The Universal Language of Love: A Conversation with ‘At Midnight’ Romantic Comedy Filmmaker Jonah Feingold

At Midnight centers around Alejandro (Diego Boneta, “Father of the Bride”), an ambitious hotel manager, and Sophie (Monica Barbaro, TOP GUN: MAVERICK), a movie star navigating the politics of Hollywood. He’s focused on opening his own boutique hotel. She’s trying to focus on shooting her new superhero film, “Super Society 3,” in hopes of getting her own spinoff, but catches her co-star (and boyfriend!) Adam (Anders Holm, “Workaholics”) cheating. Fate strikes when the shoot brings them all to Alejandro’s hotel in Mexico. Despite their radically different lives, Alejandro and Sophie begin to secretly meet At Midnight …

The rom-com genre is a tale as old as time, but it's remarkably a timeless genre audiences find themselves outwardly (or secretly) turning to time and time again. Filmmaker Jonah Feingold is back again with another rom-com great that pulls at your heartstrings, packed with great one-liners, a stellar cast, sweeping orchestrations, and a beautiful location. And I'd be remiss to not mention all the wonderful Easter Eggs that Jonah and his team have placed throughout this film - hint - Roman Holiday.

After meeting and speaking with Jonah about his feature directorial debut Dating & New York, we became instant cinephile friends and notably, found myself a big fan of his charisma and his passion for film. If you don't already, I highly recommend following him on Instagram - he's always imparting firsthand filmmaking wisdom and gems. So, it was with great joy and excitement that I had another opportunity to talk "shop" with Jonah about his latest film At Midnight. 

Jonah shares with us how the project came across his radar, the importance of the director and composer relationship, shooting on location in Mexico, what he learned directing his second feature and so much more.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Welcome back to Script, Jonah! And congrats on the film. This is such a beautiful movie; I wouldn't expect anything less from you. Let’s dive in! Knowing that the script had been with two previous writers – how did this project initially come across your desk? Was it strictly for a rewrite gig or just coming on board as a director?

Jonah Feingold: Just to your first point, it's an honor to be speaking to you again so quickly. And, yeah, really excited to be able to continue to make romantic comedies. For this particular project, kind of funny actually how the script came to be - the original draft of the script, written by a guy named Giovanni M. Porta, who wrote the draft almost five years ago, and then it was set up at Netflix. And, you know, movies are difficult to get made, even when a studio is behind it. Brian Kavanagh-Jones, one of our producers got the script back from Netflix and they had a new writer Maria Hinojos, who did a pass on the script, and that got it set up a Paramount+.

This is all to say that the concept was a Diego Boneta wonder or dream turned reality where he wanted to make a rom-com that honored Mexico City and Mexico in a way that he hadn't seen. He had seen rom-coms take place in Paris, Barcelona, and New York, but he hadn't seen a film that really honored Mexico in the way that he always wanted to. It wasn't in a way, like how Narcos would do it, but it's a feel-good, beautiful rom-com. And he liked the title At Midnight. [laughs]

And so that's where the whole thing came from. I got a phone call from my manager - my manager at Grandview Tracy Kopulsky - and she said, ‘Look, something very special has happened that will not happen often,’ which is a greenlit start date movie with a star attached and they need a filmmaker and the producers were like, ‘We want a director to come in, do a director's pass, and take over the movie and make the movie something that they're passionate about.’ And she was like, ‘there's five other people, you're gonna have to pitch the whole thing. But the good news is, they saw your first film, and they loved it’. And that's all you can ask for. And I was like, ‘OK, I've been in pitches where people have not liked my movie,’ [laughs] ‘or have not seen it, and those have gone well. So, maybe this will go well, too.’ And so I went in, and I pitched my vision for what I would do to the script, which was really some dialogue work. And also, just making it shootable. It wasn't the script that got executives excited. It was the script that will go out there to make, and cast, and locations and how's that gonna all work and just expanding the world of the writers had already built so well?

[A Twist on the Holiday Romantic Comedy: A Conversation with ‘The Noel Diary’ Director and Co-Writer Charles Shyer]

And fun thing, obviously, when you're going out there to cast your actors, you might get educated on ‘Oh, a certain actor is looking to do a rom-com. Oh, Whitney Cummings is available.’ And I've always wanted to work with her. So maybe I'll make this part bigger. Casey Thomas Brown did an incredible job with Diego in Father of the Bride. Let me make this part bigger. Cat Cohen, who I love, and she's my muse, I want to cast her. So, that's how the script came to be.

Sadie: Once you were on board, did you ever go back and rework anything with the original writers? Or was it clean slate of you do your pass and let’s get going?

