M.H. Murray wants to tell queer stories. The Torontonian filmmaker has already been carving a niche for himself in that realm, from 2014’s short film Inside the Whale to his acclaimed web series Teenagers. Murray’s latest project, Ghost, is a poignant take on the gay dating scene in Toronto. It was recently accepted into the 34th Connecticut LGBTQ Film Festival.
Completely bereft of dialogue, Ghost depicts the life of Benjamin (Mark Clennon). Benjamin is gearing up for a dinner date with Simon (Nykeem Provo) when the latter stops answering his messages. We see Benjamin engage in various activities throughout the day to stave off the pain of being ignored. After he’s ghosted by Simon, Benjamin decides to dance the night away in a bittersweet moment of hope.
I had the privilege of chatting with M.H. Murray about the process behind Ghost, what he hopes audiences will glean from it, his trajectory as a filmmaker and his undying love for Daphne Blake.
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Melody McCune: We at GGA love a good origin story. What’s M.H. Murray’s origin story?
M.H. Murray: I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately since I’ve been promoting the film [Ghost]. I’ve always loved telling stories, but it was probably when I watched The Little Mermaid as a kid and … I felt a really intense feeling of wonder … that magical feeling you get when you watch a really good movie or hear a really good story. So, I think when I watched that, I just became obsessed with that feeling. I wanted to feel it over and over.
I started to seek out more movies, and I think I wanted to pursue that feeling and to make other people feel that feeling with my own stories. I would say it started off with The Little Mermaid and never stopped since then.
Ghost
MM: How did Ghost come to be? What was your thought process behind its inception?
MHM: Well, we shot Ghost at the end of 2018. That was the year where I had my “dating around” phase. I got to really experience the gay dating scene here in Toronto. It was a lot of fun overall, but what I was really intrigued by, and kind of surprised by, was the way that people would ghost each other or what we keep to ourselves versus what we share with others.
So, I was thinking about it and I had never really seen it be depicted that way, specifically the phenomenon of being ghosted by someone and then seeing them be active on social media. I think that’s obviously a modern phenomenon because back in the day if you were ghosted, you would have to wonder what the person was doing. You wouldn’t have a chance to look them up on social media. I think it almost makes it worse in a way because you feel doubly ignored. It’s really sh*tty for your self-esteem.
I never went through that experience, exactly. But I definitely had situations where I wanted to hear from someone and wasn’t sure if I’d done something wrong or if the feelings were different on the other side. I think in this film, I just wanted to show a character being in denial about it.
They make the dinner plans and then he [Benjamin] goes about his day. Even though he’s [Simon] not answering his phone anymore, he stops answering texts … I think that was something that I really wanted to portray on screen because I felt it could be relatable for people.
I wanted to represent it in a way that’s obviously sad, but it’s bittersweet. In the end, there’s a bit of hope. Obviously, not everyone is going to find solace in themselves after one day. But I think if someone rejects you or if you get ghosted, I think eventually down the line you realize it wasn’t for you or it’s not really you that’s the problem. You’d have to find that love in yourself, somehow.
MM: I think all of that was evident. In the film, you feel that sense of denial. It’s almost like going through the five stages of grief. There’s denial, anger, acceptance, bargaining and depression. I thought that was a really neat aspect.
MHM: Thank you. It was really cool to shoot it because we shot a lot of footage. We only shot for one day, but we shot a lot of footage. It allowed me in the editing room to find all those little moments. We filmed a couple of scenes where he [Benjamin] called him [Simon].
Then, I used a couple of them and in the editing room, it was about really finding the moments that felt true. I think it was a really cool process to do it with Mark [Clennon] because we’re pretty close in real life. We were able to bond over our shared trials and tribulations in the gay dating scene. And it was a cool experience for us to definitely express that part of ourselves.
MM: I loved the lack of dialogue. I thought that was a really interesting choice. Of course, it epitomizes that feeling of being ghosted. It’s this isolating, hollow feeling. Was it your intention to leave out dialogue from the get-go?
