U-M Creative Currents

Disfluency

• Arts Initiative • Season 3 • Episode 1

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In today’s episode of U-M Creative Currents, we’re diving into the inspiring journey of two talented University of Michigan graduates—Anna Baumgarten ('15), writer and director, and Danny Mooney ('08), producer. Their award-winning feature film Disfluency is making waves on the film festival circuit and is gearing up for its wider release in theaters and on streaming platforms.

Disfluency follows Jane, a college student who, after failing her final class, returns to her family’s lake house to grapple with the trauma that derailed her senior year. As she confronts her past, she uncovers the complex layers of her emotional struggles. With over 12 U-M alumni contributing to the crew, this deeply personal project highlights the power of collaboration and storytelling.

Tune in to hear Anna and Danny discuss the creative process, the impact of their U-M education, and what it takes to bring a powerful, personal story to the screen.



Season 3, Ep.: Anna Baumgarten, Danny Mooney


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[00:00:07.105] Mark Clague:

Welcome to Creative Currents, a Michigan Arts Initiative podcast, where we discuss collaborative creativity and how the arts can spark meaningful conversations. I'm your host, Mark Clague, and today we're joined by two talented University of Michigan graduates from LSA's Film, Television, and Media program, writer-director Anna Baumgarten and producer Danny Mooney. Their feature film titled Disfluency is winning awards on the film festival circuit and is about to launch into wider release, both in theaters and on streaming services. It's always great to talk with successful U of M graduates who are out there making art happen. So welcome to the show, Anna and Danny. Thank you so much for having us 

[00:00:42.357] Anna Baumgarten:

Yeah, thank you.


[00:00:43.558] Mark Clague:

So Anna, let's start with you. Disfluency, like where did this idea come from?


[00:00:48.164] Anna Baumgarten:

where this story came from was I experienced a personal trauma in college that was hard to go through, confusing. I didn't share it with a lot of people. I tried to put it in a box and put it on a shelf and forget about it. But I couldn't because trauma has a way of coming out. and it comes out through your body. It comes up in your life. And so I started writing a short script because that's what I do with my feelings. I write them down and work through them. And that short script is something we ended up making. And it was, that short script was like really well received and we ended up making it into a feature film.


[00:01:30.709] Mark Clague:

So tell us, give us like a brief synopsis. And it sounds like this is autobiographical or semi-autobiographical or- It's shifted over time.


[00:01:38.737] Anna Baumgarten:

For sure. So it's not autobiographical. Jane is very much her own character. There are definitely parts of my life in the script and in the story. There's a lot of Michigan. We shot locally and largely in Commerce Township and in the metro Detroit area, which was a very special backyard at my parents' house and my grandmother's and my aunt's house.


[00:02:04.885] Mark Clague:

family members in the film or did they all escape? being in front of the camera.


[00:02:08.430] Anna Baumgarten:

They mostly escaped. My sister-in-law was a body double for our lead actress when we did reshoots. So she's actually in the trailer and she's like, there I am. That's amazing. Yeah.


[00:02:21.022] Mark Clague:

And there are a lot of Michigan people in the film, right? I mean, the two of you are graduates, but there are other Michigan graduates in the film?


[00:02:26.389] Danny Mooney:

I think we counted the other day. Was it 12? It was like 11 or 12 of you folks on the crew that we had either gone to school with or had just percolated into our circles over time, yeah.


[00:02:36.258] Mark Clague:

So it's really a Go Blue Thing. It's Michigan. It's shot in Michigan. It's a story inspired, you know, I think, by your experiences in college. What do you want, you know, what do you think is the message of the show? Or what is, like, Jane is this character, right? And she's a college student, and she flunks her last class, so she doesn't quite make it to the end of the runway to launch. And then she ends up back at home, and she's sort of processing this sort of mysterious thing that's gotten in her way.


[00:03:04.169] Anna Baumgarten:

Yeah. And you had... asked me for a summary, but you just did a beautiful job of giving us a synopsis. Well, I did watch the trailer. Yeah, and part of overcoming personal trauma is that you never, usually, you never fully overcome it, right? It's ongoing. It's never ending. It's continuing. So the point is not that, like, Jane is healed and fixed because that's not how life works. Like, that's just...


