“Stumbling Through the Jungle with a Machete” | Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad, Chili Finger
When Jessica Lipki discovers a severed human finger in her bowl of chili, she blackmails the regionally-beloved fast-food chain for $100,000 in return that she and her blissfully ignorant husband, Ron, keep quiet about the incident. Unbeknownst to Jess, her stunt has caught the attention of "the" Blake Junior, the plutocratic founder behind the "Blake Junior’s" food empire. He recruits his ex-marine buddy, Dave, to investigate Jess and discover the truth behind the chili finger...
Starring Judy Greer, Sean Astin, John Goodman, and Bryan Cranston, Benda’s and Helstad’s feature is a chaotic black comedy with a decidedly Midwestern twist. Chili Finger screens Saturday, May 5. at 7:00 p.m., at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival. Ahead of the screening, Benda and Helstad graciously took the time to answer this year’s filmmaker questionnaire. Below, their individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
Edd: I was a gregarious storyteller in the classroom and around the dinner table, usually making videos as an alternative to writing papers, but it took a while to learn about “filmmaking” as something a person could actually do. I was fortunate to attend the University of Southern California where I discovered a whole wide world of movies, directing as a craft, and producing as a profession. It is also, critically, where I met my lifelong cohort of collaborators including Beyond the Porch partners Alex Bell and Stephen Helstad.
Our founding partnership was the essential first step to directing my first film, Superior, a coming-of-age story starring Paul Stanko. I wrote and directed the movie, producing with Alex and Stephen, and the film was a labor of love made using every resource available to us after our recent graduation from USC. As an 11-person contingent fresh out of film school, we lived and filmed together for a summer along the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with everyone’s full buy-in on the creative opportunity to make a movie.
Making Superior involved writing a script with a producer’s mindset, knowing what resources and locations were available to us, and then assembling a team of passionate people at a common creative junction in life, embracing our naivety as an essential driving force.
Stephen: I've had an affinity for storytelling from a young age; I was one of those insufferable classmates who was always writing his/her “novel”. But I have to shout out David Larson. He was the artsy older brother of one of my close childhood friends, and one day when I was at his house (I think I was 7?), he showed me a “film” he had made using Star Wars Legos, a handycam, and Windows Movie Maker. That unlocked something for me.
Fast forward a decade, I attended USC Film School, where I met my now-business partners Edd Benda and Alex Bell. The three of us started a production company, Beyond the Porch, to produce Edd’s first film that he wrote/directed titled Superior. I produced and Alex DP’d.
Chili Finger is the first film I’ve directed. If there was a “path” towards directing it, I don’t know what it was. It felt more like blindly stumbling through the jungle with a machete. However, there were hundreds of people wielding machetes alongside me. Edd (my co-director), Alex, our producers, EPs, cast, crew…my opportunity to direct is only possible because of them.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
Stephen: I started writing Chili Finger as a passion project in January 2020. A few months later, the best thing that could happen to a writer struggling to find time to write occurred. Chili Finger became my Covid sourdough starter.
What excited me about the project, aside from its connection to the dark comedy crime genre that I love so much, was exploring the story through the perspective of an empty-nester. That made Jess (the main character) suddenly three-dimensional and provided all of these rich themes and ideas that I was excited to explore.
I showed an early draft to Edd that summer, who immediately resonated with the story. We spent the next five years developing the project together.
Edd: Stephen and I have collaborated for over a decade on a bevy of projects as we build our careers. What is consistent is a shared creative sensibility, love of filmmaking craft, and our midwestern roots. When he brought me an early draft of Chili Finger back in 2020 it touched so quickly on many familiar personal touchpoints and what I love about movies, so it was a blessing to have his words on the page as my initial spark of inspiration.
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
Edd: A natural comparison is the Coens’ Fargo, one of many Coen films that is “a guiding influence to my overarching vision as a filmmaker,” Chili Finger and beyond. Their body of work makes clear they have so much fun creating, so I try to have fun, too. Beyond its many lauded creative qualities, my affinity for Fargo is a bit more personal.
I spent part of my childhood living in Minnesota, and in 1996 Fargo was released in theaters. I was a toddler, so my parents hired a babysitter and attended the opening night showing in a packed house on a cold night in Minneapolis, knowing just enough hype to make a date night out of it. To this day, their joyous sensory description of being part of that audience, on that night, watching that movie is a gift I long to give the world. And while it is insane for me to compare Chili Finger to freaking FARGO – as theater audiences are not able to blindly experience their masterpiece for the first time, Stephen and I are happy to make our humble offering a few decades removed.
Stephen: I know it’s not a film, but I’m going to say Breaking Bad. I was in college at the time, struggling to find what kinds of stories aligned with my taste, and Breaking Bad was like water in the desert. It combined all of these elements of my favorite filmmakers: the minimalism of the Coens, the playfulness of Scorsese, all while crafting a story that felt completely unpredictable and inevitable at the same time. It taught me the importance of trusting your audience, and that will always stick with me.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
Stephen: I grew up in West Salem, WI, which is just slightly bigger than the 2,449 population of Nekoosa, WI where the film takes place. These towns can feel like the most oppressive, dream-killing settings imaginable (which is how I felt growing up), while to others, there’s nowhere else they’d rather be. It was important to the film that those ideas juxtapose one another, and drawing from my memories of West Salem was helpful.
Edd: I bounced around the midwest as a kid, spending time living in Minnesota and Michigan before landing in Los Angeles to attend USC, so the people and places that dot the Great Lakes region are key inspirations for Chili Finger. While searching for a place that could be a facsimile for our rural midwestern “Nekoosa, Wisconsin” that had the necessary resources to support our production, Illinois presented an incredibly attractive incentive that was essential for our independent film’s budget. We identified Champaign and the surrounding area as the perfect place to make our movie, and it was. The people, places, crews, and overall vibe in East-Central Illinois exceeded all expectations, allowing our whole team to approach the movie with a shared creative vision and the necessary resources to realize it.
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
Edd: I remember attending the IMAX opening night showing of Mad Max: Fury Road at the AMC Burbank in an absolutely packed house of kindred film nerds. That film provided one of the most incredible sensory theatrical experiences from start-to-finish, and *spoiler alert* I will never forget the audible ROAR from the crowd when the convoy is at the edge of the desert and they make the decision to turn around and take the road back…chills!
Stephen: I was 10 and my mom took me to see Pirates of the Caribbean, my first PG-13 movie. There’s a scene where the pirates need to sneak onto the British ships, and Geoffrey Rush tells them to “Take a walk.” CUT TO the ocean floor at night. Out of the darkness emerges a throng of SKELETONS walking towards camera, and the most formidable, terrifyingly-awesome music cue envelops the theater, composed by Hans Zimmer. Aside from Star Wars, that was the first film whose score blew my hair back. All that to say, I was a Hans Zimmer fan before it was cool.
Chili Finger screens Tuesday, May 5, at 7:00 p.m., at the Music Box Theatre, for this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival.
