‘My Dead Friend Zoe’ Filmmaker Kyle Hausmann-Stokes On Combating Veteran Stereotypes In Hollywood With Engaging Female Leads

My Dead Friend Zoe, directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes and co-written with A.J. Bermudez, is more than just your average military-based drama. Using his own personal experience during and after serving in the Army as a Bronze Star combat veteran, Hausmann-Stokes manages to interweave a relatable story that deals with complex themes of trauma, self-sabotage and maintaining a willfulness for life and love through human connection. “Veterans are more than our stereotype,” the filmmaker told Deadline. “We veterans don’t own PTSD. Anybody can experience hard stuff. This film is not [just] for veterans. It’s about veterans, but it’s for everybody.” 

Starring Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales in the lead roles, the film centers around a female veteran named Merit (Martin-Green) who can’t quite deal with the weight of carrying the leftover PTSD after leaving the war. Making matters worse is the fact that her traumas manifest in the shape of her deceased best friend Zoe (Morales) who often shows up as a figment of her imagination. As she deals with the mandatory military therapy sessions she’s assigned, Merit is also tasked with taking care of her aging militant Vietnam vet grandfather (Ed Harris) from whom she is estranged. 

Here, Hausmann-Stokes talks to Deadline about his upbringing, confronting personal demons, uncovering nuanced and engaging Veteran stories.

DEADLINE: Were you meant to just be an Army man or a filmmaker? Did you always have a penchant for filmmaking and telling stories?

KYLE HAUSMANN-STOKES: I wish I had a more unique Spider-Man origin story, but in terms of the filmmaking bug, I guess it was just in my DNA. From a little kid onward, I was always stealing the camcorder. I was the video guy in high school, doing all the news. I did the tennis video, the yearbook video, all that stuff. When I joined the military, I was a paratrooper in the infantry, and that has nothing to do with making movies, and you are not allowed to film. It is a security hazard. But I would do it, I would sneak my little camcorder on our airborne operations, jumping out of helicopters and airplanes, and I would edit these crazy action music videos. This is before YouTube. I would cut them together in my little cement barracks room and put them on VHS tape. I would order 200 VHS tapes and distribute them to the whole unit. And so, I guess it was always in my genetic makeup.

DEADLINE: What was your inclination to join the military? Do you have military in your family, or was it for the housing benefits and all that? 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: Yes. For both those reasons. I would say the two reasons I joined the military were because there was some military legacy in my family. My grandfather served in the Army for 22 years. He was a lieutenant colonel. He did two tours in Vietnam. And then, my uncle served in the Army in the Air Force. My aunt served in the Army. They met in Korea. My great-uncle is a Korean veteran. There’s a lot of service in my family, but I come from a very liberal part of the country, a small city in Wisconsin, and so I joined the Army a month before 9/11. I wanted to be a part of something larger than myself, but I also needed money for college. I hope that people keep that in mind when they’re thinking about when us young people get sent away to war. A lot of folks are just there because it’s an opportunity. A huge part of it was for the GI Bill, and it worked out the way it was supposed to. I used the GI Bill to go to film school at USC, and that was a dream come true. I never could have afforded that otherwise. 

DEADLINE: No creative throughline at all? Is anyone in your family in the creative arts? 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: The answer is no. My mother is a veterinarian, so a different kind of vet. My dad worked his whole career in human resources. So, no. My grandpa was a farmer who then served in the military. So, no, there’s no other filmmakers or professional creative types. My uncle, who I mentioned before, who served in Korea is a very well-known writer. His name is Bill Stokes, and he’s very well-known in Wisconsin as writing about nature and just kind of rural Wisconsin. But no, I’d say that’s about it. I don’t know where [my inclination] came from.

DEADLINE: So, the idea for this movie comes along. How did you go about working with A. J. Bermudez?  And how did you combine your experiences regarding what absolutely had to make it into the film? 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: I love A.J.  I’m so thankful that I get the opportunity to talk about her. So, I started writing this script during COVID. It was kind of percolating inside me for almost 20 years. During that time, I finally had the courage to… I spent my whole career telling veteran stories, but it wasn’t until COVID that I found the courage to start telling my own story. So, I wrote the script and for about two years, I wrote this script a hundred times, a hundred different ways. The characters and the story all stayed the same throughout, but a lot of different permutations. And I always knew because this film was going to be about women veterans, that before we actually went to make the thing, I absolutely had to collaborate with a woman to have a female perspective. I can speak to my military experience as a veteran, but I do not know what it’s like to be a woman, more specifically, a woman veteran. And so, I asked a producer of mine, Liz Manashil. She’s a filmmaker. She has an amazing podcast called Making Movies is HARD!!! I said, “I’m looking for an amazing writer who happens to be female that can work with me on this script to bring a female voice and perspective to it.” And without even thinking, she’s like, “A.J. Bermudez.”

