Learning how to keep themselves together when their life seems as though it’s falling apart is one of the most emotionally engaging and relatable driving forces for the protagonists of modern independent films. That’s certainly the case for filmmaker-actor Ahamefule J. Oluo’s main character of Aham in the new music-infused drama, ‘Thin Skin,’ which is inspired by a true story.
The movie’s story is loosely based on the award-winning Off-Broadway show ‘Now I’m Fine’ and a true story featured on This American Life titled ‘The Wedding Crasher.’ ‘Thin Skin’ was co-written by Oluo, as well as his wife, Lindy West, the co-creator of the Hulu television comedy series, ‘Shrill.’ The duo collaborated on the film’s script with its director, Charles Mudede.
The drama stars Olou, Annette Toutonghi, Dwayne Kennedy, Hari Kondabolu, Ijeoma Olou and Jennifer Lanier. In addition to co-penning and starring in ‘Thin Skin,’ Ahamefule also composed the feature. He also served as an executive producer on the movie with West and Mudede.
‘Thin Skin’ is having a limited theatrical release this month that began on November 16 in Los Angeles. The film also held screenings in Oluo and West’s hometown of Seattle between November 16-19, with a special Q&A being held on November 18.
The drama’s final screening will be held this Thursday, November 30 at the e-flux theater in Brooklyn. The New York screening, which will be followed by a Q&A, will begin at 7:00pm ET.
‘Thin Skin’s theatrical distribution is being accompanied by a VOD release tomorrow, November 28, by BayView Entertainment. The movie will be available to rent or buy via Amazon and iTunes.
‘Thin Skin’ follows Aham as his days are spent at a soul-crushing corporate job and his nights come alive behind a trumpet at Seattle jazz clubs. As he struggles to climb out of the ruins of his broken marriage, Aham has to deal with endless bureaucracy, a boss trying to lead him to the Lord and his mother who won’t cut ties with his ex.
Aham is living with his entire family once again in his sister’s cramped one bedroom apartment. The one person missing from this living situation is Aham’s estranged Nigerian father. His brief reappearance sends the family into a tailspin and a search for meaning. Pressed together in this vise of a home, the family struggles with adult life and the meaning of family.
Oluo and West generously took the time earlier this month to talk about co-scribing, producing, starring in and producing ‘Thin Skin’ during an exclusive interview over Zoom. Among other things, the duo discussed how his stage show influence the process of developing the story, characters and music for the screen adaptation. The couple also praised Mudede’s writing and directorial styles by calling him a visionary filmmaker.
Film Factual (FF): Together, you co-wrote the script for the new film, ‘Thin Skin,’ with Charles Mudede. How did the screenplay and screen adaptation come together?
Ahamefule J. Oluo (AJO): The film is based on the live stage show that I premiered in 2012. We started working on the film even before the stage show was even done.
Charles Mudede, who also directed the film, saw an early version of the stage show. He immediately contacted me about making a film adaptation of it. So we were actually developing the film alongside the musical it’s based on. So Charles and I started working on the film in 2013, and Lindy came into the screenwriting process about a year later. Then there was a lot of fundraising, which took years and years.
Lindy West (LW): The original inspiration is that it’s autobiographical. Everything that happens in it actually happened to Aham. So it’s the story of a true, very difficult, surreal period in Aham’s life.
FF: Besides working on the drama’s script with you both, Charles also served as the feature’s director. What was the experience like of collaborating with him as the movie’s helmer?
LW: Charles is a visionary. When we were writing the script, he would write these lines of dialogue that are stunningly beautiful.
AJO: We’d have to make them make sense, though. (Oluo laughs.)
LW: We’d have to bring them back down to Earth a little bit and knit everything together. We also wrote a lot of the jokes. But it was an easy collaboration with Charles.
AJO: I think an over-simplification of it was that I tend to think more in terms of story arc, the larger narrative and the overall structure. Charles is definitely more into the vision of each moment, and what each moment looks and feels like.
I think what Lindy is amazing at is making everything flow. You can have the words, but if they don’t seamlessly integrate, it’s very difficult to tell the story.
I think those three strengths really helped balance the script.
LW: Charles makes everything beautiful. We just tried to make sure everything was funny and made sense. Charles is also very funny.
On set, Charles is always looking for visual interest, and what makes every shot interesting. Every single frame is special. Charles makes sure that there are details that are moving beautifully, and that the light is beautiful.
The movie wouldn’t have been as surreal or otherworldly, or as interesting and straight-up comedy, without Charles’ input. There’s a beauty that he brought to the film that’s off-kilter. It’s something that no one else can do. Charles is a singular genius.
