Jason Laurits is the director of Loves Company, starring Rachel Dratch, which debuts this month at Dances With Films. In the piece below, he details how delusion helped him as a filmmaker.—M.M.
Though quite the outsider in the movie business, I still blindly hopped on the path to making my first feature, Loves Company (a Misery meets Ruthless People, that reminds us, don’t meet your heroes). I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I just rolled with the delusion that I could maybe pull this off. I had learned by this point, as an artist, that you always start off delusional. It’s ok.
Within six months, I was “scouting locations” in Florida and Louisiana and meeting line producers. Had I raised the money yet? No. I wasn’t even sure how much money I needed. I was told to get a budget. OK, fine. Then a pitch deck. Sure. A proof of concept teaser. What, now? A lawyer. Fuck.
But I somehow managed to do it all, keeping all reasonable thoughts away from my deluded decision-making. I set a production date for later that October in Louisiana and just bulldozed ahead. At times I felt like I was running a Ponzi scheme.
Yep, we’re shooting in October 2024!
Shooting what? Shooting how? I wasn’t quite sure, but I just kept saying it until I believed it myself. I had saved a modest amount of money that would have covered, perhaps, catering and porta-potties, but it was nowhere near what Loves Company needed, even as a low-budget indie. I started a crowdfund and found myself cornering every person I had ever met and asking them for $50 in exchange for a video of me in a gator costume thanking them for supporting film.
What had become of me?
But I managed to hit the crowdfunding goal. People were so generous, though it still wasn’t enough to get this thing made.
October!
The house of cards started to feel shaky. And now, having crowdfunded, I had put myself out there, to EVERYONE. People from goddamn high school, other filmmakers I met once at a festival, friends’ parents who still wondered what I was doing with my life. How would it even look if I took all their gracious (but tax-deductible!) contributions and never got over the finish line? For the first time, I started to sober up out of my delusion and freak the hell out.
But then, the same universe I threw this crazy idea out at a year prior, opened its heavens and sent me an angelic force. A wonderful somebody that I had known for years in my writing group, our executive producer, Sarah Davie. She had been with the script from the beginning and now wanted to help with investment for Loves Company. It was enough to greenlight the project. My delusion was now becoming a reality.
Recruiting Rachel Dratch for Loves Company
Now I was fueled. October was truly within reach (and coming up quick). I pulled one of my very few Hollywood connections and got in with a good casting agent (Josh Ropiequet). We made a casting wishlist. Then I pulled one of my very few New York connections and got my script to someone on that list, Rachel Dratch. Next thing I know, I’m zooming with Rachel!
Yeah, it’s looking like October, Rachel. You in or you out? (OK, I wasn’t that smooth).
I guess I just willed it all again into the universe, because before I knew it, Rachel said yes and we had assembled a terrific cast with Jack Plotnick, Sarah Baker, Dustin Ingram, Bryan Batt, Tristen J. Winger and Rex Wheeler (aka Lady Camden). Now we were weeks away from October!
I picked a cinematographer (Joshua Bagnall), an art director (Sara Nyquist), an assistant director (Liana Cockfield). Our incredible producer, Laura Singleterry, arranged travel for the talent, and booked the crew, got SAG approval. The main interior set began to be built on a soundstage at New Orleans’ Fishpot Studios. I had a prop person (Kaley Daniel) who was able to do anything I asked for (Can I get a toilet seat with stirrups, please?).
Locking down exterior locations was more of a challenge. We couldn’t find an old, creepy house on a lot of land in the outskirts of New Orleans. Most were rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. I did find one perfect one… next to a busy train track. I was so in love with it that I was willing to risk having to stop filming to let a 50-car train go by.
Thank God I was talked out of it. We also had to find a Walmart-like store. I drove all over New Orleans desperately looking for something, to no avail. Then I came across a very cinematic, but small, little grocery store (not the big box type that the script required). I had to pivot — there was no more time left. I booked it on the spot and rewrote the script to accommodate the new setting. (It ended up working even better).
October had now arrived!
It was the first day of filming, interiors on a soundstage. There was still construction, still painting, of the sets that we’d be filming on in minutes (my art director, covered in paint, looked like she was about to throw up). I knocked on each actor’s dressing room doors… to make sure they were truly there and hadn’t come to their senses. No escapees.
And so…we made Loves Company! The 15 days of production (yes, 15!!!) continued to be a battle. But it was really the invincible shield I had attained in pre-production, by watching my impossible dreams and delusions shape into an actual, real thing, by just believing ever-so foolishly that the universe had my back…and it did! It all carried me to the end. All thanks to the power of delusion.
Loves Company plays Dances With Films, one of our 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2026, on June 19.
Main image: Jason Laurits and Rachel Dratch on the set of Loves Company.