It’s All About the Emotionality: A Conversation with ’31 Candles’ Filmmaker Jonah Feingold

Leo Kadner (Feingold), a hopeless romantic New Yorker who reconnects with his childhood crush Eva Shapiro (Sarah Coffey) while preparing for his 31-year-old Bar Mitzvah. The journey to the religious milestone is a whirlwind of relationships of the past (and future), an unexpected reconnection with faith, and the pressure of his family’s approval tightly woven into a return-to-rom-com special. 

Jonah Feingold’s films may be labeled as hopeless romantic comedies, but if you’ve been paying close attention to Jonah’s filmmaking career and heck, even his Instagram page, you’ll realize he’s really a hopeful romantic from New York City. And that hopefulness resonates through his charisma and love for all things movies (period).

With his latest film, 31 Candles, yes, it’s about chasing a nostalgic idea, a romantic impulse, searching for and hopefully landing a second chance. But there’s more to it. It not only romanticizes the idea of nostalgia, but it holds up a big ol’ mirror to reflect how we move through life, interact with people on the surface, and how maybe, just maybe we need to get out of our own way so that we can truly connect with people on a deeper level. And for those familiar with Jonah’s previous films, like Dating & New York or At Midnight, you’ll see that 31 Candles is very much 100% a Jonah Feingold certified film.

Jonah Feingold discusses with Script tapping into his vulnerability to write this semi-autobiographical movie, the influence his Instagram self-portrait short films had on how he approached the films aesthetic to his acting, and casting gold with Sarah Coffey. Plus, he gives some much-proven insight to the challenges of independent filmmaking. But like the hopeful romantic he is, there is hope on the horizon for independent films and their creators.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: I know there are parts of this film that are semi-autobiographical to you, as any filmmaker, any storyteller, any writer, just the idea of being so vulnerable and putting yourself on the page. What was your process and headspace?

Jonah Feingold: I think the word vulnerable, and I've kind of come to this conclusion with having the film now be out, and seeing the name on the title cards and all that stuff, is to me, being personal is like a defense mechanism. It's actually way easier to be personal, because in my mind, personal can never be good or bad, because it's ultimately your own experience. It's hopefully unique, and there's universal themes that people can draw from. It's almost less vulnerable than having a movie like EXMas or At Midnight or even Dating and New York be out, because those movies are all fictional, created ideas.

It's actually way more painful if someone is judging my ideas than they are if they're judging me, because at least I know that I'm the only version of me that exists. I cannot change me, nor would I ever change me for anyone else's opinion.

It's actually a weird defense mechanism to write something personal. And in the writing process for 31 Candles, drawing from my relationship with my grandmother and what it meant to be raised in New York and the dating scene, I actually think created a very universal experience for people who want to try something new later in life, or who had that summer camp crush, or whatever it was when they were of a certain age, and I've always wanted to go out there and say something to them.

And then, of course, there's iconography that's relatable, like the AOL instant message, or the idea of the Eva Shapiro character, who is this amorphous idea of this romanticized perfect person, only to find out that maybe they don't feel the same way about you felt about them.

Sadie: And you nail all those things so beautifully. There is this kindness and sweetness to it, especially with nostalgia at play, where you kind of present it to the audience too. I think we all kind of put these expectations on this idea of nostalgia, or on a person we knew 15 years ago. Obviously, they’re not all of those things we put on them, they’re a full, actualized person. Like Eva says to Leo, ‘You see me as a full person. You called me by my first name.’

Jonah: Yeah, I love that moment. Two things for that moment. One was, the idea of this character, that's the first and last name character that we all know those people in our lives. And then at what point does that person become just a first name or just a last name? And then I also really, I mean, for the film nerdy thing, there's that great scene and that great moment in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one of the better ones, where his dad calls him Junior the entire time. And then there's this moment where Indiana is reaching for the Holy Grail, and he's about to reach too far, and if he reaches too far, he's gonna fall through, and his dad's trying to save him. And then he's like, 'Indiana.' And he calls him by his actual name there, and then he gets his attention. I was like, 'Ooh, that's really cool. I wonder if we can do something like that for Eva Shapiro.' So that's where that came from.

Sadie: Nailing the tone and aesthetic of this film – having been following you on your Instagram and seeing all the fun shorts you've been doing and what you've been playing with and testing. I'm curious how much of that was kind of setting yourself up for the look and feel of this film, maybe testing out your own acting chops as well, comedic timing, and how much all of that helped you get into this bigger framework?

Jonah: You're spot on. Whether I did it intentionally or not, I started making these self-portrait style videos on Instagram. That's what I would call them, as self-portraits. I think the first one I made was because I read about how [Edward] Hopper, the painter, would wake up at sunrise and go paint the streets of New York, before there were people on the streets. And I loved that challenge. I loved the artist approach, the craft of being like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna go do a thing.’

And there's rules to that thing. It has to be in the morning, and light has to be a certain way, and that's what I'm going to capture. And so, I was like, what if I made self-portraits...

