As she sets out her career as a filmmaker, Destry Allyn Spielberg is ready to shake up the Hollywood system. Having long been intrigued by the elevated genre space, she is set to launch her debut feature Please Don’t Feed the Children at the Sitges International Film Festival on Friday.
The project, which is led by Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery and Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito, follows a gang of orphans who travel to the south in search of a new life after a viral outbreak decimates the adult population of the nation, only to find themselves at the mercy of a psychotic woman who is hiding a perilous secret.
When it came to casting this group of youngsters, Spielberg worked with renowned casting director Anne McCarthy (The Conjuring) with an aim to find fresh and young actors for the ensemble.
“My goal was to bring in as many new faces as possible – that’s kind of my goal as a director in the future,” she says. “I want to start careers – I’m sick of seeing movies that lack young talent. There are so many young and talented actors that are not getting seen. I think the whole system is bullshit and I don’t understand why the industry is so exclusive. It’s silly.”
Zoe Colletti (Only Murders in the Building), Dean Scott Vazquez (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts), Vernon Davis (Chariot), Emma Meisel (American Horror Story: 1984), Andrew Liner (Vampire Academy), Reagan Aliyah (Ironheart) and Joshuah Melnick (Saint X) round out the cast for the low-budget indie project, which is produced by Jason Dubin and his Perry Street Films, Josh Kesselman, Michael Hagerty, Bill Kenwright and Daniel Ryniker. Altitude is handling international sales for the title, with WME Independent repping North American rights.
“We had such a perfect movie for an ensemble with new faces so we were keen to get as many as we could,” she says. “I was so lucky to have found this cast.”
Working with Dockery was also a positive experience for the director: “Michelle was so humble and willing to try different things – she has your back and really has a voice in the industry when it comes to supporting women.”
Grappling the indie space
When Spielberg first read Paul Bertino’s script for Please Don’t Feed the Children, she knew the project would be the perfect fit for her directorial debut. She was coming off the back of winning Best Thriller at City of Angels Women’s Film Festival in 2022 for her short film Let Me Go the Right Way and had recently signed with WME when she was presented with Please Don’t Feed the Children.
The burgeoning director, whose father is The Fableman’s helmer Steven Spielberg, was originally expected to make her debut with Ryan Hooper’s 2021 Black List Script Four Assassins (and a Funeral), a project she is no longer attached to, but ended up being drawn into doing something more in the genre space.
‘Please Don’t Feed The Children’
“It was the fastest read of all of the scripts I had seen and was so riveting and such a great page turner,” she says of Please Don’t Feed The Children. “I just had this gut feeling that this was the right one. The name of the script jumped out at me and the fact that a title could make me want to read something was just great.”
She adds: “I really enjoyed psychological movies growing up and this film is really more of a psychological thriller than a horror. It’s like The Goonies meets Children of Men.”
Every independent film is full of challenges and Please Don’t Feed the Children was no exception. The low-budget feature was hit with some hiccups in financing that ultimately meant the project was delayed from April 2023 to October and November of 2023, smack in the middle of the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Luckily, the project was granted a waiver to film and ultimately ended shooting across 18 days in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was an experience, Spielberg says, that endeared her to working in the indie space.
“It was a very challenging movie to get made but it was an experience that almost made me not want to leave the indie genre space because I liked the challenge,” says Spielberg. “The feeling of accomplishing is so good and when people believe in you and you meet people that you hopefully want to work with forever, it’s amazing.”
She continues: “It had a lot of ups and downs. I think I had a piece of every single challenge that comes with making an indie film – let alone a movie – all in one. And I’m really grateful for it because if this had been a smooth process – which, by the way, no movie is, they are all challenging – I wouldn’t be prepared for the next one.”
Working during the strikes was, she admits, a “very emotional” experience for the cast and crew on set. “It brought us together and made the work environment healthy and fun and we felt like we were all in this together,” she says. “There was no room for blaming anyone for this and that. That was something that was very important to me – the set had to be non-toxic.”
Directing steps
Spielberg, who has a background in photography, had previously worked as an actress in films such as Licorice Pizza and an episode of the miniseries I Know This Much Is True, but when she directed her short film, she quickly realized that she wanted to pursue directing instead of acting.
“It made more sense for my brain and how I visually imagine things with colors and set design,” she says. “I loved getting a little more creative with shots and I think when you step into the genre space, you get more of that. When you’re in the drama space, it’s a little more balanced and a lot more feng shui.”
Growing up, she recalls listening to SirusXM’s CineMagic with her father, a now defunct station which played film scores, source music and dialogue from movie soundtracks. It was on that station that she first got the taste for what would become her favorite film The Shining.
“One day we were driving and listening to it, and they had a segment on The Shining and I remember listening to it and hearing the classic ‘Red Rum, Red Rum’ and the audio of it and the score just compelled me. I became obsessed with it, but I was too young to watch it.”
When she did watch it when she was older as well as the film’s documentary Room 237, Spielberg says “it completely changed my world.”
“I love that Kubrick liked to f-ck with the audience and that he liked to pinpoint things that had nothing to do with the actual story and all of the hidden messages in the film as well as all the conspiracies around it,” she says. “It made me think that if I was going to ever make a movie, I wanted people to be talking about it after, so how do I do that?”
She loves the name Please Don’t Feed the Children and likens it to signs that say ‘Please Don’t Feed The Animals’, which she hopes means audiences will want more when they come in to watch the film.
Destry Allyn Spielberg, “The Fabelmans” premiere, 2022 Toronto International Film Festival
Amanda Edwards/Getty Images
Family ties
Spielberg is hyper aware that having one of the most prolific and lauded directors in the world as a father will offer up both perks and hurdles as she begins to carve a name for herself in the directing world.
“I think I’m very lucky to have him as my dad,” she says. “The name itself comes with its perks – it’s a blessing and a curse. But I have to remember that I can make a name for myself. I can prove my talent on my own. But at the end of the day, I’m always going to be a Spielberg, and I have to be okay with that.”
“Unconsciously, being on sets as a kid was my film school so I’m really grateful for that,” she adds. “I think I know as much as I do and have the instincts that I do because of that and I’m just really grateful of how supportive he is.”
She admits that she showed her father a second and rough cut of Please Don’t Feed the Children – less for notes and more out of excitement. “I’ll never do that again,” she quips. “I think he was nervous and thought it wasn’t going to work but when he saw the final cut, he gave me the biggest hug and it was a big weight off of my shoulders.”
Up next, Spielberg is currently at the very early stages of her next directing project with Please Don’t Feed the Children with actor Melnick and while she can’t reveal much, she does tell Deadline that it’s a murder mystery. “And there’s possibly a third project,” she admits. “I can’t say much but it’s going to be great and I’m going to be busy.”
But as she readies to unveil, Please Don’t Feed the Children to audiences tonight at Sitges, she’s proud of the lessons she’s learned on her debut feature. “I have tried to be as collaborative as possible and tried my best to keep it positive – even on the hardest days and sometimes it’s tough,” she admits. “You deal with a lot of different characters, and you have to know how to put your foot down and be a boss and then allow for those moments. But you also have to forgive and forget and continue to collaborate and fix challenges together – the work environment is really important.”
Spielberg adds: “And it has to be fun. If I’m the only one having fun and enjoying the process, then I’m doing it wrong.”