‘Hannah Ha Ha’: a small-town film poses big questions about economic anxiety
Growing up in Sharon, Jordan Tetewsky and Joshua Pikovsky had a pattern. Tetewsky, a moody adolescent by his own account, would convince Pikovsky to collaborate on middle school projects. The pair would inevitably butt heads, and Tetewsky would then run those projects into the ground.
It was a “rocky relationship,” Pikovsky recalled in a recent interview with the Globe, but as the boys continued into high school, there were bursts of bonding. “I think it was mostly just us talking about Stephen King and then the worst bands you could imagine,” he said.
Over the years, their roller coaster rapport evolved into a mutual reliance, and then a fruitful creative partnership. After they both graduated from college — Pikovsky at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Tetewsky in the film conservatory at the State University of New York at Purchase — they teamed up on a series of short films. Those collaborations were a success, yielding a handful of thoughtful, sliceof-life portraits.
The pair eventually came together to make “Hannah Ha Ha,” their debut feature. Opening June 30 at West Newton Cinema, the film follows the small-town routines of an easygoing 25-year-old who is facing pressure to start a career before she’s kicked off her dad’s health insurance.
The filmmakers wrote the script when they were around 27, while the experience of acquiring their own health insurance for the first time was still fresh in their minds. Crafting the script, Tetewsky said, involved “trying to do something that wasn’t heavyhanded and overt, like a big dramatic conflict. It was trying to find something that would be relevant to what people in our time are going through.”
Shot over 11 days in July 2021, the film was a joint effort that the friends, both now 29, also directed and edited together. Operating on a shoestring budget, Tetewsky and Pikovsky used locations in and around their native Sharon, and relied on a cast and crew of friends, family, and locals patient enough to rough it on a scrappy indie endeavor. Case in point: Instead of a wardrobe trailer, the lead actress, Hannah Lee Thompson, changed costumes inside a hastily pitched camping tent.
There were stumbling blocks. An actor originally set to play a lead was forced to back out after testing positive for COVID-19. Several of the allotted production days were rained out. And shooting the film so fast left them feeling drained.
“The first three days, Jordan was spiraling,” Pikovsky remembered. “We did it at a breakneck pace, like nonstop. It was very physically and mentally demanding. You can’t sustain a positive attitude for that long, for that many hours a day.”
But there were also happy surprises built into their no-frills method. Tetewsky found that stretching a pair of black pantyhose over the camera lens cast a soft, fuzzy tone over the footage. The effect made the images look like a summer heat mirage, while mirroring Hannah’s gentle and loose approach to the world around her.
Thompson, a musician and friend of Tetewsky’s from college, agreed to star in the feature after working with the pair on a short film. In “Hannah Ha Ha,” her character works odd jobs around town while living at home with her ailing father, Avram (Avram Tetewsky, Jordan’s real-life father). Enter Paul (Roger Mancusi), Hannah’s naggy older brother, who reminds her that she’ll lose Avram’s health insurance once she turns 26. A tech marketer, Paul urges Hannah to find a secure line of work.
“I think every Hannah has a Paul in her life,” Pikovsky said.
Upon Paul’s nagging, Hannah embarks on a job-finding mission. She submits applications, asks around town, and, in the film’s funniest scene, even interviews for a position at a tech startup in Boston. After traveling to the interview on the commuter rail, Hannah is asked by the boss to estimate the number of fire hydrants in London, England, and to provide her MyersBriggs personality type.
Tetewsky and Pikovsky wrote the fire hydrants line after Googling “tech interview questions” and then “slightly modifying” one they found funny. The Myers-Briggs detail came straight from Pikovsky’s own experience: “I had to do a test to get a job once. Apparently my result is what got me the job.”
The film also boasts a number of Sharon-specific locations. In a couple scenes, Hannah and Avram go out for ice cream at their favorite neighborhood dairy bar. In the later sequence, they pull up to the shop and learn that the business has closed for good.
Tetewsky and Pikovsky shot the scenes at Crescent Ridge Dairy, a Sharon staple that Pikovsky only semi-ironically called “a national treasure.” The shuttering of Crescent Ridge in the film is fictional; that shop is still going strong. But the filmmakers have been forced to say goodbye to their fair share of mom-and-pop spots over the years, including a local bookstore that closed when they were teenagers.
The film’s title, Tetewsky confirmed, is a nod to “Funny Ha Ha,” Andrew Bujalski’s 2002 micro-budget comedy about post-graduate ennui. Tetewsky and Pikovsky’s film mirrors the scrappiness and spirit of that mumblecore touchstone, as well as its interest in small moments and mundane dialogue.
But “Hannah Ha Ha” distinguishes itself in its singular focus on economic anxiety. Hannah’s story seems to ask a specific, contemporary, and urgent question: How do young people reconcile their own idea of a fulfilling life with the type of life that our society recognizes and rewards?
Or, as Tetewsky put it: “Why can’t someone like Hannah live a good life? She’s someone who’s providing a lot for her community and also working and doing her best. Why can’t she be comfortable?”
Pikovsky echoed the idea. “This is a good person who takes care of people around her, who does work hard, who does serve a role in her community — that’s important. So why is her brother right that this is not a sustainable lifestyle?” He added, “Why have we rigged up a system where people like her are actually punished for being good?”
Crucially, the film doesn’t attempt to answer the questions it poses. Instead, it revels in the small moments of comfort that Hannah finds beside Avram, watching television, eating ice cream, or enjoying an evening bonfire.
Tetewsky and Pikovsky are currently at work on a handful of additional features. They’ve already finished one of them. “I could not do it alone,” Pikovsky said. “I feel like we fill in each other’s gaps really well.”
“Single directors make terrible decisions all the time, because they don’t have someone being annoying next to them,” Tetewsky added. “We think all directors should be duos.”