The path to queerness isn’t always straight. That’s the message at the core of Seattle-based filmmaker Kaylie Connors’ upcoming project, Summer of Eden, a Queer coming-of-age feature film cowritten by Connors, made on location in Seattle and Bellingham and starring an impressive cast of local talent.
“I want as many hands from the Pacific Northwest to touch it as possible. I feel like the Pacific Northwest doesn’t get its flowers, and I want this to be a big love letter for that,” Connors told the SGN.
Originally from the Midwest, Connors wrote the script with her friend, novelist and Northwest native turned Midwest transplant, MJ Heron. Inspired by the beauty of the Pacific Northwest’s natural landscape and culture of acceptance, Heron and Connors wanted to pay tribute to as much local art and culture as they could, including original works by local painter Isabel Campbell.
Summer of Eden follows an awkward, ex-Catholic college student as she spends the summer in Seattle with her best friend and her boyfriend, and starts to realize she may be closeted. Inspired by campy Queer classics like But I’m a Cheerleader and Bottoms, Summer of Eden explores the internalized Lesbian monologue while paying homage to the wonderful queerness of the PNW.
The cast
The film was inspired, in part, by Connors’ own experience moving to Seattle. “When I moved here from the Midwest, there was a huge culture shock. You get to be whoever you want here,” she said. “It was pretty shocking that I could hold hands with a woman on the street, and it was shocking that there are rainbows everywhere. Seattle made me more Gay, and it made me more proud to be me. And I wanted to tell a story about someone who grew up a little bit similar to me, and had the culture shock of moving here and realizing, like, ‘Man, maybe I’m a little more Queer than I ever thought.’”
“I think it’s cool that such a weirdo gets to be the main character, and the movie isn’t about her becoming unweird — it’s just her coming into her weirdness,” added actor and comedian Annie Sutherland, who plays Eden.
“Eden in the story is supposed to be kind of this mirror that we can hold up to our pre-Queer selves of, like, before we realize the power and the passion that we hold and who we love and who we want to love and who we want to be.” Connors said. “She’s supposed kind of to be the Jane Doe of your closeted self.
“Annie is so intelligent and so funny naturally that when I gave her these lines for this character, who is supposed to be so awkward... Annie was able to find her own comedic artistry in that and timing, and she played it so well, because, in real life, Annie is so fun and cool and outgoing. And so it was so interesting to watch this very colorful person play this very gray kind of beige character.”
Rounding out the cast are Bonne-Vejou Dorrell, Keeks [Kahusi], and jack-of-all-trades Alex Moore, who made it their own personal challenge to be an extra in every scene.
“It’s been really fun working with Keeks,” Sutherland said. “She and Bonne, who plays Leo, are just great costars. The three of us had really good chemistry, and it was very easy. Bonne is an incredible actor and has such a great calming presence on set, and Keeks is just a firecracker and so funny. Her improv in this movie made it.”
“[Bonne] is usually cast as a really masculine character,” Connors added, “and this character was Bisexual and very artsy and wore guy-liner in half the shots, and he was, like, ‘Put me in, coach,’ and he rocked it.
“Keeks is so funny. And honestly, a lot of the lines are really improvised on her part. I kind of gave her free rein, like make sure the message gets across, and … there’s nobody else who could have played Quinn.”
Background
At its heart, Summer of Eden is about a lonely, closeted Lesbian finding community through her friends, which is exactly what Connors had to do to get the film off the ground. Not only did the cast and crew host a fundraising raffle at the Wildrose but Connors has also been pleasantly surprised at how much local Queer people have rallied around her.
“My community has come back tenfold,” Connors said. “They’ve made lunches for the crew. They’ve donated, they’ve let people stay at their houses.”
As a real-life version of Eden, Connors grew up feeling isolated in her hometown, which led to suppression of her own Queer identity. “As women, we’re told to suppress our sexuality, and especially as Gay women, it’s like ‘Oh, we don’t want you.’ I was told as a younger kid, like, ‘We don’t want you at sleepovers… you might be a Lesbian,’ because people were clocking me before I clocked myself.”
Like many Queer kids from conservative backgrounds, Connors felt that coming out would mean ostracization. Instead, she found a home and new support in Seattle. “In reality, I didn’t really isolate myself,” she said. Now she’s “I’m accepting love from a community that [I] didn’t always [know] I’d have. Because I didn’t have [one] back home.”
Community
Working on the film has shown Connors just how special Queer art circles in Seattle are. One scene, in particular, required two dozen portraits of Keeks in different styles. “I’m very anti-generative AI,” Connors said. “In this day and age, the way that we’re going in society, a lot of people would be like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to print a ton of AI art.” Art plays a special role in Summer of Eden and reflects the core creativity that flows through the heart of the Pacific Northwest. So, Connors got creative.
“Instead, I’d have prop parties where I’d invite my community members over, and I’d be like, ‘Hey, you see this girl right here? We’re gonna paint her… in different styles. It doesn’t matter what it looks like,’ and at the end of the night, I have 25 paintings of this person, and I use [them] in the film.”
Resourceful solutions like prop parties, the flexibility of a dedicated cast and crew, and incredibly generous people helped get Summer of Eden off the ground.
“I would not be able to do this without the community that I have, and I know I’m super lucky and I’m super privileged,” Connors said. “If there are any aspiring filmmakers out there reading this and asking themselves if they should go for it, and feeling embarrassed, find a mantra that helps you.”
Connors’ mantra is “To be a star, you gotta burn.” She leads with her emotions and says that embarrassment is just the feeling of ego falling away. Writing and filming Summer of Eden helped Connors see just what she’s truly capable of, and she hopes the film can empower other young Queer people to do the same.
“My vision for this film is to make my loser Lesbian community feel less alone in their journey,” Connors said. “I want late bloomers to feel honored, I want the state of Washington to feel honored, and I want people to feel enchanted by the fashion and art in this film. And my vision is for it just to be campy and funny and beautiful and inspiring. I want people to laugh, I want people to cry, and then I want people to self-reflect.”
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