Melora Hardin

After gaining popularity on the hit show "The Office," as well as films like "17 Again" and "27 Dresses," Melora decided to begin a project of her own. TheCelebrityCafe's Stephanie Pappas spoke with Melora about the trials that come with writing, producing, directing and funding the film she stars in and how it feels to accomplish such a powerful goal.

SP: Melora, tell me what the story of the film 'You' is all about.

MH: It's a love story; it's about love and loss. The basic gist asks the question what if you lost your soul mate. It's very touching and very moving, but ultimately it's uplifting and life-affirming and kind of the opening of people's hearts, that seems to be the consensus.

SP: It sounds very serious.

MH: Yes it is. We get some little funny bits but it is a drama.

SP: How did you come up with or discover the story of the film?

MH: Well, the first scene of the movie happens in Rawdon's and Miranda's bed where they are kind of basking in that wonderful, blissful time of having a new child, their first child. During that scene Miranda has a daydream about what it would be like to be at their daughter Quincy's wedding, and she kind of speeds forward in her mind and imagines what her wedding speech might be.

Actually that scene really did happen in our lives, when we had our first daughter we were basking in that bubble of new parenthood. I had that fantasy and my husband went away a few weeks after that to work on a show. He came back three days later with the script. So that's what spawned the whole idea for, what he explained as the writer, as sort of imagining how much he loved me and what it would be like without me or if I were not around anymore.

SP: So the story is extremely personal then.

MH: Yes it is, even more so because my husband wrote it and I directed it, and our kids are in it, and my parents are in it, and lots of good friends contributed in different ways.

SP: Is the character you play the mother figure?

MH: My character is the mother and the wife, so ultimately I stay very alive in his imagination. She [my character] kind of hangs around to help and hinder overcoming his grief, it's kind of magical. There's some magic realism in it, it was nice to explore that.

We just screened the movie in Vegas and a woman came up to both of us and just burst into tears. She said 'You have no idea, I lost my husband 5 years ago and you just wrote my life. I was just talking to him before I came over here today.'

So it's really touching when people connect with the movie that way. We luckily haven't lost anybody, for us this is just a what if, but we feel that anybody who has really found their soul mate or their partner in life, everyone has had that fear, even if they come home a little later than they said they would. And certainly in Los Angeles, you can kind of imagine the free life. I think everybody has had that fear at one time or another with somebody they love so it definitely strikes a universal chord.

SP: It must be such a great accomplishment for you, because you luckily haven't gone through something so trying, but to connect with people who have.

MH: Yes, we really just didn't know how it was going to be received, and the fact that it had such an incredible healing quality for people is another thing that we weren't necessarily trying to make, but it just became that kind of a movie and that's such a lovely byproduct.

And we're already finding now that we are probably going to screen it with Comfort Camp, a camp for kids who have lost somebody. They get to go to it for free and have the normal camp experiences but they also get to meet with therapists and talk about their grief. They want to screen our movie for 600 members in L.A.

We are about to launch a road trip where we will screen it for people and do Q & As, so that should be exciting. We're going to start in Scranton, Penn., where obviously "The Office" is, with a screening on the 25th. It should be a lot of fun. The last time I was in Scranton everyone was so kind. I'm looking forward to coming back.

SP: So not only did you star in the film, but you directed it as well. That must have been hard work!

MH: It was hard work. There were a lot of different complex hats that I was wearing. There were a lot of relationship that can be and have been historically complicated; you know star/director, director/producer, writer/director, husband and wife, mommy and daddy. We had many rolls. There of course were many roles that were complicated for sure, but I would say overall we are not getting divorced, we love each other and we are hoping to do more movies.

SP: You said most of the cast involved was family members, was there anyone outside the family you needed to cast to fit a certain image?

MH: We knew that little Quincey would be our daughter, Piper, who was the baby in the film, and we knew that our oldest daughter Rory would be Quincy from ages 4-7. Then we had to cast someone from 11-16 because we knew that Allison Mack was going to play Quincey from 16-21. She's someone that my mom managed for many years, and we cast Kristi Lauren, who plays Quincey from 11-16. We did a casting call and Kristi just had the right qualities and the right look and she's really a wonderful little actress. She came into our new family and became part of our 'You' family as I say.

The cast also needed different boyfriends. They are Yuval David and Adam Taylor Brooks, who were both just perfect for the part; youthful, good-looking guys that just had the right qualities.

SP: Did you cast any real life boyfriend?

MH: Yes I did! The man playing my brother was my very first boyfriend. His name is Don Michael Paul and it was actually my husband's idea. We ran into Don on the street and Gildart said he would be perfect.

We were a little concerned because the only character we hadn't cast was the brother and that was the most important. Everyone else already knew what it would feel like to sit around the table, you know I had done it, my mom and dad had their dinner table. We were casting one other person, but he had never been familiar with the family table, dinner-time energy. Don had, he was in my life for five years and many times sat around my parents' dinner table, so it was kind of a good thing because the dinner table is like the heart of the movie. It's the family itself, the family meeting place in the film, it reoccurs many times.