[00:03:28.514] Mark Clague:

Although we love our stories to end in that simple triumph, right? But that's not real.


[00:03:33.180] Anna Baumgarten:

Yeah, exactly. And so Jane does have triumphs, and it does end on a note of hope and continuing and to me that is real I never wanted to make or the reason I made this is because I felt like I had never seen anything that spoke to my own experience in a nuanced way there's so much confusion and imposter syndrome there's mania there's anger it's very complex and for me it came out in weird ways and I you know I've always seen this kind of kind of story told in like law and order SVU. And it's like, like really high key lighting and it's dark and it's scary and everything feels so cut and dry and they're going to catch the bad guy. And that's not what this is for most people.


[00:04:25.536] Mark Clague:

Yeah. Well, one of the sub themes I would say of the arts initiative is the role of the arts and mental health and wellness, right? That it's something that actually makes us better as people, helps us discover ourselves. I So I did my undergrad at Michigan, too, way back in the day, long before you two did. But creative writing was actually a really important class for me, I remember, just sort of putting my stories on paper. Nothing profound, you know, really, but just it was a part of self-discovery that was, you know, really, I think, important for the arts. So, Danny, I sort of got what Anna's doing as a screenwriter and the director, but what's a producer do?


[00:05:04.177] Danny Mooney:

I feel like the producer, and Anna and I produced together, Um, but a lot of it for this, especially like once Anna needed to shift into director gear was just really keeping the ship afloat. And in any indie film, you're going to get a lot of holes punched in that ship on a regular basis. So it was myself and Anthony who is our also U of MLM and also our co-producer on the film, um, basically just managing everything and just running everything. So that way we could just carve as big of a path as possible for Anna to just go and do her awesome work and not have


[00:05:36.172] Mark Clague:

day-to-day giving people to show up and there's the food here on time. Did this actor show up?


[00:05:41.476] Danny Mooney:

Yeah, and we had all sorts of fun stuff on this with locations dropping day of and stuff like that where suddenly we're like, okay, cool, we got two hours to figure out how we're going to reshoot this for a loft instead of a house and that sort of stuff. Just background craziness. Running the business side while Anna just waves her wand and makes the magic happen.


[00:05:58.915] Mark Clague:

That's great. And you guys met on the film set, I understand.


[00:06:01.798] Danny Mooney:

So the first time we ever overlapped, Anna tells the story way better than I was, actually on a movie I directed right


[00:06:11.288] Anna Baumgarten:

yeah so yeah Danny made this movie called Love and Honor actually written by Jim Bernstein who's in the film department and I was 18 and I was coming to U of M and they were shooting like the summer before my freshman year this was when there was a lot of filmmaking going on in Michigan with the film incentives and everything so I was doing extra work in Michigan because there were professional sets everywhere where you could do that which was very cool and such a great time to get into film in Michigan at U of M and Danny was directing I mean this was like a big set like the leads were Amy Teagarden and Liam Hemsworth it was it was like a real set I know that sounds funny but I had never been on a real set before but I saw Danny then and I was like wow like this is someone doing it in Michigan Danny's also like a legend in the department I don't how many projects have you like when he was a student he did like 50 student films. Like, he did something stupid.


[00:07:10.812] Danny Mooney:

It was an unhealthy amount, yes 

[00:07:13.295] Mark Clague:

you got more than one C, I imagine, just showing up to clas 

[00:07:16.598] Danny Mooney:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. If it wasn't production, I don't even know if I passed, yeah. I don't even know if I checked.


[00:07:22.524] Mark Clague:

was really on being sort of an entrepreneur and going out there and making art, even while you were a student.


[00:07:26.689] Danny Mooney:

Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, yeah, while I was here, I'm just a very learn-by-doing person, and I went to the mechanical engineering department, and on day three, I was like, oh, life choice that was a terrible life choice and made my way over to film and knew nothing and so yeah so the learn by doing thing really meant that I just had to get on as many student film sets as possible and make as many student films as possible and yeah so there's at any one time I was shooting four or five student films at a time and also I was playing roller hockey for the University of Michigan and I was also trying to be a student so like juggling all that but yeah it was fun. So you were saying you came to set and then that's where we like originally were in the room together for the first


