‘Stress Positions’ Director, Cast on Making COVID Into Comedy

Even years after vaccines allowed us to largely resume our normal lives, the COVID-19 pandemic remains an omnipresent force in American culture. From disruptions in supply chains that continue to impact prices to lifestyle changes such as a spike in remote work that permanently altered our economy, the lingering effects of the pandemic are impossible to avoid. But for all of the disruption that the events of 2020 caused, pop culture is still largely proceeding as if nothing happened.

Theda Hammel’s “Stress Positions” looks to change that. The Sundance hit stars John Early as a gay soon-to-be-divorcee who struggles to live up to his liberal talking points as his life crumbles in the summer of 2020. The satirical film fully embraces the pandemic, never hesitating to mock the ways it shaped American culture for the worse. Following the film’s premiere, Hammel, Early, and co-stars John Roberts and Qaher Harhash stopped by the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox, to discuss their fearless approach to weaving the pandemic into the story.

“It emerged out of the pandemic,” Hammel, who also stars in “Stress Positions,” said of the film. “It was very acute in culture, in the world, and it just seemed like any thought that anyone could have had to branch out from that. In our narratives, there is an attempt to suppress or repress or ignore or erase this time of crisis. One of the ways we were able to go in on that moment was through…