The rules I had were, they had to be one take. They could not be scripted, and the camera had to be connected to the city. So, all those original videos, there was never a tripod. It was always that the camera was on a mailbox or a bench or a scaffolding, and the camera had to be touching the city directly.

And then they became this exercise in performance, where I was acting in front of a video, and I started to understand not just as a director, but as a performer you don't have to be big with your performance, the camera captures everything, and you can move your body in a certain way, and it'll capture that. And it could be compelling to just whisper something, or a look can be compelling. Or what can you do with blocking?

31 Candles was coming around, and I was like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna put myself in this very autobiographical movie,’ because I don't feel like there's enough actors out there who are down to fall on the banana peel and be goofy and make fun of their own height. And I wasn't gonna cost any money, and I wasn't gonna be difficult. I was never gonna resist myself as a director, and I would only sort of play into the instincts of an actor. And I was like, ‘Oh, these little Instagram videos have been wonderful practice for the day that we're on set and I have to call action, I have to go in front of the camera and do a scene.’

So those were super, super helpful in terms of getting reps in the gym and having a comfortability around the idea of I have a microphone on me, the cameras down there. I have a scene here. Let's go off there and do it, and knowing a little bit of what it might look like on the other end, and then knowing what you would and wouldn't need. You don't need to overshoot a scene. You don't need to undershoot it either. So that was super helpful.

Tonally... there's all these different hats that we wear when we're writing a script and when we're directing a script. And some of the magic of filmmaking really does come from seeing that first cut of a scene together where… it lives and it breathes.

Sadie: There’s so many beautiful shots in here, specifically the opening shot seeing the buildings, as we drift along.

Jonah: By the way, that shot I love because, maybe when people watch the movie for the 100th time, if they ever do, that's supposed to be my character looking up and I'm walking down the street and I'm looking up at the buildings. And there's supposed to be this ongoing visual motif of a character looking up at things, whether that's the dinosaur, which is sort of a stronger representation of Eva Shapiro, this extinct, made-up concept - dinosaurs are this really foreign concept, especially to kids. And the characters looking up at that. He's looking up at the buildings. He's looking up at her.

And then the final scene in the movie, he's looking across at the Freedom Tower. And that's supposed to all be linked, whether or not that comes across, there was intention there, in terms of just that opening shot of this character looking up at the buildings and wondering at their height and their awe, you know?

Sadie: Casting across the board, fantastic. You have such a great eye finding people who are up and coming, rising stars, or even well-established actors for specific characters. But more specifically, Sarah Coffey, who plays Eva Shapiro – how much did she help elevate this character once she came on board? On the flipside, you do have a knack for writing very strong, grounded female characters – whereas the male supporting characters are like this Muppet type guys flailing in the peripheral.

Jonah: Great question. I love the Muppets as a reference, because that's a big reference in in the film. For Sarah, I always joke we always beat ourselves up for scrolling away on Instagram or TikTok. But in this instance, on this day that I was deciding to scroll, I came across Sarah Coffey, and like most of my casting process, it's usually fairly instant. It's not like I've ever needed to watch three different tapes and five different scenes of somebody and say, ‘Oh, I think they're the right person,’ or ‘I think they're not the right person.’ Whether it was Monica Barbaro for At Midnight… or Jaboukie [Young-White]… or even Leighton [Meester] for EXMas.

So, I saw this TikTok of Sarah. I forget what she was even doing, but I DM'd her, and I was like, 'Hey, I would love to get coffee with you just to see what your vibe is like. You're just so talented and you're a comedian in New York City.’ So, her and I get coffee, and I'm telling her about this movie. I go, ‘I'm writing this role, I feel like you'd be really perfect for it. I'm sure you get told this all the time in these meetings, where someone's like, I think you'd be great for something,’ but the problem with me is, for better or worse, when I sit you down and say, ‘we're gonna go make a movie’ the bad news is we're gonna make the movie so you better actually lock in. [laughs]

And I had that mentality with her, and the next time I said, let's get together in a week, and I'm gonna bring my camera and we're gonna do a chemistry test. The luxury of making an independent movie is that you can do a chemistry read, you can arrange that time. There's no egos, there's no studio forcing two people together. And so, she showed up. We did a chemistry read. It was really just to see how we looked side by side. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, this height thing is so great,’ but she really reminded me of these sort of 1940s 1950s actresses who are both very powerful and very opinionated and very physically funny, but also very soft and very romantic, and she had a little bit of all this DNA. And I was like, that's what Eva Shapiro should be.

When it came time to work with Sarah, we did one sit down where we went through the entire script, line by line, I just said to her, ‘Any words here that don't feel authentic to you or your character, let's change. I have no attachment to literally, any lines, any sentences. It's about the emotionality, and I'm here to help you make sense of these words or to help improve them to what your character would say.’

Sadie: The grandmother character is such a beautiful character. Not to give away too many details, but there is this playfulness again with nostalgia and what we put on people, especially loved ones.

