Wendy Jo Carlton’s “Good Kisser”

When Wendy Jo Carlton’s new film Good Kisser hit the festival circuit last year, it was an instant success. Now, you can stream it from the comfort of your own home.

Best known for writing and directing Amazon’s Jamie & Jessie are Not Together and the hit lesbian web series Easy Abby, Carlton created a story about two women who try to spice up their relationship by arranging a threesome with another. A witty drama mixed with comedy and emotionally difficult moments; Good Kisser is a fresh, romantic ride that will immediately capture audiences. The film stars Kari Alison Hodge, Julia Eringer, and Rachel Paulson. This is Paulson’s first leading role in a feature film, and yes, she is Sarah Paulson’s little sister.

OUT FRONT had the opportunity to chat more with Carlton about the film, how it developed, and why it is such an enthralling tale.

Hi, Wendy Jo! Thank you for taking the time to chat with me about your film Good Kisser. Without giving too much away, can you tell us more about it?
Good Kisser is about Jenna, who is the protagonist, and she is in a relationship and in love with her girlfriend, Kate. You can already tell from the beginning that there is a little bit of tension between the two, a little imbalance of power. Jenna agrees to a potential three-way date. A romantic, sensual, sexual date with a third woman, Mia, on the encouragement and suggestion of Kate. So, it is really about Jenna’s experience navigating it throughout the one evening that the film takes place.

How did you come up with the film’s concept? Did you pull any inspiration from your own personal life?
[Laughs] Well, of course! I am always pulling inspiration from my personal life. I have not had this particular threesome situation happening in one night. Maybe I should say I’ve had because it’s more interesting, but I have had a lot of experiences with love triangles. I think a lot of lesbians have, at least in my experience. I think you start meeting people more of like mind and you sometimes have similar taste in who you are attracted to. So, I like to write about that, and I like to write about sexual tension, having crushes, and if you act on it or not, or if it’s mutual or not.

So, Good Kisser is about navigating attraction at more than one level because there’s the physical and sexual attraction, but there’s also the intellectual attraction. When you meet someone, you don’t always know if you’re going to have that other kind of connection, so I wanted to also write about that. Like, when you have a great conversation with someone and you find yourself really attracted to them. Not just because you think they are sexy, beautiful, or whatever, but you think their sense of humor is amazing. You are turned on by their brain, their ideas, and their ability to communicate. That is also what Good Kisser is about, and we see that kind of play out.

Why did you want to make this film?
I wanted to make this film because I am still not seeing enough of this kind of scenario in the mainstream, and this scenario for me is queer women with other queer women enjoying each other. It’s sex-positive, not about coming out; it’s mature, experience adults who are navigating a fun, sexy situation. I wanted to write the story about sexual pleasure and emotional recognition between women.

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You have been making female-oriented, queer movies for two decades. How would you say this film differs and stands out from your other works?
I would say my lesbian web series Easy Abby is in a similar vein. Because it’s a web series, it’s shorter form with eight-minute episodes and you get to move around the world a lot more than a feature film, but I would say that Easy Abby is also about female sexual pleasure, confidence vs. low self-esteem, and how we all take turns having certain levels of self-confidence. It’s all very human, not just queer. I like to get into the complexities of the queer, female point of view.

Are you still working on Easy Abby?
Easy Abby has two seasons, and I would love to have funding for Season Three. I have the story all mapped out, but we are just waiting on funding. It has been a few years since season two was finished. It’s currently on Revry and Open TV, which is on Vimeo. When season one first came out on YouTube, it got 50 million views. So, there is clearly a market and an audience. It’s just hard to get the funding, I have found, if your protagonist is a queer female.

Have you always had a passion for writing and filmmaking?
I have always had a passion for communicating on a mass-media level. I started in radio, and I think I was always obsessed with recording my voice and other people’s voices. I love listening to the radio. Then I eventually became a DJ, programmer, and producer for radio. So, I have been fascinated with mass media and reaching a mass audience. A broad audience.

How has Good Kisser been received by audiences? I heard it was very successful while on the festival circuit.
Yes. It stayed on the festival circuit even though the pandemic kind of cramped a lot of things. Other than that, we won a Jury Award in Tampa, an Audience Award in North Carolina, and we were the featured women’s feature at both Outfest and in Toronto. We packed houses and had a really great response.

