SARAH WINSHALL: Spirit Awards Producers Award Winner
By Rebecca Green
With two critically acclaimed films released in 2024 - Jane Schoenbrun's I SAW THE TV GLOW and India Donaldson’s GOOD ONE - and her latest film BY DESIGN premiering at Sundance 2025, producer Sarah Winshall is having what many would call “a moment.” But as the winner of the Film Independent Spirit Awards Producers Award, Sarah reveals that success in independent film is anything but overnight.
From questioning traditional casting "rules" to experimenting with different producing roles, Sarah sat down with Dear Producer to share her experience navigating an industry in flux while staying true to her mission of championing "personal films with unique world views." Through her work with rising directors and the launch of a new film festival, she's redefining what sustainability can look like for independent producers, even as she admits she's still figuring it out herself.
2024 was a big year for you with both I SAW THE TV GLOW and GOOD ONE premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and now being recognized in award conversations. And if that wasn’t enough, you have a new film, BY DESIGN, that just premiered at Sundance 2025. How do you feel about this windfall of success? Is it a happy coincidence in terms of timing or was there strategy in having a full plate?
It definitely feels like a coincidence. I SAW THE TV GLOW and GOOD ONE were shot a year apart and I had very different roles on each film. On TV GLOW, I was a full-on producer, whereas on GOOD ONE I was an executive producer. All of my films are really different from each other, which makes it nice to have such a broad range of work to showcase. On top of that, I launched the Los Angeles Festival of Movies last year. Everything I've been thinking about for a long time is finally getting some attention in a way that I haven't experienced at this level until now.
It's that myth of overnight success, right? People know your name now because of all the publicity in a short time frame, but you've been doing the work for years without the limelight.
Exactly. I've been here doing this work the whole time. 2024 was more difficult in terms of work-life balance. My work has felt more all-encompassing. That said, it does equal more attention. With the pandemic and then the strike, everything felt quiet for a couple of years, so it has been satisfying to have so much to share and celebrate.
How did you determine which role to play on each film? How do you differentiate being what some call a “capital P producer” versus an executive producer?
Choosing the executive producer title was an experiment. For sustainability purposes, I am trying to grow in terms of the scale of the budgets I'm working on, but I also want to be involved in discovering new talent, which often happens in the low budget space. GOOD ONE came to me at a time when I was over-committed and underpaid, much as I am now. However, I love the team that made it and I wanted to be involved no matter what, I just couldn't be a boots-on-the-ground producer. We talked a lot about what I could do and ultimately chose executive producer because it was the title that spoke to the resources I was bringing to the table. Typically EPs bring financial resources, but I was filling out gaps in other ways. Also, like an executive producer, I was sitting in an office doing "executive" work while the rest of the team was physically making the film.
I hadn't done anything like that at the time so I was nervous to take up the space without earning my keep. Now I can look at the film and see what I brought to the table and it feels really good. It was a valuable collaboration and I'm honored to be part of a team that executed such a beautiful film. I'm hesitant to take credit for this movie, but there were things that I brought to the table that made a difference, particularly some key conversations around casting, fundraising, and other creative and organizational conversations. I do think that I earned my keep and I feel really happy about that.
As we both know, there are many people who have taken a full producer credit doing much less. I think you’re setting a really good example for establishing what is involved in being a producer and how you earn the credit and also giving more weight to the executive producer role outside of just financing. Would you do it again?
I think it might become more common in my career. Looking at what makes sense for somebody my age and with my experience level, the opportunities to grow are very limited as the boots-on-ground producer. The opportunities to get involved in films in a more advisory capacity where you're helping the team figure out what gaps they need to fill or sharing what works based on experience - that's been the most satisfying stuff lately.
Having you involved also helps validate the project to investors and other third parties when maybe other members of the team don’t have the same experience as you. This brings a lot of value to the role.
It does and as I get older and do this more, the energy to take on every aspect of producing an indie is really tough to find. There's a certain pleasure in knowing your limits, expressing what you are and are not available for, and having that be respected. When you're the "capital P producer,” that doesn't usually get heard or taken seriously. You're not really allowed to say you’re not available, even if you haven't been paid, even if you've worked every single day for two years without a break. Drawing boundaries as a producer is very difficult.
You also clearly defined your role going into the project, which as the producer, you can’t, it’s all encompassing and you have to deal with whatever comes your way.
The EP role has also given me some luxury in setting expectations. It's nice to establish a more defined role since you're not going to do everything. The only thing is that I don’t love the executive producer title because it implies financial support and I don't want people to think I can invest in their films. I'm trying to find a way to make a living and that implication can send mixed signals about my actual situation and what I can support. I'm still figuring out exactly what that looks like, every movie is different.
I always think of Sarah Winshall as the person who loves weird movies. When I look at my own body of work, on the surface, most people probably can’t see what they have in common, but I know how they all relate to each other. Is there a throughline in the stories you tell or themes in the films that you're attracted to?