Jonah: Part of the reason I was excited to make 31 Candles was because I knew I wanted to tackle a relationship between a grandson and his grandma, and that is inherently uncomfortable to me. Writing a character that's in their mortality, and all this stuff was scary. And the lens by which I can approach this is through comedy and through romance and these things that I know well. And so, it was always a little nerve wracking, especially how do you possibly write a character who's in their 70s, 80s, whatever it's going to be when you're a 31-year-old in in Brooklyn? What do I know?

There was a little bit of fear there. But I tried to pull from my memory of my conversations with my grandma. I also just tried to pull from what was real. And I knew, again, emotionality above all. And because this is sort of a screenwriter focused conversation, I think sometimes we get… I used to personally get hung up on so much about what are the words. And I think the words are super important. I'm not trying to pull away from that. But at the end of the day, look at The Apartment, Billy Wilder, "shut up, and deal" is the best “I love you” ever to exist in a movie. But the words weren't “I love you” it was the subtext.

And so, when you think about that, you're like, oh, everything's about emotionality. Sometimes I think we're like the dialogue. Yeah, the dialogue, it all connects, right? So, if you lack in maybe the actual dialogue ability, as long as you're making up for in the emotionality of the piece, it's going to be OK. So, I really tried to lean on emotionality.

Also, I had the luxury and the gift of Caroline Aaron… we went to the Screen Actors Guild and did a really cool talk. And the moderator was like, ‘What are your inspirations?’ And I listed off a bunch of names, and she's like, ‘Your inspirations are my resume.’ And I thought that was such a cool thing, because all the all the filmmakers I loved, she had worked with and I was like, ‘Oh my God, she's right.’ She's the voicemail in Sleepless in Seattle.

She broke down every sentence and every word. And she's like, ‘What do I mean by this? Why am I saying this?’ And she got me really into the musical company. There's a song called "Being Alive". And she was like, ‘This is kind of the essence of your character. Use this as a guide.’ There's an incredible level of intensity and prep and work that she does. And therefore, that's how those words got to where they were.

Sadie: Making an independent film… nobody's knocking on your door to make it. Hopefully at some point people aren't knocking on your door to make your movies, but when it’s something so personal – very slim chance. Can you touch on the realities of the business side from finding the funding to distribution and marketing?

Jonah: The realities are horrible. [laughs] It's almost like looking at global warming, where it's like, OK, we are the one planet that has human life, maybe, and we are a thriving Earth, but we're also destroying ourselves, kind of thing. Like, that's the film business. [laughs] My new phrase for films are that they are all resurrections. Movies are doing everything in their power to die, and we need to be Dr. Frankenstein and bring them back to life.

And truly, that's all you're doing when you write a script. It's an idea that you have that you're trying to bring to life. When you're trying to get people to show up, you're trying to raise the money and raise the energy, and when you're trying to get out there, you're trying to push it forward. It's Weekend at Bernie's, the whole thing until maybe it's done, or maybe you carry it just far enough so that people believe you, and then it goes back into the ether.

But I think it's truly hard. I think that people need to ultimately believe in the passion of the creator. Like, yes, it's a personal story. But a lot of really wonderful things were happening with this movie.  Due to the SAG strikes, a lot of people were out of work, and we got the SAG waiver. So, I got to hire people that I thought were very talented, and we got to do what we love doing, which is making things. I mean, I would make things for free, let alone get paid to do them. So obviously, I like doing that. And obviously the people that work on movies, no one works in films to get rich, and if they do, they're very misguided.

So, there's an element where people want to do the thing, and you need to maintain confidence and maintain communication and be empathetic, but also be communicative. So much gets lost in lack of context and lack of communication.

The reason I love making Indies is because when I'm in charge, I'm telling people transparently how and why it's happening. ‘Hey guys, our budget is this amount of money. We have these amount of days to film it. We cannot go over because there's no money to go over.’ So that's why I'm saying no or yes or doing something like in this way. It's not like there's a studio, and even when there is a studio, then you have 40 people behind an email screen who aren't providing context or communication, and maybe they don't know how to.

It's an incredibly nuanced job, and it's incredibly difficult to get the movie out there. Making the movie is the easiest part of the process. Getting the movie out there, getting people to care about it, is the hardest part, and the financials are currently not in place to support independent cinema.

I don't have a real solution beyond the fact that if you want to go make an independent movie, you need to make it for as very little money as possible, and then you need to start calling theaters yourself and booking them or work with a distributor that's going to give you a percentage cut or put it on YouTube. The business is not conducive until it reinvents itself and we start to rewire the expectations of this stuff. But the bright side has never been easier to make things so, it's almost like a two-way street.

Support indie films and watch 31 Candles in Theaters.

December 5 in Los Angeles at the Laemmle (Royal and Town Center) and the Lumiere Cinema. And then January 9, 2026 nationwide at AMC locations to be announced.