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Behind the Scenes of “Exes & Ohs”

It’s not that often that a short film seen primarily on the LGBT film festival circuit transitions to the small screen as a prime-time television series, but that’s just what happened with Exes & Ohs, a new half-hour comedy about lesbian dating, that premieres Oct. 8 at 10 p.m. on Logo, AfterEllen.com’s parent company.

The series, which is based on Michelle Paradise and Lee Friedlander’s 2002 short film, The Ten Rules: A Lesbian Survival Guide, stars out lesbians Paradise, Megan Cavanagh (A League of Their Own) and Heather Matarazzo (Welcome to the Dollhouse, The L Word), as well as Angela Featherstone (The Wedding Singer) and Marnie Alton (Love on the Side). The television series includes several characters from the short film, including the ones played by Paradise and Cavanagh.

“When I was shooting the short,” said Friedlander (Out at the Wedding), “I really wanted to shoot it like a half-hour, single-camera series, and everyone was like, ‘It’s a short, it should be shorter,’ and I kept saying, ‘It feels like it a series to me; it feels like we shouldn’t shorten it.” The Ten Rules, which Friedlander and Paradise had early on envisioned as a possible series, ended up running 28 minutes.

While shooting the film, Friedlander shared her hopes for The Ten Rules with Cavanagh, who originated the role of Chris, a lesbian partnered with a woman named Kris (who together own an online pet accessories store), in the short. Cavanagh was initially skeptical about its chances of making the move to the small screen.

“Listen, I’ve been in Hollywood a long time,” Cavanagh said, “and I was like: ‘Good for you. Right on. Let me know.’ And then it actually happened. I couldn’t believe it.”

The birth of the Logo network coincided with the end of The Ten Rules‘ run of the film festival circuit. “It did absolutely everything you could expect a short could do,” Paradise said. “Logo saw The Ten Rules on Lee Friedlander’s reel when speaking with her about her earlier film Girl Play, and they thought it would make a great series.”

Logo’s senior vice president and general manager, Lisa Sherman, concurs. “There are a lot of shows about relationships and dating out there, but this is the first time a show features a women’s perspective on dating women,” she said. “So in many ways, we hope it breaks ground on the most elemental dynamics of dating and relationships.”

Friedlander encouraged Logo to bring Billy Grundfest (Mad About You) on board to develop the series for television, and he and Paradise worked on the story together, deciding what to keep from the original short and what to change.

While The Ten Rules was largely the story of documentary filmmaker Jennifer (Paradise), they envisioned the television series as an ensemble, with additional characters having their own story lines as well. Since the “rules” from the short were creations of Jennifer’s mind, helping her navigate through the world, they are less emphasized in the series. Thus, they decided to call the series Exes & Ohs, which also helps identify the work as an ensemble show.

Grundfest became a co-executive producer along with Paradise and Friedlander. Once they decided which characters to bring forward from the short, they began the process of casting.

Paradise said that the variety of experience among the three of them definitely helped out in the casting process. “Bill has a lot of television experience; I have quite a bit of writing and acting experience; and Lee has produced a lot of independent film and done some directing,” Paradise explained. “Getting those three different points of view in the room when we were looking at actors was fantastic.”

Their main characters would consist of Jennifer (Paradise reprises the role in the series), her ex-girlfriend Sam, Chris and her partner Kris, and a new character named Crutch. The original actors from the short were invited to audition; some did so, while others had moved on to different projects.

Jennifer’s best friend (and ex), Sam, is played in the series by Marnie Alton. Sam is a bartender who hopes to make a fortune flipping houses. “She’s uninhibited, optimistic, but not in a Pollyanna-ish way,” said Alton. “The thing that really excited me about her is her lust for life. … She’s so full of energy, full of sexuality, and scared to death of commitment, which shows her beautiful vulnerability.” In the first episode, Sam is dating Becca (Cathy DeBuono), who wants a committed relationship. Sam, on the other hand, remarks to Jennifer, “Why do people insist on catching things that don’t want to be caught?”

Angela Featherstone (Soul Survivors) plays “Kris with a K,” the other half of the Chris-and-Kris couple, who have been together for 10 years. The two dress alike and run several “furry people”-related businesses together out of their home.

Featherstone said that her job is easy because she gets to be partnered with Cavanagh. “Basically all I do is just show up and love Megan Cavanagh,” she said. “I put on what they tell me to put on, I stand where they tell me to stand, and I just love Megan Cavanagh. … I would do a play in the Himalayan mountains with Megan Cavanagh.” Cavanagh loves working with Featherstone as well. “Angie Featherstone and I have this great chemistry — like old couple energy,” she said. “We’ll get into this bickering thing, but it’s sweet, always sweet, like real couples do. I love Ang; she’s the perfect wife. We call each other ‘wifey’ when we email each other.”

Chris and Kris are mother figures to the group, especially Crutch, a barista and aspiring singer-songwriter played by Heather Matarazzo. “[Crutch] is incredibly young, emotionally,” Matarazzo said, “and is just trying to find her way in the world through the lives of these older women.” The diversity in ages among the regular cast is one thing that Friedlander and Paradise are proud of, as is the diversity in looks. The women in the cast don’t all look like conventional models, and the characters range in age from 17 to 40. Class differences are also addressed, with Chris and Kris as home-owning, successful entrepreneurs on one end of the financial spectrum and multiple-job-holding, getting-help-from-Mom Crutch on the other.