She had just had A.J. on her podcast. A.J.is an award-winning novelist and also a screenwriter. So, Liz made the match. A.J. and I, we were fast friends and collaborators. So, when I booked her, I just said, “OK, look, this is kind of strange. I don’t have any money. This isn’t even a real thing yet. Do you want to come into my mother-in-law’s basement and kind of tear apart this script, blow it up? And I’m going to tell you every reason for everything I have in there. I want you to question everything and then make it our own together.” So, we spent about two weeks in a basement, covered the walls with Post-it notes, and then just put it all back together. And then we were just trading. A.J. then did her own complete pass on the script in her voice and handed it to me, and then I did my pass as well. Then, we continued to collaborate all the way onto set. At one point, A.J. came to Portland [where we filmed], and I’m like, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing something here. What do you think?” We’ve already written our next script, which is called Men’s Group. It’s about adult male friendship and loneliness and how that’s kind of an epidemic, but it’s going to be a comedy. A.J. is the best.

DEADLINE: What about your Army life shaped your film experience? 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: This film is 20 years in the making because of a single conversation, a single mission that I was put on by a colonel named Daniel Griffith. So, I’m in the Army, it’s 2004, the end of my enlistment. So, I’ve done my three years, and I’m supposed to get out of the Army, but as you remember, in 2004, we are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so, his thing called the Stop-Loss happened. So that happened to everybody. It’s basically like, “Just kidding, you can’t get out of the Army. We’ve spent a lot of money training you. We’ve got to go to war.” It was my unit’s time to go to war, a very scary, emotional time. I literally have to cancel my enrollment in college. We’re getting ready to go to war, and I get a call to come to my colonel’s office one night. And this is a very scary thing because I don’t even know the colonel knows my name. You don’t want to be standing in front of the colonel. It’s way up there [in rank].

And I’m standing there in front of him, and he said, “Sergeant, I’ve seen your films.” And now I’m scared because I was not supposed to be making films, as I mentioned before. So, I think I’m in big trouble. And he goes on to say, “I think they’re really good, and I think they’re really meaningful. And so, we veterans and soldiers don’t necessarily always get the opportunity to tell our own stories or have a creative voice. So, here’s what I’ve done for you, and you didn’t ask me to do this, but this is what I did. I’ve made arrangements for you and only you, the only person in this entire thousand-man battalion, to be exempt from the stop-loss. And the way that you’re going to pay it back to all of your battle buddies by not deploying with them is you’re going to find the best film school in the world. You’re going to hone your craft, and you are going to tell the soldier story.”

DEADLINE: Wow.

HAUSMANN-STOKES: I was almost speechless. I saluted him, and a week later, I’m in my shitty Subaru headed west out of the Army, and I was on this mission. And so now two and a half years later, I finally make my way to the film school at USC. I found out that’s a pretty good one. I didn’t get in right away. Resilience, I had to keep trying. Finally, I got into USC, and the same week I got my acceptance letter to USC, I got a letter from the U.S. Army Human Resources Command that’s now ordering me to come back into the Army. And this is in 2007. The wars are not going well. There’s this thing called the Surge. They were just calling people back out of retirement. So, I had to put everything on hold at USC. I had to drop out for three semesters, cut my hair, and come back into the Army. It was so surreal; I trained up for six months. I joined a unit out of LA, and then we deployed to Iraq ’07, ’08. I was there for a year. During that deployment, I met two of the soldiers, my platoon mates, on which this film is based. And then when I came back from Iraq, I finished film school, and I’ve just been on that mission ever since to tell the soldier and the veteran story.

DEADLINE: That must have been a surreal experience navigating some form of normalcy, being thrown back into that, and coming back to society again. In the film, Merit is reluctant to express herself in therapy. How much of that is lifted from your experience described here? 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: I was 100% thickheaded. It’s impossible to quantify things, but I have been saying that this film is 93% autobiographical. So much of this film is ripped directly from my life. I changed the genders of myself and of my battle buddies. But aside from that, and I will say that I didn’t witness my dead buddy [as an apparition], like Merit does in the film. But aside from that, everything else is true. I was incredibly resistant to talk therapy to any type of therapy. I’m a soldier, I’m a grunt, I’m a paratrooper. We don’t do feelings. We suck it up and drive on. That’s what we’ve been taught. I actually had PTSD when I got back from Iraq for about a year while I was at USC, but I learned to live with it. I hate the idea that you can heal fully from something because those experiences are a part of you. But I actually made peace with my combat-related stuff. 

I will also say, the role of the VA counselor is Morgan Freeman. He’s based on a real person who would not leave me alone. I was like, “Man, I’m not trying to talk to you.” He was a Vietnam vet that would not let me isolate. Then, you’ve got Ed Harris, who plays a version of my grandfather. Literally, the scene in the film where they’re at music in the park and Merit says, “I wanted to be like my grandfather, a hundred feet tall.” I recreated that exactly from memory.

