Portland’s music scene and landmarks feature in indie comedy ‘Cora Bora’

There’s a new Portland-based, independent comedy on the scene. “Cora Bora” follows Cora, a snarky, somewhat aimless musician struggling her way through solo shows in bars and coffee shops across Los Angeles after the mysterious dissolution of her band. When she suspects her girlfriend is seeing someone new, Cora returns to Portland to try and salvage the relationship. While there, she loses her dog, almost joins an orgy, suffers through awkward encounters with old friends and ultimately confronts the trauma that’s been holding her back.

Rhianon Jones wrote “Cora Bora” and served as its executive producer. She joins us to talk about what the movie means to her and how she was influenced by her time in the Portland music scene.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end this week with a new Portland-based film. “Cora Bora” tells a story of Cora, a snarky, somewhat aimless, often self-sabotaging musician, struggling her way through solo shows in LA bars and coffee shops after the mysterious dissolution of her band. When she thinks her girlfriend is seeing someone new, Cora returns to Portland to try to salvage the relationship.

Screenwriter and executive producer Rhianon Jones knows the Portland to LA route well. She spent about a decade in Portland’s rock and punk scenes in the late ‘90s and early 2000s before moving to LA herself. She joins us now to talk about the new movie which had its theatrical run in June and went online last week. Rhianon Jones, congratulations and welcome to Think Out Loud.

Rhianon Jones: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Miller: I want to start with a scene from the beginning of the movie. Main character Cora is playing a show at a bar where, first of all, there are very few people in the audience, and those that are there are not that into what she’s doing.

[Video clip playing from “Cora Bora”]

Miller: Rhianon, what is going on in Cora’s life at the beginning of this movie?

Jones: I will say, in that scene, what is going on is people are kind of getting up and leaving, for those who can’t see it. So she’s a recent transplant to LA. She’s been there for a few months, trying to branch out on her own. She’s still in a committed but not exclusive relationship with her girlfriend Justine back in Portland. So she is struggling to establish herself in a different music scene.

Miller: You’ve said that one of the big sparks for this movie was a Tinder date that you went on. Can you describe that date?

Jones: So it was a story told to me by a free spirit that they went on a Tinder date with someone who had been in an open relationship that was long distance. He sort of described this 24-hour process of realizing she had met someone else. And it was kind of serious. So going back for her birthday or some celebration, and then kind of realizing it was over and ending up very far from home. Not in the same situation as Cora but similarly far out of town and having to walk back. And I was like, oh, man, this is like the quintessential story. It’s like a unity of time and place, it all takes place in 24 hours and it’s her lowest moment of her life, in many ways.

Miller: You heard that story and it’s not an exaggeration to say that at least the kernel of a screenplay was born?

Jones: Yeah, I mean, that was sort of the skeleton on which everything else is hung. Obviously, there’s a lot of changes in the process. Even at the time that I heard it, I was like it’s even funnier if it’s a woman, a female musician, because it’s not something you see often. We don’t track in film very often female messiness. It’s getting better, but it’s still, I feel, an under exploited area of comedy.

Miller: Let’s listen to another scene from the movie. This is when Cora has returned to Portland. She goes online and meets a guy who she’s going to hook up with. She takes an Uber or a Lyft to the rural outskirts of Portland somewhere to meet up with him. It turns out he’s there, but it’s actually the home of a very sweet polyamorous group that he is a part of. Let’s listen to part of a scene when she is hanging out with all the people in this group.

[Video clip playing from “Cora Bora”]

Miller: Rhianon, I should have mentioned this before, but Cora is played by Megan Stalter, an actor who’s I think most well-known now for playing the chaotic and amazing Hollywood agent on the HBO show “Hacks.” It’s impossible to imagine anybody else in this role in your movie. Can you describe just what she brings to the screen?

Jones: It’s funny because when we were shopping the script around, once we had the director attached, the director and I were both like, “Yeah, Cora is amazing. She’s difficult but who wouldn’t love her?” And not so for everyone else. They were like, “Wow, she’s kind of awful. How do we get people to care about her?” When we both sort of independently settled on going after Meg for it, whenever we pitched the movie and [said] it’s going to be Meg Stalter everyone was like, “Oh, OK. Of course.” They suddenly understood what we were going for because she brought that heart that Hannah and I had just kind of assumed was obvious, but apparently was not on the page. So that’s something that having her cast in that role and going out with the phone with that was a whole different story, because of what she’s doing on “Hacks” and because of her stuff on Instagram, her comedy bits that she does. People could understand that she’s a little more likable than maybe what they’d just been picking up from the actual script.

