We Should Get Dinner!

Comedy

Sep 29

Written By Mike Ambs

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A film by Eliza Jiménez Cossio & Lexi Tannenholtz

After their parents divorce, ex-step-siblings Abby and Sean are forced to confront if they were ever really family.

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Directed by
Eliza Jiménez Cossio, Lexi Tannenholtz

Director of Photography by
Christine Ng

Produced by
Lexi Tannenholtz

Music by
Andrew Kerr

Editing by
Jon Higgins

Featuring
Eliza Jiménez Cossio, Anthony Oberbeck, Moss Perricone, Tim Barnes

Directors Statement

We Should Get Dinner! is a chaotic comedy about bottled-up anger and the different boundaries people have in relationships.

Abby runs into Sean, her ex-stepbrother, who she has not spoken to since their parents’ ugly divorce. Sean is looking to move on with his life, while Abby is looking for someone to walk her down the aisle. We start with Abby running late to meet Sean on a busy East Village street, then we settle into a small, crowded restaurant where their conversation oscillates from awkward pleasantries to full on fighting. At the height of their intense face off, Abby slices her hand with glass and the blood renders Sean hysterical. We follow them to the hospital where some semblance of stillness is finally reached when they confront their base question of: what do they mean to each other?

*Eliza Jiménez Cossio, Lexi Tannenholtz*

Through their tumultuous dinner, we explore the larger questions about all kinds of relationships: What happens to people who drift from your life? What happens if they come back? What do you want to say to them, if anything at all? And what if it's not how you expected it to be? We all have our own versions of broken relationships, and this film seeks to find the weird, nostalgic, sad, and sometimes hopeful nature of them. People often say “we should get dinner” when they don’t have the intention to follow through with it -- this film explores what happens if you do get dinner with that person you actually didn’t want to get dinner with in the first place!

Updates

Q&A with Lexi Tannenholtz & Eliza Jiménez Cossio

“We wanted to be very intentional with every joke and line of dialogue, no filler, all killer as they say. You be the judge! But more so, if we're gonna put people through this dizzying scene of constant back and forth, every word needs to push the story forward and tell us something about these characters.”

Featured

Lexi Tannenholtz is a filmmaker based in NYC. She is currently in post-production on Chestnut by Jac Cron starring Natalia Dyer with Utopia Films and Shudder’s Bad Things by Stewart Thorndike starring Gayle Rankin and Molly Ringwald. She also just wrapped production on Booger by Mary Dauterman starring Grace Glowicki which took part in the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival Creators Market.

Featured

Eliza Jiménez Cossio (she/her) is a chicana writer and actor, currently writing for Fred Armisen’s This Fool (Hulu) and Taika Waititi’s Our Flag Means Death (HBO Max), previously One Day at a Time (Netflix) and Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas (HBO).