When Eric Forbes answered a call to do a film about mental health, one thought came to mind: Why not do a comedy?
There were two reasons for the unorthodox approach. One, he guessed, correctly, that other filmmakers would pitch brooding movies to give the serious topic the weight it deserved. His own attempt, laughing at the darkly funny moments that, say, anxiety can bring, would likely stand out. And the second reason? Zach Myers.
Forbes, a video production contractor and graduate student at Colorado State University, met Myers at a filmmakers’ meetup at The Lyric in Fort Collins. Filmmakers gather there every month to show off their work and have discussions about it. Forbes, along with others in the group, quickly learned to appreciate Myers’ gift for being funny.
Zach Myers and Eric Forbes. Photo by Kate Stahla. Featured image (top): Eric Forbes (left), Zach Myers (right), Sadie Stalker (seated), behind the scenes. Photo by Mollie McCoy.
“Comedy is a hard thing to balance,” Forbes says, “but Zach regularly gets the room to laugh.”
Myers, 30, moved to Fort Collins a couple years ago and works independently in video production. The film community is what brought him to Fort Collins.
“Every town tries to have a film community, but Fort Collins stands out because it has film professionals,” Myers says. “You see high-production stuff every month. And it’s a welcoming place.”
Myers contributes to a video series about wellness on YouTube called “Sloth Pond,” and his humor deals with the kinds of awkward, anxiety-ridden characters and situations that made shows such as “The Office” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” so successful.
As it turns out, his sense of humor was perfect for the project.
The result is “Clubbing,” a film Forbes and Myers made for Voices With Impact, a project of the national nonprofit, Art With Impact. The organization gives $7,500 grants to 10 filmmakers around the country to shoot short features on different topics each year. Past themes were climate change and burnout (2023), grief and resilience (2022) and stories of Black, immigrant and queer people (2021 and 2020). “Clubbing,” along with others on mental health, premiers on the Voices With Impact website on June 6 as part of the organization’s annual film festival.
The film follows an awkward college student trying to find the right club to join. It explores cliques, the propensity to follow your own niche and how difficult it can be to put yourself out there.
Sadie Stalker, lead actor of “Clubbing,” during filming. Photo by Eric Forbes.
“We are still trying to say something meaningful,” Forbes says, “but we wanted to make it more universal and relatable.”
Voices With Impact receives hundreds of applications a year. Forbes is the first applicant to receive the grant two years in a row. Last year he worked on a movie with Jaime Jacobsen, an assistant professor at CSU and longtime filmmaker, on the climate anxiety felt by farmers and ranchers.
“The film was poetic and well put together,” says Chris Hyde, director of film studies with Voices With Impact, about the film Forbes and Jacobsen collaborated on. “His all-around way of getting a story told is very impressive. When people can work across different genres, it shows they have a special talent.”
It helped to have Forbes’ name attached to “Clubbing,” but Myers’ script was selected on its own merits, Hyde says.
“Of all the years we’ve done this, this first draft was really one of the best scripts we’ve ever seen,” Hyde says. “We love the different ways of tapping into mental health. We don’t always want a serious, heavy film.”
Actors Charlotte Daysh, Luke Dalley and Peter Young during filming. Photo by Eric Forbes.
After Voices With Impact selected their project last fall, Forbes and Myers began meeting every week in November and had a script done by January. They set up locations in Fort Collins—the main ones were the University Center for the Arts and the Clark C building on the CSU campus—and began filming in February. They had a little help from Austin Wang, a set designer on the HBO hit, “The Last of Us,” who mentored them while they created their own sets.
Forbes and Myers edited in March and finished just before the April 1 deadline by pulling a few all-nighters. Forbes says, half-seriously, that they probably made “a few pennies an hour” with the grant. It’s the biggest thing either one has worked on as main producers.
“It was nice to be able to pay people and have it be an actual production that the community could work on,” Myers says.
Hyde says past grant winners have gone on to do bigger films, though it’s doubtful you’ve heard of any of them. That’s fine with Myers, who likes the filmmakers’ group because most of them don’t need to be the next Martin Scorsese. They love making films as a way to burn off the stress from making a living, he says. He’d love to make another movie with Forbes, but in the meantime, he hopes to pursue his passion of making comedy shorts while creating corporate videos.
“I think there are some in the group making passion projects,” Myers says, “but for the most part, we are working and living free lives. I plan to keep at both.”
Where to watch:
“Clubbing” and the other films premiere at voiceswithimpact.com/filmfestival on June 6 and are free to watch during festival events. “Clubbing” will also be available for NOCO Style readers to view from June 27-July 30 at bit.ly/vwi24collection.