Jonah: It was a clean slate. The beautiful thing is they were very supportive. There was a wonderful collaboration between me and the two other writers. In fact, the second writer Maria I cast as the director of the fake movie within the movie. And Gio has a cameo, he plays the trainer in the first five minutes, but it was a very fun family affair where we were all just like, ‘Oh my gosh, this movie is getting made. Let's just enjoy that.’ And at the same time, it wasn't like I was consulting, you know, J.R.R. Tolkien about the characters he spent 20 years writing. [laughs] They did a great job of getting the script down the field. And then the ball got passed to me and took it to the endzone. That's way too many sports analogies. [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] And something about no yellow flags and you made it to the goal.

Jonah: [laughs] Right.

Sadie: Rom-coms can be formulaic, right? But there's something that is so great that like gets you so invested in rom-coms, at least for me as a viewer, which are the character introductions. And if they're really well done, then you’re hooked and I’m watching this movie no matter what. There seems to be a fine art of dialing in character introductions without giving too much backstory, and without them being too on the nose, but just enough for us to be like, ‘We know where we're gonna go on this ride with you.’

Jonah: That's a great point. I love nothing more than character introductions, particularly in the way that they date back to Raiders of the Lost Ark for example - how much can you say about a character before you even meet them? Before they even say a word? How much can you say with a silhouette of their imagery? These are obviously not rom-coms, but I think of Pirates of the Caribbean where Jack Sparrow comes in, you think it's his heroic shot, and he's on the top of the sail and then you come out and it's a sinking ship. There's nothing more on point for the character than that. I think that's where my education and character intros come from is those types of films.

And then I think, when we were looking at the rom-com genre, I agree with you, it's how much can you say with how little words, and in our movie, I love that Monica actually can't even get a word in the first five minutes of the film. That's the whole point is that she's in this overbearing relationship with this movie star actor, who clearly, even the late-night show host doesn't even know her real name, even though she's a star, because she's the lead of that superhero movie that you see. And then in Diego's case, there's definitely words, but the goal for that introduction was I wanted to show the world, the blue ocean, the palm trees, and his outdoor kitchen, which is like, who has an outdoor kitchen? [laughs] And then also he's a hopeless romantic.

There's things that happen in the written word there, but also that first scene, Diego in his outdoor kitchen, we spent a lot of time nailing the musical tone, because you see this kind of classic rom-com close-ups, Sara Sampaio, a wonderful actor, and model and you see this traditional thing but then there's this one moment where you're like, this classical flute comes in, almost fairytale-like and some people might be like, ‘Wait, what is that? What is this music cue?’ [laughs] And that's kind of the point, this is going to hopefully be a journey that you're not necessarily expecting. But that was the idea there was to tonally set the movie, because I think you have to do character and film tone at the same time, they have to marry each other. Which is the beauty of being in the director and the writer position is you can control both those things.

[A Mosaic of Memory: A Conversation on Adapting 'From Scratch' with Co-Creators Attica and Tembi Locke]

Sadie: And speaking of music, because it does have that classic 40s, and 50s orchestrations, and having spoken with you previously about how important music was for you too in Dating & New York, what was the process like on this film with your team?

Jonah: My favorite part of the process is the composer-director relationship. I forget if I mentioned in our first chat together, but one of my first internships was for Hans Zimmer at Remote Control in Santa Monica where I had to like make him coffee during the production of Pirates of the Caribbean 4. I did it because I wanted to see how really high-level directors would engage with their composers. So, I saw Nancy Meyers come in, I saw Gore Verbinski, and Christopher Nolan and Jerry Bruckheimer and learned a lot about just that whole world and some really great stories about how Pirates of the Caribbean the first score is credited to a different composer because Hans was under contract for Gladiator - like all this cool stuff.

I think for At Midnight, the same composer as my first movie, Grant Fonda, who I met at USC, who I've worked with for five, six years - and the second I got the job after calling my parents, I called Grant and I said, ‘Hey, we're doing a Paramount+ rom-com, which sounds insane,’ [laughs] ‘but that's what we're gonna go do now.’ And we started writing right away, because he read the script, and he wrote Sophie's theme and Alejandro's theme. And I was able to start learning those themes, and showing them to the actors. As soon as we were auditioning, I think the audition chemistry read between Diego and Monica, we cut together via Zoom, they're close-ups, much like we are right now, and I put the Alejandro theme underneath it. And that's what we sent to Paramount when we first were showing them the camera reads.