FF: Besides co-penning the screenplay, you also star in ‘Thin Skin,’ Ahamefule. The cast also includes Annette Toutonghi and your sister, Ahamefule, Ijeoma Olou. What was the casting process for the film?
AJO: It was a very collaborative process. Everyone was pretty much involved in every decision. There wasn’t a traditional hierarchy, as the three of us sat in a room and dreamt together. There was a sense of ownership that everyone had, and no one wanted to step on anyone’s creativity.
LW: So we were involved in all of the casting decisions. We had a casting director for a couple of roles, but we mostly cast the film ourselves. Some of it was serendipitous.
Annette came to fill in for someone at a live script reading, and she was amazing. So we were like, “She’s hired.”
The same thing was true for Aham’s siter, Ijeoma. She’s not an actor, but we needed someone to come in last-minute for another live script reading. We did several of them to get feedback from people while we were filming.
So Ijeoma came to read as herself, not so much as a joke, but we asked, “Hey, do you want to do this?” The role was much smaller at the time, and she said, “Sure.” Someone had dropped out, and we were like, “Do we need Ijeoma to come read as herself?” Then she was excited about it. When that idea came up, it couldn’t be any other way – there was no question about it.
AJO: I think that dictated a lot of our other casting choices. I think often times when people make movies, they think in a very straightforward manner, “I just need to get the best actors for every role.”
I think we thought about it in a slightly more holistic way. We thought, what do we gain by my sister not being a trained actor, but by being herself?
What is the film that we want to make? Is our goal to make a film that’s very polished and smooth? Or is it to make something real in ways that you wouldn’t expect, and things do pop out and seem different than other films? I think we always tried to balance that with people who are and aren’t professional actors.
FF: Ahamefule, in addition to co-scribing and starring in the drama, you also served as the composer. How did you approach creating the score for the movie? How does the score in the feature compare and contrast to the music in the stage show?
AJO: The stage show had 10 pieces of music in it. The format of the stage show was that I would talk and then conduct an orchestra.
I started thinking about the process of creating the score before we even started writing the script. The score was almost part of the process, even from the very beginning. I was thinking about how music was intertwined with the overall script.
I’m someone who likes to set a lot of guidelines for myself. One of the guidelines I set was that I wasn’t going to use any piece of music in the film that wasn’t in the stage show.
So those 10 pieces of music was my full musical language. I could rearrange them and change the tone…but those 10 pieces of music was the musical universe for the film.
I also thought about how I acted and performed music in the film, and how we could use music to interact in interesting ways that’s impossible otherwise. It wasn’t possible to have someone play the trumpet on screen and then have an orchestra come in and join unless there’s someone who understand the narrative and musical elements of the film, and is actually doing the musical performance. I wanted to take advantage of what we could do, especially considering how low the budget was.
LW: I liked what you said the other day about how one of the reasons why you decided to act in the film was because…
AJO: …I wanted the music to be real. All the music you see in the film was performed live. There was no one lip singing or playing along to a track. Anytime you see someone playing music and you hear sound, that’s the actual sound.
That’s something that we were only able to do because I decided to be in the movie. I didn’t really have an aspiration to act; my aspiration was to be able to integrate music into the story.
LW: Aham said it would be easier for him to learn how to act than to teach an actor how to play the trumpet. (West and Uluo laugh.)
FF: Besides co-writing, starring in and composing ‘Thin Skin,’ you both also served as executive producers on the project. How did you approach producing the film throughout the production?
LW: It was a tremendous undertaking making an independent film. But it’s also really freeing.
During the film’s production, I was also simultaneously developing a TV show for Hulu (‘Shrill’), based on my own book (2016’s ‘Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman’). It was interesting; we shot the first season of my TV show, and then I came back to Seattle a few weeks before we started filming ‘Thin Skin.’
The contrast between the two projects was so fascinating. I went from working on a TV show with a studio, network and production company, as well as big, famous actors to working on a small indie film. On the show, I had power and influence, to a degree, but I was part of a huge system.
Then when we worked on ‘Thin Skin,’ we were able to do whatever we wanted, within financial constraints. But artistically, we were the deciders, and got to have tis complete power and responsibility over how we can make it what it needs and deserves to be.
So that was a really empowering and fascinating transition, and both were really fun. It’s really fun to make a TV show.
AJO: We made so many script changes on the days we were shooting the film, which you can’t do when you have a larger hierarchy of people.
LW: On the set of ‘Shrill,’ I wasn’t allowed to be like, “Hey, let’s try this.” (West laughs.) You could, within reason, say “Let’s say this instead.” But on ‘Thin Skin,’ we…
AJO: …were allowed to do whatever we wanted.
LW: I have so much pride in this film and how it turned out. It was a really fascinating experience to truly be at the helm of something in a way that no one was going to tell us no. But no one else was going to step in and make sure this was a success besides us; we’re the only ones who were making sure this was good.
