A pair of housewives create a $40 million coupon scam in Director Aron Gaudet & Gita Pullapilly’s comedy, Queenpins.
Inspired by a true story, Gaudet & Pullapilly’s film is about bored and frustrated suburban homemaker Connie and her best pal JoJo, who hatch an illegal coupon club scheme that scams millions from mega-corporations and delivers deals to fellow coupon clippers. They find themselves pursued by a hapless loss prevention officer from a local supermarket chain who teams up with a determined U.S. Postal Inspector to bring them down.
On September 11, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Gaudet & Pullapilly discussed the making of Queenpins during a Q&A moderated by Cindy Chupack (Otherhood).
During the conversation, one of the topics Gaudet & Pullapilly spoke about was their directing style.
“Our approach to directing and leadership is very different than a lot of people,” said Pullapilly. “It is really about making sure everybody understands the goal at the end of the day, which to us was be in service to the story. For example, for our actors we would do exercises like identifying your core values and so Kristen and Kirby would do this exercise for who they are in their personal life and for their characters. When we were on set, it was a lot easier to understand character and story. It sped up the efficiency. If we needed something from story or performance, we could quickly identify it based on each character’s core values.”
Gaudet & Pullapilly previously directed the feature film, Beneath the Harvest Sky and, along with Director Dan Ferrigan, the “India: A New Life” episode of the television documentary series Frontline/World. Gaudet’s directorial credits also include the feature length documentary, The Way We Get By; and the documentary shorts, The Gambling Man and The Elephant Bath.
Aron Gaudet & Gita Pullapilly both joined the DGA in 2020.
You can listen to Gaudet & Pullapilly's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.