Dennis Staroselsky’s new short is as personal as it gets. Filled with family and friends –– and his frustrations about being a working actor –– “What It’s Like to Be Okay” is set to screen at several festivals this year.
Dennis Staroselsky is OK. In fact, he might be doing a little better than OK these days.
Staroselsky, an assistant teaching professor of theater at Northeastern University and an actor of stage and screen, is gearing up to head to the Pasadena International Film Festival, where the new short film he wrote, produced and starred in, “What It’s Like to Be Okay,” will screen to its first audience.
For an actor whose credits include Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit” and HBO’s “The Deuce,” it might seem like nothing new, but Staroselsky says he has never been more proud of a project. It doesn’t hurt that his daughter, Chiara, is his co-star.
“When it came time to do the short, I asked her, ‘Would you want to do it?’ and she was excited but adamant that I pay her a dollar,” Staroselsky says. “I did.”
For that reason and many others, “What It’s Like to Be Okay” is a deeply personal project for Staroselsky. Described by Staroselsky as “Tootsie” meets “Little Miss Sunshine,” the film follows Terry (Staroselsky), an actor whose dreams of making it in Hollywood persist even as they have started to curdle. He mostly drives an Uber and auditions, unsuccessfully, when he can.
We meet him just as he has, in his eyes, nailed an audition for an exciting project, one his agent tells him will change his career. At the same time, Terry has to balance his hopes for a long-stalled career with his duties as a husband and father, just as his daughter is acting in a school play.
Staroselsky’s script is inspired by his frustrations trying to make it as a working actor, along with the many experiences he and others have had in an industry that is more challenging than ever. In talking with his friend Noah Bean, he realized there was the foundation for a character study that also touched on universal truths about acting in Hollywood.
“‘It’s yours’ turns to ‘You’re still in the mix. You’re the frontrunner’ to ‘OK, they’re seeing a few other people,’” Staroselsky says. “Every actor has that story.”
Despite Staroselsky playing a man whose dreams have been unfulfilled, the project itself was a dream come true. Many creatives talk about their work being a labor of love, but “What It’s Like to Be Okay” was truly a family affair.
They filmed in Staroselsky’s house. Bean, a friend of 20 years, directed it, while Bean’s wife, Lyndsy Fonseca, plays Staroselsky’s wife in the film. Two Northeastern graduates, Staroselsky’s former students, were associate producers. Staroselsky’s wife was even the head of catering.
Naturally, the cherry on top was that Staroselsky’s daughter not only appears in the film but plays his fictional daughter. The energy and wonder that his daughter brought to the set was infectious and, similar to how things play out in the film, reminded Staroselsky of why he got into acting in the first place.
“She was just loving the experience, and I think that joy is also what the film is speaking about too, of falling in love with something like that,” Staroselsky says. “It’s a very pure thing before we get self-conscious and outside validation becomes important.”
Chiara Staroselsky will next appear as Lumiere in her elementary school’s production of “Beauty and the Beast.”
Pasadena is just the start of a festival run that will continue with the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival and the Block Island Film Festival, with more to come, Staroselsky hopes.
The success of “What It’s Like to Be Okay” is about more than how many festivals it screens at. As the first film project Staroselsky had ever produced and starred in, it was creatively reinvigorating, particularly at a time when he feels he has next to no agency in the industry as an actor.
“I got to do things [as an actor] that I’d never done before that were very much closer to who I feel I am and the topics that I wanted to explore,” Staroselsky says “Terry says, ‘I turned something special into something stupid.’ I think this experience … really turned something stupid back into something special.”