It’s always heartening as the filmmaker to be in the audience and in the room with people when they are laughing when you hope they laugh and they’re upset when bad things are happening. It was very, very exciting for me in Toronto. Without giving too much away, there were audible, loud hisses about the character Kate and her behavior in a certain scene. It is so satisfying to hear strangers go like, no she didn’t! There is a lot of relatable emotional complexity in these characters.

What do you hope people take away from this film?
That’s a very good question. I hope that people will love themselves and find their own pleasure in terms of not being mislead by pleasing other people.

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And what have you personally taken away?
I love actors. I knew that before, but some stories and some movies I try to make, I hope for some magic between the interpretation of the story and the talents they bring. Other than that, in terms of process, Good Kisser is telling a story that a lot of people want to see because it’s about how messy things can be in our regular, day-to-day lives as we navigate love, romance, and attraction.

We make mistakes, and some people are more selfish and self-centered than others, but you still love them. That doesn’t mean you stay with them. I like to write about sexuality in women because it’s connected to me. It’s a microcosm of what I see as the macrocosm of the world. Female sexuality is typically not celebrated or represented. In Good Kisser, they talk about orgasms, and I want to see women talking about orgasms with each other. Talking about pleasure, navigating sexual dynamics, and being honest and real about it.

It’s also a wink to my own experience of being with women for over 30 years. Not everybody, not every person, not every lover, is the same. Their bodies are not the same; their brains are not the same. So, it’s like I have this agenda in the back of my mind while I’m writing this story with these characters. I am threading through other themes that I have always cared about.

One is about self-esteem and sexual pleasure and being unapologetic about what works for you and what doesn’t. Not just sexually, but romantically. Another thread, and it’s more subtle in Good Kisser, is about money and class issues. Jenna doesn’t care as much about making money as Kate does. It’s another example of how sometimes it’s just not a great fit with certain lovers no matter how much you want to be with them.

Good Kisser has an amazing cast. What was it like to work with this amazing group of women?
You know, there are only five characters in this movie, and I wrote it so that it would be more cost effective to make happen and produce. So, four women and one man, and everyone was fantastic to work with. The three main characters, played by Rachel Paulson, Julia Eringer, and Kari Alison Hodge, they had their work cut out for them.

Having chemistry between two people is one thing, but when you’re trying to have believable chemistry between three people, that’s exponential, and they did a great job. This was all shot in just 12 days, and we shot from 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., so it can all be nighttime, and we can have a real background outside. It was difficult, but it was worth doing that. Everyone was wonderfully professional and prepared to work. They spent time working offset with each other to work through some of the scenes so we can get these emotional beats right.

Can you tell us more about teaching screenwriting and film production courses to aspiring filmmakers?
I tend to work with new screenwriters, and I try to get them to do writing exercises. Not just within script format, just prose on a piece of paper. Handwriting, no computer. Handwriting is you. It’s your body and it’s your mind coming through the electricity that is going through your body and making your hand move. I think that is very powerful and grounding. You are also looking at your own handwriting and no one has the same handwriting. It is very unique.

So, I think it is important to do the whole process manually with notes and brainstorming. That is one of my big technique with screenwriting. Start on the page, be sloppy, and keep the pen moving until you figure out why it is you are writing the story. Your subconscious is onto something. It’s recognizing something, and it is your job to be that kind of translator. I think the more we are really personal and subjective about why we are telling the story we are telling, that helps you figure out what the protagonist really wants or is really afraid of. Then that helps you figure out what comes next and how the story end.

What’s next? Do you have any other upcoming projects we should be on the lookout for?
I do. I am doing a couple projects. I have two screenplays, and one is called Yellow Belt. Its female lead is a scientist, and she happens upon evidence of multinational corporation malfeasance in the Arctic Ocean. It takes place in Seattle, and she is trying to get the evidence to somebody, but someone steals her bag. So, that is how the movie starts. It’s kind of a modern-day superhero movie, but she doesn’t have superpowers except for the one move she remembers from her Groupon karate class.

The other is called Slipknot, which is about a middle-aged lesbian woman who finds herself suddenly homeless after her partner dies and the partner’s family sells the house and makes her move. Then the third project is a novel so I can have the freedom to not worry about fundraising and producing the story, and it’s called Start Telling Everybody. It’s a novel about sudden death, trauma, and unlikely friendships that come out of a woman’s death.

Follow Carlton on Instagram to stay up-to-date with the latest news and developments. Good Kisser is available to rent, purchase and stream on a variety of digital platforms including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Photos Courtesy of Wolfe Video