Charley Feldman is delightful. Her enthusiasm for Jem and the Holograms is on display for all in the crowdsourced fan film she wrote and directed, Truly Outrageous, and the glee in her voice when she talks about the film is contagious. More than just wanting to bring an ’80s cartoon classic to life as a sort of do-over for the dismal Universal Jem and the Holograms from 2015, Truly Outrageous balances throwback Saturday Morning Cartoon fun with representation and an awareness of its audience of nostalgic adults. The result is campy fun with above-par production values.
RELATED: We Need More Women Behind the Scenes in Entertainment Media
Because Charley and I had SUCH a hard time avoiding spoilers during our conversation, I think you should pause now to watch the 30-minute film, then continue to see what she had to say about it.
Leona Laurie: I’m so excited to get to learn more about Truly Outrageous.
Charley Feldman: Thank you so much for inquiring. It means a lot that anyone wants to hear more, to be honest. We really, really love this thing.
LL: Can we just start with why? Why did you want to do this?
CF: It’s hard not to talk about the story of how this has happened without throwing a little shade at Universal’s film…
LL: Throw the shade. What were they thinking? How do you take the cartoon Jem and the Holograms and be like, “Look, we want the name, but we’re gonna get rid of anything that might appeal to somebody who’s familiar with it.”
CF: The reason I hesitate is because we’ve talked to so many different kinds of Jem fans, and some of them really felt seen by it and liked it, and-
LL: I don’t believe that.
CF: It’s a minority, but we love them all the same. They’ll be mad at us forever because of the sketch we made. (Which you can watch below!)
When we saw the trailer, we had the same reaction as it sounds like you did. How did they mess this up? Jem in name only. Where’s the fun of it? Yeah, make it modern, we understand that, but at least make it something. It’s been compared to Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana is a Jem redo, frankly.
RELATED: Here’s what GGA said about that trailer back in 2015.
LL: Mm-hmm.
CF: It just seemed so small. What pissed me off the most was G.I. Joe and Transformers have just ginormous movies with all this money behind them, and Jem had $5 million, and that’s it. So, they clearly didn’t think much of the property, they didn’t care about its fan base and they didn’t think it could be any bigger than a YouTube A Star is Born. It just seemed to us that they missed an opportunity.
When we saw the trailer, we made a sketch where Jem and all of her friends, the Holograms and sort of extended family, sat down thinking that this was going to be amazing, and then they realized that this is not the movie they anticipated.
We got a really, really lovely response from that. Jem fans thought it was funny, and they thought, “Hey, why don’t you guys give it a shot?” And we’re like, “Yeah. Why don’t we give it a shot? That could be fun. We’ve always wanted to do a short film at Chickbait. Why not this?” We Kickstartered, and people wanted to see it, so here we are.
LL: Will there be more Jem films from you? You left some major cliffhangers.
CF: We definitely left some stuff unresolved! And we wanted to make it fun in that way where obviously Jem is episodic, and we had every intention of, if we’d met our stretch goals, to make a feature that wouldn’t feel episodic—that would just answer everything in a feature length, but we had people working on this for free or next to nothing. No one really got paid their full rate, which is my way of saying that if we ever did do it again, and answered the questions we left hanging, we would want to pay everybody fairly.
So, I don’t know, is the answer to that. I do want to, at the very least, put out the story of what we want to do, but it just depends if people like it and want to see more and tell us that. And then we’ll fundraise again.
LL: What was the process of developing this story?
CF: The Kimber stuff was the first idea I had about this. It’s proven to be the most controversial, and I understand that. People, honestly, have been so exuberant and kind and wonderful about this film, but if they have one critique, they very politely say it’s that.
This is the story I wanted to tell, and specifically with the twist, because I like stories where there is something very special about a person that they don’t know yet. It’s a super sci-fi trope, super fantasy trope, and I wanted this to be, at its core, like a really strong queer story. I think that’s very much just how queer identity, at least my own, works, where there’s something very unique and wonderful and amazing about you, and there comes a point in time where you realize that is one of the things that makes you wonderful and special.
