Writer/director Arie Pankiw discovered documentary studies and broadcast news while in journalism school and quickly fell in love with video editing and production.
She didn’t attend traditional film school, but instead taught herself the basics of Final Draft and began writing after graduating. After directing the first season of Netflix’s “Feel Good” and the “Joan Is Terrible” episode of “Black Mirror,” Pankiw finally secured funding for her first feature film, “I Used to Be Funny,” starring “Shiva Baby” breakout star Rachel Sennott.
The film was released in select theaters through Utopia and digitally on June 18. Sennott stars as Sam, a stand-up comedian who suffers from PTSD after being sexually assaulted and trying to decide whether to search for Brooke (Olga Petsa), a missing teenage girl he used to babysit. The story moves between the past and present as Sam works through his trauma.
Pankiw told Variety that the script for the film was about her life and the women around her, and she wanted to explore recovery and healing in a way that differed from other revenge stories and soap operas in pop culture.
“I couldn’t find anything written about the two steps forward, one step back cycle of recovery, and that’s what I wanted to talk about,” Pankiw said.
Sennott and Petza’s characters share a unique intergenerational bond throughout the film, and Pankiw said it was this important relationship she wanted to tell. She said her own sister, a longtime teacher and a ballet camp counselor she was obsessed with all influenced Sam and Brooke’s relationship.
“As women, as we get older, there’s always this burden of making the world a better place for younger generations of women,” Pankiw says. “And of course, it’s a joy, but it’s also hard work. I think we’ve all been on one side of it. That mentor-mentor relationship where you hand someone a tampon under the bathroom stall door and they’re like, ‘Okay, I’m going to teach you a thing or two about the world.’ I think we can all remember that.”
Finding a young actor to play Brooke was one of the most difficult parts of the production process, but Pankiw says Petza was a minor miracle: She says Sennott and Petza had such natural chemistry on set, and when Sennott did a chemistry read with the other young actors, there was something special about the pairing.
“Rachel became like a big sister to Olga during the shoot,” Pankiw says, “and we captured this sweet little friendship that just grew organically between them.”
Pankiw said about blending comedy and drama, especially with a theme like sexual assault, he feels it’s more honest to combine the two to talk about recovery.
“I think all my work, in a way, walks the line between catastrophe and absurdity,” Pankiw says. “There is never a day in life that is pure tragedy or pure comedy. It’s all mixed together, and that’s how I think about the world.”
Pankiw described Sennott as a “dream” and said her acting was incredibly skillful and natural, but that it took a lot of hard work to get through. She was impressed with how well Sennott performed in front of the camera after seeing her co-star with Ayo Edebiri on the Comedy Central web series “Ayo and Rachel Are Single.”
Then, after seeing “Shiva Baby” in 2020 and Sennott’s standup, Pankiw knew she was the one.
“I don’t know how she does it. She’s magical,” Pankiw says of Sennott. “She makes things feel new every time, and I think that’s the hallmark of a comedic actor. Even after multiple takes, there’s something so present and real and immediate.”
Pankiw said that while some have seen the script as a response to the #MeToo movement, the theme of sexual assault has unfortunately always been important and timely. She wrote the film over 10 years ago, but throughout the editing process, the core of the film and its theme of assault and recovery never changed.
She hopes “I Used to Be Funny” will encourage viewers to stay until the end to see what people were like before trauma robbed them of certain aspects of their personality. She describes the film as an acknowledgement of the damage we suffer socially and culturally when young women are not protected from assault.
“I think as a society we often hold victims to too high a standard,” Pankiw says. “I want the audience to empathize with Sam before they see how vibrant she once was, because we don’t always get to see that in young women after something terrible has happened to them.”
