“I’m editing in my head how I say this,” explains James Sweeney, the writer, director, producer and star of the new Twinless, an elegant new black comedy about two men who meet in a support group for people who have lost their twins.
The reason Sweeney is mentally editing is that we’re talking in June, but this interview will come out with Twinless’ theatrical release in September, and he wants to make sure one of his answers won’t spoil any of the film’s many turns.
Making Twinless was a similar exercise in both planning ahead and being in the moment. Sweeney is in almost every scene of the film, usually opposite co-star Dylan O’Brien — they play the pair who meet in the support group.
Sweeney’s directing involved constant planning and visualization to balance the film’s sumptuous images and tight storytelling. Twinless breathes like a rom-com, but it’s more deftly plotted than many thrillers: If a character mentions something, you can almost be sure it will come back, often in a way that feels both heartbreaking and inevitable.
From the characters’ first meeting, which establishes that Sweeney’s character, Dennis, is gay, and that O’Brien’s character, Roman, is not — Twinless hints at an array of possibilities about where things could go, in terms of plot, and also genre.
That required a lot of editing in Sweeney’s head.
“Dylan and I have talked a lot about how I think one of the reasons he’s such a great actor is because he’s so present,” Sweeney explains. “And I, as a director and producer, spend a lot of time thinking ahead… anticipating problems and trying to come up with solutions before the problems happen, which can be really annoying and exhausting.”
Sweeney laughs, then adds: “So much of what I do as a writer and a director is communication. On one hand, art is subjective — you hand it over and it’s no longer yours, and it’s open for interpretation. But on the other hand, the more I can clarify my intention, the higher the yield rate of my intentions getting across. What I like about acting is it forces me to be present and be in the moment.”
Twinless Director James Sweeney on His First ‘Little Shows’
Sweeney, who is 35, was born near Sacramento and moved several times as a child, including to North Carolina and Utah, because his father was in the Air Force. He grew up mostly in Eagle River, Alaska, a suburb of Anchorage, and his parents still live in Alaska.
He didn’t have a twin, but did have an older sister. The decade-long-gap in their ages contributed to his sense of independence.
“I’m a military brat, so I had to start over several times,” he says. “Being an introvert and having to reset multiple times, I kind of created my own worlds to live in, with stuffed animals. My cousins and aunts and uncles can tell you stories about how I would put on little shows when I was a kid.”
He started doing regional theater in elementary school. “I think my first role was as a chair in Beauty and the Beast,” he laughs. “Which had lines, to be clear. I dressed in black and just pushed a chair around.”
He fell in love with TV before film— “because that’s what I had access to growing up in Alaska,” where he only had one movie theater close to home. Eventually a love of writing led him to film school at Chapman University, where he started off as a screenwriting major and then transferred into the acting program, which was interdisciplinary between the university’s theater and film programs.
At Chapman, he realized he wanted to direct. He also met his best friend, cinematographer Greg Cotten, who would go on to shoot both Sweeney’s debut, the 2019 film Straight Up, and Twinless.
Sweeney was in his early 20s when he wrote the scripts for both Straight Up — about a man who has previously dated men and tries dating a woman — and Twinless.
“I guess I’m in a different place now than I was then. But I am interested in themes of identity, themes of permanence. I also love the romantic comedy genre. I’m interested in relationships,” Sweeney says.
“Straight Up is sort of an exploration of how we do or do not have all of our needs met in one person — whether or not that’s pragmatic or attainable, especially in a modern landscape. I think the romantic comedy sort of sells the notion of one person to complete you. And I guess I, in some ways, try to dissect that through my work.”
Partners in Crime
Twinless also explores the idea of people completing each other — or falling short of each other’s expectations. While Straight Up relies heavily on Sweeney’s chemistry with the film’s female lead, played by Katie Findlay, Twinless is built around Sweeney’s dynamic with O’Brien.
O’Brien started out posting original videos to YouTube in his teens, which led to an acting career. He is best known for MTV’s Teen Wolf and the Maze Runner trilogy, and has recently taken on a series of bold, standout roles, including playing a young Dan Aykroyd in Saturday Night and a brutal pimp in Ponyboi.
Sweeney met him through the Twinless casting process.
“It was during the pandemic, so we met over Zoom, but we shared the script with his team, and he read it and then watched my film, and it was just sort of, I guess, instantaneous,” says Sweeney. “I think he just really saw my voice. … I write pretty specifically, so when I feel somebody really gets it, I latch onto that. And I felt like he just has the versatility and instincts.
“I was looking for a partner in crime, and I had heard that he had a really good reputation, on set, as a leader, as a co-star, and I just felt really good about how we would work together,” Sweeney continues.
O’Brien signed on not just as the co-lead, but as an executive producer.
Sweeney’s attention to detail — and making the complex look elegant — is especially apparent in a house party scene in Twinless that takes a lovely, dynamic approach to the split screen.
“There’s a visual grammar to the film that starts with the bifurcation of perspectives,” explains Sweeney. “So initially we’re seeing things through Roman’s point of view, then we shift to Dennis’.
“So the split screen, for me, was sort of the merging of a shared point of view. It wasn’t in the initial first draft. It was an idea that came later and for me concretized the grammar I was trying to build.”
Twinless is now in theaters, from Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate.