Justin O’Neal Miller’s PEGGY Wicked View Of Kids’ Birthdays In Suburbia

Director and Producer Justin O’Neal Miller studied at the Georgia Tech School of Architecture, where he won the Grand Prix for his thesis film project, titled Hypertecture. His passion for design and storytelling led to a career in set design and art direction, working for feature films and television including Prisoners, 42, American Made, The Walking Dead, Baby Driver and First Man by Damien Chazelle.

His short film Peggy portrays a housewife who appears to have it all – until the cracks begin to show. Since starting its festival run, Peggy has won numerous awards including Best in Show at Rome International Film Festival, the Jury and Audience Awards for Best Short at Spokane International Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Short at Calgary International Film Festival.

Peggy stars Sarah Blackman (The Derby Stallion) and Jason MacDonald (The Vampire Diaries), who gives a perfect comic performance. Miller recently spoke exclusively with Film Inquiry.

The universality of birthday party Hell

There is some genuinely wicked humor Peggy. Where did it come from?

“Yeah, I wrote and directed it,” Miller acknowledges, “and I think that it primarily came from being a parent. I am a father of four, and being at kids’ birthday parties got to see the kind of over-the-top culture that we throw for our kid’s birthday parties a lot of times – and how much of that ends up being parents standing around drinking beer, hanging out with each other, networking, and having an excuse to hang out – when a lot of time you don’t get an opportunity to do that. There was an instance in particular at one of my son’s birthdays where he was getting all these presents that – not quite as far as it goes in Peggy – but there were presents that we probably wouldn’t let him have otherwise – certain types of candy, video games and movies and things like that. So that’s where that birthday party setting and the concept of focusing on the adults at a kid’s birthday party came from.”

It’s a more universal theme than it might appear at first blush. The writer admits to one particular memory of his own son attending a birthday sleepover and only finding out the next day that the birthday boy’s father let the boys at the party watch an R-rated horror movie and then took them to Hooters for lunch the next day.

“Oh boy, that’s a bit of a horror story,” Miller says. It would have been nice to have had the opportunity to clear that first… “Get a heads up a little bit, right,” Miller agrees. “It’s just kind of anything goes for these things. I think that also – and we didn’t explore that concept in this short – but yeah, I’ve definitely had similar things happen where you take your kids to a party and there is stuff going on there where you are like ‘Yeah, I don’t know if I’m into this.’”

Cast as good as the A-listers

Miller has an excellent cast in Peggy, mostly not familiar names. Sarah Blackman in the title role is wonderful. Where did Miller first encounter her?

Miller agrees: “She is wonderful. The whole cast, and I could not have asked or dreamt up better if I had access to A-listers, but I first came across Sarah when she auditioned for a role on a short film that I produced – it was this really, really dramatic film about divorce – and she had this really powerful audition – she came highly recommended, and the casting director said ‘She’s also really funny, I know you couldn’t see it in that audition.’ I said, ‘Oh that’s interesting,’ and I asked to see a few of her more comedic performances, and came to find out that she really loves more of that side of things even though she is really versatile. So I knew going into this project, that I really wanted somebody that could handle the comedic stuff, which is a talent all in its own, but it also needed to be underpinned with a dramatic overall performance because I think in general the characters and the performances aren’t terribly comedic. I think the jokes are all in the world – it’s not like standup or a movie where the characters even know they are in a comedy. So I wrote it with her in mind, and as soon as I convinced her that no children or animals would be harmed [he chuckles at this], I think she got on board.

Mies Isaac Miller is also hysterical in the movie. Miller’s pride is evident. “That’s my son, the same son who got those presents at that birthday party. Thank you, I’ll make sure to tell him that, I think he’ll really be proud to hear it.”

He has a future, if he pursues acting. So now we don’t have to ask where he came from… “Yeah, I auditioned a hundred thousand kids and found him in the hay straw. That’s not true at all. And so actually all of the kids with speaking roles are my children. It was a real family affair. My wife is the redhead who is driving the van with the six-year old girl, and who falls into the handsome bachelor’s arms, and then both the boys are played by my two sons,” he says.

Miller has a background working in the art department of several larger movies, reminding this writer of something he was told by another young filmmaker a year or so ago – that he recommended that young filmmakers get on a set by any means necessary. Would Miller agree with that assessment, and if so, would he have any advice for young filmmakers as to how to do that?

Nothing terribly different on small production sets

Miller says: “I would say that certainly is very helpful. But there is a side of me that also would say don’t wait for that – that there is nothing necessarily that you need to learn from someone else’s set in order to go make your movie. I’ve made four short films now and been on a lot of large sets, and I would say fundamentally there’s nothing terribly different from what we were doing on that first short film, when I knew relatively nothing, and the larger productions that I’ve been a part of. I think it’s just about assessing the story that you need to tell, and then kind of problem-solving your way out of it and trying to make sure that you get as much of it in the camera as you can. A lot of times I feel like people who aren’t burdened with a lot of the bureaucracy and protocol of how to do it right, can end up with a whole different set of problem-solving skills.”

