How Nicole Riegel Got in Tune With Dandelion

It’s fair to say that Nicole Riegel leaves the house with film and music on her body. Wherever she goes she takes a 16mm film camera with her – a gift from her husband who bought it for her in Sweden – and carries it on a strap made from her old guitar strap. “They’re my instruments,” she says.

It’s all so fitting, considering the subject of her new film Dandelion is a struggling musician. In the film, which is in cinemas this week, KiKi Layne (If Beale Street Could Talk) plays Theresa, a singer-songwriter playing thankless gigs in Cincinnati’s cocktail bars who finally rolls the dice on performing at a biker rally in South Dakota. That’s where she tumbles into a creative relationship and bed with fading star Casey (Thomas Doherty, The Invitation, Girls5Eva) as they both begin to wonder: Is that all there is?

That’s the same frame of mind that Riegel found herself in after the release of her debut feature, Holler. Originally scheduled to premiere at the 2020 South by Southwest Film & Television Festival, it was thrown into the maelstrom when that event was canceled, finally entering the bumpy world of streaming festivals later that year before being acquired by IFC Films and being released in June 2021, as cinemas were struggling to navigate the COVID-era new normal. Riegel recalls, “I was feeling so depressed and so beaten down as an artist, and I just was at a moment when I was facing this very narrow view of commercial success.”

She desperately wanted to make a film about musicians, but even after the critical success of Holler, “I couldn’t even get the room to interview for a music movie. Because I hadn’t made one, Hollywood’s not going to let me.” She found herself in the same place she was in before she made her first movie, so she had to adopt the same attitude: If no one was going to let her make a music movie, she was going to make one on her own terms. Dandelion’s struggle is not to become a star but to find what kind of performer she wants to be. That’s why Riegel describes Dandelion as “a film about process rather than results,” which is something she sees in herself. “When I just focus on the work and be in the process, and I go get lost, that is when it all just opens up for me.”

That’s why Dandelion keeps clear of the trappings of the post-A Star is Born depiction of the musical megastar, as Riegel wanted to look at the struggles of the working artist – and especially how much harder it is for women in the arts. “I see my male counterparts regarded as geniuses and wunderkinds, and I look at the work that’s made by women who aren’t Greta Gerwig – who’s amazing – and we’re not looked at in the same way. We’re not talked about and trusted and recognized in the way that male filmmakers and male musicians are.”

Rather than express that story through a filmmaker’s travails, Riegel turned to her other passion: music. Dandelion’s delicate guitar ballads and covers are out of step with current tastes, Riegel says, “and she looks online, and when women are getting clicks and likes it’s sexy videos and, ‘What’s the most salacious thing you can do to grab eyeballs?’ and the music she’s making is not loud and splashy and clicky.” Riegel sees her travails summed up in one line that was improvised on the day of shooting: “‘Instagram doesn’t make you good.’ That’s true. You can have millions of followers, it doesn’t mean you’re talented; it doesn’t mean you’re a great musician.”

Riegel admits that Dandelion’s experiences in music resonate with her own as a filmmaker. “I’m not making the cool concept-y things. I’m not making the breakout film of the year that’s the buzziest thing, [but] I want a career. The point is to keep making film after film and build a body of work.” Her hope is that the film will resonate with artists who feel down about their career and creative trajectory – and that included her future self: “If I’m feeling that way again, I’ll go watch Dandelion again.”

While Dandelion is rooted in Ohio, Riegel actually decamped from her adopted home of Los Angeles and moved to Nashville, which she explains “is not Music City, it’s Songwriter City.” She quickly found out that she was one of very few filmmakers in the city (Harmony Korine used to live in her neighborhood, but that’s about it), but she was surrounded by struggling musicians, hardworking musicians, musicians for whom stardom is not the point, but the process of building up their own body of work is everything. “It was my Berlin,” she cheekily notes, “and I got lost in Nashville and found Dandelion.”

Equally, she and her husband found a community there, as she would get to know musicians, and they would hang out at her house. That’s where she assembled the ensemble that provided the music for the film, including Grace Kaiser and Brother Elsey (who appear as Casey’s backing band), “and they sing and we drink beer and wine and make music, and it’s the best thing ever.”

Plus, she added, Nashville is not a town of bars and clubs where musicians play over chattering crowds. It’s a place of listening rooms where audiences pay attention, and the difference between the two is key to Dandelion. It’s also informed by a moment from Riegel’s own life when she was still living in Los Angeles. “I went to Sky Bar, and Ted Leo was playing. I’m a big Ted Leo fan, and all these people are there, but it doesn’t look like a Ted Leo crowd. He’s playing songs, it’s great, and then all of a sudden everyone’s just walking around him. It’s just LA people, having drinks, talking over him. They’re at a cool, hip pool bar and basically turned Ted Leo into a lobby singer. It’s like, do they know Ted Leo is playing right now? He was wallpaper, and then at one point someone walks up to him and he goes, ‘(heavy sigh) If you’re driving so-and-so BMW, the valet has it out front.’ And then he goes, ‘Never thought I’d say that, but here we are.’”

Leo’s not the only famous musician who influenced Dandelion. Two of Riegel’s key collaborators were Cincinnati natives Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National, who worked with her to turn the poems and lyrics she was writing into songs. Big fans of Holler, the duo came on board immediately upon reading the Dandelion script, and the creative relationship crystalized immediately. She sent Aaron some rough notes “just to see if it was anything. He sends back a song.” Not just a song, but “The Ghost of Cincinnati,” one of the core musical elements of the film. Moreover, Aaron asked Riegel if he could adapt and perform the song as his first excursion as a lead vocalist on his collaboration with Justin Vernon, Big Red Machine. "Literally the next week, [Taylor Swift’s] Folklore came out, and I was like, ‘This is who you’ve been working with? Wow.’ … and then the next thing I know he’s performing it on Jimmy Kimmel.”

Riegel has referred to Dandelion as the second installment in what she calls her “Ohio Women Trilogy … three different portraits of three different women in South Ohio.” It began with Holler and will continue with a third planned film about an older woman in the region. However, she’s also “dying to film something in the North of England.” Like her home state, it’s a post-industrial region that has often been ignored by policymakers, and she discussed that at length with her Holler star, British actress Jessica Barden. “Something I learned from Jessica was the disparity between the North and the South, which I didn’t know was such a huge thing. She’s very outspoken when it comes to class, which is something I love about her.”

Moreover, Riegel's movies are profoundly and overtly influenced by British filmmakers like Lindsay Anderson, Ken Loach, and Andrea Arnold. “They care about class so much,” she says. “To tell stories and criticize one’s country in British cinema feels welcome and almost encouraged. In American cinema, you are not supposed to criticize your country, and so I find that Brits like my work more than Americans do – and I’m OK with that.”

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Dandelion is in cinemas now. Read our review and find showtimes here.