EXCLUSIVE: Daniel Talbott, a filmmaker with credits including Midday Black Midnight Blue and the upcoming Welcome to Tool Shed, has formed Orphan Andy Films, a new film and television production company focused on queer voices that takes its name from the iconic diner in San Francisco’s Castro district.
“Our community is under renewed attack in the U.S., and that has made me want to be more visible, vocal, radical, and out there in both film and television,” Talbott told Deadline of the impetus in launching his company. “And, most importantly, I want to help other queer filmmakers from every background and corner of the world make their films and tell their stories.”
Current films on Orphan Andy’s slate include documentary Welcome to Tool Shed about an iconic Palm Springs leather bar; The World’s Coming in Fast, an experimental narrative/doc hybrid feature about San Francisco as a historical home for queer joy; the half-hour episodic drama Born Again, about a group of friends reeling from the death of a loved one; and the short film Parking.
The company aims to focus on rural, working-class, and global queer stories and will partner with other producers and companies.
“My work is heavily influenced by queercore filmmaking by filmmakers like Gus Van Sant, Cheryl Dunye, Gregg Araki, Chantal Akerman, Jennie Livingston, Todd Haynes, Lucio Castro, Derek Jarman, Lizzie Borden, and Agnès Varda,” Talbott said, “all filmmakers who have made and told queer stories with and without support and financing, in a singular and brilliant way.”
A cultural and social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of punk subculture, queercore is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society’s disapproval of the LGBTQ+ community. A do-it-yourself approach and aesthetic is another defining element of the filmmaking genre.
Said Talbott, “Queercore is embedded into the DNA of LGBTQ+ film. Something is always at risk emotionally, spiritually, and in how the film is dreamt up and made in queercore cinema. Orphan Andy Films will produce films with a deep ‘indie film lifer’ obsession with filmmaking, to borrow Sean Baker’s phrase.”
An award-winning writer-director and co-curator of the monthly queer cinema screening series, Black Cat Cinema, Talbott’s first feature Midday Black Midnight Blue, co-written and co-directed with Samantha Soule, premiered at the Seattle Film Festival and was released by Good Deed Entertainment. His feature script Gray is in active development in Denmark with Motor Productions, and his horror drama pilot Rome, Georgia, starring Mary-Louise Parker, is also in development. Additionally, he is working with Saga Film on the limited series To the Light and co-directing the documentary Welcome to Tool Shed. He created and co-showruns the LGBTQ+ drama Born Again with Stephen Laughton. TV writing credits for the Juilliard grad include ABC’s The Conners, where he was a staff writer, and The Mist, based on the Stephen King novella.
