Cooper Raiff and Lili Reinhart. Bryan Derballa/Getty Images Logo text This past awards season, Hal & Harper creator Cooper Raiff and his co-star Lili Reinhart crashed a glitzy reception for Song Sung Blue, the biopic for which Kate Hudson went on to receive an Oscar nomination. The room was filled with voters of various awards bodies, and Raiff had an agenda: Get the word out about Reinhart’s performance ahead of this coming Emmys season.
“We don’t have the money to put on a big screening and after party, so we kind of snuck in and were like, ‘Hey, have you seen the show Hal & Harper?’” Raiff says now over Zoom. “You look to see who Hugh Jackman’s talking to, and then you go and talk to them afterwards; you see who Kate Hudson’s giving hugs to, and then you go give them hugs…. Then we did a couple more events and the people we met the first time would come up and be like, ‘Oh my God, she’s incredible.’”
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This, Raiff has learned, is what it takes. The 29-year-old filmmaker shot up in the indie world with his first two features, Shithouse and Cha Cha Real Smooth, the latter of which sold to Apple TV+ for $15 million after its Sundance 2022 premiere. After scrapping his next planned film, Raiff instead turned to TV — a medium he himself doesn’t much engage with — with Hal & Harper, a nine-part limited series examining the dysfunctional bond between the eponymous siblings (Raiff and Reinhart). Briefly set up at FX, Raiff went on to finance and produce the project independently, with a starry supporting cast including Mark Ruffalo and Betty Gilpin; Mubi acquired the rights after its Sundance premiere and released it over the summer to critical acclaim.
But Mubi is not known for episodic distribution, and is particularly not in the business of Emmy pushes; the Television Academy’s purview tends to be limited to projects most visibly on the campaign trail, given the sheer amount of content out there to sift through. Raiff understood all that — so, on behalf of Reinhart, he’s taken matters into his own hands. “I don’t watch the Oscars or the Emmys, but I know that people watch it and they watch things because things win awards or get nominated for awards — my favorite movie of last year was Sentimental Value, and no one had heard about it until the awards campaign and people started talking about it,” Raiff says. “I want to say yes to everything I can to get the show in front of people and get Lili’s performance in front of people. I just think it’s a monumental performance.”
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The world of awards campaigning has taught Raiff about the current state of showbusiness and how to move forward as an indie filmmaker at a perilous time for the industry. Raiff describes Ryan Coogler as his filmmaking idol and calls Coogler’s debut Fruitvale Station his favorite movie — but seeing the success of Sinners, a relatively commercial enterprise that won Coogler his first Oscar, opened his eyes in a new way. Specifically, Raiff has been stuck on Coogler once describing Sinners as a “croissant”: a product that goes down easy, masking its intricate process and rigorous artistry.
“I’m working on a movie now and I’m trying to lean more into making a croissant,” he says. “I want to figure out a way to make a living in this industry, and I want to know how to raise a family in this industry and keep making movies that I believe in. Because he really believes in Sinners — it’s a great movie — but it is a croissant. Fruitvale Station is not on a croissant.” You sense Raiff is referring to his earlier work along similar lines.
As for Hal & Harper? “Lena Dunham was a really big supporter of it, and she was like, ‘You have to start selling this as Fanny and Alexander,” Raiff recalls, adding of the 1982 Ingmar Bergman feature: “I watched it and I was like, ‘We’re doomed.’ It’s amazing, but it bores even me, there’s no one who’s going to be like, ‘Hey, who wants the next Fanny and Alexander?’”
It’s not as though Raiff has been operating wildly outside the mainstream, of course — Cha Cha Real Smooth won Sundance’s Audience Award and was easily the biggest sale out of that year’s festival. “If we made Cha Cha now, it would not have that sale — it is just not that moment right now,” Raiff argues. “Now all they care about is awards. That’s where my head is: If I want to make a movie the way that I want to make it, I have to win an Academy Award. I have to package it and say, ‘This person will win an Academy Award if you buy this and market it the right way.’
“And is it the worst thing in the world that in order to get something seen, it has to win an Oscar? No,” Raiff continues. “Right now, I’m making a movie that’s harkening back to the ‘80s and ‘90s. I’m shooting it on film. It’s a road trip movie. I know how to sell it.”
Raiff and Reinhart at a SAG-AFTRA Foundation event for ‘Hal & Harper.’ Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA Foundation ***
Television works differently, of course — and Hal & Harper is in a category of its own. Narratives matter when it comes to Emmy recognition, too, and Reinhart has a compelling one, having starred in more than 100 episodes of the teen hit Riverdale before revealing new depths in this relatively niche project. She won the best-actress prize at Series Mania, Europe’s largest TV festival, in a race that also included Long Bright River’s Amanda Seyfried.
“That was the most proud I feel of any work that I’ve done as an actor,” Reinhart told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “I’m an indie girl at heart. People wouldn’t know that because I was on a CW show for seven years.” Raiff adds now of what she brought to the show, “It just takes a very emotionally deep, wise person and who can dance around some fucked up stuff in an effortless way — and she was that.”
But Raiff also hopes his show gets recognized for eschewing the beats of traditional, commercial TV. “When we were trying to sell it, I was constantly told, ‘There’s too much silence, looking in characters’ eyes,” Raiff says. “It was like, ‘They want this if the show is like 80 percent less of staring at someone in the bathtub.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, that’s the reason why I watch movies.’ I watch movies to see the character in the bathtub, staring off and flashing to something. That’s what I care about.’”
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Hal & Harper is now streaming on Mubi.
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