The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff talks to Simone Faoro and Marin Hinkle about their short film
The Yellow
during TIFF 2024.
Faoro reflects deciding to adapt Samantha Hunt’s short story with Maika Monroe recognizing the powerful storytelling potential of short films.
Hinkle aims to empower future female filmmakers and praises working with Monroe, Faoro, and Haley Joel Osment.

Compared to feature-length films, shorts are wildly underappreciated despite being able to inflict a similarly powerful impact. Co-directors Maika Monroe and Simone Faoro create a stunning short film, The Yellow, which is adapted from author Samantha Hunt’s short story of the same name, that intimately dissects suburban dread and existential absurdity. The 14-minute film features mesmerizing performances from Marin Hinkle (Two and a Half Men) and Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense).

In this interview, Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits with Faoro and Hinkle at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and delves into how they updated the source material to reflect today’s issues and their experience working alongside the crew. Hinkle also reveals her goals to uplift future women who are in this industry, expressing her admiration for both Monroe and Faoro. Hear about their experience filming The Yellow in the video above, or follow along via the transcript below.

Short Films Like ‘The Yellow’ Deserve More Attention
“They’re like short stories.”

PERRI NEMIROFF: I feel like nobody pays enough attention to short films, and it’s such a beautiful storytelling format that literally doesn’t get as much credit because it’s short, and I can’t quite understand that.

MARIN HINKLE: My brother was visiting prior to me getting on the airplane, and he’s never seen a short film before. He said, “I don’t understand. How can I pay to go see them?” And actually, I, who had been in the business for many decades, realized that that was probably true. Unless you’re in the business, you don’t quite know how to have access to seeing short films.

I find that very stressful. Also, sometimes when I cover them, it can be challenging to get them distributed. Then you hear these wonderful things, and then there’s no place to access them after the fact. I find that very frustrating.

HINKLE: We were with a producer last night who shared something that I thought was beautiful. She said you should tell people who don’t understand the value of short films that they’re like short stories. A collection of short stories can offer something that a novel is a very different kind of experience for.

I feel like now I’m going off on a real tangent, but I was thinking about this because one of the movies that I was really excited about here is Life of Chuck, and it is one of Stephen King’s short stories. Even with books, I feel like a full book gets way more attention than a short story. It just does not quite compute because both can be equally as powerful.

Clearly, I know what you’re short is about. Our viewers might not know about it just yet. Would one of you mind giving a brief synopsis of The Yellow?

SIMONE FAORO: It’s about two unhappy people who spark a magical moment and come together, and a little fantastical moment happens. It’s a strange little story.

HINKLE: And then there’s also a dog.

I almost got very stressed about that dog.

HINKLE: Yes, we were all a little stressed!

And then I didn’t.

Maika Monroe and Simone Faoro Wanted to Depict “Raw and Wild Women”
Image via IFC Midnight

Simone, I know you co-directed and co-wrote with Maika Monroe, who I am a big fan of. She’s been on Collider many times. Can you tell me a little bit about how you first met and what the first thing you saw in her was that signaled to you, “She would be a good creative partner for me?”

FAORO: I’ve known Maika since we were 16. We grew up together, and we’ve been best friends for a very long time. We had always wanted to collaborate on something, and we never really knew what. It wasn’t until I found Samantha Hunt’s book of short stories that I was like, “I want these women that Samantha writes to be on the screen.” I just fell in love with them. They’re very raw and wild women, and we need more of that represented on the screen. I found the book, and I gave it to Maika, and I was like, “Any one of these stories. Let’s do it.” She came back with The Yellow, and we got in touch with Samantha and started adapting.

Image by Photagonist at TIFF

So many follow-up questions. One of my favorite things about an adaptation is that it’s an opportunity to respect and celebrate the source material, but also find ways to evolve. What space in her short story did you find that you thought you could bring your unique voice to?

FAORO: For Susanne’s character that Marin plays, we kept essentially her little bit exactly the same. I felt like it was really beautiful and impactful, and I didn’t want to touch her character. I thought she was perfect as she was. But I felt like Roy, who was played by Haley Joel Osment, could be a little bit updated for the time. The original short story is about a little less than 10 years old. So, Samantha and I were talking, and we felt like we could make him lonelier. In America, there’s a crisis in loneliness right now, especially in boys and young men, that I think is really sad. We were tapping into that, and we felt Haley really embodied ’90s nostalgia, and we felt like he was the right person to play the role.