[00:08:06.853] Anna Baumgarten:

yeah so I knew who Danny was long before he knew anything about me real quick because you mentioned roller hockey something I mean I could talk about how much I love Danny all day we came we both come from like team sports backgrounds and we really treat film sets like team sports yeah in


[00:08:24.550] Mark Clague:

what way because you're competing and somebody wins and somebody


[00:08:27.814] Anna Baumgarten:

no I feel like some people do feel that way about movies in terms of like all the competition around it and but that's not how I see it. That's not how I see art at all. Part of art is about finding your audience and sharing it with those people. There's no win or lose. But with team sports, so I came to U of M to study screenwriting and I fell in love with production along the way because when I got on the set of a production, I was like, oh, this is a team. There's a team captain. Everyone has a role. Everyone's role is really important and important to getting the job done. This is the most is the most collaborative art form on the planet. And that's really where I fell in love with it and how, and me and Danny, like, you know, we throw things to each other. We're really good teammates. We have a lot of perspective. Like we're not carrying cancer and we're not going to put people in super, you know, we're not gonna put people in dangerous or unhealthy situations to like get a shot, to get things done. And I feel like there's so much grit attitude in filmmaking, but we also know the limits Like, we know where to draw the line, and that's really important in a partner, too. I feel like I, like...


[00:09:40.591] Mark Clague:

No, that's great. And I love the idea, like, that everybody on the set is equally important. You can't succeed unless everybody's part of the team. Big time, yeah. But I'm curious to know more about Michigan's film program, because you came here to study film, and, you know, we're not in Hollywood, right? You might not think of Ann Arbor, Michigan, as the place where film is happening. And I've been to the film studios at FTBM. They're sort of hidden in the basement inside of the North Quad building the academic building there and it's pretty awesome and there's so many great things happening there's a whole history of TV like there's a TV set and different camera sets and just sort of all sorts of stuff but it's pretty much invisible if you don't know it's in there you know so I just tell me a little bit about the film program and what you guys learned at Michigan because it's it seems like a


[00:10:28.182] Danny Mooney:

yeah I mean I guess I'll go first because I was a couple years ahead of Anna so there's been a an evolution I think over over especially the last decade or so in the film department. But yeah, I mean, I found my way there through acting. I had just acted in theater in high school, and when I was bailing out of the engineering program, I kind of was like, man, if I make films, I'll act in them, and that will be how I do things that I enjoy. But then I just really quickly realized there were so many facets to the storytelling in film, and I just started falling in love with every single one of them as I learned. And amazing professors like Jim Bernstein, who's been so sweet to us on this film and so many of our films 

[00:11:05.841] Anna Baumgarten:

We love Jim.


[00:11:06.802] Danny Mooney:

And getting to direct one of Jim's scripts was so educational. Getting to know a script that is that well-crafted by someone as good as Jim is really how you can formulate in your head, like, oh, this is true script writing. This is how it works, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So my grad school was directing one of Jim's scripts. It was phenomenal. And he's just also the best teammate. He's great. So with professors like Jim and then Robert Rayher, who recently retired, but He was our production professor, who's incredible.


[00:11:36.375] Anna Baumgarten:

love Breyer, too.


[00:11:37.416] Danny Mooney:

Yeah, Breyer's amazing. And Terry Sarris and McNamara. There's so many good people that we had over the years. And honestly, what's really cool about U of M, and Ann Arbor's an artistic community. It's also a sports community. And so it's also this fun team vibe that I think I haven't seen as strong in other places. There's other places I've shot over the years, and something about Michigan filmmaking is special. It's really, really special where everybody is so talented in their respective way, but under understands all the other jobs and all the other lines of craft. And so I don't know, I think for me, the university filmmaking process was of a team, I'm trying to think how to describe it, more of like a, something you could steep yourself in and like really get to know the process. And Ann Arbor as a community to shoot here, trying to shoot in places like LA and New York and stuff like that, it's such a brutal place to shoot and doors are just shut on you all the time. And in Ann Arbor, the community's like, yeah, you can shoot in our restaurant, can we feed you too? you don't have to pay and we're like that's all the things


