{"id":621575,"date":"2026-09-11T16:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621575\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T16:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:20:13","slug":"caleb-hearon-on-starring-with-zooey-deschanel-in-tiff-movie-trash-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621575\/","title":{"rendered":"Caleb Hearon on Starring with Zooey Deschanel in TIFF Movie Trash Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCaleb Hearon grew up in a small town in rural Missouri with a population under 10,000. It\u2019s the kind of locale that can \u2014 especially for a young queer person \u2014 leave lasting scars and simultaneously build up an enduring sense of humor. The comedian and performer has long excavated his Midwestern roots for his stand-up. Now, Hearon\u2019s life acts as the inspiration for the TIFF<\/a>-bound indie Trash Mountain, Hearon\u2019s most personal project to date.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirected by indie vet Kris Rey, Hearon co-wrote and stars in Trash Mountain\u00a0as Gavin, a gay man who lives in Chicago but is called back to his small Missouri town by his half sister \u2014 played by Zooey Deschanel<\/a> \u2014 after the death of their hoarder father, each of them tasked with cleaning up the emotional and literal mess left behind.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeveral years ago, Hearon\u2018s own father unexpectedly died. \u201cWe had a really complicated relationship \u2014 but a beautiful one,\u201d says Hearon. \u201cI feel lucky that we got to a really good place before he passed.\u201d Along with his family, Hearon, who was working in a writers\u2019 room in Los Angeles at the time, was confronted by the not-oft-talked-about logistics that come with a loved one\u2019s passing: locating paperwork, cleaning out homes and jumping through a seemingly endless number of bureaucratic hoops.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe started writing the screenplay for Trash Mountain as a cathartic exercise: \u201cI never thought we would honestly make a movie about it.\u201d But after sending it to filmmaker friends Colin Trevorrow and Lilly Wachowski \u2014 who each signed on as producers \u2014 the production process began in earnest. Typical of indie filmmaking, there were years of false starts, with funding and casts periodically materializing and disappearing.<\/p>\n

\n\tHearon has built a career that spans prestige TV (Fargo, Mr. & Mrs. Smith), a well-regarded podcast (So True with Caleb Hearon) and stand-up, with his debut special, Model Comedian, released by HBO in 2025. It was during a small break in the middle of filming The Devil Wears Prada 2 \u2014 his biggest project to date where he stars alongside Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway \u2014 that Hearon got a call from Trevorrow saying that they finally had the money to make Trash Mountain but that they would have to pick up cameras the next month.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was like, \u2018What the hell?\u2019 \u201d he recalls. \u201cBecause you\u2019ve got so many years in your career of dreaming of scenarios like where you\u2019re at a job, and you\u2019re talking about me having another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe backbone of Trash Mountain\u00a0is the relationship between Hearon\u2019s Gavin and his sister, Abbi. It\u2019s the kind of effortlessly funny dynamic that makes the heartaches that come with having a sibling look truly worth it.<\/p>\n

\n\tHearon shares an agent with Deschanel at CAA, and the rep told him that the actress happened to be looking for a new project and was available during Trash Mountain\u2019s small \u2014 very small \u2014 production window. \u201cI was like, \u2018Look, if the job is pretending to love Zooey Deschanel, it\u2019s gonna be like the easiest acting job in the whole world,\u2019 \u201d Hearon says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt a lunch in Los Angeles with Deschanel, Hearon remembers: \u201cI swear to God, I said, \u2018Why would you do this?\u2019 I knew everyone was going to have to do it for like $7 and a handshake in rural Illinois in the winter.\u201d Deschanel was sold nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTrash Mountain<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of TIFF<\/p>\n

\n\tProduction on Trash Mountain\u00a0was only 18 days and came with all the stories you would expect from true indie filmmaking, stealing locations and chasing light.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne day, filming in a local big box store, Hearon kept overhearing a loud conversation from the next aisle between who he thought were members of the crew. Unbeknownst to him, they were local shoppers trying to decide which T-shirt to buy. He remembers, \u201cI was in the middle of the take going, \u2018I\u2019m so sorry. Can we cut? People are being really loud.\u2019 And [director Kris Rey] was like, \u2018Yeah, we couldn\u2019t afford to shut down the place, and we have about an hour left, sorry!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrash Mountain also marks Hearon\u2019s first time at the top of the call sheet. \u201cDuring filming, I kept joking, \u2018You know what this film needs? 30 pages where you don\u2019t see Caleb.,\u2019\u201d he laughs. But it was also a position he didn\u2019t take lightly, saying, \u201cThere\u2019s this thing I\u2019ve learned through the years of not being number one on the call sheet where I watch the people who are, and they have so many other jobs. Everyone\u2019s energy, everyone\u2019s tone, everyone\u2019s gratitude flows from the director and the leads.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor already established fans of Hearon\u2019s comedy or for audiences watching him onscreen for the first time, Trash Mountain is the kind of discovery people travel to a film festival hoping to see. A true indie with craftsmanship and heart that is bigger (much, much bigger) than its budget.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was acting before I was ever a presence on the internet. It\u2019s funny because sometimes I do feel that pressure of wanting people to know that I\u2019m an artist,\u201d says Hearon. \u201cI do want people to know that, sure, I have a popular podcast that I\u2019m very fucking grateful for, and I appreciate that so much, but this is what I got into all this for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caleb Hearon grew up in a small town in rural Missouri with a population under 10,000. It\u2019s the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60,1745,78113],"class_list":["post-621575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tiff","tag-zooey-deschanel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}