Short & Sweet: “The Cheap Seats”

Brittany Reeber’s short film “The Cheap Seats” about the psychic community of Cassadaga, Fla., screens tonight as part of the AFS Member ShortCase

Welcome to “Short & Sweet,” our look at short films playing in Austin. This time it’s Brittany Reeber’s short film “The Cheap Seats,” which follows a skeptic’s journey to Cassadaga, Fla., the psychic capital of the world. The short screens tonight at AFS Cinema as part of the AFS Member ShortCase.

Austin Chronicle: What had been your experience with mediums or psychics before working on this film? Are you more of a believer or a skeptic, and did working on this film change your perception of mediums?

Brittany Reeber: I think that I’ve always been drawn to the occult and the paranormal, not in the hopes of being spooked, but in the hopes of testing my relatively secular upbringing. I really want to believe, just like I think a lot of people going to Cassadaga really want to believe.

What is most interesting to me is not what we learn from a psychic in a reading room, but what we learn from ourselves and our reaction to the wanting. It’s a transactional experience and there are certainly a lot of people who want to take advantage of those who are desperate to tap into something outside of our physical world, talk to a dead loved one, but a lot of people walk away thinking it was money well spent. I’ve had some uncanny moments in the process of making the film, but nothing that’s completely stamped out my skeptic side.

AC: Can you talk a little bit about the significance of Cassadaga, Florida? How did you hear about it, and why did you decide to film there?

BR: I was raised in Florida and the whole state is a big part of my work. I especially love the very middle and would slow down to explore it on my drives back to Austin. I rolled through Cassadaga on one of those trips (inspired by the Bright Eyes record) and quickly became obsessed. Not only does the place have a lot of fascinating history in regards to spiritualism and 19th-century American culture, but it also raises a lot of themes that I like to explore in my own work, specifically about my family and our relationship to spirituality and ancestry in our very silly, modern lives.

AC: One of your cast members, Nellie Edwards, is a medium in Cassadaga. What was it like working with her on this film? Did she have any input on how spiritualism was portrayed?

BR: I went to Cassadaga several times over a few years before I made the film, and Nellie was one of the residents I befriended. I hadn’t planned for that role to be a non-actor, but a week out from shooting, we still hadn’t found the right person and I decided to ask Nellie. I had no idea how should we be on set or if she would even approve of the script. She wouldn’t rehearse and insisted she would show up on time the first day, which she did.

The community is very small and there’s a lot of fascinating politics among the residents and the businesses there. It took along time to get approval to film and I felt like Nellie chose to work with us as some sort of act of rebellion against the board (kind of like an HOA composed of mediums and psychics) who were skeptical of our project, or maybe she was just bored. She memorized all her lines and sat patiently between setups, only occasionally spooking the crew with comments like, “I can see on someone’s face if they’re going to die soon, they have a different aura about them.”

AC: Without giving too much away, the ending of the film leaves a lot open to interpretation about the lives of the main characters and the meaning of their experiences in Cassadaga. Why did you decide to end on that mysterious note?

BR: I guess it felt most honest to my own position on the subject matter, straddling the line between skepticism and belief. The main character is very resistant to the vulnerability that’s kind of necessary during an experience like that and I wanted her to be able to call attention to the aspects of it that might be considered problematic while also still capturing the magic of Cassadaga. It really is a special place, spirits or not. It’s what you make of it.

AC: If you could communicate with the spirit of someone who has passed away, who would you want to speak to and what would you ask them?

BR: I would ask my great-grandma to describe her fondest memory and also ask what dying feels like.

AFS Member ShortCase, Monday, July 18, 7pm at AFS Cinema, 6406 N. I-35 #3100, austinfilm.org.