Bay Area native makes ‘Body Snatchers’ update with ‘She-Hulk’ star

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” has always been a Marin story. The original 1955 novel by Jack Finney, “The Body Snatchers,” was set in Mill Valley, where Finney lived.

This story about plants from outer space that replace humans with hivemind duplicates has been adapted over and over again into movies in 1956, 1978, 1993 and 2007, and has loosely inspired many more, becoming essentially a subgenre in its own right.

Now “body snatchers” have returned to Marin County with “Snatched,” a short film written and directed by Marin native Michael Schwartz that premiered Oct. 1 as part of the “Bite Size Halloween” series on Hulu.

Filmed in Belvedere and El Cerrito, “Snatched” stars Tatiana Maslany, the Emmy-winning star of “Orphan Black” and current Disney+ sensation “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” whose season finale aired Thursday. “Snatched” is Maslany’s first onscreen role with her husband, Brendan Hines of TV’s “Lie to Me,” “Scandal,” “Locke & Key” and “The Tick.”

“Brendan Hines, we had met a few times before, and I’ve been a huge fan of his work for years,” Schwartz says. “A mutual friend put us in touch, and I did not know he was married to Tatiana. He shared the script with her, and they reached out to me one day and said, ‘Tatiana thinks this script is brilliant and is wondering if you’d consider her.’ And I cried and I screamed and fell into a puddle, because that was the most absurd statement I had heard in my life.”

In Schwartz’s horror comedy (he calls it “disco horror”), Maslany and Hines play the parents of a teenager who gets a stony reaction when he tells his parents he’s gay. The next morning is even more uncomfortable as Mom and Dad are suddenly way, way, way too supportive. It’s like they’re completely different people.

The son is played by nonbinary actor Misha Osherovich, known for the movie “Freaky,” a horror twist on “Freaky Friday.”

“Back in May, the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill was making national news, and I was perplexed by the hollow statements put out by corporate leaders and political leaders saying that they support their LGBTQ+ employees while actively giving money to politicians that were supporting the bill,” Schwartz says. “I had the opportunity to pitch 20th Digital Studio for this series, and I turned to my partner and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if a kid came out as gay in a horror movie, but the horror is that the parents are overenthusiastic about it?’ We just couldn’t stop laughing. We started riffing off of all the ways we could subvert these different kinds of horror tropes, or tropes in the culture.”

Schwartz envisioned it as a Bay Area story, which made it perfect for a “Body Snatchers” riff.

“I felt that I could, with a light touch, poke fun at my hometown, but also hopefully raise some interesting questions about the ever-clashing ideologies that happen in the Bay Area,” Schwartz says.

“Some of the experiences in this film were based off of experiences of not only myself, but queer friends of mine and people of color who grew up in Marin. Police often mistook them from coming over from Oakland, and, of course, they didn’t. They lived in Marin. We shot it in a place that I love, but it’s my hope that it’s an opportunity for us to take a look at our values and what we stand for.”

A lot of roles are played by locals. Marin residents Sid Ganis, a former Lucasfilm and Paramount exec and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and his wife and fellow producer, Nancy Hult Ganis, served as consulting producers for “Snatched” and also play disturbing neighbors in the film, displaying a familiar yard sign boasting of tolerance.

Schwartz grew up in Kentfield and went to Marin public schools all through high school before studying theater and film at the University of Southern California.

“I had a Halloween chest of costumes as a little kid, and I would put on shows when I was 3 years old, 4 years old, 5 years old,” he recalls. “I would write the scripts, I would create programs and I would put on shows. I made my first film when I was seven with my VHS videotape recorder. It was never not what I felt I was here to do. I was always a storyteller.”

After 15 years in New York, Schwartz recently moved back to Los Angeles. He briefly returned to Marin in 2015 to direct “Peter Pan” for the Mountain Play.

“Every project that I’ve been pitching, the novel I just wrote, they’re all set in the Bay,” Schwartz says.

“I think San Francisco is so ripe for these stories of clashing ideologies, and it’s so ripe for beautiful photography, and there’s so many stories by underrepresented voices that haven’t yet had the opportunity to get out to the public. So it’s my hope to continue to return to my hometown as much as I can tell these stories, and also film in the Bay.”

Sam Hurwitt is a Bay Area arts journalist and playwright. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter at twitter.com/shurwitt.

