Collaborating With Friends

What happens when you work with someone for 10+ years?!?

This is a story about how three filmmakers-turned-collaborators-turned-friends have come together to work on probably the wildest project of their lives!

Level Ground started as a boutique film and arts festival. We hosted our very first iteration in February 2014 in Pasadena, California. It was 10 days long and entirely volunteer-run. (What were we thinking?!?! is a great question and a story for a different post!)

At that first festival, we hosted deep conversations over dinner, installed exhibitions, moderated book talks and podcast interviews, and screened films. One of those films was The Most Fun I’ve Ever Had With My Pants On, starring and directed by Drew Denny.

I saw the film at Outfest the year prior and cold emailed Drew to include it at the inaugural Level Ground Festival. It’s a beautifully shot film and Drew is captivating on screen and confident behind the camera.

A few years later, I was attending a Pop-Up Magazine show at the Ace Theater in Los Angeles, and they screened an equally stunning film called Queer Habits. I was delighted to see Drew’s name come up on screen as the director of that project.

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You can watch the whole 13-min Queer Habits film here!

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So, as you do when you are the director of a film festival, I reached back out to Drew – even though we had yet to meet IRL and it had been 3 years since we’d last been in touch. Here’s an excerpt of the email I sent her in March 2017:

“…I was at Pop-Up Magazine last weekend and loved your story!! It was a great evening, but your story was definitely a highlight! I would love to connect and see if there’s any way to include that story and/or the film as part of our upcoming festival in Pasadena. It’s such a powerful story of building relationships across difference and that is what Level Ground is all about!”

Lucky for both of us, Drew agreed and we screened Queer Habits at our 2017 Level Ground Festival.

Chase Joynt also exhibited work at both our 2014 and 2017 festivals. In 2014, with his short film I’m Yours and an exhibition called Resisterectomy, and then in 2017 with a project called Between You and Me and also as part of a book tour with Vivek Shraya.

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I’m Yours remains one of the best short films I’ve ever seen!

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Later in 2017, Chase and I went on to make Framing Agnes together (which first premiered as a short film at Tribeca the same year as Drew’s short film Momster). And then, in 2021, Chase and I started Level Ground Productions.

In 2022, someone brought a project to Level Ground Productions. It was about a group of women survivors of intimate partner violence. I had recently listened to Drew’s podcast Asking For It and I immediately knew I only wanted to work on this new project if Drew Denny was the director.

Flash forward a few years, and we premiered Survivor Made in partnership with FreeFrom. Roxane Gay and Padma Lakshmi were Executive Producers. FKA Twiggs let us use her music in the film. And we got to tell hopeful, joyful stories about and with survivors.

Okay, we’ve finally caught up to 2025. Drew, Chase, and I went from fangirling each other at film festivals to working together and inviting each other to housewarming parties.

One day Drew emailed me and Chase and said:

“…I know you both have a million projects coming up so I wanted to touch base. I’m trying to rally some funds to film with some Sisters in states where drag is being criminalized through this comedic mockumentary construct following our anti drag crusader Fanny + the priest (who I still think could be played by Chase but no presh!!). My dream is to also infiltrate some actual churches with these characters and cover the abuse scandals happening in parishes where some of our Sisters live so that the film can explore how drag queens are demonized while actual predators are protected in the house of god. Light content, really super light, so silly, just so much fun 🤠”

Rally some funding we did, and now dear readers, we are introducing Richie and Fanny Cox to you.

This is a long way of saying: champion the work of the people you admire and respect. Don’t forget the people you meet at a festival and definitely don’t be afraid to reach out. Stay open and look for meaningful ways to show support and build collaboration.

Filmmaking is a tough industry and really, truly the only thing that makes it worth it is the people you do it with! So prioritize them above everything else.

What’s next for Fanny, Richie, and Inhabit?!? We’ll keep you posted here!

And stay tuned next month for a short interview with Drew where we give her a chance to tell her side of this story!