MHM: It was. The really early version of the script had him [Benjamin] walk to the bar that the guy’s [Simon] at and he looks at them through the window. I wanted there to be more of a confrontation at first, but then once I decided on the dancing scene at the end, I figured it would be more powerful if it’s all very internal.
He does interact with the clerk at the grocery store, but other than that, it’s pretty much him by himself and going through the motions. I felt that excluding the dialogue would, like you said, heighten that feeling of isolation and anxiety. I had never done it before. In a lot of my work previously, I had loquacious characters that liked to speak in monologue. It was a good challenge for me as a filmmaker — to try to tell a story more visually as opposed to with dialogue.
MM: Since it was more of a show rather than tell situation, was Mark Clennon given free rein to improvise?
MHM: Yes. It’s fiction because I wrote a script and it’s not Mark it’s Benjamin, but the film is a hybrid in the sense that we shot it in his apartment. He’s in his own space, using his own utensils and his own things. There was a lot of space to improvise. For example, with the instruments, we walked around the apartment and we’re like, “Okay, let’s play the guitar, let’s play the recorder. Let’s see what feels right and how you would do it if you were trying to distract yourself.”
It was definitely a lot of improvisation and the dance at the end too. Mark, in his music videos, he’s known for doing free-spirited dancing that isn’t very choreographed. He does do choreography as well, but I loved the way that he danced and how it felt very free and improvised.
We actually shot that last dance thing in one take and everyone was like, “Okay, let’s do what we’re going to do.” Then, he did it. I was like, “Okay, I think that’s all we need.” I think sometimes you get lucky with those little moments. I like having actors put a bit of themselves into the role too. I think it can, in general, lend itself to a bit more of an authentic feeling.
MM: It’s definitely more grounded in reality when they get that opportunity to inject a bit of themselves into that character. I love the little dance moment in the end.
MHM: That was his song too. I don’t know if you picked up on that in the credits.
MM: I didn’t know that. That’s so cool! Besides writing and directing you edited Ghost. How important was it to piece together the story you wanted to tell in the editing room?
MHM: It was pretty important. My big project before was a web series. It was, overall, really great. But something that I experienced during that was having deadlines. For this film, I purposely didn’t set any sort of schedule. As I said, we shot it. We shot the film in December 2018 and I had the space to edit and re-edit and put all the pieces together like a puzzle.
I think it was a good experience for me as a filmmaker because I was able to keep going until I was actually happy with it. Not to fulfill some sort of deadline. I think it all worked out in the end. Obviously, ideally, I’d like to do that with all my future projects, but I think there’s almost always a specific deadline. It was a unique experience in that sense.
MM: What do you want audiences to glean from watching Ghost?
MHM: I think it’s a bittersweet movie. I hope that people watch it and they see a character that they can relate to and they want to follow his journey. It’s kind of funny to say, but I guess I want people to feel anxious and sad watching, but also feel a sense of hope in the end. It’s a little “slice of life” look at Benjamin and how he deals with rejection. I hope people, especially queer people, can see the film and see themselves in it.
Teenagers
MM: Let’s switch gears a bit. Teenagers really took the internet by storm. Did you draw from your own experiences when creating the show?
MHM: I think there’s a bit of myself in each of the characters. I co-created the show with my long-time friend Sara [Tamosauskas]. We’ve been best friends since we were children. We got to halfway through film school. We were both turning 20. I think when you turn 20, there’s this weird sense of like, “Oh my god, I’m not going to be a teenager anymore.”
When you’re a teenager, you feel like you’ll be a teenager forever. Then it gets to the end, and it’s a really shocking experience. I was watching a lot of web series at that time. It was 2013 when a lot of web series were starting to come out, like Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae. I felt inspired by the possibilities of just making something and putting it out.
I was super naive and didn’t really know how the business worked. I think that was a blessing because if I did know how the business worked, I probably would’ve never made it. There are so many obstacles and things that get in the way when you realize all the realities of the industry. I went to a high school that was pretty diverse in terms of religious backgrounds, race and sexuality.
At the same time, I was watching shows like The O.C. or One Tree Hill, which I think are great shows for what they do, but they’re very specific. With Teenagers, even now, I look back and I’m cringing. I was pretty bold to name it that, but the reason was that we didn’t want it to be just one teenager’s experience.