So, there’s that metaphor, thematic bit to it, but also, I like robot stories. I do like the elements of what makes us human. Is it our brains? Is it our hearts? Is it what we do for the people around us? And with Kimber, I think she’s a good example of it, where she feels the most deeply out of everyone, yet she does not have the same birth as everyone else. I just look forward to exploring where that goes and what that means.
LL: Were you inspired by Small Wonder?
CF: I’ve never actually seen Small Wonder.
LL: What?
CF: I know. I’m a bad consumer of ’80s culture, but I’ve never seen it. I know the plot of it.
LL: Where the loving father is designing a robot that will grow and age alongside his human son in a way that will make her robot-ness undistinguishable to their mutual peers? I can’t believe you haven’t seen that.
CF: I wish I was cool enough to know that that was an overlapping thing. Honestly, I’m just an anime dork who loves Ghost in The Shell–brand philosophy.
LL: Well, maybe you lucked out on the Small Wonder parallel, but obviously it was more than luck that your costumes, hair and makeup are so on-point in Truly Outrageous.
CF: We got so lucky with Arda Wigs. All of the wigs you see were donated by Arda. They had so much confidence in what we were going to do that they were like, “Here. Take our wigs, and make them into something special,” and we did, because of Chrissy Lynn, Jessica Mills, and
Candice Mae Rodriguez.
The three of them were our hair and makeup team, and Jessica Mills does wig styling for everyone from cosplayers to theater. It’s just her gig, and her and Chrissy are just absolutely incredible. And they’re also cosplayers themselves, so they like detail and care about accuracy, and they brought that. And still allowed the hair to move. Every time we watched a screening with Jessica, she was like, “Ah. Look at that hair move.”
And the clothing was Jade Thompson. She was the first person I thought of crew-wise.
It’s her beautiful brain. She can just go into a Goodwill, and pick out exactly the right things for our girls to wear. Very few things weren’t second-hand. Accessories here and there were things that she’d have to buy, like stockings and things like that, but everything else were finds. And actually, our Synergy costume was created by Castle Corsetry, specifically on Maude, so she had to go in and get fitted.
RELATED: We are long-time fans of Maude’s!
If you’re going to do something right and different from the other movie, I think it was Synergy. We really wanted Synergy to be this babely AI hologram, and who better than Castle Corsetry and who better than Maude Garrett, who is a stunning Aussie babe?
LL: I love listening to you talk about this. The passion and enthusiasm definitely comes through in the film, but it’s so cool to hear you still sound so excited about it.
CF: We had such amazing people in this. I love the people on it. I love that everyone was just like, “Game on. Let’s make this hyper-femme Jem and the Holograms movie. It’s just going to be this candy-colored delight.” And it seemed like a passion project for everyone. It was a particularly optimistic set. So, I’m glad that translated into the final product, that it made people feel good.
LL: It’s so interesting, though. I appreciated the romantic sub-plot, but I wasn’t watching it like it was a conscious integration of queer identity into this world. It’s more like … why wouldn’t that be there?
Maybe this is just because I really like Steven Universe, but-
CF: Aw, I love Steven Universe.
LL: … thinking of something else that’s exploring queer identity at the same time as creating vocabulary for the audience, which in that case includes a lot of children, to talk about who they are and how they feel, and what happens in their life through things that are super brightly colored and really fun.
CF: Honestly, Steven Universe is one of the most important cartoons to come out in the last 10 years, and I’m not just saying that because the literal Steven is on the show I’m writing for right now– Steven Sugar is an artist on it– but…
LL: No way.
CF: Yeah. He’s lovely.
I really, really love the queer voice in Steven Universe because it’s already organic to the story, and it’s so organic that I don’t think it’s jarring for outsiders. They do it in such a way that you really believe in these characters, like you believe in Pearl being in love with Rose Quartz and how hurtful it was. People antagonistic or outside our community need to see that. They just make it so natural, so certainly, when you see things like Solo, where you’ve got Lando Calrissian- “Oh, he’s pansexual. Well, I guess that makes sense because you can boink anything in space.” That’s great. But it’s not explicit, and it boggles my mind that these sexual relationships that aren’t heteronormative aren’t just there.