[00:12:37.039] Anna Baumgarten:

great yeah especially for students when you're learning the community you know embraced us which was awesome I graduated in 2015 so it's been a minute but film programs across the entire country have expanded so much almost every college university has a film program of some kind you know screens are everywhere and there's a lot of jobs out there for it now and so the program has like progressed a lot I haven't been as in tune with it like the last few years I mean Jim has updated me and it sounds like things are you know they're adding new classes you get such a full well-rounded education from theory to production to writing and you know you can pick and choose what you want to focus on but something that's excellent about U of M is not only that it's U of M but it's a four year you know it's a four your real robust diverse college education that you can do a lot of different things with there are some people you know there's so many different ways to get an education if you want to be somebody making movies and this is just I think so well rounded in a way that makes you a better artist and so that's something I really have to say just for U of M in general and the way that the the way that the program or the way the department runs you know We have to study theory. We have to know our roots. We're really educated in this. And of course, we have to do, what are the classes outside of film calls? We have to do it. Requirements 

[00:14:18.307] Anna Baumgarten:

Other stuff. But I mean, doing that, you learn so much. So when I was here, it was the first time they had done a live SNL-style class where we had three, you've been to the stages. In the studio, they had three and we were doing a live show with people sitting in the audience cutting to different cameras. So that's just something new that when I was here, they're doing way more now. They're shooting TV pilots, which my honors thesis at U of M was a TV pilot that I directed and was written by one of my creative partners, Will O'Donnell. And we're both like still in the industry, you know, working towards all these goals. So the practical skills are, the practical skills translate


[00:15:04.697] Mark Clague:

I agree. It's an amazing program. And the fact that you have the practical side, but also the scholarly side in terms of like interpretation, film studies, history of the Donald Hall collection, the script collection, the Orson Welles collection is here. Like we were talking earlier about the fact that you can see this script to Citizen Kane, you know, the greatest movie maybe ever made is right here in Ann Arbor. So there's, there's incredible opportunities. So what, so tell me about the process of launching a film into the world and like, what did you, what did you learn here that's helped with that? But I, I can imagine, well, first of all, an independent film probably means huge investors, big budget, you can do whatever you want, right?


[00:15:48.264] Anna Baumgarten:

right? Okay, so clarifying question on launching a film into the world. Are you interested in hearing about getting a film off the ground versus distributing it? Because right now we're doing the launch. We're doing the big... push, the scrappy marketing, all of that.


[00:16:06.503] Mark Clague:

Get it to the world. Use your social media. Yeah. Do your podcasts 

[00:16:09.886] Anna Baumgarten:

Right, exactly.


[00:16:12.629] Mark Clague:

us again. Oh, the pleasure's ours. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm sort of interested in all, but like one of the questions I have is like, how did you get the actors? Because you, you know, you're telling a story that you're connected to, but you're not the lead, right? Right. So how did you find the talent to be on the show? And was it a difficult process? Because as I said, you don't have the big budget to just hire people for millions of dollars, right? You've got to have people who are really invested in the process and believe in the mission, believe in the story that you're telling.


[00:16:40.960] Anna Baumgarten:

For the short film, for the short film, I wrote and produced it. I did interact it. My dear friend, Laura Holiday, did. She's a Sundance Ignite director. She's a wonderful person. I knew she would get the story. And I also wasn't ready to direct it. I have a whole soapbox about writing. You want to be working on scars, not wounds 

[00:17:03.183] Anna Baumgarten:

So if you're not in a place where you can really handle something, if you really are working through something and you need to be in therapy, you need to be getting help, you need to be doing self-care things, then this isn't going to be a good thing for you to do.


[00:17:18.780] Mark Clague:

first and then tell the story to others 

[00:17:20.962] Anna Baumgarten:

So important. Exactly. So I wasn't in that place with the short film. And Laura was amazing. And so to get to your casting question, Laura and I were casting the lead and I we had a whole list of people famous people we knew all kinds of things and I was watching a show on Amazon called Sneaky Pete I don't know if you guys are familiar with it or not but Libe Barrera was on Sneaky Pete and I had never seen her before and literally the the first time she came on screen I had this instinctive moment of it's her and I don't know it's kind of like a love at first sight thing almost as a director and an actor I think And so I looked up her management. I looked up Libé's management, and I got a hold of them. And I was like, hey, would Libé want to do a short film? And they were like, yeah, let me check. And so, yeah, we centered the script. We got lunch, and we made the short film. And for the feature, as indie filmmakers, you're looking at your resources around you and the people you have in your court. And Libé had a sister, Ariella Barrer, who is also wonderful, very talented And I said, hey, can I write a movie for you and your sister? Like, you know, the feature version of Disfluency. And Libby was like, hell yeah, let's do it. And I was like, okay, what else do I have? I have my hometown in Michigan. I know of a lot of support there. Also, I didn't want to make a whole feature. When it comes to this subject, I wanted to explore the complexities. I wanted to put the highs and lows in. I wanted it to be a coming of age summer comedy, which is not what you would first If you're thinking, that is


