In the new film Egghead and Twinkie, filmmaker Sarah Kambe Holland brings a loosely autobiographical coming-of-age queer story to the screen. While the film does draw from some of Holland’s personal experiences and the emotions of that teenage angst of coming out. In her filmmaking debut, the comedy is a mix of romance, young adult friendships, queerness all set amid a road trip from Florida to Texas – specifically Dallas.
“Twinkie is the protagonist that I needed when I was growing up as a queer mixed-Asian kid in Texas, and I want the audience to see the world through her eyes,” Holland said in the film’s press release.
After playing the festival circuit, the film debuts today, April 29, on demand and digitally on Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Vudu, Direct TV and through local cable providers.
For her first film, Holland, 27, talked about writing and then seeing her life on the big screen – sorta.
“It’s very loosely based on me and I took a lot of liberties with the material for sure. But I think it’s more so, you know, trying to capture the emotions that I felt when I was going through all those changes,” she said. “And I think that that aspect of it has been really positive to get to kind of process those experiences and like a comedy film.”
Egghead and Twinkie centers on teenage animator Twinkie just shy of adulthood and misunderstood by her adoptive parents. She secretly begins DM-ing her Insta-famous DJ crush BD who suggests meeting in person for the first time at their show some 500 miles away from Twinkie’s Florida home. Twinkie enlists her best friend Egghead to steal her parents’ car and hit the road.
The film touches on themes of racial and sexual identity and ride-or-die friendships through a Gen Z perspective – much of it through Twinkie’s POV. When casting that character, Holland mentioned that she thought casting “herself” might be tough; not just in finding a carbon-copy of her, but more of the right actor who could embody so many layers in the character Holland had written.
“When I cast Sabrina [Jie-A-Fa], it was her first speaking role and she really blew me away. She has a lot of characteristics as Twinkie,” she said.
The film also stars Louis Tomeo as Egghead. The two were first cast in these roles in the film’s first iteration as a nine-minute short. Holland was impressed by their chemistry that it was a natural choice for the two to be in the feature.
When Holland wrote Twinkie, she said she knew it would be challenging to find the right actor.
“It was really important to me that she’s Asian American and exploring that identity alongside her queerness and knew it was going to be tough,” she said.
She even began to DM people on their Instagram or websites to reach out. But then, Holland recalled one meeting.
“Sabrina and I had met on a commercial shoot like a year and a half before, and I thought, is it going to be really creepy if I DM her on Instagram now? Like I’m sure she doesn’t remember me,” Holland said. “But it worked out, she showed up to the audition and obviously here we are.”
Set in Florida and Texas, these were both places Holland had lived. She grew up in Austin but ironically, the road trip doesn’t take the two to the state capital. Instead, the film makes its way to Dallas. Why Dallas?
That’s a very legit question,” she said. I think it was our budget. This is a super scrappy microbudget indie film and we couldn’t actually afford to film in Texas. We shot entirely in central Florida. Having grown up in Austin and having visited Dallas, I felt like we could mimic Dallas a bit easier. I feel like there are very iconic spots in Austin that I couldn’t fake, so we made it Dalas.”
Speaking of budget, and fun fact, Egghead and Twinkie is the first feature film to successfully fundraise its budget entirely through TikTok. Also, Dallas was a distinct choice for Holland and mixed with her own familiarity with Austin, it all made sense to take Twinkie elsewhere in Texas.
She added, “I chose Dallas as the destination for the road trip, because I wanted Twinkie to go on a search for a big city, full of diversity and with a large queer community, set in Texas, to represent what it’s like to grow up gay in the South. It was important that Twinkie have fantasies about urban gay life, full of dance parties and celebration. Dallas was my choice as a great Texas city to represent the life that Twinkie aspires to have.”
Watch the trailer for Egghead and Twinkie below: