Shot in black-and-white vertical video; made for Tik Tok and premiering theatrically as a feature film at the Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Estonia; Jon Bass’s New York City-set indie comedy, Carole and Grey, presents an interesting array of contradictions and formal playfulness. That it’s also a rather accessible, kind-hearted, and winsomely sincere film means that it’s not just an interesting experience, but a friendly, enjoyable one.

It’s the story of two best friends Carole (Mary Wiseman) and Grey (Jon Bass) who journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan’s Upper West Side to pick up a dog from the ex-girlfriend who recently jilted Grey. The plot however, largely plays second fiddle to a relentless string of non-sequiturs and odd-encounters that range from intimate existential conversations at the Natural History Museum to raves to shape-shifters and angry gangs of yo-yoers. I sat down with Bass at PÖFF where his endless riffing led to a very lively conversation about the film.

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Joshua Bogatin – Can you walk me through the origins of the project? Was it originally made for TikTok before becoming a film? Or was it made for both TikTok and cinemas at once?

Jon Bass – I wanted to make a movie, and I wanted to release it for free online, on a platform that already has an audience built in. The biggest audience that you can find for something like this is on TikTok, so I decided to make a movie and put it on TikTok. That was the genesis for the idea. Everything after that is sort of: what came first, the chicken or the egg? Yes, it’s a movie. It’s on TikTok. Is it a TikTok movie or is it a movie that’s on TikTok? I think it doesn’t really matter. It just is what it is.

While editing, my editor kept asking, ‘should we do this because it’s going to be on Tik Tok?’ I would always tell him, ‘no, we’re not making it because it’s going to be on TikTok. We’re making it as a movie, and then we’re going to put it on TikTok.’ There was never a point when we said let’s Tik Tok-ify it. I just wanted to edit this movie in the most interesting and fun way possible.

Joshua Bogatin – While watching it, I kept wondering whether it was structured for TikTok where videos are typically shorter than 2 minutes. I kept trying to figure out where each video would start or end. The movie is also very episodic in a way.

Jon Bass – On TikTok I put it in parts. It’s not episode one and episode two, but part one and part two. But it’s for sure wildly episodic and extremely ADD.

Joshua Bogatin – Did you write it like that?

Jon Bass – I was very influenced by a quote from David Lynch where he essentially says: if you can write down 30 scenes, you have a movie. I had written one scene for me and my best friend Mary [Wiseman], who plays Grey, where we go to the Guggenheim. This is when the writers’ and actors’ guild strikes happened and the strikes were fucking awful. Everyone was out of work. Everyone was pissed. There was hope because we thought we were going to get this amazing deal. It didn’t happen.

So I had this scene that I had written with me and my best friend, so I asked myself, what happens if I expand on this and just start writing? On a flight from New York to LA I wrote down quick ideas for scenes between the two of us, and at the end of that plane ride I had about 20 scenes. I decided all I needed was 10 more to make 30 scenes. So of course, it’s definitely episodic. It is almost like these disparate scenes between two friends that I later found the thread for.

Joshua Bogatin – How was shooting a whole movie in a 9×16 aspect ratio? Did it pose its own challenges

Jon Bass – Oh, yeah. We originally had a DP, but it became apparent pretty early on that there was a bit of a disconnect with what he wanted to do and with what I wanted to do. Which was an issue because it’s such a small production. We literally had a crew of three people. The smallest you can possibly get away with.

Joshua Bogatin – One cinematographer, one sound mixer and one producer?

Jon Bass – No. It was DP, DP, and DP. three DPs. We had one DP, one DP/DP assistant/PA, and one DP/producer/best friend.

Joshua Bogatin – Plus an actor, writer, director and producer.

Jon Bass – too. So we had to make sure that everyone was getting along. This first DP was taking it too seriously. He always wanted to set up really nice shots. I didn’t. The biggest challenge was getting someone to move past the idea of creating pretty shots. We were shooting with iPhones and we’re not hiding the fact that we’re shooting with iPhones. We’re embracing the fact that we’re shooting with them. I think if it looks ugly, that’s beautiful. I think the movie is really ugly at some points and I like that. Sometimes I just have an ugly frame with half a person’s face in it. Sometimes while watching I think I should have probably framed that better, but at the same time I remember that it was my intention to make it with as few barriers as possible.

Joshua Bogatin – I’ve always admired the grainy textures of iPhones; the pixelated-ness. There’s a certain rawness to it.

Jon Bass – Do you remember when movies in the early 2000 were shot on HD? It was this weird sort of early digital technology. I remember when it first came out and people were really upset by it. A lot of critics thought it just looked terrible. I watch that stuff now, 20 years after the fact, and I think it looks cool as hell. I think it will be the same with the iPhone.

Joshua Bogatin – I agree. After Tangerine [Sean Baker, 2015] and Steven Soderbergh’s first iPhone movies [such as 2018’s Unsane], I thought it was going to become way more common. It’s still pretty rare.

Jon Bass – Because what DP wants to shoot with an iPhone? They don’t fucking exist. You know why Sean Baker was his own DP on Tangerine? Steven Soderbergh shoots all of his own stuff. You’ll only find it if the director is also the DP. There is not one DP out there who’s excited that they get to shoot on an iPhone. They’re funny people. I love them. One of my best friends is the DP. But they love talking about lenses.