So, music has always been a top priority and taken very seriously. And it's spoken about much like a character - that's how him and I discussed the music in the same way you would describe the qualities of a character. And what was I listening to, Diego's very musical as his Monica and so Diego wanted us to honor Bolero-style music, but also honor Hollywood. So, it was a fun mix of classical Hollywood 1940s Leonard Bernstein-style music mixed with like Bolero and Augustin Lara. And combining those two worlds in the movie starts off very Hollywood music and then becomes more and more sort of guitar. And still the same theme always, but of course, there's a 12-person choir that plays at the very end, but that's just because I had to. [laughs] And yeah, also fun moment in the movie is when there's a shot of a record player in the hotel room, the record is credited to our composer. It's just taken as seriously as a character, I think is the key with music.

Sadie: Yeah, that is so cool. And I love that your actors also got to hear their own music like that. Having that tool and giving them that access like, did you see better performances from them?

Jonah: You do because I think it does a couple of things - one, when you're in between takes, and you're in the middle of Cenote, an underground body of water and Mexico with no cell service or whatever, and you take out your iPod or your computer and you put a headphone in your actor's ear, and you say, ‘Hey, listen to what me and the composer have been working on for your character.’ I think it just shows your actor and your crew that you take this thing really seriously. And it isn't just something that you're trying to have come out and never be thought of again. It's like, we've taken a lot of time and creative effort into creating a world and creating a character.

If you take every element of the filmmaking craft seriously, it helps enhance every other element. And I think it also helps with tone. If I say to somebody, ‘Oh, the tone of the movie is like magical pop culture fairy tale, takes itself seriously, but also doesn't take itself seriously.’ People will be like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ And then if you can show a scene with the music, where it's like, ‘When they kiss, it's this orchestra.’ It just shows you exactly what the world is that you're playing in. And I think Monica really responded to that. I remember her and I were listening to her theme, and she was like, ‘I completely understood what we were going for after I heard it.’ And Diego, I mean, he sings, so every time I send Diego something he would sing it back to me, which was really cool. [laughs]

Sadie: That is really cool. In terms of shooting in Mexico City, and again, you're really good at taking a city and making it a very vibrant character and giving it voice, and with this film, we do see some fun Easter Eggs paying homage to Roman Holiday, definitely a lot of parallels – but shooting outside of LA or NYC, what was the biggest learning curve for you, or something that you wish you would have known before taking on this location-based project?

Jonah: It's a great question. And, you know, being super candid, when I first got the job, and I was flying to Mexico for the first time, all our crew is local Mexico City artists, and it's like a real thing. Dating & New York, it was like people who were maybe still in NYU, or about to graduate. [laughs] This is a different experience when you're working with adults, and I was deeply nervous, panic attacks on the airplane, just so scared. And because not only had I just never had a project of this size, but it's a lot of people's livelihoods at stake and everything, and especially with the ways that movies were coming and going, movies get announced, movies get put in pre-production, and then they get taken away, and you're like, what is it the director's fault?

That was quickly then all squashed when I met the crew, and I met my wonderful cinematographer, and I just was welcomed in with open arms and had an incredible experience. And because of Diego, because of the crew, I was welcomed into a city that I did not know very well. And I think in a fun way saw it with childlike wonder where I was like, I'd never been here before, look at look how cool this is, look at this. And everyone was showing me things that were in movies, but also weren't in films that we could show it off in a really wonderful way. And it was really amazing.

The biggest learning curve was the language barrier that existed. I speak Spanish, but obviously not at the level where, if anyone's been on a film set, there's already a different language being spoken relative to English, so imagine the sort of like vernacular that you must know. And that was a difficult learning curve. But at the end of the day, what I really loved was that no matter what, everyone was so excited to be working on a rom-com, people would come up to me and just say, ‘I think it's so cool that you're doing a rom-com, there's got to be a rom-com Renaissance. And people are like, ‘I'm so used to doing blood, guns, or like a war movie, this is really nice.’ So, the universal language of love is what is connecting for us, and I think that that was the best. That was the happy surprise that happened from the experience.

Sadie: I know every country is a little different with how they function on set, shooting hours, lunch breaks – like in France you’re always eating – for this set, not necessarily being constrictions but it’s a new way for you on how to make a movie and run a set.

Jonah: This was a COVID project, so there was that element of constant testing, obviously. But no, I've read about walking lunches and French hours, but this was just like how we did it for Dating, it was honestly, you work and then you have an hour for lunch or maybe 45 minutes for lunch and you go back and do your thing.

