It’s been argued that art imitates life and life imitates art. Thelma has its roots in a telephone scam that almost claimed writer Josh Margolin’s grandmother’s savings.

“After my grandpa passed away in 2013, she was living alone for the first time in her life in her nineties, which was this weird moment of loss and transition, but also of this newfound independence. She’d never really lived alone or had that much time and space to herself,” says Margolin about the lead character in her film.

“The scam call that happens in the movie is almost verbatim to the scam call she received in real life, where a pretty similar series of events unfolded. She got a call, someone pretending to be me saying I was in jail and that I hit a pregnant woman with my car,” elaborates Margolin.

The family believed the scam, but fortunately, Josh was able to intervene before any money exchanged hands.

“That incident and that moment got my wheels turning, because she’d always been just such an unflappable and infallible force in my life and seeing her duped that way was kind of jarring. I started imagining what might have happened if she had sent the money and ventured out on her own to get it back.”

Josh Margolin. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

“Thelma became an excuse to tell that story with the trappings of a genre that I’ve always loved, which is action,” mentions Josh.

Thelma straddles equally between character drama and action with less than subtle nods to Mission Impossible, but with a scooter rather than a motorcycle.

“The notion of trying to take those film tropes, shrink them down and use them sincerely, but in a more everyday way to celebrate her grit and resilience, made me feel there’s really something here.”

Thelma avoids the typical clichés of elderly citizens being unable to understand modern technology. Anyone can fall victim to a telephone scam. Thelma Post examines old age more than ageing in her story.

A Tale Of Two Genres

Thelma is both a drama and action film rather than a hybrid of the two. Each genre progresses independently, and other times, they intersect. “That was definitely something that was top of mind for the whole process because we never wanted it to feel like parody. We never wanted to feel like punching down. The most exciting thing about the movie was trying to take those tropes, and weave them in,” adds Josh.

Margolin welcomed the challenge of balancing the grounded character elements of Thelma’s life and bridging the gap with the explosive action sequences. Since the character was based on his grandma, Josh would periodically perform gut checks during his writing to ask what she might do in a particular situation. What lengths would she go to?

“Where do we cross that line into something that feels too broad or too goofy, as opposed to, this has some absurdity to it because the premise has a little bit of that built in?” postures Margolin.

“There was always a sense of wanting to make sure that things felt motivated by character, even if we pushed them into some genre territory. We wanted to make sure we were always psychologically aligned with Thelma’s mission, her needs and her desire to do this. We let the character lead the push.”

We played it straight, not winking at it from inside the movie.

From Pitch To Screen

It’s always helpful to have producers who are also friends to shepherd Thelma into production.

Producers Zoë Worth and Chris Kaye and Josh Margolin are members of Rock & Roll Universe, a writers group that meet once a week. Margolin brought his idea for Thelma to the group and Zoë and Chris responded positively to it.

“They were really excited about it and had been looking for something to make. So we started talking about the possibility of trying to get it off the ground together.”

This was a serendipitous time without a formal pitching process. The real heavy lifting began in trying to find financing partners. Margolin also created a look book as a visual tool. “I made a very detailed packet to really signal the tone, the feeling, and the aspiration in terms of what I wanted to make.”

Josh was always attached to direct, so it was imperative that all the partners full understood his vision from that perspective.

He wrote the screenplay in 2019. Once June Squibb signed on for the lead role around 2021, the other elements fell into place. “We were lucky to get to June through a mutual pal, Beanie Feldstein, who was an actress who had worked with June on a movie. Beanie very generously sent June the script. It added a personal touch, and was a nice connection point rather than simply submitting via her agents with a note about why we wanted her to play that role.”

“Something we did throughout the process of trying to attach cast was I would always go through the script with Zoë and Chris with an eye to who was reading it. We would look at it through that voice and make sure that any little tweaks we could make would feel like it would sit right in this version of the character.” They would only send the script to people they were genuinely interested in working with and gave them as much context as possible.

Thelma (June Squibb) & Daniel (Fred Hechinger) Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Eventually, they partnered with CAA Indie Finance when they had “enough pieces of the puzzle,” June Squibb, Fred Hechinger (grandson Daniel), and Richard Roundtree (Ben). Margolin notes that all the financing was secured a lot closer to production than we might think.

“We found really wonderful partners in this company called Zurich Avenue who financed the film outright. They came on, I think in the summer, and we ended up shooting in that fall, October to November.”

Thelma premiered at Sundance and Magnolia purchased the distribution rights.

A Period Of Transition

Thelma paces itself with gentle ebbs and flows with the occasional explosion to remind audiences this is mainly an action movie. As a character piece, it touches on many themes including autonomy, ageing, and anxiety.

“It’s about not counting people out and not being ashamed of needing help. There are ways to hold on to your sense of self, even in times when you have to compromise that a little bit. People are sometimes capable of things that we don’t give them credit for,” elaborates Margolin.

“I think it can feel, as I’ve seen with my own grandma, like the world is getting smaller and your life that you once knew is shrinking.”

“Every character is going through a transitional moment in their lives. Those anxieties, those fears and those moments are pinging off each other. That alchemy fuels the script.”

“Each person, not just June, going through this moment of reckoning with their relationship to their family and with their own independence.”

“Thelma sets out to get her money back, but also to try to prove to her family, to herself,  that she’s capable of it, that she’s someone who can still affect the world and be a force to be reckoned with. By the end of it, she lets herself accept the fact that she isn’t what she was, but there can still be dignity and a sense of self retained in embracing that shift, while hanging onto that kind of spunky, single-minded, determined nature,” explains the filmmaker.

In her journey, Thelma pursues a romance with Ben. Initially, it was companionship. “I don’t even think of it so much as a romance, as much of as a romantic friendship or a partnership. I think they are two sides of a coin in terms of how they are experiencing this moment in their lives.”

“Ben is embracing, and maybe almost hiding, in these comforts by not engaging with the world. Thelma is the opposite side of the coin, where she’s so unwilling to accept any of those support systems and pretty much doing it on her own. But that has its own failings because maybe if she was living the life that Richard was living, she wouldn’t have fallen for the scam because she would have this community of people around her.”

“It’s two people who are finding each other in a moment in life when there’s just so many different ways to reckon with that transition and they are able to bring out a little bit of the opposing instinct in each other. And in that way, they find some equilibrium.”

“In finding each other, they’re also finding the threads of the, the life they’ve lived together and getting to reminisce through things with someone who has a shared past. It helps with their trust for each other and the intimacy that develops.”

This sentiment is captured nicely when June and Ben are on the road as he helps her get her money back. He’s acting as a    friend more than a knight in shining armor out to rescue her.

“There’s a moment on the bench where she’s talking about living alone for the first time and how she misses her husband. But she also just tried sushi and she liked it.”

“I think something about those things crashing into each; the melancholy, but also the joy, the weirdness and the little discoveries that come along with this new phase. I think something about that moment feels very essential to her experience.”

What Sparks Josh Margolin’s Imagination?

“What excites me most are movies that somehow find a way to feel really personal and relatable, but do so in a way that also feels very visual, very cinematic, and very expressive.”

“I’m honestly a big fan of horror for that reason. It’s always such an exciting way to express very human feelings in a sometimes inhuman way and getting to play in those metaphors.”

“Sometimes the puzzle of that is trying to find ways to make things that might feel disparate actually feed each other in an unexpected way. If I can crack that, that always feels like a joy.“