Miller: It’s almost like the magic trick of this performance and others, as you noted, that she can be both a nightmare and someone that you can’t help but like. How do you think she does it?

Jones: Meg is, herself, a very kind and loving person, which I think is part of it. She’s not having to fake that part of it. She doesn’t really have a mean bone in her body, but it was also a no brainer for her to accept the role. She understands how to portray someone sort of complex and annoying and difficult, but maintain that they’re still deserving of love, which is ultimately kind of the story that we’re trying to tell with Cora.

I also think that for this movie in particular, because music plays such an important role in it, her singing – which you just heard a sample of earlier – is quite pretty, and very raw and natural. And I feel like those musical interludes in the movie where you get to see her performance also was a great stage for her to kind of show the depth of character, and the sort of rawness and vulnerability that maybe didn’t come through in just the scenes that were more oriented towards getting a laugh.

Miller: How much of yourself did you plan to or want to put in the Cora character?

Jones: Honestly, none. I thought I was like the Tom character in it who is her kind of counterpart, played by Manny Jacinto. But interestingly enough, a lot of my Portland friends who have watched the film have reached out to me and been like, “Oh my God, she’s so you. I see so much of you in her.” I guess I didn’t realize how in your art, the stuff bubbles up whether you think you’re like repressing it or not. And I thought that I was safely not represented by Cora, and I was actually scared to have it set in Portland for that reason. But the rest of the team [were] all big fans of Portland and were like it’s got to be here.

They made me sort of dig a little deeper for the more dramatic parts of it. And I did rely on some of my experiences before I left Portland for some of the more dramatic moments, which was definitely hard, and I felt very vulnerable. I’ve been most nervous about “Cora” showing in Portland and online because I feel like I was there for so long, and it was where I got my start as a musician and a filmmaker. I feel like I want to make them proud. But also I need to explore, personally, why I felt I needed to leave at a certain point. And I didn’t want to hurt Portland’s feelings, you know, because I love the city so much and what it gave to me in my youth.

Miller: If you don’t mind, let’s dig into those things. First of all, starting with what it gave you. What were the best parts of the decade or so that you spent as a musician and as a young artist in Portland?

Jones: I came from a small town in rural Washington and I went to school on the East Coast for like a year. And then I wanted to be back on the West Coast. I went to Reed in Portland and was just thrown into the middle of this incredible scene, especially for women – Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill and the whole Northwest music scene – that was just super accessible, super welcoming, super tough, political, righteous, innovative and lo-fi. It was really such a lucky opportunity for me. There’s no way I would have learned to play drums or guitar if I hadn’t been in Portland at the time that I was. There’s a lot of socioeconomic factors that go into an art scene like that, like affordable rent and houses with basements so people have places to practice, and a culture – there’s a lot of used equipment around. You can get stuff for cheap, a sense of social obligation for people to pass on how to play instruments and teach each other, a sort of do-it-yourself attitude that makes it more universally accessible.

It was an artistically and creatively very rich time in Portland. There was a lot going on and some of it’s luck and some of it’s just the way things panned out at the time, but I feel very lucky to have been there, basically in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. And when I wrote this, obviously, some time has passed. I haven’t been in Portland as much the last few years because I have young children here on the East Coast and it’s hard to travel with them. But my team was still very attached to Portland and [they feel] it’s still like that. It’s still a true representation. The music scene is still great, the art scene is still great. People are still very supportive and it’s a very fertile environment for that, a very nurturing environment. So it made sense that Cora leaving was kind of a big deal for her in more ways than one.

Miller: Why did you leave?

