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Las Tres Sisters Interview Part One
Our conversation
this time focused almost entirely on the nine-year journey to get this
film made with her co-writers and co-stars, Marta Méndez Cross and
Virginia Novello, who were joined brilliantly in supporting roles by
Cristo Fernández and Adam Mayfield. The opening scenes of Las Tres Sisters
seem to set the film up perfectly for the three distinct personalities
of Sofia (Novello), Maria (Cross) and Lucia (Maldonado). “The three of us
wrote the whole movie. It was very collaborative between the three of
us. We used something called Writer Duet and you can be writing at the
same time. It is kind of like a Google Doc only for screenplays. Someone
could be doing a scene and then another person could be behind her
saying I am going to tighten it up. We would be doing things like that.
It was great. We based the characters on pieces of us, but
that doesn’t mean that every line that Lucia said I wrote. It was this
is where I want my character to go and I think this. Then we would help
each other out. We would write for each other. Sometimes we would go in
and go this is how Lucia (Make sure you pronounce this name right.
Watch the movie and you will know why!) would say it. We say they
are cartoon versions of the unhealed versions of us. What would have
happened if we hadn’t worked on ourselves. Marta’s character
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Alexandra Dean and the Judds
Alexandra Dean begins, “It (the documentary) was
put together by Propagate Production Company and they made a deal with
the estate. Then I went out to both daughters, Wynonna and Ashley. I
asked them if they wanted to participate. Ashley wanted to participate,
but she wanted to meet me and talk to me. We had a long conversation,
before we decided to go forward. With Wynonna it took a while and she
came onboard about halfway through the filming.”
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Electronic Firefly
Electronic Firefly
website
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Anna Carvalho Loves Monsters
Seeming to have
several projects on the go all at once, we decided to ask her about two
of them. “One of them is a
series that we started in 2023 and it is a horror series. It is
(comprised of) Portuguese tales that were in a book that was launched in
2023. At that time, we realized in Portugal there were not a lot of
women working in horror. In Portugal horror is stigmatized a little bit.
One of the women (working in horror) was me. I was the producer and
director. My collaborators are Isabel Pina and Sandra Henriques. We thought let’s adapt some of these tales and create the monster, kind of based on Frankenstein. It was working all of these tales and finding out what they have
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Lucy Gale - It's Never Too Late
Songs like “It’s Never Too Late,” seek to rekindle
how love first felt or perhaps get back a love lost, and the
breathtakingly beautiful “Turn Up That Love Song,” remind us of
how we felt or may still feel when we are so in love with another that
those emotions and feelings burn within us. This latter song should be
in a scene for a movie or series, so pay attention music supervisors.
The song is beautifully sung, arranged and orchestrated. Rather than
overpowering the singer, as so many instrumentalists sometimes do, the
musicians compliment Lucy Gale in a way that if you close your eyes, you
imagine them dancing slowly together or perhaps,
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Paul Rappaport - Behind the Curtain
“That is what I was trying to do. This was a very magical time, and I
wanted to share these stories and for the readers to have fun, like I
had fun. I wanted them to have the experience that I had. Somehow, I was
(blessed) with a photographic memory, because as you know from reading
this book,
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Robert Watts - Album Interview
It is a collection of songs that he describes as,
“Indie Pop. The album BloodWork was named, because of the copious
amounts of liquid that have exited and entered my body in the last year.
Also, BloodWork is the composing and the writing and all of that.
For me it is like my blood and something that I am very attached to. On
the inside of the CD cover there is a picture of one of my heart
graphs.” Robert there is obviously more to this story. “The making of the record was brought to a halt
when I had emergency heart surgery last year. I am one hundred percent
now. When I got out of the hospital and I started feeling better is when
“On & On,” (the song) hit me. I had five or six songs ready and some of
them I ended up using and some of them I didn’t. “On & On,” just is one
of those songs that came out really easily. “On & On,” although lyrically is not a hopeful song
lyrically, has a musical vibe that is more upbeat running counterpoint
to the lyrics. The song “Otis,” is a nod to Otis Redding, “It is
just a mashup of
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Jesse and Noah Leave Love Alone
We jokingly asked
them about the song “Leave Love Alone,” and if it was a reference to a
relationship that went sideways. Jesse replied,
“That is an older song, so I don’t even remember. I started that song
with Simon Bruce, an Australian singer and songwriter who lived here in
Nashville for a while. We halfway finished it and he and Daniel Tashian
finished it and then it came back to me. Daniel was going to put it out
and then I didn’t hear anything for a while and so I thought I would
just throw it into this mix of songs that we were doing for our next
session. We thought we could do a pretty good job on it. We recorded it,
got it ready to go and he ended up putting his out around the same time
or maybe a couple of weeks before or something like that. He released it
mostly in Australia. I guess it is worldwide, because of streaming. The songs ended up
being so different and with different audiences, so they didn’t really
clash.” Produced by Pino Squillace, engineered by Brandon
Henegar and recorded at the House Of David Studios in Nashville the song
is a Country song, with Rock influences and excellent musicianship.
