When life gives you lemons … you make a movie in your hometown.
That’s one way Nora Kaye dealt with the onset of COVID-19 in early 2020. The 2012 Northampton High School graduate, now an actor and writer in Brooklyn, New York, had been set to begin work that spring on her first feature film, alongside her friend Whitney Uland, when everything shut down.
“It was a little disappointing, to say the least,” Kaye said in a recent phone call from Brooklyn.
But out of the ashes, Kaye said, she and Uland, also from Brooklyn, conceived of a new indie film project: a story of two former middle school friends who have drifted apart but come back together years later under trying circumstances, reigniting their high school pop band during a visit to their hometown — which happens to be Northampton.
“The Cosmos Sisters,” which has just been released digitally and is also available as a DVD, was shot entirely in Florence and Northampton over 10 hectic days in December 2020, with most of the filming taking place in and around Kaye’s childhood home near Florence center and the Northampton bike trail.
Co-written and directed by Kaye and Uland, “The Cosmos Sisters” is a story of the ups and downs of female friendship and dealing with loss, though the narrative is lighter than that. Kaye and Uland have done comedy in film and TV pilots, and their movie offers laughs and snappy dialogue between the two leads — Kaye and Uland — who regularly finish each other’s sentences and poke fun at each other.
“I think this film came out of this weird time we were in, where everything had been disrupted and we really had to rely on friendships and our imaginations,” said Kaye, who’s 29. “It was also about looking back at your roots, how you grew up, and drawing on those kinds of memories and experiences.”
“And,” she added with a laugh, “it’s also about being a little crazy, and mixing tragedy and comedy. I think the best stories come out of putting those two together.”
Kaye, who studied drama and neuroscience at Vassar College after graduating from NHS, says she was a busy thespian all through high school — she also ran track and played soccer — and was drawn both to comedy and drama. In college, she was a part of a theater ensemble that devised its own work, and when she came to Brooklyn after graduation, she expanded on those experiences.
“When I moved to New York, I said ‘I’m going to be an actor,’ ” she said. “But I found all these other incredible collaborators to work with in different ways.”
Since then she’s written plays, indie TV pilots, and other work, and she’s done production work for other projects. She and Uland, a Texas native, met on an indie TV pilot set playing best friends, and a real friendship sprang up between them. They’ve since collaborated on a number of projects, including a proposed dark comedy series for television, “Hysterical Women,” about workplace harassment.
Kaye says there were logistical and emotional reasons for filming “The Cosmos Sisters” in Northampton. For one thing, sticking mostly to one location seemed to offer the fewest health risks in the midst of the pandemic. Kaye says her parents graciously stayed in an Airbnb while the film was shot — the film’s budget paid for that — so most of the small cast and crew camped out in Kaye’s home for the 10 days of filming.
“We were like a little bubble crew, and I’m really proud of how we all pulled together,” she said. “Everyone was kind of rock ‘n’ roll, let’s make this happen … 10 days is not a lot of time to do a feature, so it felt like a bit of a pressure cooker, but everyone stayed right on it.” (The film runs 78 minutes.)
And Northampton, Kaye said, “is incredibly cinematic, and it’s just such a great arts town. That was a big part of my life when I was growing up, and I think that contributed to the whole atmosphere of the film.”
“The Cosmos Sisters” has some autobiographical elements. Kaye and Uland play former friends named, well, Nora and Whitney, who in high school formed their indie band with a sort of pseudo-Nordic theme, wearing purple and blue bobbed wigs and hamming it up on stage. But their last gig was 10 years ago, and now, in their late 20s, they’ve pretty much gone their separate ways.
But when her mother dies, Nora comes home to grieve, and Whitney pays her a surprise visit to try and cheer her up “and hopefully get #content for her failing YouTube Channel,” as production notes put it. Nora is not exactly thrilled to see her old pal.
“So Whitney, what’s the ulterior motive here?” says Nora. “There’s always an ulterior motive with you.”
“I’m just here to support you,” says Whitney, as the two face off in Nora’s kitchen.
“Oh, the power of sisterhood,” says Nora, rolling her eyes.
The two break the ice a bit in a scene filmed at the NHS track, where they warm up to run some laps and reminisce about a few former (fictitious) teachers neither could stand. But the thaw doesn’t last, and in the next scene, Nora has locked Whitney out of the house — and when Nora’s boyfriend, Jake, arrives and lets Whitney in using his key, Nora pounces: “Who let this snake into my house?”
Kaye says she drew on some of Uland’s biography in playing her character. “Whitney’s dad died six years ago, and knowing her, I think I was able to channel some of her grief … we took kernels of our real-life experiences and wove them into the script.”
Some of the film was shot in a converted barn on Kaye’s family’s property, where The Cosmos Sisters originally got their fictional start and the older Nora and Whitney find their old wigs and other props, prompting them to draw a little closer and consider playing one more gig.
That barn, Kaye says, is where she did any number of theatrical skits and other creative projects when she was growing up, “so that was a really good place to film.” She notes that both she and Uland also made home movies when they were growing up “so film is something we’ve both been drawn to.”
“The Cosmos Sisters” is a family affair in other ways. Uland’s husband, Jon, wrote much of the film’s score and also performs on the soundtrack along with Kaye and Whitney Uland; Kaye’s sister, Natalie, has also written a song for the film.
Production costs were about $70,000, Kaye says, which came from a crowdfunding campaign and other donations. The film is being distributed by Gravitas Ventures, a company that makes a wide range of mainly independent films available to video-on-demand audiences worldwide.
Ultimately, Kaye says, the movie is a nod to the importance of friendships for women. “Female friendships have been one of the brightest pillars of my life,” she said. “I wanted that to come through.”
For more information on watching the “The Cosmos Sisters,” visit norakaye.com/the-cosmos-sisters.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.