Joshua Bogatin – It’s a gear-head mentality.

Jon Bass – They’re full gear heads. They want the nicest shit. They always want to shoot on film, even if they don’t know how to shoot on film.

Joshua Bogatin – And if you’re making a micro-budget movie, the cost of shooting and developing film is your whole budget.

Jon Bass – It’s very funny when you get into a conversation with a DP about your movie and they always suggest shooting on film. You think that’s a cool idea, but then you think about it logically and the second you really think about it, it kind of just seems… DUMB.

Joshua Bogatin – So did you work very quickly during production?

Jon Bass – Yeah, we shot it in 13 days. I think it’s funny when people talk about how long it took to shoot a movie because there’s some movies that were shot in seven days and they turn out looking great. There’s some movies shot in 10 days that turn out looking like absolute shit. Like Carole and Grey. [laughs] Intentionally! Intentionally!

Joshua Bogatin – How was the iPhone conducive to such a quick production.

Jon Bass – If I had a better sense of time restraints, we could have finished the movie in five days. I wanted to keep my cast and crew happy, so we ended up shooting about six hours a day. It doesn’t matter if you’re shooting with the biggest fucking camera in the world or with the iPhone, it is still tough to make films. It is never an easy endeavour. You need to get a lot of people together. You need to bring resources together. You need to go places and do things. It’s always going to be hard. I wanted to make it as easy as possible. We could have finished in six or seven days, but my dumb ass wanted to keep everyone happy. And it was a very amicable shoot where everyone really got along.

Joshua Bogatin – When you were using all of these public locations, did you ever have any trouble from the location staff?

Jon Bass – No because we were shooting an iPhone vertically. No one cares if you’re making a TikTok.

Jon Bass – Exactly. That’s one of the reasons we shot it that way. My producer, who’s a good friend, was so nervous the whole time. He kept telling us to hurry it up so we don’t get stopped, that we have to be super careful because we’re in a public space. And I kept telling him, ‘I think we’re okay, bro.’ Every time it freaked me out and then we would get there and realize that no one cares. We’re shooting vertically on an iPhone.

Joshua Bogatin – Yea, and the whole movie is just two friends talking. Why did you choose to film it in black and white?

Jon Bass – It was Mary’s idea actually. She thought it’d be cool if it was a black and white and I like it because it reminded me of Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979). Something I learned from my editor after the fact was that we also didn’t need to worry about a colourist so it became a nice way to save a little bit of money too.

Joshua Bogatin – Was it hard to direct while also acting?

Jon Bass – Yeah, I don’t like it. I did it because I was shooting a movie with my best friend and I didn’t want to pay someone to direct. I knew that it would also be a weird thing to find someone who had the same aesthetic view that I had about this movie. It’s a very specific point of view and also very messy. I told the DPs to shoot me and Mary, but really to do whatever they wanted. And at the same time I told them to make it look whatever, not beautiful, but whatever. It needs to be that way because if it’s not that way, then we’re trying for something that is somehow falsely cinematic. That would feel weird to me. It’s weird to me when any of my scenes are on a tripod. There are a few scenes where it looks nice and it’s on a tripod. Then we immediately cut to absolute bedlam, mayhem. For me that is the movie, so it’s very bizarre to have these moments of stillness.

Joshua Bogatin – That style makes a lot of sense to me, because the movie is very intimate. It’s about friendship. Having that casual sense of style would seem pretty important because it gives you a genuine sense of them hanging out.

Jon Bass – Exactly, that’s a great way of putting it.

Joshua Bogatin – What inspired you to make a movie about friendship or about relationships in this way?

Jon Bass – It was really just something that I was feeling. I had just gotten out of a relationship, and had just started to reconnect with my friends. In the movie Carol says that she’s been best friends with Grey for the last 20 years, except for when Grey’s in a relationship because he becomes a ghost. That can be a little true in real life. When I get into a relationship, I can sometimes lose track of my friends. I think it’s very normal for that to happen, but it’s not my favorite quality in myself because friends are very important to me. So I ended up making this movie and a big part of it was that I wanted to spend time with my best friend. We had been hanging out, but it was still a little hard to get together. So I said, let’s just make a movie about it. A movie where we get to hang out all the time.

It was her idea to throw in the theme of romantic relationships. I love the thing that she says at the end: ‘I think we’re conditioned to believe that romantic relationships are the pinnacle of existence, but I think that can set you up for failure. Love won’t cure you. Love won’t save you. But fucking is really nice.’ That was all improvised and all Mary. It’s one of my favorite parts. It’s the theme of the movie: friendship. The whole movie is a little bit chaotic and a little bit out of the ordinary in the way that it’s shot, but I also wanted to make an easy movie. Film festival movies are usually very serious, about terrible events and terrible things happening to either good or terrible people. They’re beautifully shot and really pretty to look at, but sometimes you just want to close your eyes and go off to dream world. Those movies are great and there’s a place for everything, but a movie like Carole and Grey is different. What I love about the Black Nights Film Festival is that they’re interested in showing works like this. I started off the premiere screening just by saying it’s a miracle that this film is in this festival. It’s true.

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Jon Bass is pictured at the top of this article, snapped by Joshua Bogatin. The other image is a still from Carole & Grey.