A conversation with St. Louis native Kristin Archibald, co-star and co-writer of “I Love You Both”

In the new indie dramedy I Love You Both, real-life sister and brother Kristin and Doug Archibald portray fraternal twins with a close, slightly codependent relationship. They’re at once siblings, roommates, and de facto best friends. Unfortunately, they discover that they’re both falling for the same guy, Andy, played by Lucas Neff (Raising Hope, Downward Dog), and this awkward love triangle obliges both twins to re-evaluate their life choices. The film is the feature debut for St. Louis natives Kristin and Doug, with directing duties handled by the latter and a screenplay written jointly by the siblings. St. Louis Magazine film critic Andrew Wyatt talked recently with Kristin Archibald about the film, which opens in St. Louis this weekend, and about what makes a story equal parts funny, weird, and sad.

I understand that you and your brother are St. Louis natives.

That’s right, we both went to Kirkwood High School and then we both went to Webster University for a bit. I ended up graduating from Lindenwood [University], and he moved out to L.A. and finished up school at UCLA. And then I eventually moved out here as well.

I guess the obvious question that I’m sure has been put to you many times is: How autobiographical is the film? You guys aren’t actually twins in real life, but I gather that you are close. To what extent did you draw from your own experiences for this story?

It’s obviously kind of a story about us as siblings. It’s our same sense of humor. The mom in the movie is our real mom. When we were writing the script, we just wanted to write a story about close siblings, and about a sort of codependence, in a humorous way. We remembered after starting the story that during high school there had been one day when we had both liked the same person. But then as soon as we had realized that we liked the same person, we had both stopped liking them. We remembered that, and thought that would be funny for the story, if that was kind of the catalyst to help the characters get over their codependence. It would be one thing that they wouldn’t be able to share.

So the story isn’t a true story, but all of the humor is us. Even a lot of the lines in the movie are things that our mom says in real life. So it’s kind of based on our family and our family’s humor.

The three of you—you, your brother, and your mother—have a great rapport in the film. I understand that this is your first film as an actor, and your mom’s as well?

Both of us, yeah! My mom wasn’t actually supposed to be part of it at all. She was coming to L.A. to go to Disneyland, and we had another actor fall through for the mom. We were auditioning people, and none of them made sense for the role. It just didn’t fit our dynamic and it didn’t seem real. So right before my mom came to L.A., we were like, “When you get here, you’re going to play the mom.”

There’s a lot of familial chemistry apparent on screen. And there’s a strong deadpan aspect to the film’s humor. Some of my favorite moments in the film are just you or Doug reacting with vague, wordless disgust and bewilderment to the things that other people are saying.

We wanted to make a movie that was equally funny, weird, and sad. Just something very real. We’ve always really liked really dry humor, so I think that kind of came through. We just wanted everyday humorous things. For example, at the end of the film, there’s this thing with a pizza box that is one of the funnier bits in the whole movie. There’s nothing special about it; it’s just big pizza box.

And that little bit of physical absurdism—I don’t want to spoil it—goes on just a touch longer than you expect, which makes it funnier.

While the film’s is sad, it’s not sad in the manner of most indie dramedies, where in the third act a dog will usually die, or something similarly cheap, to inject the story with gravity. The plot involves infatuation and dating, but the film isn’t a romance per se. It’s more about the loneliness and dissatisfaction in these two characters.

You know, it’s funny; the film had a really terrible title for the longest time. Originally it was titled Quarter-Life Crisis, because that embodied the story of these 28-year-old people who were somewhat disillusioned with where they landed. All of a sudden, they’re looking ahead to turning 30 soon, and sort of looking around at where their lives are headed with disillusionment. So for the longest time that was our title, but we ended up deciding it was too on-the-nose, too cheesy. After we shot it and were watching the rough cut, that’s when we came up with the title I Love You Both. It reflected every part of the story and made sense for everyone.

It has more than one potential meaning. Now that I’ve seen the film, I feel like it could be a sentiment from the mother directed at the siblings, not just a romantic expression.

From the mother to the siblings, or from the siblings to each other and Andy. My character obviously has a hard time, realizing that she really cares about her brother’s feelings and also has feelings for the Andy character.

The character of Andy is very well-sketched, partly through Lucas Neff’s performance, but also through the writing and wardrobe and so on. He presents a sharp contrast with the Krystal and Donny characters, the twins, in that he feels like a guy who knows what he’s about, knows what he’s doing. I think one of the other characters observes that “He knows that he’s handsome.”

Totally. We really wanted his character to seem like the coolest person that they had met in a long time. He’s a really refreshing person in both of their lives. It’s obvious that they feel like this is the best person they’ve ever met and they’re both overly excited about him.

The Krystal and Donny characters are a little stunted and codependent, but it’s not a trial to spend time with them. Indie comedies are rife with protagonists who come off as insufferable drips, but you guys created characters who are sort of messed up and needy, but still relatable.

I think the word “codependent” has a negative connotation, but I think it happens more than people realize, just in the way that you care about your family’s happiness and approval. In this situation, it just ended up happening in a much bigger way. The characters reach a point where they question whether they can put their happiness before the fear of hurting someone else’s happiness. I guess they’re inseparable in some sense, because they’ve relied on each other as both best friends and as family, to support them and bring them up when they’re down and help them figure out their path in life.

Do you feel that Andy’s bisexuality or possible bisexuality changes the dynamic of the film’s scenario? Would it be a fundamentally different story with two straight sisters who are both into the same guy, or two gay brothers both into the same guy?