“It’s so important to me to have people who reflect an actual community,” Paradise said. “And that isn’t in just how someone looks, but in how they move in the world. And we’ve tried really, really hard with this to get all of that, and to have diversity on many, many levels.”

She is aware that they may face some criticism about the fact that all the leads are white. “It wasn’t an active choice to pick all Caucasian actresses,” she said. “It was a question of which characters [from the short] do we want to focus on for the first season, and which ones have the greatest room to grow.” When they knew that they were going forward with Jennifer, Chris, Kris and Sam, those roles had already been cast with Paradise, Cavanagh, Featherstone and Alton.

Women of color do appear in guest and recurring roles throughout the first season. For instance, Sheryl Lee Ralph (Broadway’s Dreamgirls) plays a minister in the first episode, which also features former Pussycat Doll Nadine Ellis.

Considering the racial and ethnic diversity issue, Paradise said, “It’s really important to raise those questions and for the people [who are creating shows] to hear it, actually hear it, and provide honest reflections of the community.”

Several of the women from Exes & Ohs had very personal reactions to the project, whether due its content or the experience of filming it. Marnie Alton, for one, realized several dreams during the production. When she was younger, she saw Pretty in Pink and thought the pink Karmann Ghia that Molly Ringwald’s character drove was the coolest thing ever. She mentioned this to Michelle Paradise when they were discussing what kind of car Alton’s character, Sam, should drive in the series.

“She said to me, ‘Yeah, wow, that’s going to be a hard one to find … probably not, but good idea,'” Alton recalled. “So we discussed a couple of other cars. Well, on our very first day of shooting in Vancouver, we’re doing a shot of me as Sam sitting in a car in front of a house she’s looking at. I walk up to the set, and it’s a gorgeous, completely refurbished, beautifully kept cherry-red Karmann Ghia.”

Later, Alton had lunch with Paradise, who mentioned she was about to go meet the music director. Alton joked, “Hey, one day in Season 7 or 8 you should put my song in your show.” Alton had always kept her songwriting private, but Paradise asked for a demo.

“I didn’t have a demo,” Alton said. “I called in some favors, and in 45 minutes, laid down samples of my songs.” Paradise and the music director liked what they heard and are using one of Alton’s songs in the fourth episode.

For Megan Cavanagh, who has been acting professionally for more than 15 years, playing the role of an out lesbian is especially meaningful. “I did this show partly because I am an out lesbian,” she said. “I am so happy to be playing an out lesbian in a show, I’m just grinning from ear to ear all the time.”

Her role provides additional laughs for her partner and friends in real life. “I don’t think I’m butch compared to any of the other butch women I know. But in terms of the other girls in the show, I’m playing ‘butch.’ Which is of great hilarity to my butch friends.”

She continued with a laugh: “My [real-life] partner identifies as butch; to see us together it’s obvious that she’s butch and I’m femme in those paradigms. And I’m older, so I guess we do do those paradigms.”

Out filmmaker Lee Friedlander said of the characters on Exes & Ohs: “You can relate to them; they feel like your group of friends. … It’s nice to see us on television.”

Alton, Featherstone and Cavanagh all sang high praises about the quality of the writing that Michelle Paradise delivered for this series. Paradise was a very busy woman, working as actor, writer and co-executive producer on Exes & Ohs. She said there were times during the production when she would stop for a moment in wonder at the fact that what had begun with her writing in a San Francisco café had turned into a television series with an amazing cast and crew.

“I would stop for a moment,” she said, “stop being the actor or the writer or the producer, and I would just get to be a person standing in this world and say: ‘This is really cool. People are going to get to see this, and people are going to get to see themselves in the characters; it’s going to be out there.'”

Heather Matarazzo thinks Exes & Ohs is important because it provides an opportunity for lesbians and gays to laugh. “The issues we tackle and the subject matter we present to the audience is done in a very light-hearted way,” she said, “not being dismissive, but that it’s OK. We don’t have to take ourselves so seriously all the time.” It’s clear that the cast enjoyed a light-hearted camaraderie with each other — even in the midst of filming a skeet-shooting scene outside in Vancouver on a chilly winter day. “They told us, ‘It doesn’t snow in Vancouver; you’ll be fine!'” Friedlander recalled. “Then they had the biggest blizzard in 30 years!”

Not prepared for such weather, but professionals all, they carried on, creating a humorous moment that many named as their favorite from shooting the series.

Cavanagh — whose character is the one who goes skeet shooting — and the crew bundled up in heavy coats and made necessary adjustments due to the snow and cold. “They put the battery pack for my mic on my head under my hat,” Cavanagh said, “so I was worried about moving my head, because I thought the mic would come out.”

Angela Featherstone added, “Megan looked so friggin’ cute with a little Elmer Fudd hat on.”

Friedlander also recalled the funny attempts to get a bird to land on Michelle Paradise’s head during a scene on a yacht in the first episode. “Some of my favorite moments were the unexpected,” she said.

Both Friedlander and Paradise hope that Exes & Ohs is renewed for subsequent seasons, partly so that they can continue to tell the stories of the main characters but also to explore the stories of additional characters that they weren’t able to include in the first season’s six episodes. As Friedlander said, “We’ve got to get picked up for a second season, so I can see what happens!”

Exes & Ohs premieres on Logo on Monday, Oct. 8 at 10 p.m. ET, and it is also available for download on iTunes. Go to LOGOonline.com for more information.

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