SP: How long did filming take?

MH: We shot it in 18 days, very fast, and then we took about almost two years to do the post on it. The post [production] was very long.

SP: Were you working on other projects as well during post production?

MH: Yes I was working on "The Office" and I was doing movies like "17 Again," but we were also spending our own money, so we were kind of just taking it as we went. The most expensive part of the process for us was the post on the movie.

SP: So for shooting the film that quickly you probably had to be pretty organized on set.

MH: We definitely did. I mean my husband and I did a lot of hard work, we had an amazing assistant director, Damon van Deusen, who was incredibly helpful, we had an amazing cinematographer, Kev Robertson, and we had great sound people who did a really clean soundtrack so we didn't need a lot of fixes. We feel it's very important to have good food on the set, you know a well-fed crew is a happy crew, so we employed the help of all our good friends to bring their signature dish to the set every day. Everybody just couldn't wait until lunch time to see what they were getting. We had really excellent food every day, which is really cool.

SP: It sounds like everything was so full of life!

MH: It really was. Often my husband and I would be scrambling eggs in the morning so the crew could have a hot breakfast while we were getting out makeup done. It was pretty full and packed every minute, I can't say that I had a second to do anything else. But I liked that about it. I felt very utilized and that all my gifts and skills were needed of me every day.

SP: Now I understand the film will not be released in theatres?

MH: We will be screening it in theatres, but at the moment it's released exclusively online. People can get it from the website, which is youthefilm.com, and they can also download it from iTunes and Amazon. If they get it from our website, though, they get all the great extras; the background, the making of the movie, interviews with the cast and crew, deleted scenes and outtakes.

SP: Was there any particular reasoning behind releasing it online?

MH: I think that there are a few things. One is it's really exciting to think that people can read the article, see me in "The Office," wonder what else I'm doing, look it up and immediately be able to watch the movie. If they want they can download it and within 5 to ten minutes they can see the film. It's a really great thing.

I also like that it can cross a lot of boundaries. I love that this is the future. There are so many beautiful films out there that if they don't get picked up by someone, like Miramax or Fox or whatever, they just kind of fade out. I know how passionate I am about my film and I know that there are a lot of other filmmakers out there that are just as passionate about their films. And that doesn't mean that they are all good, but if we can sort of make headway here then we can hopefully exemplify for a lot of other films.

SP: That whole idea seems very inspirational.

MH: Thank you. I think it's very exciting, an exciting time for artists in general. People haven't quite figured out the internet yet, and it's sort of this incredible canvas that we can all kind of splash our thoughts and ideas on and people can kind of come and see what it's all about. It's a neat way of creative connection and I think our film is all about connection and family. I think the internet has the capacity to create a huge community and connection.

SP: How did you go about actually promoting the film?

MH: I've done some interviews with sites and the traditional stuff, like I was on Chelsea Lately talking about it. My friend posted it up on her site, hungrygirl. We send it around to people we think are interested based on what their sites are and that's been successful to some extent. I think we are finding and learning as we go that there's not a lot of examples.

I'm very excited because we did a piece on Entertainment Tonight, which has millions and millions of viewers so hopefully we will be able to pull them to our side. We're finding that when we screen the film and then have a Q & A to get people talking they understand how personal it was and get connected. They feel very emotional towards the film after hearing from the filmmakers.

SP: After funding the film yourself, do you have any goals financially?

MH: We would like to make our money back. We're keeping a counting record so that we can show people we did make our money back. We would love to make a profit because we ultimately would love to make another movie. I just don't know if we could actually make a movie for as little as we did this time because we actually pulled every favor in the book, you can't do that too many times. So we hope we can afford to make another movie and to pay people a little bit more. We did it on an experimental budget and we really needed a lot of help, so the thought of growing the money to find patrons that might help support what we are doing is exciting. We want to create a library of films because that's the way to make great films, keep making more films.

SP: It sounds like you have a great circle around you for future films.

MH: We do. WEe have a great circle and a great community of actors and professionals in all fields. We're fortunate. I'm really fortunate to have a family full of talent, both my parents are actors and my husband is as well.

SP: You've had so many comedy-based roles like "The Office" and "17 Again," how was it to play a more serious role this time?

MH: It was great; it's funny because as a child actress I was constantly cast in dramas, very rarely would I do comedy. It's always really fun to just mix it up. This happens to be a drama and that's the way it came out and I think great comedy is just the same as great drama, and it comes from truth which makes it work.

SP: What was your favorite part about the whole experience?

MH: The family adventure that we went on. Our kids were little at the time, and it was definitely a team effort, we all kind of came together and prepped the kids for what was going to happen. We had two nannies working around the clock and basically said all right everybody hold on to the ship. We were doing something for the first time and together as a family and there's just something very bonding about that and very special.

"You" is now available on the web at youthefilm.com, iTunes and Amazon.