Those who have followed Jesse and Noah over the years, should not be
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Macartney Reinhardt - New Song
Macartney
Reinhardt describes this experience as, “I have co-written before, but
this is one of my favorite ones that I have ever done. I was on
Instagram one day and Stone messaged me saying I would love to write
with you and then he brought in Kylie. The first song the trio wrote
together was “Cowboy Without a Conscience,” released earlier this year
(2025). We really meshed from the beginning.” Although the song has a summery feel to it,
don’t let that fool you, because with a big smile on her face and her
dimples showing Macartney Reinhardt says “Two
Ships,” was written on one of the few days of the year when it
was snowing in Nashville. “I wanted to write a song about when you go
from being so close in a relationship and then after the relationship it
(feels) like you never knew that person. That has always been a strange
thing to me, how you can go from every day being with somebody and being
so close to him and then a breakup. It is like you don’t know him. Then
Kylie came in and she said I have this idea called Two Ships. She
asked do you think we could combine those. I said yeah, definitely. She
had taken it from Two Ships passing in the night that Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow poem. We just started working off
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Peter Holsapple - Face of 68
Peter Holsapple says, “I am extremely proud of
the new record. The songs that make up The Face of 68 are largely
songs that were written after the release of Game Day, my last
solo record in 2018. What happened was my friend Carlo Nuccio from
Continental Drifters passed away from cancer in 2022 and I don’t grieve
very cleanly, so I wrote a song. Actually, I wrote a couple of songs,
but the song “Larger Than Life,” that I wrote and cut, felt good. I
thought it had been a few years, maybe the statue of limitations had
been lifted and it would be okay for me to do another record. I had a folder with about fifteen or sixteen
songs and I thought maybe there is something in here. Then I got Don
Dixon (producer) on the case and I wanted to do it different than
Game Day. Game Day was all me and that was fine and I don’t
have to do that again. I wanted to do it with this rhythm section and I
got a crack team, Rob Ladd (drums) and Robert Sledge (bass) and made it
a very tangible record. We could feel it coming out of the speakers, at
least if you play it loud enough, which I do. I suddenly had a
bunch of songs and I had a studio (Overdub Lane) six minutes from my
house. I had a producer in Don Dixon whom I dearly love and have loved
for a million years. I had a great engineer whom I had worked with Jason
Richmond. He had done the engineering for The Paranoid Style stuff, the
band that I play guitar with these days. It all came together and pardon
the pun, but we did it in record time.
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Ágota Dunai
In the film Fight and Flight,
Ágota Dunai
says, “I played a flight attendant. I had flight attendant experience
before in another film, and they chose me,” Although she had a minor
role in the film she says, “I really hope it made it to the film. I
haven’t seen the film yet. There was one scene when the plane starts to
crash and there is a lot of shaking and someone falls down. Then I go
to the (person) and help him up. I ask if he is okay and ask if he needs
medical help. That was my speaking scene, but in many other scenes I was
packing, sorting and helping with seatbelts. Also, when there were fight
scenes, I was trying to protect the other passengers. There is one scene
when somebody gets cut with a chainsaw and there is fake blood scattered
on me. There are a lot of action scenes. I (also) worked with Josh Hartnett in The Fear
Index. It was nice to work with him again.” With impeccable English, proficient in German and of course her
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Actor Ruben Yuste
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Paula Parducz - Actress
She is cerebral, talented, at home in comedy or
dramatic productions, but leans more to drama as a preference, which we
will explain in a bit and she shared some insight to that side of her
acting while discussing the role she played in the theater production
Beauty, directed by Carna Krsul. “My favorite role is Annabel in Beauty.
I liked it because it allowed me to (get into) a vulnerability that I
really had not explored before, because in a way it touched a part that
I really had not dug into (previously). She (Annabel) stepped out of her own shell. She
is afraid of going out (Annabel is agoraphobic), but she is masking that
by looking young and
pretty. It was very powerful on stage and it was always interesting to
feel the reaction of the people when they could see the mask dropping,”
she says.
We wondered about the dynamic of an actor performing in front of an
audience and in the role of a character who had difficulty with mixing
with others and certainly Annabel would never have performed before an
audience.
Paula Parducz
explores that dynamic with us, “You are the actor, you know the story,
you know what is happening and you know what is coming, but the
character doesn’t. A Mexican director
Luis De Tavira
said actors
have the ability to be and not be at the same time. I am the actor, but
I am not the actor I am the character, but I am not the character. You
are and you are not at the same time. There are moments when you truly
forget yourself and you are just the character. It is a very interesting
dynamic. You can also see the reaction of the audience and that is why I
like theater the most. You have the people there and you can perceive
when (they are engaged) and you know when you are losing them. You know
who is connected and who is not.”
Beauty was the third play that she was cast in by Carna Krsul, the
others being the first Most Budapest in 2019 and then Square
“Most
Budapest
(2019) was the first one, then Square in 2021, before we did the
third one, Beauty. I found a casting call online for Most
Budapest. Carna is an amazing director and she is a lovely person on top
of that. The way she prepares is she uses a lot of physical exercises
and games and stuff. We had this whole afternoon doing different games
and she had several texts and having us try different scenes and to
improvise. We started to have a chat and get to know each other more.