[00:19:05.851] Mark Clague:

mind when I saw the trailer.


[00:19:07.271] Anna Baumgarten:

Yeah, no, for sure. Um, but that is like part, part of that is in there. Uh, and you know, we aren't marketing it as a comedy or anything like that, but that, uh, was the setting. That was the soft, that was the soft blanket. I wanted Jane to land in, um, was, you know, summer at home with her family and friends. Um, I wrote the roles of Jane and Lacey, the two sisters for Liebe and her real life sister Ariella who are both actresses and they're phenomenal and then we cast everyone else around them and this was a process we didn't have a casting director it was me and Danny reaching out to their friends that they recommended reaching out to other managers we knew the managers and agents we were working with we were like do you have anybody for this we started just getting submissions in basically invite only and that's how we ended up casting it I'd also like to say that Dylan Arnold who plays the love interest in the feature he was in the short film And we recast him in a very different role in the future, which I'm so grateful we did because I love Dylan. He's such a joy to work with. He's so talented. He's like a big rising star. I mean, they all are. I really hope this movie becomes something that, you know, in 10 years when all of these actors pop off, even more so than they already have, folks are going to be like, oh, yeah, I think I saw this like really tiny indie movie with some of these people in it.


[00:20:28.838] Mark Clague:

That's right. Tell us about what Disfluency was like for you.


[00:20:32.002] Anna Baumgarten:

Yeah.


[00:20:32.482] Mark Clague:

That's great. So Danny, I'm picking up from Anna that part of the keys to making stuff happen is to go with people you know and you trust, and then also go to your family and friends, your hometown, and sort of the resources you can draw on. What are the other keys that you would say, as a student, to making your projects come to life?


[00:20:52.664] Danny Mooney:

Yeah, I mean, as we said earlier, U of M is such a great training ground for that and pulling favors and using what you have at your disposal and kind of knowing what tools are in your tool chest and what tools you cannot afford on a film that is a small indie. And so, yeah, through casting, it was a lot of people we knew and like friends of friends and just kind of pulling it all together. But then even when it came to like gear and stuff like that, like we couldn't afford a giant camera package. But then we had two U of M alumni brothers. They were good brothers, brothers, brothers, brothers. And and Alan and Paula pulled the rabbit out of the hat for us. And they were like, hey, we have a great camera package. It's not going out. We'll just ship it to you. And so and then like getting back on the like, we literally had to ship it on a plane back to them overnight to get it to them by the time they could actually make money with it eventually and it was you know just pulling that little string helped immensely and really gave our cinematographer John Fisher the fun toys to play with and make this thing look amazing and so you know and a lot of it was some of it is cold like if you go like we have a burger joint and we're like we need a burger joint drive-thru none of us knew a burger joint drive-thru owner and going in and saying like hey we're actually from here in Michigan we're making a really small film like it's got great messages behind it's gonna be a really fun film can we shoot in your drive-thru you big burger we're like can we buy all the burgers for lunch and feed our crew with them so you get a little something out of it they're like yeah okay then they cut us a discount and like you know it's like those that kind of like community embracing you as you're kind of feeling your way through making a movie and especially on this side you have you have to do a lot of it on the on the fly you know like our days off were quote-unquote days off where we were actually running out and scouting these places and talking to these people and whatever when we weren't actually rolling the cameras. And so, yeah, that was really the building blocks we built everything upon and being from Michigan and being supported by the community of Michigan is huge and invaluable.


[00:22:47.247] Mark Clague:

the Michigan alumni network is really powerful.


