Life Partners Cory Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson Discuss Their Indigo Girls Jukebox Musical 'Glitter & Doom'

Alan Cammish and Alex Diaz in "Glitter & Doom" Source: Music Box Pictures

Filmmaking partners Cory Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson – who are also longtime life partners, having been a couple for twenty-five years – made a splash with their 2008 first feature, "Were the World Mine," a gay musical in which Shakespeare, high school, and the pangs of young love collide thanks to a love potion.

Fifteen years on, with a string of gay indies to their credit to their credit ("Getting Go: The Go Doc Project," "Mariachi Gringo," the musical "Hello Again," based on the stage musical by Michael John Lachiusa), they're still mixing music and same-sex romance to create cinematic magic. Their latest, "Glitter & Doom," is a jukebox musical built entirely around the songs of the openly lesbian musical act Indigo Girls.

The movie centers on titular characters Glitter (Alex Diaz), a lighthearted young man trying to break away from his mother's (Ming-Na Wen) stifling expectations, and Doom (Alan Cammish), a musician with a goth/emo/rockabilly style who's looking to break into the recording industry. The film, which was shot during the COVID pandemic, takes place in Mexico City, but has a timeless, otherworldly feel that fits the film's fairytale sensibilities.

As they usually do, Krueckeberg wrote the screenplay, Gustafson directed, and they shared producing duties. The movie enchanted audiences as it made the rounds of last year's LGBTQ+ film festival circuit, generating the same of kind excitement that greeted "Getting Go" and "Were the World Mine," and taking pride of place with multiple Opening Night and Closing Night screenings.

Now "Glitter & Doom" has found its way to theaters thanks to distributor Music Box Films, where it is playing in limited release. (For a full list of theaters where the film is playing, follow this link. Also, look for the film's soundtrack, boasting 25 Indigo Girls songs in newly-reimagined versions, as well as a brand new single.)

Cory Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson caught EDGE up on what they've been doing lately, why they chose to make an Indigo Girls jukebox musical, and what it was like to cast this cameo-filled movie during the pandemic.

EDGE: Why a jukebox musical, and why the Indigo Girls?

Tom Gustafson: After "Hello Again" we started looking at other properties to option and adapt. As we started looking at some of the material, Cory and I were like, "Wait a minute, our own origin story is just as interesting as some of these properties that we're looking at." Then, for our 20th anniversary, he surprised me with this script of "Glitter & Doom." At the time it had placeholders of where the musical numbers would be, and what kind of the purpose the music would serve, but no real specific artists. We didn't know if it was gonna be original music or existing music.

Cory Krueckeberg: If we were going to do jukebox for us, it would be most meaningful if we could choose music from the time that we met in 1998 that would tell the story. But then, very quickly, everybody's like, "You can't try to get the rights to 20 different musicians' music, you will be making this movie for the rest of your life."

Indigo Girls were always a huge part of our relationship. I've always loved them. They were one of the first charting artists to be completely out of the closet from the beginning. It was just like, "We're lesbians. Get over it. We sing about women." And that always really inspired me.

EDGE: The film is supposedly set in Mexico City, but everyone speaks English, and Doom sounds British. It feels like this is somewhere outside of place and time.

Tom Gustafson: Yeah, and that's totally what we wanted. That was the goal, to create this kind of everywhere, anywhere place. We do a mash up of technology that sometimes isn't very realistic, but we [wanted] to give that kind of fairy tale feel.

EDGE: There are moments in "Glitter & Doom" that remind me of another jukebox musical built around the catalogue of a single act: "Across the Universe." Some of the moments even seem inspired by the style of that Julie Taymore-directed movie. Was this something you set out to do, or something the genre invites?

Cory Krueckeberg: That's one of our favorite jukebox musicals.

Tom Gustafson: With a jukebox musical, the challenge is obviously keeping the story on track and having it be coherent, which is a challenge of forcing the narrative with the songs. But even from a script level, before we even had songs, Cory already had some of the magical realism moments in it. And then, when you start adding music and choreography and everything, your world can kind of explode. "Moulin Rouge" is another jukebox musical which [was an influence on this project].

Cory Krueckeberg: The chaos in the musical storytelling in our movie is probably more borrowed from "Moulin Rouge," and the poetry is probably more borrowed from "Across the Universe," with a little hint of "Rocket Man" here and there, because that is my most recent favorite jukebox musical. I think they just did an incredible job of telling a musical story with [Elton John's] music.

Tom Gustafson: What's great about "Rocket Man" is it uses every type of musical storytelling, whether it's performance, or magical realism. I love that you can kind of go the whole range of musical storytelling within it.

EDGE: What went into the casting?

Tom Gustafson: We had thousands and thousands of people submit. They had to sing an Indigo Girls song and then do a scene. We had a thousand amazing versions of "Galileo."

Cory Krueckeberg: Our casting director and Tom had gone past Alan's video and not been interested in him. I randomly was watching it late at night, just trying to get through watching the videos. I saw him, and I was immediately like, "This is the guy. He has the musical talent, he has the vocal chops, he's charismatic and interesting and unusual." I emailed Tom in the middle of the night with that video and was like, "This is Doom."

Tom Gustafson: And then Alex... we actually had cast somebody else as Glitter, who then had to leave the project because of a conflict.

Cory Krueckeberg: We had cast an Asian American actor in the role, and then we cast Ming-Na Wen as the mom. When the other actor didn't work out, we got, like, 100 videos, and I saw Alex's video and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is totally him." It was the best accident that ever happened.

We had talked about Ming with our casting director. She responded personally by sending us a video of her singing an Indigo Girls song. She's such a fan; she really wanted to be in it.

EDGE: The film has so many fun cameos: Peppermint! Lea Delaria! Missi Pyle! Tig Notaro! What went into rounding them all up?

Tom Gustafson: I think Tig was one of the first people [we cast]. Tig is a big fan of the Indigo Girls and has worked with them.

Cory Krueckeberg: She was first because we wanted agents and managers and reps to take it seriously. She said yes very quickly and very easily, and she's been insanely supportive of the movie. She came to the premiere. She has canceled comedy stand up tour dates so she can go to screenings. She loves the movie. She loves Amy and Emily.

All of the other characters, other than Glitter and Doom, are female or female identifying, and we wanted to bring in as many people from the queer community as possible. We're extremely happy with all the people that we ended up with.

EDGE: What's your process for making films with your life partner... or is the word I want "husband?"

Cory Krueckeberg: I mean, we just had our 25th anniversary so I feel like at some point getting married seems silly, because we've been together for so long. We're not married. Like, are we just trying to conform to this weird patriarchal contract of subjugation? Why are we trying to do that kind of thing? But also, we just never decided to do it. We should probably do it for legal reasons.

EDGE: So, anyway, working together?

Cory Krueckeberg: At first, he didn't really want to work together. It was kind of me pushing him to write a script and then for us to produce it, and then for the first couple of projects he was very much like, "We're not talking about business when we're having our own personal time." That went out of the window very quickly. People will say, "I don't want the business to affect our friendship, our relationship," but it's a social business. It's all-consuming. It's impossible to separate [business from the personal], so now we're kind of the opposite, in not necessarily the best way, where it seems like all we talk about is our work. We need some balance.

Tom Gustafson: That is true. We need some balance.

"Glitter & Doom" is in limited release. For a full list of theaters where the film is playing, follow this link.

Watch the trailer for "Glitter & Doom."