She said if something comes up, I will have you in mind.
For Most Budapest she had someone, but (the person) was a Brazilian
actress who went back to Brazil. She needed someone
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Electronic Firefly From Spain
Silvia explains
what happened next, “That was not when I met Charlie (Perez-Íñigo now
her husband). I needed an electric cello for the project and another
person recommended that I call him. It was a difficult
time in my life and Charlie became my friend and he helped me in many
aspects of my life. At the time I was living in a small village called
Villarejo (located in La Rioja, Spain) and he started to visit me often. He also
recommended me for a show called “Music Has No Limits,” and that is when
we started to work together. We toured with them, and we started our
relationship. We have been together ever since. It was after we left
“Music Has No Limits,” that we started Electronic Firefly.” In 2023 their
daughter was born and for two performing musicians that has brought its
own challenges, but more on that later.
The two world
class musicians have also expanded their music careers and in addition
to performing sometimes as a duo and other times for solo gigs, they now
The two world class musicians have also expanded their music careers and
in addition to performing sometimes as a duo and other times for solo
gigs, they now also are DJs.
Charlie takes us down the DJ pathway, and how it began, “We like playing
our instruments with electronic music, so we managed to mix some DJ
music with the instruments. We would play a song and then mix some
things.”
Silvia picks up the conversation, “We make a DJ session and between the
session we will greet the guests at the hotel, because we usually work
at hotels, bars or restaurants. Sometimes we will play (our
instruments).”
Charlie adds, “Then we return to the DJ table and mix. It is a very
creative activity, because you will never make the same session twice.
It is impossible.”
At the same time, they both tell us that there is a lot of improvisation
that takes place.
Being a neophyte to the world of DJ music, our appetites for more
information, wanting them to pull back the curtain to reveal what goes
into being a DJ, just continued
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Wine and Jazz Adventures
Mindi Abair sat down with us one afternoon recently to chat, “At the
very end of 2019 my husband and I kind of had this ah ha moment. We came
together and said we both have dream jobs. I get to go off with my band
and travel the world and to make records. For all of all his life Eric
has run really amazing wineries, so he would go off to Kendall-Jackson
or he would run Mountain Napa (winery). We both had amazing jobs, but we
said let’s get out the whiteboard, the marker and a bottle of wine and
see if we are truly living our best lives. It may sound trite. We wrote
down what was really important to us and what we loved to do. We wanted
to be together and we wanted to share his passion for wine with
everyone, with people, instead of corporations. For me I wanted to
expand my world in music to places outside of the U.S. more and play
with different artists, explore and expand. We came up with a company
that was the best of both of us. Obviously, he is the wine and I’m the
Jazz.
We don’t have to be anything we are not, but obviously the combination
of wine and Jazz is pretty spectacular. Eric and I have been together
about fourteen years now. It is awesome to fall in love with someone,
but it is even more awesome when what he does for a living completely
compliments what I do for a living.”
So, when did this all start?
“We started
our little company at the end of 2019, with the idea being we would
make eight wines each year. He hires winemakers like I hire
musicians, because he knows everyone. You and I as civilians can’t
do something like that, but he can and that is his world.
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Audray
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Camilla Roman's New RomCom
The film was
inspired by a real-life situation experienced by one of Camilla Roman’s
friends and the mishaps and misunderstandings that can happen on social
media platforms. Camilla Roman
explains, “This is based on a true story and what sort of happened to
one of my friends, the character that I play. When her ex-husband was
going to get married there was a lot of confusion and stuff on Facebook
with invitations. He invited her and her mom and that was a mistake. He
deleted them and deleted whole events and people were what? Is it
canceled? All of that happened and then there is a lot of fiction into
the mix (in the film).
After she told me this story, I wrote it down a little bit. I thought
maybe I can do this for something later. I took a year of filmmaking. I
got into the final year and so I got my Bachelor (degree) in one year. I
had to make a film (for my degree). I didn’t know what I was going to
write. There were ten people in the class and my teacher said if some of
you still don’t know what you are going to write and what your film is
going to be about, now is the time to make a decision. You can’t just
sit around and hope for an idea to pop into your head, which is exactly
what I was doing (she laughs).
I thought I have some notes somewhere, let me go and find my notes and I
had this. I wasn’t thinking of writing a Romantic Comedy. I just started
writing the script and using my notes and then I had a meeting with my
screenwriting teacher. I said to him oh my god, I am writing a Romantic
Comedy.”
As
short films go, this one could more properly be referred to as a longer
short film, at twenty minutes in length. Without providing any spoilers,
it is fair to say that Fortysomething leaves you wanting more. That is
to say, those watching the film are left asking, what happens next?
“It wasn’t deliberate, but I had people come up to me after the
screening. I had a private screening and people said to me they want to
watch more. They want to see what happens next. I sent this to a
producer and I had a meeting with him. He is maybe interested in
pursuing this as a feature, but we decided to go on and do another
project that I had already started to develop. There might be a feature
or
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