Andrew Stone and Vivek Sharma have created a new lesbian film that defines what it means to balance work and relationships.
When screenwriter and producer Andrew Stone approached his life-partner and film director, Vivek Sharma with a new script titled, The Plan, the duo began a journey that included scouring the internet for the perfect female lead, and eventually landing themselves in one surreal and fitting predicament: a spot in the Short Film Corner at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival this May.
The Plan, as Sharma puts it, is a slice of life. “It’s about struggle, it’s about moving forward, about carrying on. It’s about having Plan B,” he adds. Kat played by Abisha Uhl is a struggling musician who has to take care of her ill girlfriend while dealing with an overbearing boss (played by Nina Covalesky).
She’s trying to break into the music industry with the help of an interested record label owner (Jimmy Destri of Blondie) but must balance her love-life at the same time. “We really wanted some authenticity with the characters, so we wanted to actually cast a real musician and actually be able to use their music in the film, I think that was important to us,” says Stone. (The song “El Paso Blue” by Sick of Sarah is featured in the film.)
Stone and Sharma approached Abisha Uhl after Andrew discovered her band, Sick of Sarah. “We were looking in the vein of Tegan and Sara and when we saw Abisha, we were pretty blown away. Her energy, it just fit in so well with the character of Kat,” says Sharma.
“She’s going places.” They met Uhl in the outskirts of Montreal at a punk rock performance space where Uhl read a few lines from the script and confirmed their initial gut feelings.
From there, The Plan became a reality. A year and a half later, with the film festival circuit looming on the horizon, the film’s director and writer/producer muse over a certain Robert Burns poem, “To a Mouse”, of which the film’s message says: “The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.”
“With Kat, one of the core things that she lives by is the status of her art, her individualism,” explains Sharma. Perhaps The Plan is about the idea of a stumble. “That stumble could be in the form of your boss, who’s not letting you move on any further… .
What matters is things that are important to you, like love in your life. She can always find new people to create a new record, or something like that. But what is valuable?”