Jones: There was a lot going on. I was very involved in the punk rock scene and the indie scene, which weren’t exactly the same scene. I’m not gonna have any spoilers for the movie, but there were a lot of tragic things that happened in kind of a short amount of time, a span of like a year or two before I left. And I wasn’t living a very healthy lifestyle. Like I drank a lot and I did drugs. I kind of realized one day, I don’t know where this is taking me, but I feel like I would want to do something more and something better. I’ve been so lucky to be in Portland and to have gotten to go to a good school – Reed. I feel like I’m not really living up to my potential here and I want to sort of do better, give back a little bit and get my stuff together.

Miller: Without giving the plot away, and as you obliquely referenced, there is some darkness that figures in the plot of this movie, which is also very funny. What was it like just personally to revisit those years in writing the script and then helping to make the film?

Jones: I think the biggest challenge for me artistically … I set out to write like a sort of more straight up comedy set in a rock and roll setting. So, kind of fun. But it was the director, Hannah, who wanted me to go a little bit deeper and darker. It’s really hard. They always tell you in film school, you gotta go there, put it on the page. But you don’t really want to do that, and then you do and it was hard at the time, it was nerve-wracking.

Now, having it out in Portland, has been kind of weirdly cathartic. Having conversations like this with people who are still in Portland and part of the community there kind of helped me put my past in the past, which I don’t think was really there until I did this movie. Which is also kind of sad to have something be in the past and be over. I think I kept that flame alive. I still thought of myself as a musician, even though I haven’t really played in years. I was like, “Oh, this is maybe really not my life anymore,” which is sort of bittersweet. I like my life now. But I do feel like I miss some of the highs of my life back then, and the community of musicians and artists that I got to be a part of.

Miller: Well, it’s interesting, it may be a more recent thing to realize that you’re not a musician, now you’re a producer and a screenwriter. Do you still think of yourself, though, as a punk? I mean, just in terms of the ethos of the artistic creation that you are a part of in Portland. Is that still part of your identity?

Jones: I obviously would love to think so because I feel like the punk ideals are actually pretty good ideals, they’re hard to argue with when you get down to it. Not all of them obviously, but I try to carry that into my life. I have different priorities now. Like I mentioned, I have a family and I moved into producing for a lot of other people, but I do try to keep those punk ideals present and I’m definitely drawn to projects that are a little bit outsider. A lot of our films that we do through my company, Neon Heart, are sort of ones that other people haven’t been willing to take a chance on – a little bit of the underdog vibe. I think I’m still drawn to that. And it makes me think if other people think it can’t be done, I’m more determined to do it.

Miller: So what do you keep an eye out for? I mean, if there’s a million scripts floating around, a million potential projects out there, what do you want to actually focus on?

Jones: Neon Heart is just for female directors, so we’re trying to help launch people’s careers, to get more women into commercial films. So we’re trying to get their first film, like their Fruitvale Station before they get to do “Black Panther” movies. So we’re looking for people with long term career goals and vision, and we’re looking for strong storytelling but also strong female leads in the films – which “Cora” was for me.

Miller: I was really surprised just to hear that almost all the movie was shot in LA except for four or five days of exteriors in Portland. Was it a challenge to get a Portland vibe in LA?

Jones: It’s not as bad a proportion as you’d think because we had so few shooting days – it was really quite a low budget movie. About a fourth of it was filmed in Portland. I’m so familiar with Portland and I knew that there were a few streets in LA that had the craftsman houses, which is kind of the main part that was hard to replicate. We had originally envisioned and hoped to do it all in Portland, but it just logistically didn’t work out. We didn’t quite have the budget to get everyone up there.

I didn’t actually get to go to the Portland part. It was during COVID, so it was kind of a messy time on sets. So I wasn’t able to go, which was really sad. I actually had someone who’d been in one of my first films that I did when I was 25 in Portland, a movie I did for like $5,000, and he was like, “Oh, I auditioned for one of the roles in your movie. I can’t believe it’s you.” I was like, “Oh my God, that would be amazing if you got the part and I was there,” but I didn’t get to go.

Miller: Rhianon, thank you so much and congratulations.

Jones: Thank you so much.

Miller: Rhianon Jones is the executive producer and screenwriter of the new movie, “Cora Bora,” which you can find streaming right now. We are going to go out with a song from the movie. It’s from Miya Folick who did the original score. It’s called “Get Out of My House.”

[”Get Out of My House by Miya Folick playing]

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