When Cambridge native Sian Heder introduced a sneak preview of her debut feature as a writer-director, “Tallulah,’’ at a local screening earlier this month — it opened Friday at the West Newton Cinema — a car was scheduled to take her to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. “I was like, ‘I’m not staying at the Ritz. I’m staying at my parents’ house,’’’ says Heder, who lives in Los Angeles. “Now I’m sitting here in my tiny childhood bedroom with no air conditioning and I’m saying, ‘Why didn’t I stay at the Ritz?’ I have not embraced my new, chi-chi lifestyle.’’
Best known thus far as a writer for the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,’’ Heder grew up in West Cambridge. Her mother is well-known artist Mags Harries, who created the sculptures of gloves at the Porter Square T station escalator and the trash in the ground at Haymarket.
Heder, 39, attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School before heading to Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied acting. When she moved to Los Angeles, she took a job as a babysitter, where a less-than-doting mother inspired her first short film, in 2006. That short, “Mother,’’ was the basis for “Tallulah.’’ The feature stars Ellen Page as the title character, a vagabond from Somerville (the van she sleeps in sports Massachusetts plates) who’s hired by Carolyn (Tammy Blanchard), a self-absorbed, hard-drinking Beverly Hills housewife, to watch her 2-year-old daughter. Horrified by Carolyn’s behavior, Tallulah takes the child and shows up at the apartment of her boyfriend’s mother, Margo (Allison Janney), claiming that the toddler is her own.
“The short begged to be longer because it ended with her taking the child,’’ says Heder. “I knew the characters interested me and the tone interested me: It was comedic and tragic at the same time.’’ Over the many years it took to get “Tallulah’’ made, Heder had two children. That gave her more compassion for Carolyn, she says. “I’m grateful it took me longer because I told a more complex and compassionate story.’’
Heder worked on the first three seasons of “OITNB’’ and was two weeks into the fourth season when “Tallulah’’ was greenlit for production.
“I miss the show. It’s a job, but it’s also my family. It was an amazing experience, but there are so many stories I want to tell. As a mother of two young children, being able to juggle motherhood and filmmaking [means] I have to make choices about where to put my energy,’’ she says.
Heder is writing her next movie, to be set in the Gloucester fishing community. She says that, like the characters in both “OITNB’’ and “Tallulah,’’ she’s interested in individuals, particularly women, not often seen on screen.
“I think people are hungry to see women who feel related to the women we know in life: complicated and flawed and sometimes unlikable. Men react as strongly as women do to stories of full humanity,’’ she says. “It’s time to have diverse storytellers. We’ve seen a lot of guys running around with guns.’’
www.westnewtoncinema.com
RIIFF turns 20
The Rhode Island International Film Festival, known as Flickers, celebrates its 20th year Aug. 9-14 at various venues in Providence. Not only will Flickers present new, independent films selected from more than 6,000 submissions, it’s a premiere festival for shorts. Since 2002, RIIFF been a qualifying festival in the short film category for the Oscars; in 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also made RIIFF a qualifying fest for documentary shorts.
www.film-festival.org
Loren King can be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.