We really wanted it to be more universal and feature a bunch of different characters. We collaborated with the actors too to have them bring some of themselves into the role like Emmanuel [Kabongo], who plays one of the leads. He was also a producer. As the seasons went along, I became pretty close with some of the actors.
For example, Dana Solomon and Allyson Pratt play two characters on the show that discover their own sexuality, which is something I went through, but as Indigenous women, they had unique experiences as well.
In the last season, we were able to bring a bit of that into some of the conversations. It was a really cool vehicle for a lot of us artists in Toronto, struggling artists, to tell a story that had an audience. It definitely helped to have some Degrassi people. That helped us get it out there. It was a cool experience to be able to put something online with no studio executives or anyone dictating anything and just getting immediate feedback.
I think Teenagers was a good chance for me to learn how to incorporate my own experiences, but also to always remain curious and look outwards as well. That’s really important as a writer … be curious about other people as well as yourself because we’re all a lot more similar than some of us may think. The show’s reception showed that.
I was really surprised by some of the reactions because of a lot of the characters and situations. I just wanted to show these things. For example, a lot of people were super surprised but happy that the queer women ended up together. Queer characters’ storylines have ended in tragic ways.
MM: The “Bury Your Gays” trope.
MHM: Yes. I think, for a long time, we knew we wanted them to end up together. But seeing the way people started reacting online definitely empowered us more to be like, “Okay, we want to tell this right, and we’re going to finish off properly,” which is why we ended up doing three seasons.
Every time we finished the season, we were like, “Okay, that’s it. We can not do that again.” Because we were film students with a huge cast of actors. I think at one point we had 20 cast members. But it was difficult to wrangle. Overall, I think it was worth it in the end.
Inspirations and Goals
MM: What filmmakers have inspired you and your career the most?
MHM: I was inspired by Issa Rae. I guess filmmakers or artists that I saw use the internet and everything they had at their own disposal to make something great. Most of the movies we watched growing up were bigger budget studio films. There’s a sense of mystery about them. It’s hard to find out how they get made or who funds them. So, seeing someone do crowdfunding and plan her [Rae] process was really interesting. She allowed me and a lot of other filmmakers to realize our own projects and find out how to make them.
John Cassavetes is a great example of someone who did indie films before the indie film movement. I’m inspired by people who use their own resources and money to get their projects going when studios or other people ignore them. The further I get into the industry, the more I realize it’s almost impossible to get anything made.
People like that really inspire me and The Little Mermaid, as I said, whoever made that. I’m inspired by queer filmmakers that are able to get their films out there. I really love Weekend by Andrew Haigh. I love Wong Kar-wai from Hong Kong.
MM: Is there a genre you haven’t touched yet, but would like to explore more as a filmmaker?
MHM: I’m a huge horror fan. My first foray into filmmaking as a teenager was slasher films. I would make little slasher films with my family. I would literally put on a mask and be like, “Okay, mom, you have to be in the scene and you’re going to have to die. This is how it’s going to go down.”
I wonder what they were thinking. Once I got to film school, I started getting into things like Teenagers and Ghost and another film I made called Inside the Whale. They were more about queer people feeling a lot of feelings. I was more into drama. But I have a lot of horror scripts that I’d love to make. I hope to get back to my roots eventually.
I think horror is such an exciting genre because it allows you to explore. You can explore so many different themes and ideas through horror. I think it’s one of the more popular genres, but a lot of people don’t think about horror as worthy of attention or awards like drama.
It has just as much capacity for artistic expression and important conversations. I hope to tell more horror stories from a queer perspective and feature more queer characters. Horror as a genre is intrinsically queer. It’s very campy, it’s over the top and, you know, the underdog stories. As a queer person, I’ve always been interested in that and wanting to see more queer characters in that space. That’s definitely a goal of mine.
MM: What’s on the horizon for you?
MHM: Well, I just got a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to write a feature, which is going to be featuring the same character from Ghost. I’m working on the script with Mark who plays Benjamin and my friend Victoria Long, who’s also a great writer and director from Toronto. We’re going to follow Benjamin. It’s not the same story as Ghost, but it’s the same character.