[00:22:50.049] Anna Baumgarten:

Oh, the Michigan mafia in Hollywood, in Los Angeles, I feel like Hollywood is, what a word to use to describe an industry. But the Michigan mafia in this business runs so deep and we're looking out for each other and And, you know, I take calls, me and Danny both take calls with students, recent grads all the time. If we don't, you know, if somebody wants to be an editor, I'm like, oh, yeah, Kevin Baru, who's our editor on Dysfluency, a U of M grad, who's editing Apple TV shows, he would love to talk to you. It's things like that.


[00:23:20.482] Mark Clague:

Yeah, but it's powerful.


[00:23:21.384] Anna Baumgarten:

Yeah.


[00:23:22.505] Mark Clague:

So how do people see the show?


[00:23:25.647] Anna Baumgarten:

Ooh. So we are having a limited theatrical release across the country. We are starting here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.


[00:23:33.415] Mark Clague:

good.


[00:23:34.037] Anna Baumgarten:

Theater. Yes, at the Michigan Theater. So we'll be there the nights of the 8th, 10th, 11th, and a matinee on the 12th.


[00:23:41.865] Mark Clague:

And we're in January 2025. Yes. That's this upcoming. So tomorrow night and going forward.


[00:23:49.012] Anna Baumgarten:

Exactly. And then we have a premiere with American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. We'll be at the Lemley in Glendale for a week. And then we also have a premiere hosted by The Future of Film is Female in New York City at the Nighthawk in Williamsburg on the 30th. And then we have a smattering of screenings in cities across the country. We will have a limited theatrical release throughout January and February. So it'll be in theaters. We are coming out digitally on demand, which means like Amazon and Apple TV on January 24th.


[00:24:26.772] Mark Clague:

So people can wait till then and catch it everywhere.


[00:24:29.355] Anna Baumgarten:

Exactly.


[00:24:30.116] Danny Mooney:

You can see it live. Exactly. Or you can even pre- order on Apple starting this Friday, January 10th. You can get a little pre-order in if you're getting trigger happy.


[00:24:38.346] Mark Clague:

All right. That's great. I hope everybody who listens to this podcast gets to hear it. And maybe to wrap up, just one bit of advice or something you've discovered since graduating from U of M that you would wish your undergraduate self had known.


[00:24:52.507] Danny Mooney:

That's a great question. I think for me, it would be don't overthink things and just dive in. I think every time I made a movie, there was a little part of me that was like, do I have all the faculties to make this movie? And then I just do it and find out the answer is definitely no. Every time. Every time I make a movie, I'm like, oh, I've gotten maybe 80% of this down. And then I learn the other 20%. And then I do it again. And I think if you think too much, I don't know if I can... do this or if i'm not like prepared enough or ready for it like you can do it and it's you know there's emotional sides and stuff that i think like you know like anna said you got to know when you're ready for some things but if you're talking about just the skills of of making your art i'd just say


[00:25:45.922] Anna Baumgarten:

Yes, if I could tell my undergrad self something, I would say, girl, you need to chill out. Life ain't so serious, and you're making things, and this is such a fun, creative form. You don't need to take it so seriously and be a perfectionist, which is still something I'm working on until this day. Something my great-grandfather always said is, worry is investment on a problem you don't have yet, and that translates to life in general. Um, but when it comes to filmmaking, like Danny is saying, people want to get on a moving train. So that train doesn't have to be fully built. You have to trust yourself. You have to get it on the tracks. You do have to do some of that initial legwork and you need to be picking up people getting on the train along the way. And the train's going to go faster and more people are going to want to get on it. And that goes, I mean, this applies to investing, you know, it implies to getting a crew together. Every, every aspect of filmmaking is It's about momentum. And as an artist, you have to start that momentum. And if you start it, people will come. It'll start to happen.


[00:26:56.881] Mark Clague:

That's great advice. And this has been such a fantastic conversation. And I hope Disfluency just really takes off. And I can't wait to see it myself. Creative Currents is a project of the University of Michigan Arts Initiative. Please subscribe to hear more great conversations with artists, scholars, and arts leaders from across the campus and across the globe. Send your comments and suggestions via email to creativecurrents at umich.edu. This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Mark Clague and Jessica Jenks, and our audio engineer is Audrey Banks. Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Neely, a student at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance. To learn more about the University of Michigan Thanks for listening.