In Really Good Driver, which debuted at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival, an Asian American mom (Keiko Agena) teaches her grown-up child (Alex Song-Xia) how to drive, forcing both of them to confront the slightly dangerous task at hand while resurfacing tensions between them in the past. Song-Xia, who wrote, directed and stars in the short film, also has credits writing for TV shows such as Rick and Morty, Exploding Kittens and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Here, the filmmaker talks about their inspirations and the making of their first short film.
DEADLINE: Can you talk a bit about your filmmaking journey? What inspired you to come to this field? I know you have a background in comedy.
ALEX SONG-XIA: This is my first short film as a director. But as an actor/writer, I came up through comedy in New York. It’s not what my parents wanted to happen, but I was always drawn to acting as a kid, but I never really got the chance to pursue it until moving to New York for college. With the freedom of living in New York, I started going to UCB, the Upright Citizens Brigade and did weekly shows, signed up for improv classes, and found whatever day jobs that would help me pay for it. I then started working as a comedy writer and getting acting jobs, but mostly working for other people. This was my first time directing something that I wrote.
DEADLINE: The premise of the short is fairly simple on the surface. It’s about a driving lesson, but then it actually unfolds into this confrontation about acceptance in having already come out of the closet. Plus, as if that wasn’t already therapy enough for this character, you’ve added a conversation about toxic relationships and learning self-worth on top of that. Can you talk about how you arrived at this idea of the short film and how the themes unfolded throughout?
Alex Song-Xia
Alex Song-Xia
SONG-XIA: I’ve started joking at film festivals that this short is entirely made up and non-autobiographical, but obviously, it’s pretty autobiographical. It’s based on my mom teaching me how to drive as an adult after forgetting that the reason I never learned as a teenager was because I came out, and she kind of freaked out and didn’t let me learn how to drive. And for years and years, I joked that she also forgot I came out, and I had to re-come out to her at 26. But through working on this film and with the other actor, Keiko Agena, she would ask me questions about the mom character. And I realized that my own mom didn’t so much as forget as I learned how to lie to her and date men and try to be who she wanted me to be. Then, I was also very drawn to the idea of not telling a coming-out story but kind of what happens after, especially coming from a family that doesn’t really like to talk about things.
DEADLINE: I thought about that too when I was watching. How interesting is it that it’s not a standard coming-out scene: your character had already come out prior to the start of the film. Do you think that we need more stories focused more on the aftermath? Where do you land on queer storytelling these days?
SONG-XIA: I feel similarly as I do with other underrepresented stories we’re seeing where it’s like, I don’t think we’re at the quota for coming out stories or whatever stories, but I think maybe now there’s a cultural understanding of it a little bit more. And it’s interesting to get to see the step past that and that the base reality is already that this has happened and just see the characters live their lives after that.
DEADLINE: What’s something you’ve learned about yourself in terms of writing for fictional TV shows and late-night TV shows and now making your own short film?
SONG-XIA: It’s been interesting being the one who makes all the decisions. I’m very happy to come up with as many jokes as many choices for somebody else. But it’s been interesting [while working on the short film] when everyone has to look at you and be like, “OK, which one is it?” And I’ve been slowly understanding that I did have an opinion all along, and I do have an opinion, but I just had spent so long being like, “Yeah, whatever everybody else wants.” And there’s a time and place to serve someone else’s vision but also being able to just get closer to hearing that voice that I didn’t know I had in my head of, “Oh, this is what I’m drawn to” or “This is what I’m seeing for [the vision].”
DEADLINE: What kind of media are you consuming right now?
SONG-XIA: I just watched the TV show The End of the F***ing World on Netflix for the first time. I loved it. I loved the dark humor and even the little side characters that would have rich lives that added to the humor and the depth of the scene, even if it wasn’t about them. I’ve also been watching the latest season of Hacks. I also watched this documentary called Lift about this ballet program that gives scholarships to kids in housing shelters. I really liked that.
Keiko Agena and Alex Song-Xia in Really Good Driver
Alex Song-Xia
DEADLINE: In what ways do you think you relate or don’t relate to your character? It sounds like, from what you’ve already said, you relate pretty damn well to your character?
SONG-XIA: It was cool to me that through the rehearsal process with Keiko, to be able to write a fuller character for the mom. And so much of it is brought forth by her performance as well. And I think that really helped me understand the perspective from both sides a little better than just my own version of the story. In terms of relating, I do think both characters are a little bit braver versions of whoever the real-life versions of those characters are.
DEADLINE: What would you like audiences to think about after they watch Really Good Driver?
SONG-XIA: That as much as there’s queer stories that kind of focus on the pain of [the experience], I like being able to end on a little bit of a hopeful note that even if not everything was fixed or solved that day, that the two characters are on a hopeful path.
DEADLINE: What’s next for you?
SONG-XIA: I’m on the current season of Dimension 20: Never Stop Blowing Up on Dropout TV and I’m just working on writing a feature.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]