I think the wonderful thing that I learned was how important those meals are, where you get to know the crew and get to know everybody. And I'll give you a fun story. This is not something that we ever did in the States, but basically, we had a half-day shoot on a Saturday and after the half-day shoot, it was like a week or two into production, out came a pair of speakers, and everyone just started dancing and playing music and hanging out with each other. And everyone just stayed in this remote location. So, that was really cool. There was just a social element that existed amongst the cast and crew that I did not experience or have not experienced in the United States in a very positive way, which I thought was really, really special.

Sadie: That’s such a great way to get everyone to connect and not feel like another cog in the filmmaking machine.

Jonah: It affects the movie across the board, especially when I mean, a lot of our crew had already worked together or knew each other, but because we had this world of some American actors meeting some Mexican actors and Mexican filmmakers, it was a helpful thing for all of us to bond.

Sadie: The Super Society movie that you got to make within the movie and the use of costume design for all of the characters, which again, says so much about their individual characters – but first, her superhero characters costume, I feel like I saw some hints of Rufio…

Jonah: [laughs] Who paid you to ask that question?! [laughs] The costume was something that I was super excited by, obviously, [laughs] I think only a fraction of what I prepared made it into the film, because ultimately, that wasn't what was important about the movie. But when I got to the original draft, none of that was in there. And I was like, let's take this, as someone who has been a student of film, who grew up watching movies like Tropic Thunder and Bowfinger, movies about movies, where I would always obsess over the movie within the movie - I know people care about that stuff. S,o it is very important to figure out these details. Firefina's costume was designed by our designer who designed this suit from scratch suit - it was loosely inspired by the 2000s-era superhero movies. But it was also just meant to be poppy and flashy and be like a pain in the ass of a suit for the actor to wear it because a lot of these actors do have to wear these suits that are really difficult prosthetically to put on.

Sadie: Right, like her line, “I had to wear three butts.”

Jonah: Exactly, it's like a joke. And trust me, Monica was a trooper, obviously, but she couldn't have done an entire movie in that suit. So then as the character becomes more and more herself, and as we cut more and more to the core of her heart, the elements are stripped away, and she loses the suit, loses the power and becomes just kind of Indiana Jones-inspired fit, which I think is equally as cool. She has a sword, because you need a sword.

Sadie: Obviously.

Jonah: [laughs] Obviously has a sword. And it was all linked. And that was always the intention. But there's also I think you can point to any of the costumes and the idea was always timeless quality. Her character when she's just Sophie Wilder, you could look at that those still frames and maybe say 50s 60s, there's nothing that I think that said 2022, even Alejandro's stuff. So that was always the idea that I never wanted to date these characters and what they were wearing, I want them to always feel kind of timeless or in their own little cartoon caricature-type world.

Sadie: The opening title sequence which I also really loved in Dating & New York, but in this one, it’s now an animation. What was that process like in making an animated title sequence and working with the artist?

Jonah: So, Dating & New York, we did the hand-drawn watercolors by Katie Woodward aka Rambling Sketcher on Instagram, and I obviously have a passion for these sort of like Cinderella era opening title cards even Breakfast at Tiffany's, I think they're such a special part of the movie, it tells you you're about to watch a film. And I had to do the same thing for this one. And Paramount was kind enough to grace me with this. What streaming movie in recent memory has a minute or more of a hand-drawn opening title card sequence?

It was important though to tell the story. Like if you look at those hand-drawn cards, they have story beats, the fact that Sophie Wilders famous, they have Diego being this hotel worker, they do things to help build the myth and the lore in the same way that a Disney ride queue might do is to give you these clues as before you go on the ride, it's to give you information. And so, the only way to do that properly was to recruit a Disney illustrator herself. So, I got Asia Ellington, who was like a famous Disney illustrator, and I Instagram DM’d her, [laughs] and I said, ‘Hey, I think we probably have the same favorite movies, would you be willing to draw five titles for this Paramount film?’ [laughs] And she said yes. And obviously, that was like a dream come true. Figuring out the Easter eggs there and the style.

Sadie: I love that you just like went for it.

Jonah: It's crazy how sometimes these Instagram DMs, like these swings to artists, they can make or break something. If I didn't scroll on Instagram too much one day, I would have never met Katie or Asia and never had opening titles in either movie.

Sadie: Turns out Instagram can be a great networking tool! This is the most important question, Kat Cohen, we need a movie just for her, how do we make this happen?