When I first started Smudge Films, I came up with the phrase "personal films with unique world views." It's vague on the surface, but when I dig into it, it continues to be a guide. I want to understand why the movie exists, why it's important to the people making it. There are movies that come out where it just doesn’t feel unique. Like when there are four diners in a row on a road. One is not necessarily better or worse than any of the other diners, but they're all doing the same thing.
The films I work on need to feel imperative, personal. My own brain is weird in that I don't like to do things just because that's how everybody else does them. The kind of art and film and media that I like to engage with tends to be sometimes transgressive, definitely not the most mainstream work. I'm interested in making things that people will be excited about and can engage with, but I'm not interested in making things that just follow convention for no real reason.
We have movies that are created personally, that are important to the people making them. They have something they need to say, not necessarily a moral stance, but a point of view about the world. Add to that some interesting filmmaking and awareness of film history and that's what brings it all together. That's true of I SAW THE TV GLOW, GOOD ONE, and my latest film BY DESIGN, they're all films that I think are very fun to watch and really easy to engage with, but they're not like other movies you've seen.
I've been thinking about cinema versus movies. I SAW THE TV GLOW and THE SUBSTANCE were truly cinema for me. So visually specific and bold. I know from producing IT FOLLOWS that it is not always easy to visualize what’s on the page for films like these, especially when you don’t have a budget for storyboards or VFX renderings. I'm curious about your process with director Jane Schoenbrun on TV GLOW. How are you as a producer understanding visuals like that from reading the script? For example, I can't get that ice cream man out of my head and I'm not sure I would have been able to picture what ended up on screen from what was on the page. How do you navigate those collaborations when the visuals and ideas are so big?
A lot is trust. I have a bad imagination and a problem where I can't fully envision some things until I understand how they exist. But I am good at understanding a tone or texture when I'm reading something, talking to a director, or looking at a lookbook. I can get to a director's intention pretty quickly, and that's usually the kind of stuff I work on.
Even if I don't know exactly what something like the ice cream man in TV GLOW will look like, I trust the person I'm working with to make it work because we're on the same page about the big-picture textures. Specifically on TV GLOW, there was some really fun character development work done between Jane and Albert Birney, who created drawings and helped all departments understand what we were going for. On that scale of movie, you can't just go on trust because it's more expensive and there are more people involved. People need to see what we're talking about before we start doing it.
When I read the script, I didn't know exactly what it would look like, but where we landed makes a lot of sense. It became even more than what I pictured. The production design department went above and beyond, creating bed sheets and little knickknacks that elevated the ice cream man imagery beyond what had originally existed in my mind.
You also worked on Jane's film WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR. It's rare these days for a filmmaker to take a producer from the smaller film to the bigger A24 film. There are too many forces that work against it typically. How have you maintained your relationship with Jane? Were there conversations during WORLD’S FAIR about doing something else together?
Jane's incredibly thoughtful and strategic and understands how this industry works in a highly advanced way. I'm still learning many things that Jane has known for a long time. When we were delivering WORLD'S FAIR, unbeknownst to me, there was a script for TV GLOW that was pretty fully baked. Jane asked me to take a look and said if I liked it, they’d love for me to be on it.
I said I was still delivering WORLD'S FAIR [to the distributor] and couldn't take on another movie right then. Jane said they weren't expecting me to do anything right away, that they had new representation and wanted to make sure that if I wanted to be involved, I was in the deck and being mentioned as part of the team early on. They knew if they didn't have me in at the beginning, they probably wouldn't be able to get me on later. That's the foresight I'm talking about.
Jane knew they needed a script ready to go after the success of WORLD’S FAIR and it wasn't just any script. It was an incredible script in a really strong place by the time it came to me. They knew enough to know when I would have to start working, which wasn't right away. I read it and said yes, and then I was in meetings pitching the film with Jane, but I didn't have to do a lot to get there. People ask me for advice on how TV GLOW came together as a roadmap for their careers, and I always say it's not a common enough trajectory to be considered a strategy.
It might not be a strategy for producers, but it is a strategy for directors if they want to keep working with their producing collaborators. What often happens, and has happened to me, is that when you are delivering a film to a distributor, which is a full-time job, the director is getting calls from agents and taking general meetings and all of a sudden there’s someone who wants to make their next film and you are not in the conversation. Jane understood this and got ahead of it.
The conversations were limited, but the important thing was that they happened early. Jane and I had a phone call, then there was an email where I wrote, "Yeah, this is good, count me in. When can I share some thoughts?" Then we had another call and then Luca Intili came on and then we were talking to Fruit Tree.
I know Jane from when they were working at Kickstarter as the Film Outreach Lead. After watching the film I was wondering if that job influenced Jane’s ability and wherewithal to know how to tap into a specific audience. TV GLOW is so specific in the teen angle, the dialogue and costumes. Were you both talking about the audience when making the film?
We weren't thinking about the audience in a marketing way, but rather about who Jane was making this movie for, and who it's not for, which is very specific. That defined a lot of the language and which creative notes they would take versus which ones they wouldn't. I'm allergic to planning too far ahead about what a movie will do, but we were making this movie for an audience that hasn't been served in that way.