 Us trying to move him away from the lake for his own well-being, but him being such an independent Vietnam veteran, 100% true. Ed Harris’ monologue on the pontoon boat when he talks about what it was like for him coming back as a Vietnam veteran… I didn’t even write that. I just transcribed that from my grandfather’s mouth about what happened. And then more than anything else, I really wanted to explore in this film something that I have not seen portrayed in veteran films before, is that we veterans are not a monolith. And I think that anybody who comes from a not mainstream group or some kind of minority group, none of us wants to feel like a monolith. We are very different.

Vietnam veterans are not the same as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. And when I got back from war, I thought that I would have this conversation with my grandpa. His name is Orville. He’s still around. He’s a great guy. We didn’t have that conversation. When he came back, he was spit on. He had to change out of his uniform, he had to hide it, and then they had to bury it. When I came back from Iraq, the country was completely different. They had learned from how terribly we retreated Vietnam veterans. So, when we came back, literally, they had fire trucks shooting water over the jetway. I came out, and there were people applauding us, saying, “Thank you for your service.” I had little kids asking for autographs. And now everybody says, “Thank you for your service.” And there’s Veterans Day, and there’s discounts at Applebee’s. It’s different now.

But just imagine all of that through the eyes of someone like my grandfather or these Vietnam veterans. And it was like that schism, that thing. I’m like, wow, that’s something interesting there. So that’s what really happens between Sonequa’s character and Ed’s character, is that they are very similar, but they also have kind of a rift between them.

DEADLINE: So why did you center the film around women soldiers? 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: When I graduated from film school in 2010, I started my own production company [Blue Three Productions] that just focused on telling veteran stories. I started doing all of the Department of Veterans Affairs, national advertising campaigns and PSAs. And one of the first things with this big campaign that I’m so proud of, it’s called maketheconnection.net. It is a library of short videos of interviews that I did with hundreds, literally, I think I interviewed close to 4 or 500 veterans in every major city across the U.S. for four years. We did this for four years, and it was just a lot. I learned a ton about not only Vietnam veterans, but female veterans.

So, when I was in the military for my five years, I was in the infantry, and there weren’t women allowed in the infantry because women were not allowed in combat arms. That has since changed. I agree with that change 100%. That’s the way it should be. So, I didn’t have the experience of serving alongside women in combat or in the military at all. Now, here I am as a veteran, sitting across from these women, hearing their stories, and I’m blown away. And they are so strong and resilient, and not only do they do the exact same thing that the men do, but they also deal with all of the same things that women have to deal with that men don’t. So, I was like, I’ve never seen this portrayed on film. It’s always some straight white guy. There was G.I. Jane, but that was its own separate thing. So, in that moment, I decided that if I ever get the opportunity to make a film, it’s going to be half my story and half other veteran’s stories. Then it wasn’t even really a question, it had to be women. 

DEADLINE: Let’s talk about this cast. You’ve got Sonequa Martin-Green, Ed Harris and Natalie Morales. 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: It started with Ed. I knew that I wanted to cast that role first. Again, because it’s about playing my grandfather. And so, I wrote him a letter. It made its way to Ed, and he said, “Yes.” Ed has a big place in his heart for Vietnam veterans. He lived with a Vietnam veteran. He has done films where he spent time with them. I met him for lunch in Malibu at a little diner, and I was [overprepared] and ready to pitch him [everything I had from photos to my finished script]. I even had shrapnel from my Humvee, medals and photos of my grandpa. Ed walks into the restaurant and says, “I’ve read the script again this morning. I like it. I’d like to do it.” Just straight away. Then we went on and had the best lunch and we split a tuna sandwich. 

So, then I was able to go out to Sonequa and Natalie and say, “We’re doing this important film. It’s about veterans. Ed Harris is going to be in it.” And I wrote them letters as well. And with them specifically, I chose them because they’re amazing actors that I thought they could do it, but also because I could tell by researching them that they give a damn. They are both into activism. Natalie does a lot of stuff with Everytown for Gun Safety. Sonequa is very active and outspoken and wants to make a difference in the world. And so, I basically just said to them, “I think you’re incredible. That goes without saying, but I’m trying to do some shit here with this movie, and I’m curious if you want to join me in that?” And they did.

DEADLINE: What would you like audiences to get from this film? 

HAUSMANN-STOKES: I would like for audiences to know that veterans are more than our stereotype. I would like for audiences to know that it’s OK to laugh about this stuff. And I would like them to know that we veterans, we don’t own PTSD. Like Merit says in the film. “We’re very good at it, but we don’t own it.” Anybody can experience hard stuff. And this film is not for veterans. It’s about veterans, but it is for everybody. I want people to know that.

And then maybe the last thing is just, I hope that this film can be a conversation starter. Every American knows a veteran in their family, or they’re friends with one, and they might not know how to talk to them about that, or they’re not quite sure. And I hope that people see this film and realize that we veterans do want to talk about it and maybe just need to find the right context for it or the right situation. And I’m just so excited that people across the country might start to ask veterans, “So what branch were you in? What did you do? What was that like? I’m so curious about that. Oh my God, tell me a funny story.” That’s what I’m excited about.

My Dead Friend Zoe is out in theaters now. You can also check out the making of featurette below.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]