Jonah: I agree. I think that Cat and I talked about this on set. I said to her, ‘I know you're more than the maybe traditional trope of a quirky best friend.’ When I got the movie, I think the first person I said had to be in it was Cat - this is the rule. It's a package deal. And I think that a lot of rom-coms do have that trope of a character. I am working on a new draft of something which is actually, I know it's not a visual thing [shows script], but it's right here, and I think it's got Cat Cohen's name for the lead role. So, we're working on it. She also has a TV show that she's just starred in that will come out on Freeform. I think that that will be good for her. But she's just probably the funniest person I've ever met in my entire life..

Sadie: Yeah, she's great. Last time we chatted, you gave a lot of great advice, one of those pieces I actually ran with which was to set a date to make a movie and tell people – and I did it, and the rest is history. But I was definitely thinking of you during that process – it helped! So now that you’ve made your second feature film, what is something that you learned that you're going take with you on to the next film or something that you wish you would have had in your back pocket before doing the second feature?

Jonah: First off, congrats, I'm glad the advice worked - start date mentality. I think for this, if you're gonna go make your second movie, the thing I would say is that it's not that different from the first one and that you need to trust gosh, this is lame advice - but it's trust your gut. Surround yourself with great producers, obviously, I think that that's what made this movie such a great experience is I had producers who defended my ideas to the core, and if they didn't agree with them, we spoke about it in a honest, intelligent and communicative way to get to the solution. So, I think it's like, second movie, surround yourself with incredible producers, but always lean back on what you found to be successful in the first movie.

Just to be specific, I think when At Midnight came around, l looked at Dating & New York, and I picked out the scenes and the moments that I thought we did perfectly, or close to perfect. And I was like, ‘OK, we're gonna do that again.’ And then I looked at the things I didn't think I did that great. And I was like, ‘We're not gonna do that again.’ Or if I if it didn't work, why not? Is it because it was a bad idea? Or is it because something else?

I think the most fun exercise that I think came from Dating that informed the second movie is this, and this is really helpful for writers actually - OK, this is good - this exercise of OK, you picked your start date, but now you're looking at your script and you're like, ‘What is this movie?’ And what you need to do is need to visualize the entirety of it all. You have your script, movie gets cast, it gets financed, it gets made, it gets into a festival, it sells to Apple. OK, now you're doing your press junket. And you're sitting across from someone, and they're asking you the very same kind of questions that you're asking me, Sadie, and they're like, ‘What is this movie about? What was the inspiration for the character?’ And if you're able to, you only know it after having done it once. But if you're able to put yourself in that situation and answer those questions, they can actually really help inform the movie that you're making, and the character that you're trying to figure out, because there's nothing more effective, I think, than talking out loud to someone about your movie, where you then learn what your movie is about. That's why I annoy my parents, where I'm like, ‘This is what the next project is.’ And I just say it out loud. And sometimes you'll make something up on the spot, and be like, ‘but wait that needs to go into treatment.’ This exercise of assuming everything works out great, and now you're all the way down on that side of things, what can you learn about the future that you can activate in the past?

Sadie: I love that idea of just if you're saying out loud, you're just kind of making it real, right? And the more you talk about it, you're working out the things that aren't working or discover something, and then getting real-time reactions.

Jonah: This is the dumbest quote ever, but I kind of believe that it's like, the more real that you make something, the more real it becomes. That's why the start date exercise is always like, ‘OK, pick a start date.’ And because that start date is picked, now you're telling people about it, and you're talking about it. And that's truly how movies get made that no one really tells you. Yes, story is really important, and you should take your iPhone and go make something, but it's really just about, ‘I'm going to do this, and it's happening.’

Sadie: Holding yourself accountable. And then you have other people who are holding you accountable.

Jonah: Exactly, exactly that.

Sadie: Rom-coms are making a comeback, what do you hope audiences take away from this film?

Jonah: I would say two things on that front, which is one that whether or not people respond to the film, I think the important part is when you go out there to make a rom-com, you are already contributing and helping the genre because by making a movie, agents talk about it, because agents call their clients and say this thing is casting, casting directors talk about it, crew members are seeing it on the breakdown grids, simply by having a film exist is helping the genre, and it's helping to enter the zeitgeist. So, I think that that's super important and should not deter people from going out there and making things that they don't think are relevant.

I think one thing I'm very proud of is there's a lot of movies coming out this Valentine's Day particularly rom-coms, but I do think all the ones I've heard about, ours dances in between a bunch of different genres. You want a romance, comedy, superhero movie? Or a Mexican family drama? My favorite sequence in the film is the 15-minute Mexico City sequence where they're all speaking Spanish. And I'm like, ‘This is its own little thing. I could watch this for an hour and a half.’ I think that that is cool. And I hope people give it a chance because of that.

At Midnight is now streaming on Paramount+.