“A lot of films show the stages of parenthood as just new parents, or when the kids are adolescents and it’s hard with teenagers, or later in life, when the kids are getting married,” observes Helstad. “We wanted to explore those immediate days and hours when the nest is first emptied. What does it feel like when a family of three or four is all of a sudden a family of two. Normal day-to-day things are starkly different.”
“We took Lady Bird as an influence,” adds Benda. “As we were developing Chili Finger, it was fun for us to imagine: what the movie would have been like if we stayed with Tracy Letts and Laurie Metcalf?
“Tonally, Greta Gerwig did her job so well that we didn’t want to emulate her,” Benda continues with a self-aware laugh. “But we really loved the way she treated that relationship at the moment of the kids’ departure. It was so beautiful that it left us asking about what happens to them. What if, in that moment, you found a finger in your bowl of chili?
That question helped draw Greer’s involvement, especially since the script so accurately reflected her own experiences as a parent watching her children leave.
“It’s so funny to me that these two young men in their thirties made a movie about a woman who’s an empty-nester, entering midlife and having an existential crisis,” Greer says with a laugh. “I’m always saying, ‘We need to champion women’s voices!” and then I ask them, ‘Why did you guys write such a great character?’
“I remember vividly when I was an empty-nester, and I was a weird one because I had step-kids and came into their lives a bit later. First, it was all about them, and then, all of a sudden, they were gone, and they don’t need you anymore. It’s very strange. You need a moment to get your bearings.”