He’s going to be encountering more trials and tribulations. We’re focusing on the healthcare system in Canada, and how sometimes queer people and people from marginalized backgrounds have difficulties with respect to accessing certain medications, especially HIV medications.
It was such a great experience working with Mark on Ghost. We came to the conclusion that we want to keep telling stories with that Benjamin character. Hopefully, this will be the first of a few different film projects featuring that character, and who knows, maybe in one of them he’ll walk into a haunted house and then we’ll have a horror film.
The Silly Stuff
MM: There you go! That’s so amazing. Congratulations! Have you binge-watched anything interesting during the pandemic?
MHM: I probably binge-watched too many things. Yet it still seems like it’s never enough. There’s still more stuff to watch. I just binge-watched the Amazon series Invincible this past week.
It’s so insane. I wish I read more comics. I’m very fascinated by comic books and I like the artistry of them. But I’m glad I didn’t read these comics because it would have spoiled it. It’s just a different take on the superhero genre and there are queer characters in it. Lots of blood. All the good stuff’s in there. I would definitely recommend that.
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I recently binge-watched a show called Search Party, which was so good. Probably one of the most absurd, goofiest, but emotional and funny shows I’ve ever seen. I’ve been binge-watching a lot of stuff. I consider it research.
MM: It’s research for work.
MHM: That’s one of the benefits of being a filmmaker and a writer. You can pretend you’re being productive when you’re just binging.
MM: Last question. Name your top five favorite films or anything that comes to mind.
MHM: Well, my favorite movie right now is this film called Three Colors: Blue, which is the first film in a trilogy made by the great Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski. The first one stars Juliette Binoche, who’s now a bigger international name. It actually came out the year I was born, in 1993.
It’s just a low-key but also really epic French movie about grief, and a woman who’s grieving her family and figuring out what her place is in the world. Juliette Binoche is one of my favorite actresses. That film always makes me cry. I just feel really at home when I’m watching it.
I love Bride of Frankenstein. I think that’s one of my favorite horror movies. There are so many genuinely beautiful moments in it. I love the scene when Frankenstein finds the blind man in the forest. It’s just a really cute scene. I love Frankenstein as a concept. Also, it had a gay director. After I found that out, I was like, “Okay, I have to stan this fully. I’m full-fledged stanning this now.”
I also love Jaws. That’s one of my comfort movies. I think it’s one of the most groundbreaking movies, even though I’m sad about the anti-shark propaganda because I love sharks. But it’s such a great film. I love Paddington too, like everybody else.
I love Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together, which is a great gay love story. But probably one of my favorite movies is Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
Just because I’m obsessed with Scooby-Doo and I love Daphne. Daphne was one of the first characters I think that helped me not necessarily come to terms with my queerness, but express it. In elementary school, I used to dress up in all purple and I would get bullied for it. Even though purple is a great color.
MM: It’s a fantastic color!
MHM: But definitely living my Daphne Blake fantasy. I think Zombie Island is a great, scary movie. It’s a great example of what Scooby-Doo can be as a concept, you know? There are real monsters. I love that movie. Definitely one of my comfort movies as well.
MM: Thank you so much for chatting with me!
MHM: Of course. Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day!
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Be sure to follow M.H. Murray on Instagram (@yarrumhm) and on Twitter (@yarrumhm). Click here to purchase passes for the 34th Connecticut LGBTQ Film Festival, which will run June 4 through June 13.
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What I do: I'm GGA's Managing Editor, a Senior Contributor, and Press Coordinator. I manage, contribute, and coordinate. Sometimes all at once. Joking aside, I oversee day-to-day operations for GGA, write, edit, and assess interview opportunities/press events.
Who I am: Before moving to Los Angeles after studying theater in college, I was born and raised in Amish country, Ohio. No, I am not Amish, even if I sometimes sport a modest bonnet.
Bylines in: Tell-Tale TV, Culturess, Sideshow Collectibles, and inkMend on Medium.
Critic: Rotten Tomatoes, CherryPicks, and the Hollywood Creative Alliance.
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