One of the year’s hottest independent films premiered in Cincinnati last week.
“The Travel Companion,” a new comedy-drama tearing up the film festival circuit and getting rave reviews from major publications like IndieWire and RogerEbert.com, is showing at the Esquire Theatre in Clifton for the next week.
The film centers around Simon, a struggling documentary filmmaker who enjoys free flights across the globe thanks to his best friend Bruce’s airline job. However, when successful filmmaker Beatrice starts dating Bruce, Simon risks flying too close to the sun.
For co-director and co-writer Travis Wood, the film was inspired by true events. He himself had a friend providing him free flight benefits until a new romantic partner came into the picture, and one day he told the story to his co-writer and co-director, Alex Mallis.
“He discussed the situation with me just as a friend would tell a friend and I was like, ‘wait, dude, I’m sorry but that’s so funny. My condolences, though.’ But we kept discussing it, and realized it was the seed to a really great concept for a feature film,” Mallis said. “As we kept building the script and the world, we realized that this is a perfect way to discuss how small moments can reflect larger issues. He didn’t want to lose the flights, but on a deeper level than he’s willing to admit, he’s more afraid of losing his friend.”
Thus began their work on producing a film all about filmmaking and the unspoken dangers of male friendship. Low-budget indie films about making indie films are a dime a dozen, but “The Travel Companion” stands out thanks to its naturalistic dialogue and shocking attention to detail when it comes to making the film feel ‘lived-in.’
“We really wanted scenes that felt authentic to the way that real people communicate. We weren’t interested in making a film with the sort of heightened reality that Hollywood films might have, where the dialogue is too perfect, or scenes are too convenient,” Mallis said. “Being human is imperfect, and messy, and confusing. We wanted a pace and a structure that closely matched the way that our lives actually are.”
To get the creative juices flowing between himself, Mallis and co-writer Wes Auburn, Wood showed the group some of Hong Sang-soo’s films—a famous South Korean director whose work commonly deals with everyday situations and domestic realism, and has a general focus on making movies about “regular people.” Eventually, the group came to his 2011 drama “The Day He Arrives.” It was the “perfect” inspiration for how they wanted their own screenplay to feel.
“That film was a major core point for us. The main character is not very likable, but he’s very real and honest, and he feels and says things that we maybe wouldn’t want to admit are similar to ourselves,” Wood said.
With a script written, it was time for production to begin. But with a film based around jet-setting, the group ran into one major roadblock. Filming near planes is expensive and requires special permission, and their budget was already non-existent as is. How do you film in an airport without getting a permit?
The answer: you do it without asking.
“Usually, if you’re trying to shoot an airport, you need a ton of money, a ton of people, endless amounts of red tape. So I bought a one-way ticket at JFK International Airport in NYC for myself and our main actor, Tristan Turner, and just went through security and started shooting,” Mallis said. “At first, I pulled out a very small camera and started stealing some covert shots. Nobody said anything. So I got a little bolder, started pulling out a tripod, a gimbal. Before you know it, we’re full-speed running through JFK getting shots of Tristan running, which is very much in the movie.”
Unlike the events of the film, Wood remained close friends with the person who gave him airline benefits, and there was never any real conflict between them. In fact, he ended up getting those flight benefits back, and his romantic partner currently lives right here in the Queen City—which is part of why the team wanted “The Travel Companion” to have its regional premiere in Cincinnati.
“Shout out to the Esquire and Diane there for giving us the opportunity. Getting a smaller film into theaters and competing with the big guys and taking up that screen space is not always an opportunity that films at our level are getting,” Wood said. “It means the world to us. And we thank every theater owner, worker or anyone for giving us a chance cause it means a lot.”
After playing at major events like the Tribeca Film Festival and receiving a group of glowing reviews, Mallis says seeing three years of work come to fruition has been “surreal” for the three of them.
“We’ve been kind of reminding ourselves to stop and smell the roses. We’ve been working on this for so long that we forget to look around and take it all in … It’s such an exciting moment to share the film all over the country and see what resonates,” Mallis said. “What do people like about it? What does it make them think of? But for me, just sitting in front of a dark movie screen and hearing people laugh and experience a film together is what it’s really all about.”
“The Travel Companion” premiered on April 17 at the Esquire Theatre. For more information and to buy tickets, visit the Esquire’s website.
