sort of indie movement happening here. Kit Zahaur made This Closeness here, Alice-Heart came along, Brewce Longo is making a bunch of great horror work in the city. I think the pandemic took something out of the city’s art scene, and now we’re rebuilding with a vengeance.”
On the difficulties of making an ensemble film on an indie budget, Bartuska said “It was pretty daunting. Going in, we thought we bit off more than we were prepared to chew, but we ended up doing it. Being on set, there were times where there were so many moving elements that I couldn’t really tell if I was playing director or directing. The most challenging thing was focusing on character traits, these little intricacies. The only sets I’d ever ran before this had maybe 10-15 people at most, and there were days on this set where there were 40 people in a room at once. There were a lot of times where I’d be like ‘I can’t even think about this creatively because I need to make sure it gets done’, but Will and my assistant directors and producers really helped me stay sane.”
These Are My Friends! is tangibly a labor of love. Bartuska and DiNola’s film is a chameleon of mood in a way that will be instantly recognizable to any 20-something Philadelphian, capturing the weight of a time and place in your life that you know you’ll never feel again. Cringe-inducing at some points, warm and familiar at others, and bittersweet when you least expect it to be, there’s a palpable atmosphere created by Bartuska’s textured visuals that breathes a certain life into the script’s familiarity. The ensemble cast, with standouts through the performances of Paparo, Gallucci, and Basile, all feel at home in their characters so much that you might mistake them for friends of your own. The suffocation, comfort, and chaos of being trapped in a room with your friend group at 2 A.M. on a summer night is nearly impossible to replicate, and yet bringing it to the big screen feels like second nature for this team.
“From pre-production on this film to it screening at Springfest this weekend, it will have been almost 4 and a half years, which is a lot of your life to put into something.” Bartuska said. “I’m very excited, it feels like this weekend I can finally let go of it in a way. Now it’ll be the audience’s. I’m still gonna be its cheerleader, but I won’t only be mine anymore, which’ll be refreshing.”
These Are My Friends! will be premiering at the Philadelphia Film Society’s Springfest on Friday, April 17 and will be followed by a Q&A with the director and cast.
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