Our team of producers was so incredible. This movie would not exist without Jennessa West and Jonathan Caso, our line producer. Also, Michael Seiwerath was part of our core team
AJO: Alan Pruzan has also been a part of the team that has been a part of this project for a decade now.
LW: Plus, they all stayed, and it’s not like they were getting paid during all that time. People got a fee when we were shooting.
AJO: I can’t imagine what the hourly rate works out to be. (Oluo laughs.)
LW: It has to be negative, for sure. (West laughs.) But people were so dedicated to this project and making it happen and seeing it all the way to the end. All of our producers were at the premiere in L.A. on Thursday (November 16).
I’m so grateful to those people. Every five minutes, I’m like, “I have to send them a gift.” (Oluo laughs.) But what could possibly be proportionate to the amount of work and care that they put in? It’s such a puzzle to make something like this happen.
AJO: How many meetings did we have, between fundraising, making the film and figuring out distribution, especially during COVID?
LW: We had a standing weekly meeting…
AJO: Yes, we did. We had a year off from the weekly meetings. But basically, we had the standing weekly meeting for almost a decade.
LW: We raised all the money for this movie. We helped, and you did a lot, Aham, but Jennessa and Michael mainly did it. That was a tremendous undertaking. It was so generous to put in that time. You’re putting your credibility on the line for saying, “I believe in this project and believe it’s going to be great, so it’s worth investing in.”
I learned so much on this project about how to be a producer and how to get something done. I’m still learning. When we showed at the (L.A.) screening, I was like, “Where do we sit? Jennessa, where do I go?” So I still need Jennessa to be the mom of the project. (Wes laughs.)
FF: ‘Thin Skin’ begun its limited theatrical release on November 16, and its last screening will be held on Thursday, November 30 in New York City. The drama will also be distributed on VOD on Tuesday, November 28 by BayView Entertainment. How did you secure the film’s dual release?
AJO: Well, we finished the film in March of 2020, and there was other stuff going on in the world at that time. So the film really did not get any attention when we first finished it. All of the festivals we were accepted into didn’t happen, or happened in an online way before people really knew how to do online stuff.
So all of the dreams that we had about the release of the film, including going around to the film festivals, and all of the stuff we had thought about for years, kind of went out the window as soon as the pandemic hit.
LW: It was really devastating.
AJO: Yes, it was really devastating. We had spent eight years working on the film up until that point. The last recording session for the score, which was the last thing that had to be done, occurred on the day before the lockdown.
So we thought, now what do we do? That question took a long time to answer. We looked for distribution in many different ways, but Hollywood was in chaos. Every distributor had no idea what to do.
We didn’t have any stars in the project, which is an unconventional art film. So it was very difficult to find someone in a corporate environment who would say, “Yes, this is something I think will make money.”
So it took a long time to find a distributor. We did then find a distributor who was excited about the movie. But then that distributor was bought by another company. (Oluo laughs.) So we were like, “Now we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
But then after the other company bought the distributor that bought the film, they reached out to us. They said, “We just watched this movie that we have rights to, and we realized that it’s very good. So we want to put it out.”
So we’re very thankful to Bayview, our distributor. They’ve been amazingly great. They didn’t choose to buy and distribute this film. But it’s very obvious that once they realized they had it in their catalog, they wanted to do something with it.
They’ve done a great job with it. They cut the new trailer themselves. They did a really great job setting up all of these releases, including the VOD release, and it’s been great working with them.
Q: Now that ‘Thin Skin’ is being released, what’s coming up next for you both, in terms of filmmaking and music?
LW: I’m working on my next book, which is my fourth book, and I’m trying to finish it. Aham and I also wrote a live stage show for me to perform in, and we’re going to try to tour with that.
It’s called ‘Every Castle Ranked,’ where we rank castles from worst to best. It’s also autobiographical, emotional and funny.
I also just launched a podcast called ‘Text Me Back’ on the Seattle NPR affiliate, KUOW. I also have a newsletter about movies; people can Google Lindy West’s movie newsletter.
We also just moved out to the woods. We’re going into a creative cocoon, hopefully forever, where we’re going to be living in a beautiful place, making beautiful stuff. Aham’s working on some beautiful stuff.
AJO: Yes, I’m working on a solo stage show that’s a musical. It’s similar to my other stage shows, but without the orchestra. I’m doing all of the music on looping.
So it’s me taking the same format, but taking away all of the brilliant musicians who made it really easy for me to make something great. (Oluo laughs.) Now I have to figure out how to do it on my own. So I’m about to go into a residency for that, and I’m working on touring that.
I create music for a lot of things, so I kind of go where the wind takes me.
Film Factual 