Private Project

JUNKET

Chaos ensues as a gay actor and his female costar fake being a couple as they try to save the press junket for their new YA show.


  • Elizabeth Archer
    Director
  • Nick Pugliese
    Writer
    School Spirits, Dramarama, Thank You for Being Here
  • Sarah Yarkin
    Writer
    School Spirits, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Platonic
  • Nick Pugliese
    Producer
    School Spirits, Dramarama, Thank You for Being Here
  • Sarah Yarkin
    Producer
    School Spirits, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Platonic
  • Elizabeth Archer
    Producer
  • Nick Pugliese
    Key Cast
    "Nik"
    School Spirits, Dramarama, Thank You for Being Here
  • Sarah Yarkin
    Key Cast
    "Sara"
    School Spirits, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Platonic
  • Peyton List
    Key Cast
    "Jane"
    School Spirits, Cobra Kai
  • Spencer Macpherson
    Key Cast
    "Michael"
    School Spirits, Degrassi: Next Class
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Comedy, Lgbtq, Mockumentary
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes 10 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 22, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    7,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Elizabeth Archer

Based in Los Angeles, Elizabeth Archer is a left-of-center director + writer who creates stories rooted in vibrant, stylized worlds and has a funny bone for offbeat, comedic filmmaking. Her cheeky sensibility, visual aesthetic and playful tone breathes life into both her narrative and commercial work. She explores the absurdities of modern life from an emotional palette of both subtle, nuanced performances and hilarious physical comedy.
During her time in Los Angeles, Elizabeth has worked for companies such as Hello Sunshine, 20th Century Fox, Netflix and PRETTYBIRD. She is a member of Free The Work and signed as a freelance treatment designer at The Betterment Society. Most recently, she directed and wrote her first national broadcast commercial campaign for Copper Cow Coffee, Visible|Verizon Wireless and the first five episodes of Hulu’s Dot & Brie: Talk TV. She is currently represented for commercials at SLMBR PRTY and for literary at 42 Management & Production.
When she isn’t writing her bio in third person, she enjoys listening to true crime podcasts and visiting urgent care for her seasonal allergies.

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Director Statement

Sarah and Nick met on the set of School Spirits. It didn’t take long for them to become very close very quick…so close, that they started talking about how funny it would be to fake being in a relationship for the press. It would possibly be a hard sell, given that Nick is very gay and has only ever played queer characters, yet they couldn’t stop talking about it. Was it just a bit…or something more? They pitched the idea to just about anyone who would listen (they swear they got a couple nods, a few polite giggles). Eventually…it dawned on them that people had to just see it to fully understand it. Alas, Junket was born.

Finding the right director to bring the script to life was easy. Nick has collaborated with comedy filmmaker Elizabeth Archer for years - her eye for directing nuanced performances, hilarious physical comedy and crafting clever camera movements made her the perfect candidate for the job. Comedy grows from honesty and relatability - a personal experience in the story allowed Elizabeth to breathe dimension and life into the snappy dialogue and all the little moments in-between.

Our characters, Nik and Sara, are really just heightened, insufferable versions of themselves. We want to explore the idea of celebrities in today’s modern, social media-obsessed culture, where a person living in the public eye is expected to share every moment of their life with the entire world. We’re also poking fun at the public desire for “access” into celebrities lives, parodying these interviews and press designed to let people in on who these actors “really are”..while they are ironically just playing characters of themselves.

We aim to hold a mirror to some of the most ridiculous things we’ve experienced firsthand in this industry. We asked ourselves…what it would look like if two eccentric actors tried to use this public obsession for their own, selfish benefit at a time when the industry its so aware of and focused on authenticity and representation? We’re making a statement about queerness, representation in Hollywood, the facade of celebrity and press, the bleeding of on and off camera life that is happening due to social media and society’s expectations of what a “famous person” should be. You know, all while having fun and making people laugh while we do it.