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” has always been a Marin story. The original 1955 novel by Jack Finney, “The Body Snatchers,” was set in Mill Valley, where Finney lived.

This story about plants from outer space that replace humans with hivemind duplicates has been adapted over and over again into movies in 1956, 1978, 1993 and 2007, and has loosely inspired many more, becoming essentially a subgenre in its own right.

Now “body snatchers” have returned to Marin County with “Snatched,” a short film written and directed by Marin native Michael Schwartz that premiered Oct. 1 as part of the “Bite Size Halloween” series on Hulu.

Filmed in Belvedere and El Cerrito, “Snatched” stars Tatiana Maslany, the Emmy-winning star of “Orphan Black” and current Disney+ sensation “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” whose season finale aired Thursday. “Snatched” is Maslany’s first onscreen role with her husband, Brendan Hines of TV’s “Lie to Me,” “Scandal,” “Locke & Key” and “The Tick.”

“Brendan Hines, we had met a few times before, and I’ve been a huge fan of his work for years,” Schwartz says. “A mutual friend put us in touch, and I did not know he was married to Tatiana. He shared the script with her, and they reached out to me one day and said, ‘Tatiana thinks this script is brilliant and is wondering if you’d consider her.’ And I cried and I screamed and fell into a puddle, because that was the most absurd statement I had heard in my life.”

In Schwartz’s horror comedy (he calls it “disco horror”), Maslany and Hines play the parents of a teenager who gets a stony reaction when he tells his parents he’s gay. The next morning is even more uncomfortable as Mom and Dad are suddenly way, way, way too supportive. It’s like they’re completely different people.

The son is played by nonbinary actor Misha Osherovich, known for the movie “Freaky,” a horror twist on “Freaky Friday.”

“Back in May, the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill was making national news, and I was perplexed by the hollow statements put out by corporate leaders and political leaders saying that they support their LGBTQ+ employees while actively giving money to politicians that were supporting the bill,” Schwartz says. “I had the opportunity to pitch 20th Digital Studio for this series, and I turned to my partner and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if a kid came out as gay in a horror movie, but the horror is that the parents are overenthusiastic about it?’ We just couldn’t stop laughing. We started riffing off of all the ways we could subvert these different kinds of horror tropes, or tropes in the culture.”

Schwartz envisioned it as a Bay Area story, which made it perfect for a “Body Snatchers” riff.

“I felt that I could, with a light touch, poke fun at my hometown, but also hopefully raise some interesting questions about the ever-clashing ideologies that happen in the Bay Area,” Schwartz says.

“Some of the experiences in this film were based off of experiences of not only myself, but queer friends of mine and people of color who grew up in Marin. Police often mistook them from coming over from Oakland, and, of course, they didn’t. They lived in Marin. We shot it in a place that I love, but it’s my hope that it’s an opportunity for us to take a look at our values and what we stand for.”

A lot of roles are played by locals. Marin residents Sid Ganis, a former Lucasfilm and Paramount exec and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and his wife and fellow producer, Nancy Hult Ganis, served as consulting producers for “Snatched” and also play disturbing neighbors in the film, displaying a familiar yard sign boasting of tolerance.

Schwartz grew up in Kentfield and went to Marin public schools all through high school before studying theater and film at the University of Southern California.

“I had a Halloween chest of costumes as a little kid, and I would put on shows when I was 3 years old, 4 years old, 5 years old,” he recalls. “I would write the scripts, I would create programs and I would put on shows. I made my first film when I was seven with my VHS videotape recorder. It was never not what I felt I was here to do. I was always a storyteller.”

After 15 years in New York, Schwartz recently moved back to Los Angeles. He briefly returned to Marin in 2015 to direct “Peter Pan” for the Mountain Play.

“Every project that I’ve been pitching, the novel I just wrote, they’re all set in the Bay,” Schwartz says.

“I think San Francisco is so ripe for these stories of clashing ideologies, and it’s so ripe for beautiful photography, and there’s so many stories by underrepresented voices that haven’t yet had the opportunity to get out to the public. So it’s my hope to continue to return to my hometown as much as I can tell these stories, and also film in the Bay.”

Sam Hurwitt is a Bay Area arts journalist and playwright. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter at twitter.com/shurwitt.