Marin Hinkle Strives to Uplift Future Women in Cinema
Image via Juniper Productions

Marin, on to you with signing on to this. You are very popular. I imagine you have many opportunities, and someone might be thinking, “Why carve out the time to do a short film?” What was it about this material that made you say, “I need this kind of project in my life?”

HINKLE: In the last maybe decades, I’ve had a chance to work on a variety of roles that have had a kind of cover that they present. We get to see in some episodes, whether it was Judith on Two and a Half Men or whether it was Rose [in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel], we get to see moments of, I call it like an underbelly. But I was very drawn to this piece because I feel like the rawness of a private space that someone has when the family is gone, and you’re alone in the house, and maybe you’re drinking, or maybe you’re dancing to the music that you’ve wanted to let loose to, I, maybe in my own life, felt like I needed a little bit of that let go.

Honestly, I really wanna work with young women. I really wanna be there to support and to love [them]. “Guiding” is not what I would say because I think I made a lot of mistakes in my career, so maybe I wanna tell them to go a different direction than I went at times. But I really got incredibly drawn to both Simone and Maika and Samantha, who wrote it. I’ve told all three this: whatever they do from now on, whether I can hold a boom for them or play a tree, I’m here energetically to help this generation go. I was so drawn to that. So, it was a yes right away.

It makes me so happy.

HINKLE: Thanks.

It’s such an important thing because someone with your platform eventually pulls someone else up, and then you could pay it forward when you make more movies. That’s how the cycle continues and how it gets stronger every single step of the way.

Image by Photagonist at TIFF

Many questions about your collaborators. First of all, I’ll start with the two of them, Simone and Maika. Why, from your perspective, did it feel like the right directing duo to lead you through this process?

HINKLE: This one’s beautiful — she’s an incredible photographer and really a visionary and a deep artistic soul. I looked at her work, and I certainly knew Maika’s, and I just knew that their taste and how they were gonna present their direction was right on the same page. I think I was on set for two days, and every single moment they would share their thoughts with one another. They were two peas in a pod, like two elves, two magical sprites, and they never had disagreements, or if they did, it was away from us. It really just felt incredibly invigorating and soulful the way that they worked, and I knew that from the second I talked to them.

Haley Joel Osment’s On-Set Spirit Is “Childlike”
“He’s a legend.”
Image via Juniper Productions

Now I obviously have to ask about working with Haley.

HINKLE: He’s a legend.

It’s a raw role that you have to give a lot of yourself to. What is it about him as a scene partner that makes you feel safe and also makes you feel like you could deliver your best work?

HINKLE: Haley, in a funny way, reminded me of Tony Shalhoub. I’m gonna say that because I say this about Tony — every day Tony came to work over the six years I was with him [on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel], it was childlike because he was like, “I can’t believe I get to do this.” The expertise of all the years he’s been doing it, he has no ego and no hubris about that. And Haley was the same. It was very childlike, how joyful he was at playing a role that’s very in despair. I just felt like their casting was extraordinary. It was a perfect merger, and we had to be pretty sexual. We had to be very vulnerable, like, meet, be covered in blood — if I’m allowed to say, I guess I’ve just said it, a little spoiler alert — but basically, that kind of sexual openness was just about trust. I had it in a second.

I love that.

‘The Yellow’s Crew Share the Colors They Are Inspired By
Image by Photagonist at TIFF

I’m gonna end with this question that I feel I could just come across as, “What is your favorite color?” But because of your movie, it has made me think about how I respond to colors and how they make me feel. Can you tell me a specific color that you find inspiring you?

FAORO: The yellow. I love yellow. It’s always been my favorite color and I have a lot of clothing that’s yellow. It’s just my go-to. But I love all colors. Honestly, I love green and blue.

Glad you like green on the Collider set.

HINKLE: I wanna know what yours is. Can we finish with yours?

This movie made me think about it a lot. Mine is red, and it brings me back to my Nana, who always used to say red was a lucky color. Every time I see a lot of red, I feel like something good is going to happen.

HINKLE: You have this connection to her. My mom’s is red, too.

FAORO: Red is very cinematic.

HINKLE: I grew up thinking I wanted to be eccentric, and, for some reason, purple felt quite eccentric. I guess I’m gonna go with purple.

FAORO: Great color.

Special thanks to MARBL Restaurant for hosting Collider, as well as our additional sponsors Range Rover, the official luxury vehicle partner of the Cinema Center and Collider Media Studio, poppi, Tequila Don Julio, Canada’s premium spring water brand, Legend Water, and People’s Group financial services.