Private Project

MAKE ME A PIZZA

A woman tells a pizza delivery guy she can't pay for the pizza she ordered. But can the sex she offers instead of currency possibly equate to the true value of a pizza? Is there anything that can be worthy of pizza, aside from what the market has decided? Together the two decide that their only option is to become the pizza object themselves, to make each other into pizza, in order to become free.

  • Talia Shea Levin
    Director
    NEXT TIME, ISOLATIONS
  • Woody Coyote
    Writer
  • Katie Peabody
    Writer
  • Talia Shea Levin
    Writer
  • Kara Grace Miller
    Producer
    GIRL WITH THE GREY EYES, LOVE SUCKS
  • Talia Shea Levin
    Producer
  • Sofie Somoroff
    Associate Producer
    RIDE BABY RIDE, LOVE IS A FIRE
  • Woody Coyote
    Key Cast
    "Pizza Delivery Guy"
    ANCHORAGE
  • Sophie Neff
    Key Cast
    "Hungry Lady"
    ALL THE WAY DOWN, THIS TIME
  • Lynn Hong
    Editor
    CAKE
  • Vittoria Campaner
    Director of Photography
    NINA & IRENA, DYE RED
  • Amelia Steely
    Production Designer
    DO REVENGE
  • Felicia Armstrong
    Intimacy Coordinator
    CARTER, COWBOY, CHOKER, HARNESS, HEART
  • Matt Bernstein
    Composer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Comedy, Fantasy
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 25 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    16mm film, Broadcast tube camera
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.33, 1.66.1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • SXSW Film & TV Festival
    Austin, Texas
    World Premiere
    Midnight Short Competition
  • Cinequest
    San Jose, California
  • Calgary Underground Film Festival
    Calgary, AB
  • HollyShorts Screenplay Contest

    Finalist
  • MovieMaker Magazine

    Production Services Program
  • AFI

    DWW+ Finalist
  • FilmQuest

    Top 10 Short Screenplay Finalist
  • Katra Film Series

    Short Screenplay Finalist
Director Biography - Talia Shea Levin

Talia is a Director, Writer, and Producer for film, theater, and virtual reality. She uses speculative storytelling and non-naturalistic narrative techniques, from dance to science-fiction, to create worlds that help us see our own more clearly.

Her short film NEXT TIME took home an Audience Award at the Academy Award-Qualifying Nashville Film Festival and also screened at HollyShorts Film Festival. Her dance films have been featured across international platforms and festivals including Short of the Week, NOWNESS, Source Creative, The Cut Magazine, and Dance Camera West. Her short film MAKE ME A PIZZA had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

Her music videos for artists like Jordana Lilly and BURNS have over five million total views online, and she maintains a focus on story in her advertising and industrial directing work for clients such as Uber ATG, Caseworx educational videos, and NanoString Technologies.

She has served on the jury for the National Film Festival For Talented Youth and the L.A. Dance Film Festival, and is a member of Amsterdam and Mexico-based art collective Snowapple and the Festival Director for their Jardin Rouge Film Festival. She is also a Filmmaking Mentor for the Latino Film Institute’s Youth Cinema Project.

She holds a degree in Directing and Screenwriting from Carnegie Mellon University, and has expanded her education through work with extraordinary filmmakers like Apichatpong Weerasethakul (UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES), Josephine Decker (MADELINE'S MADELINE), and Paula Wagner (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE). She is also certified in Mental Health First Aid and has trained in intimacy coordination with Theatrical Intimacy Education.

She likes goat cheese on her pizza.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Realism is deceit. The artifice and mess of passion and pizza provide a deeper truth, provide generative chaos or, at the very least, provide entertainment - itself a sacred catalyst for hope.

The concept for MAKE ME A PIZZA began as a joke with co-writer and lead actor Woody Coyote. A Marxist porno, the pizza boy trope taken to its most illogical conclusion; it just made us laugh. Plus, I had a half-cooked dream of abandoning the indie film industry to become a feminist porn director. I’ve got the love of artifice down, but I’m probably too picky about shooting on film to make it far in porn today, so my friends and co-creators (and a pandemic) convinced me to keep that dream in the oven until the cheese really started bubbling.

I dove into the script more in earnest in the depths of 2020 when I needed joy like raw dough needs water, and because I believed audiences would find genuine joy in the sauce, too. I wanted to use intimacy the way people use violence in horror, to pick under the skin and get to the gooey heart of things, but there was more work to do to uncover how.

The idea kept cooking and I took the time to study intimacy coordination and theatrical clowning while my collaborators each added their signature ingredients throughout our devising process until our absurdist, erotic, anti-capitalist fantasia was hot and ready. The pizza party then grew to include the incredible and predominantly queer and female or non-binary cast and crew who offered their very valuable labor to a fresh pie of a broadcast camera, 16mm, practical effects, consent-forward, cheesy, disgusting, glorious, greasy pizza film I am excited to deliver to the world.