Ever felt defined by your job? Ever wished you were someone else? “Maude,” the new short from Austin’s Anna Margaret Hollyman, mixes those components together in a short tale of mistaken identity, social anxiety, and social comedy. A struggling twentysomething (Hollyman, who also directs) falls into a comedy of errors when she has to pick up a babysitting job, and ends up on a helter-skelter of confusion and pretend that can only end in awkwardness.
Hollyman, who was most recently lighting up screens in slightly-true-tale of a missing evangelical in Sister Aimee, first talked to the Chronicle before the short debuted at SXSW 2018. She explained that it was born from her experiences paying the bills as a jobbing actress. She said, “I’ve had a plethora of interesting survival jobs that have gone along with that because, believe it or not, one cannot make a living on acting alone – especially in indie film. ‘Maude’ was an attempt to take an experience that was personal to me and interpret it in a comedic way, which is the best way for me to cope with things in life in general.”
Watch the short now on Vimeo (where it’s a staff pick) or head over to www.austinchronicle.com/screens.
This article appears in November 1 • 2019.