What would he say was the biggest challenge making Peggy? He thinks about this for a moment. “The biggest challenge was probably handling several scenes that weren’t just a couple characters. You know, even a scene with four characters in it, and in a lot of ways we didn’t necessarily do it intentionally, but like it really builds from a scene with two characters to a scene with two and a half characters – with a kid in the back seat of the car to a scene with three or four characters, until we are like in a scene with ten characters at once. That was definitely something I had never done before, and we approached the end of the film almost like it was an action movie or something. And then we had never really approached a scene like that before and in a lot of ways it was a little scary. But I remember the moment on set when Chris [J. Christopher Campbell], my DP, Producer and brother-in-law, basically was like ‘This scene is going to be crazy, like this scene is going to be super cool.’ And I remember being able to take a step back for a second and all the panic of getting that stuff right dissolve a little bit.”

Not to provide spoilers, but there is a stunt with an owl – what is he willing to say about how it was done?

The trouble with owls

Miller, understandably, doesn’t want to give too much away. “There was a real owl, and we had an animal wrangler that my brother-in-law Chris had met on the set of Manhunt: Unabomber miniseries, and we looked at stock footage for options, and discussed shooting it with a green screen as another option, and ultimately they met us at the location and we had a very limited amount of takes that we were able to get with the owl, because there is only so much that owls are willing to do. It was really kind of a one-take wonder type thing. Through a combination of layering and visual effects we were able to get the shots that we needed for that final sequence.”

This writer happens to remember reading an article about the Harry Potter movies once that mentioned that owls were limited in their sense of cooperation. “Oh man, that’s a great way to put it,” Miller says. “And I guess I didn’t know that going in. You know it’s not that they are terribly hard to train, but that you can get them to do one or two things for dead mice, and then after that they might do it or they might not. They might just sit there for the rest of the day. You know, kind of well-fed and satisfied.” Once they’re well-fed they lose their sense of method? “That’s fair,” he says.

When did he first know he wanted to be a filmmaker? “I think that I first really knew about two-thirds of the way through college that I wanted to do it for a living, at least at some level,” he says. “I would say if I had to pick a defining moment it was probably not even watching The Lord of the Rings movies, but watching the behind-the-scenes footage from The Lord of the Rings. I think that’s when I became completely enamored with the process and also started to feel like it was something that I could do.”

How did he get this particular production mounted? It seems that increasingly that short films are the proving ground for young directors. “Yeah, I think that’s right,” he says, referring to the short films being a proving ground for young directors. “And this film was basically self-financed by myself and a couple of friends, one of which is my brother-in-law Chris Campbell who I keep referring to. He and I have a number of scripts that range from short films that are entirely doable with relatively small budgets, into the largest television show that you’ve ever seen. [Laughs] So a lot of it is us trying to figure out what we are capable of doing at the moment, and then we just sit down and break the whole thing down to a tee and see how much we can get away with for how little. A ton of people come out and we horse-trade and make favors wherever possible to try and make it doable, but still without compromising the overall integrity of the story.”

The joys of locations that come with their own props

So did the production have to rent the bouncy house and props like that, or did they just crash somebody’s birthday party? Miller says: “We had the location very generously donated to us which meant us not just taking over their backyard but their entire house. And having people be able to be staged there when they are not actively being used on camera. And it was actually the neighborhood’s bounce house. It was co-owned by a bunch of people in the neighborhood. I had, of course, looked into rentals – even purchasing one when we weren’t even sure at this point whether we would need to damage it. Then as soon as I started talking to them about their house – because I had their yard in my head when I was writing it – and I started talking about a bounce house and they said, ‘Okay, well we have one.’ So we got to use that, and then there’s a giant rope swing, and a built-in trampoline and all that stuff was already there – so saying that we really lucked out is probably a very nice way of putting it. They have actually been very generous throughout my whole career. They used to be our neighbors and I have shot pieces of other short films at a previous house that they had.”

It was a great location. Peggy is currently screening on the competition circuit. “It is,” Miller says. “It’s really been picking up a lot of steam and one of the biggest festivals that we get to play in is about a month from now at Tribeca.”

What’s next for Justin O’Neal Miller after this? “Since the festival circuit began I have started building Peggy as a half hour, dark comedy series that is getting pretty close to being pitch ready. I’m definitely going to be pursuing that, as well as a couple other small to medium sized features. Which one picks up the most steam will determine which direction we go next.”

Film Inquiry thanks Justin O’Neal Miller for taking the time to speak to us.

Peggy has already screened at Cinequest Film Festival, and will be next screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.