I don’t think so. You know, we’ve received all kinds of feedback about the film, and people have had a lot of different reactions, especially about Andy being a bisexual character. But, really, the “A Story” is the siblings’ story. While we were writing the script, Doug and I would talk quite often about what happens when people are dating. In the movie, Andy meets one of us at a party before he meets the other sibling, and he always seems to be more strongly interested in that first character throughout the story. That’s just what happens when people are dating. In our story at least, I don’t think it has anything to do with anyone’s sexuality. It’s just that when someone has already become interested in a new person, even when they meet another new person shortly after that, they end up waiting to see how the first thing pans out.

Your character makes some bad choices in the film, but they’re always understandable, human choices. There’s a point in the film where she texts an awful ex-boyfriend in a moment of despair, but we’re not thinking, “She’s so stupid.” We’re thinking, “Yeah, OK, I get it.” We’ve all texted an awful ex late at night. We’ve all stalked a crush on Facebook.

Yeah, I think that’s part of what makes the film very real. You go through things, but you don’t suddenly become a totally different, confident person, or change that much all at once. When the movie starts, my character is upset about that ex-boyfriend character, and through meeting Andy and these other things that occur that allow her and Donny to become more independent, you get to see her take a small step forward. By the end, she’s in a place where she’s over and done with that ex forever. I think that’s realistic.

There’s a couple of pivotal choices made in the story, but there are no grand transformative moments. Just fumbling progress in fits and starts.

We thought through a lot of endings. A lot of people wanted a more resolved ending. But in real life there’s a lot of people who just ghost you all the time. You go out with someone for a long time and then you just never hear from them again. Not everything resolves itself. We didn’t want an ending where everything is buttoned up, because that’s just not real.

I really enjoyed the costume design in the film. It strikes a good balance between a sort twee charm and feeling genuinely individualistic. Your character’s pineapple pajamas are a highlight. And I love Doug’s style, with the bow tie and the shirts buttoned all the way up to the top of the collar.

Okay, that’s funny, because I forgot about the pajamas. That’s one of the very few thing is the film’s costumes that our production designer actually designed. All of the other clothes in the movie, we just sort of pulled out of our closet. Those are just our clothes. And there are definitely choices that we made, but the pajamas we just wanted to be totally over-the-top and ridiculous. That the siblings would even have these matching pajamas that they probably got from their mom as a gift.

The electronic keyboardist and composer Jes Kramer created some of the film’s music, and it fits the story and tone very well. How did you guys connect with her?

The score was actually done by three people, one of them being Jes. We actually worked with her for years on the music. We had originally shot just a pitch trailer that was only a couple of minutes long, years prior. That’s what we used to fund the movie on our Indigogo. And she did the music for that as well.

I’m not a music person, so when Doug and I are talking to a musician about the vision in our heads, and they just sort of make something, that’s so awesome. And then we’ll test it out and ask to change something, and they send something better back each time. It’s amazing.

Doug’s character in the film is a pianist, and I understand he’s actually a pianist in real life.

Yeah he is. He was a concert pianist for a really long time. He was originally a music major and then he studied film. Then he realized there wasn’t really a path to being a concert pianist and decided that film was kind of his passion anyway.

The distinctive house that your characters live in is a real, historical house designed by architect Rodney Walker, correct?

It’s actually where Doug and his boyfriend currently live right now. They had actually just moved in there when one of the assistants for Mark Wahlberg’s movie The Gambler knocked on their door. Then they moved out while The Gambler was shot there, and that kind of helped us look at the space differently and decide that this would be a good place to shoot our movie, at their house.

The space feels very appropriate to the film. There’s a kiddie clubhouse element to it, as least as it was filmed, with your characters in these kind of mirror image bedrooms, for example.

Totally. And it doesn’t really have an L.A. vibe. We didn’t want anything to feel location-specific like that. We didn’t want you seeing all these palm trees and stuff. You can’t tell where the film takes place, and the house really is fitting for that.

The film was primarily shot in and around Los Angeles, correct? And yet the setting does feel somewhat deliberately generic.

Yeah, that was important, because we didn’t want it to give off a specific energy or vibe or whatever, because the location wasn’t really relevant to the story.

And yet your characters do specifically take a trip to the Madonna Inn, this famously kitschy motel in San Luis Obispo, California.It’s supposed to be the Madonna Inn, but the interior, the motel room, is actually a home that we rented for a day in Eagle Rock. Most of those props were brought in by our production designer. And then the exterior is just another hotel in Solvang. But the Madonna Inn was definitely the inspiration for it, though, so we were excited about that.

This is your first film as a writer and an actress.

Yes, it’s both Doug and I’s first feature. We really started the story in 2008, honestly, although it was a much different story then. It really evolved over the years. Doug has directed some shorts before, but it’s his first feature as a director, it’s the first feature we co-wrote, and it’s the first feature we’ve acted in, in any capacity.

What was your background prior to this? Did you have any inkling you wanted to be a filmmaker?

I went to Lindenwood thinking I was going to do fashion design. Then I went to London, and I was there one day and I said, “I’m going home. I hate fashion.” I thought I had made this totally wrong life choice, but eventually you start to realize what you enjoy doing by just looking at how you spend your free time. I started doing a lot of photography and learning about cameras. We were already writing, and it was like, okay, we should just both go into film.

Are you and your brother going to continue to collaborate going forward? Any other joint projects in the works?

Yeah! We’ve finished writing a TV pilot. Since the release of I Love You Both, we now have a manager, so in June we’re going to be shopping our pilot around. And we’re beginning a second movie right now, which we’ll both be acting in.

I Love You Both opens Friday, June 9 at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre. Co-stars and co-writers Kristin and Doug Archibald will be in attendance at the 7 p.m. screening on Friday, and will participate in a Q&A after the show.