We're made to feel every film has to be for everybody. Very few companies are doing limited releases. Platform releases are practically a dead concept. Yet we're also supposed to have singular points of view and hit specific audiences. Distributors can’t have it both ways.
There are always excuses not to do something in a certain way, but let's find the reason to do it. Most industries are having shifts right now. Everything is extra hard and we don't know if things are smart to do, but we're here doing it, so let's do it.
Along those lines, I’m always telling filmmakers not to make a coming-of-age movie because you can’t cast the film in a way that attracts financing or distribution. However, you have two movies this year with lead roles that have been successful (though that doesn’t mean they have been financially successful for you personally). Do you live by any of these kinds of “rules” of filmmaking when it comes to picking projects?
Maybe this is why I've been struggling with sustainability. I wouldn't recommend this model. But regarding putting films together, I think these estimates for valuation for cast or genre are just as arbitrary as taking a risk. There's just as much excitement around having Brad Pitt doing something familiar as there is having an actor you don't really know, who you've seen in a couple of things, doing something they've never done before. That's also exciting, that's also valuable. The difference is you can't compare it to something that's already existed, so we don't have valuations.
Strategically, that doesn't work, at least for me, but I also haven't made anything work financially, so I shouldn't talk. The films have been good, but we're taking risks. We're constantly being told we need a famous person in this role, or that if we can't sell to 800 television channels in China, because they don't know who these actors are, the movie won't be worth anything. There are movies where you can tell that people just sent the script to the top five people at one agency who fit the demographic, and those actors aren't in the right roles. That's not best for the movie. I think trying to play by any rules is often foolish. For me, it's always just what's best for the film.
Take GOOD ONE for example, James Le Gros is perfect for that role. To me, he's a huge movie star. I've been watching him in things since I can remember and I'm obsessed with him as an actor. He's phenomenal and was perfect for that part. During fundraising, there were a lot of questions around who was in a hit TV show or who had already done an independent film with success and would do another one. That's actually much less interesting for the movie and for the actor. James came to the film knowing a couple members of the team. He lives in the mountains and is comfortable being outdoors (the film is all shot outside in the mountains). He was an incredible addition to the team and part of making the film and his performance is phenomenal.
I watched WOLFS recently with Brad Pitt and George Clooney. That's exactly what you're saying - that's a package I recognize. It's a genre piece and it's well-executed. I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t transcend beyond those actors.
It's George Clooney the whole time. It's a movie that is a diner on a corner next to 8 other diners. There's nothing wrong with it. I will watch that movie. But I don't need to make that movie because making movies is hard, and while it might be easier to make a movie like that, it doesn't feel like somebody really needed to make it. It just exists.
I'd love to wrap up with the Los Angeles Festival of Movies, which you launched in 2024. Speaking of diners on a corner, there are plenty of film festivals, so I'm curious what prompted you to start a new one? It's such a big endeavor, even on a small scale.
The Los Angeles Festival of Movies will have its second year in April 2025. It's a small, curated festival that showcases very independent-spirited films that aren't playing in other LA festivals. We're trying to fill a niche, not compete with anything that pre-existed us.
It started with a conversation with Micah Gottlieb, who runs a screening series called Mezzanine that primarily shows restorations and older films year-round at different venues in Los Angeles. He had been getting submitted a lot of new indie films, but couldn't offer week-long runs since he didn't have a venue. We were talking about why filmmakers were so excited to submit these films to him when he couldn't give them a qualifying run. As a producer, I understood why. LA is a tough marketplace, and finding a release that gets proper attention from your target audience can be challenging and he was doing a really good job of getting people out of their houses to watch movies.
He was lamenting that his bandwidth was limited to one or two events a month. This was around the time that the Maryland Film Festival announced it wouldn't return for the year, BAM Cinema Fest wasn't coming back, and shortly after, Outfest shut down as well. We realized these disappearing festivals were all playing similar kinds of films, and suddenly it wasn't just LA that had nowhere for them to play, it was everywhere.
We talked about doing a series where all the new, interesting films sent to him throughout the year could play under the Mezzanine umbrella in one weekend. That eventually became the LA Festival of Movies. For year two, we're continuing in the spirit of the first year - it's a very limited program of 8 to 12 films, all hand-selected without open submissions. We require at least an LA premiere and want to explore more world premieres this year for films flying under the radar.
It's been a really nice way to support more films than I can as a producer. The biggest issue as an indie producer is that you spend years on a movie and the best-case scenario is often it plays once at a dusty old theater at 2pm on a Wednesday then goes to Amazon VOD. For the festival, one of our major goals is to find an alternative way to celebrate these filmmakers' hard work.
What are you excited about for 2025?
I'm very excited that the LA Festival of Movies will happen again. That's a feat in itself, so I'm very pleased to have that in April. I have a few films in the pipeline, a couple in post that we aim to complete in 2025, and a couple we plan to shoot in 2025. I'm at a place in my career where I'm not taking on new projects for development because I can't afford to. My main goal for 2025 is to find a way to get paid to do the work that I like to do and to find a way to have producing be a job and not just a really difficult and glamorous hobby.
A very good professional New Year's resolution - to make money.
Agreed.