The stars of Touch Me, which premiered Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival, say they responded to writer-director Addison Heimann's exploration of trauma via a love triangle with an alien.
The alien, Brian (Pucci), returns and invites Joey and her roommate Craig (Gavaris) to stay on his compound. Forte plays Brian's human assistant, Laura.
"The trauma and the mental illness was something that drew me in," Dudley said. "I have had my share of narcissists and toxic relationships. That was a really big one to explore because that has a lot to do with some of my own trauma."
Joey remains attracted to Brian despite their past encounter. She even watches tentacle pornography to remind herself of Brian's alien tentacles.
Brian courts Craig, too, creating tension between Craig and Joey. Gavaris said he could relate to Brian's narcissistic personality, even though Brian is not human."They sell you on this idea that you don't have to do the work of being a human in the world," Gavaris, 35, said. "They'll take the pain away. They'll give you the keys to easier access to get to the places you're going. That's what Brian does in the film."
Brian shares some of his alien technology to make humans feel better, including leading hip-hop dance classes with Laura by his side. But, hearing Gavaris describe narcissists caused Pucci to exclaim.
Touch Me is Heimann's second film. The writer and director said he will always use genre trappings to explore queer stories about mental health.
"You can have this wacky, ridiculous tentacle sex stuff," Heimann said. "I hope people see it and laugh and say 'ew,' but I want them to walk away and feel seen."
Forte, 63, also starred in Heimann's first film, Hypochondriac. She feels seen by his films because of her own tendency to complicate her life.
"I think just being an artist in general makes us a little more porous to anxiety," Forte said. "My husband's like, 'You make everything so hard.' I'm like, 'Because it is,' but it's not. I think it's just because as artists we're actually just more porous."
The tentacle sex scenes involved collaboration between Heimann, the actors, puppeteers, special effects crew and intimacy coordinator Sasha Nicole Smith. Brian puts a tentacle in Craig's mouth and lifts Joey in their scene.
"It was something that we treated very seriously," Dudley said. "We had a wonderful intimacy coordinator on set, Sasha, who we all worked with to figure out what I was comfortable with."
Other challenges in Touch Me included choreographing Brian's hip-hop dances. Pucci, whose first three movies -- Personal Velocity, Thumbsucker and The Chumbscrubber also premiered at Sundance -- spent a month in dance class.
Choreographer Meredith Kirkman taught Pucci, Gavaris and Forte their dances, but Heimann expected them to know their moves by the time cameras rolled.
"This guy gave us three takes at one angle for the entire dance of most dances," Pucci said. "So if you didn't get it at that point, it wasn't going to be in the movie because it was going to suck. You had to be good or else it wasn't going to work."
The film begins with Joey telling a therapist about her first encounter with Brian in a single, uninterrupted take. Dudley performed the scene four times, but the first take appears in the film.
"I only had a few days to memorize, and I'm dyslexic so it was really difficult," Dudley said. "I think it was because Addison believed I could do it and had so much confidence in me so that really helped push me through it."
Touch Me screens again on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday at Sundance. Heimann welcomes festival attendees to approach him.
"If you like it, come talk to me," he said. "I'm around to discuss mental illness."