We’ve got a film festival gem to put on your radar! It’s Jamie Sisley's narrative directorial debut, Stay Awake, which celebrated its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival and is the opening night selection at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Inspired by Sisley’s own experience, Stay Awake stars Fin Argus and Wyatt Oleff as brothers Derek and Ethan. Derek’s got hopes of becoming an actor and Ethan’s an excellent student with the potential to get into the college of his dreams. However, the typical coming-of-age experiences are often sidelined by the responsibility they feel to help their mother (Chrissy Metz) who's struggling with an addiction to prescription drugs.

Fin Argus and Wyatt Oleff in Stay Awake
Image via Stay Awake LLC

With Stay Awake's North American premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival on the horizon, Sisley, Argus, and Oleff joined us for an interview covering their experience making the movie.

There are many excellent films and shows tackling addiction, but one of Stay Awake’s many standout qualities is how it depicts the complexity of being stuck in such a cycle of co-dependency. It begs the question, how far do you go to support a loved one and when do you prioritize your own self-care? Sisley explained:

“A lot of it, honestly, was just drawing from a lot of the personal experiences that I had and the people who are in the treatment community that I know [had], and just sort of expressing that patience mixed with that frustration. The question I’ve always sort of asked of, how much do I put into trying to help someone that I love manage a very difficult disease? How much do I owe to myself to step away and develop a sense of self-care for you and maybe your brother, your sibling, other people? It’s really tough. I really wanted to illustrate that as best as I could, as best as a film can, just sort of the ups and the downs of that journey.”

While Stay Awake does boast a good deal of charm and heartening moments of support, as one might expect, there are also a significant amount of deeply challenging, emotionally demanding scenes for Argus and Oleff to tackle. However, Argus insisted that Sisley’s leadership on set gave him all the confidence he needed to feel safe going to those more vulnerable places:

“It’s scary, even as an actor knowing that you’re playing a role and it’s fiction, sometimes you go to those emotional places and it’s hard to get out of. But that was one thing that I loved about this set so much, is there was so much support and encouragement. Jamie was this protector of us as actors, which is something I deeply appreciate and you don’t always experience. So those sensitive subjects and those highly emotional scenes, I always felt like it was a safe environment to explore those things and really become raw and vulnerable for the film and for the purpose of storytelling.”

Fin Argus and Wyatt Oleff in Stay Awake
Image via Stay Awake LLC

Sisley further detailed his approach to bringing the best out of his cast and crew:

“Not that I’m a super experienced director, but what I found was, a lot of what my role was was sort of trying to bring out the best in people, and that happens in a bunch of different ways. Some people want to be heard. Some people just want to be left alone! [Laughs] Some people have a lot of opinions, beautiful opinions that if you really give them free rein, they come back knowing what your intent was and they just shock you. That’s my favorite part of these processes is when you have an idea, you have a blueprint and then you get to surround yourself with people that are, in their specific areas, much smarter than you and they come back with something that just astonishes you. And then as a whole, collectively, you come up with something that’s a lot better than you could have ever done yourself.”

Clearly Stay Awake was a hugely collaborative project all around, but a significant amount of the movie’s core is Oleff and Argus’ connection. Both are hugely talented creators all on their own, but they also easily identified something the other did that brought even more out of their own work. Oleff began:

“For a lot of the shoot I was scared for the scenes where I’m crying because I have had trouble with that recently, just kind of getting those emotions out. But there’s something about Fin that brought that out of me and I feel like emotionally we were always on the same level. In every scene we were there and it was so easy to connect with him and to just be there with him. It was so easy to be present.”

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Argus took a moment to break down the difference in their prep processes, and emphasized how Oleff’s approach to the work inspired him:

“I do a bunch of character prep and journal out the hobbies of the character and stuff like that, so then, when I’m filming, I hop in and I don’t know if I do a bunch of prep the day of. I’m just like, ‘Okay, I’ve done all the work.’ And it was really cool to see Wyatt take time, and I’ve taken some inspiration from him, on the day to really center himself and get into the right emotional headspace for a scene because there were these times where we had these highly emotional scenes together where I’d just be reading my book and just sort of in a different headspace. And then I see Wyatt reading his sides in the corner and I’m like, ‘Okay, wait. There’s something going on there!’ So I really appreciated that about Wyatt. He’s really good about remaining present and taking the time to hone in on an emotional moment.”

Chrissy Metz in Stay Away
Image via Stay Awake LLC

As for Chrissy Metz, she made a huge impression on literally every single person on team Stay Awake.

Even with the sky-high popularity of This Is Us, Sisley recalled Metz taking the time to meet with him in person to discuss the film. “Actually, on the last day before COVID! We met at a restaurant and it was a ghost town and we were like, ‘Wow, it looks like this pandemic thing’s really starting to take shape!’” That lunch meeting went well enough to encourage Metz to commit to the project, but what then? With productions being shut down and pushed back due to the pandemic, one might expect an industry powerhouse to consider other opportunities. But not Metz. Sisley explained:

“When the pandemic happened, Chrissy always said, ‘I’ll stay on.’ And in this world, in the limited experience I have, you just never know with people. A lot of the times people will say that and then a bigger production will come, and for Stay Awake that’s literally any project. [Laughs] We’re like a small indie film! I didn’t know what to expect and this project meant a lot to me. It’s literally based off a lot of important struggles that I’ve had, and a lot of people have. And so, she stayed on. She really is a person of her word and I can’t say I’m surprised having gotten to know her better now, but she’s really just such an amazing human being."

Not only did Metz give the role of Michelle her all, but she’d also take any opportunity she could get to excel as an executive producer and to create the best possible environment on set. Sisley recalled:

“She’d hate that I’d bring this up, but I remember there were times on a hot Friday in the middle of the summer, and suddenly ice cream sandwiches would appear for the entire crew. Whoever donated them is supposed to be anonymous, but everyone obviously knew it was Chrissy. And she would do little things like that. In addition to taking her role and her character very seriously, and really giving it 110%, she would do a lot of things to help inspire the cast and the crew.”

If you’re in the San Francisco area, do not miss Stay Awake at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 21st at 7:30pm at the Castro Theatre. And for everyone else, stay tuned. Hopes are high Stay Awake will secure distribution and be widely available soon.