RELATED: Read our interview with Susan Egan, the voice behind Rose Quartz!
Deadpool 2 actually did it really well, even though it was a side character. Negasonic Teenage Warhead and her girlfriend, you’re just like, “Yeah. They’re girlfriends. Of course they would be. We live in modern society.”
With us, it’s certainly a controversial coupling because Stormer and Kimber, they have their episode where it’s very implied, as all the campy elements are implied towards queer culture in Jem. But, IDW, the comic version of Jem and the Holograms, makes it explicit. We certainly wanted to make it explicit, because it is important to us that Kimber’s bisexual and that Stormer is her girlfriend.
When I said before about the twist, I do mean the entire alphabet rainbow, but also, more people are comfortable talking about being non-binary, about being trans, and that’s certainly where I’m going with Kimber, about what that identity means to her and me.
LL: Tell me more about the people behind the scenes. Who was there from the beginning?
CF: This is absolutely a team. My partner in Chickbait is a woman named Clare Lourdes. She plays Pizazz. She was very much part of the creative process, while also being on the ground with the rest of the actors where I couldn’t be, and doing the business elements of this, like the rewards.
Then this amazing man, who came out of the Jem ether, named Café Noir. We made him executive producer, because that’s how much work he put into this. He’s a Jem super-fan who also happens to be a highly, highly experienced special effects guy, who actually worked on the other Jem film and who worked on a lot of other notable things. He reached out when we did the Kickstarter, and was like, “Hey, I’ll do your special effects for nothing.”
LL: Wow.
CF: We’re like, “Ha ha ha. Sure. You’ll do our effects for nothing.” And he’s like, “No…seriously.” And he was real.
When we picked our jaws up off the floor, we’re like, “I suppose we can give you a shot.”
Now he’s a dear friend. When we said the film release was going to be spring, we’re like, “We have to do it by end of May,” and we all have full-time jobs. The last month became super crunch time– so much so that in the 48 hours before the release on May 30th, Café and I didn’t sleep. We were by a computer, rendering and fixing everything and making sure it was ready to go. I’m still kind of recovering from those last 48 hours.
It was very much a team effort, where it’s sort of my concept and my writing, and Clare facilitating, and Café putting the Synergy magic over it.
LL: Your full-time job is writing for Disney, right?
CF: I’m a writer for a new show called The Owl House that’s coming in 2019. It’s really good. I’m so proud of it. I’m so proud of our showrunner, Dana Terrace, who worked on, like DuckTales and Gravity Falls. This is her first show-running endeavor, and it’s got witches, and I just got very lucky. I love it here.
LL: What channel will it be on?
CF: Either Disney Channel or Disney XD.
LL: You’re awesome. I am so grateful for your time, and so excited to get to share everything that you just told me. Do you have any closing thoughts?
CF: I guess the major thing I’ve been ruminating on in the week this has been out, and just knowing the incredibly fierce women-identified and non-binary writers and directors I know out there who put stuff out there all the time is (and this might get more serious than I intended), we’ve been through a lot, just being creatives in this field and not being men. And there’s so many hardworking women I know out there, and they just don’t get the shot, and they don’t get the visibility, and they don’t get the coverage and it’s just …
It’s amazing that we’re in a world (where) we’re listening to the stories of when things go really wrong. I just wish we started to invest more time in when things go right, when things are created, and passion is put in.
I really think there’s a lot of art coming out from people who are just starting, or just getting to the point where they’re noticed, who need more push, and we should be doing that, as much as we do for when things are scary or bad. And certainly, that needs to be covered extensively, because that’s how things change, but I do think we do need to do better when things are going great and when art is being created.
LL: Word.
Want to know EVEN MORE about Truly Outrageous? Check out this video of Charley answering some frequently asked questions!
- WANDAVISION Finale Recap: (S01E09) The Series Finale - March 5, 2021
- WANDAVISION Recap: (S01E08) Previously On - February 28, 2021
- WANDAVISION Recap: (S01E07) Breaking the Fourth Wall - February 19, 2021
