Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

There’s a ton in here this time!

Did you know soccer legend Kelley O’Hara executive produced a short film that won at Tribeca Film Festival? I didn’t, so I found out more and one of the directors spoke with me!

Or did you know when tennis star Ben Shelton will be returning from the injury he suffered at the U.S. Open? I didn’t, and I don’t think the public did, but he told me (and a stadium security guard!)

How about if Sen. Jon Ossoff thinks it’s time to call on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign as Secretary of Health and Human Services? At work, we asked.

And what’s Olympic swimmer and former Nickelodeon game show host Summer Sanders up to now? At work, we figured it out, and then after trying for several minutes to help her out of the building, I also… eventually… figured it out. (In case it’s not brutally obvious, the show she hosted was called Figure It Out. See what I did there? Where’s my prize?)

It’s a fun one, so let’s get moving, but first, here’s Peach!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s Ripe!

A two-year-old short film caught my eye, thanks to a bit of marketing on TikTok and a high-profile intersection with soccer. 

Ripe! is a 2023 short from Olivia Mitchell and Kerry Furrh, who work as the LA-based film production duo Tusk. In 2024, it won the award for best narrative short film at the Tribeca Film Festival, and U.S. soccer legend Kelley O’Hara served as executive producer and a major funder for the film, along with her fiancée Kameryn Stanhouse.

So before we head into the film—and a chat with one of the film’s two directors!—let’s jump back in time for a moment, specifically to 2019. 

O’Hara was a star on the U.S. women’s national team and she had just helped lead the squad to a second consecutive World Cup win. While the team was loaded with star players who were openly LGBTQ+, O’Hara was not one of them.

She had not kept her sexuality a particularly tight secret, but never really commented on it. A very intense player on the field, O’Hara let out a bit more of her off-field personality in the joy of celebrating the win.

She ran over to Stanhouse, who was in the first row of the crowd, jumped up and planted a very public kiss on her. No outing. No long post. Just letting herself show and telling the world a bit more about herself in the process.

@abcnewslive

#kelleyohara recounts the moment where she kissed her girlfriend after winning The #worldcup in 2019; Harvey Guillen adding: “#comingout i... See more

Now, we go a bit further back. It’s the early 2010s, and Furrh and Mitchell, meet on campus as two students at the University of Southern California. They start working together, producing their own music videos, prank videos, little behind-the-scenes docs, and more.

As they graduate, they keep working together, building a portfolio of work including shorts and commercials.

All the while, they’re partners. Not just film partners, but romantic partners.

In a conversation with me last week, Mitchell shared that it was a heavy burden for the two of them to carry, and a major event in both their lives and careers.

“On one hand, you can say we were lying to people we loved for a very long time. And on the other hand, you can say that we were just struggling with societal pressures and doing what we could to survive,” Mitchell told me.

“I'm so glad now that we're finally just not hiding that. It's just—I can't imagine going back to the other side. When I was on the other side of it, though, I didn't really realize how much it was affecting me or us.”

After they came out, she said, the projects changed. They got more room to work on projects with LGBTQ+ artists or allies.

Several of their higher-profile projects have included music videos for some of the early hits by Canadian pop star and LGBTQ+ darling Tate McRae, including her 2022 breakout hit “She’s All I Wanna Be.”

From there, Mitchell and Furrh let a trip to Spain, where they stayed on a rural farm, guide them to what became Ripe!

“We envisioned a story there,” Mitchell said. “We always are inspired by locations, and because this one was so striking and so different, we were immediately just brainstorming by candlelight at midnight on this farm. I mean, who couldn’t write a good story in these circumstances?”

The film is a sapphic fever dream, roughly 20 minutes that capture both your attention and imagination.

Quick cuts, vibrant colors and breathtaking scenery captured beautifully tell the story of a queer romance in a setting that evokes the 2017 hit film Call Me By Your Name, but tells a more modern story. 

But two major differences help set it apart.

Unlike in the 80s setting of that film, here, cell phones, FaceTime and WhatsApp chats play essential storytelling roles in a decidedly modern story. 

And unlike the many, many stories about male LGBTQ+ love, this time it’s young lesbian love that gets a long-overdue spotlight. 

“Ripe! is not our personal story of hiding from our friends and family throughout our twenties, but it is kind of a projection of the struggle to just come to terms with what you love,” Mitchell said.

We start with Sophie, an American high schooler, who is spending the summer in Spain away from her doting boyfriend back home.

Interspersed is some soccer, which has clearly been a way for Sophie to get to know some locals. Quickly, we see Sophie show a competitive streak, matching up against Spanish local Gloria. They tussle and Gloria falls, breaking her arm.

And beyond playing a funding role, O’Hara and Stanhouse also helped offer insights for production, especially in the soccer scenes.

“They read every script, and Kelley, of course, advised on the soccer and, was like, remote coaching some of the players when we were shooting,” Mitchell said. “She couldn’t be there because of the World Cup training but the fact that she was like, making time to do this just shows you how amazing of a partner she was.”

In a later scene, we see the two run into each other in a market, with Gloria holding what seems to be a clear grudge, showing an edgy side to her personality. Sophie splits quite a bit from her on-field intensity, often being timid and a bit aloof.

Sophie offers to make it up to Gloria by making her dinner, leading to an intimate scene where the two enemies begin to see love blossom.

It builds steadily from there, with a Spanish summer offering a window into two very different young women both dealing with similar problems as they grapple with their own identities.

The film culminates in Sophie’s boyfriend surprising her right as she and Gloria are set to finally spend time together while openly in love with each other. Gloria storms off, with Sophie pausing for a moment and deciding to chase her. The two meet in the middle of an open road and kiss.

It’s a decision Mitchell and Furrh came to in part by thinking about what was satisfying to them, but they also thought about the relative lack of happy endings in stories about lesbians.

“If the community is feeling like there aren't enough joyful love stories, that's valid. I mean, I see that too,” Mitchell said. “I mean we were so—we had nothing joyful when we were struggling. So yeah, why not put something out there?”

The film did a lovely job of not just telling a modern story but making it feel timeless and universal. Teen love is pain and joy and extreme emotion. It gave me a similar feeling to the one I had as a teen watching reruns of The Wonder Years. It didn’t hurt that Ripe! used varying cameras and filming styles, mixing in visuals that made me feel like I was moving between the 70s, 80s, 90s and the present day.

The jury at Tribeca agreed, saying in their statement that the film won its award “for beautifully capturing the raw and realistic essence of a teen summer romance and containing extraordinary performances that bring to life the bittersweet charm of youthful love; and for immersing the audience in the evocative feeling of summer in every scene.” 

Fast forward to now. Ripe! has made its way through the short-film circuit and now, Tusk have eyes toward turning it into a feature film. They’re working on building attention and interest in the hopes that studio support and a cast can take shape.

“We have a script, the phase we're at. We just attached our lead actors, which we haven't announced yet, but we're really excited about them,” Mitchell told me. “And then, we're about to take it back out, and with a new draft of the script that we think is a lot better and a new cast. That’s really exciting. And our goal is to find financing so we can shoot next summer. I mean, that would be the dream.”

Based on what I’ve seen on TikTok, there’s certainly interest. I only learned about it thanks to a post that asked “Did y’all know Kelley O’Hara EP’d a sapphic soccer short and it won Tribeca?”

@ripe__film

arriving to the premiere, good vibes :) one year and lotsa awards later… we are chugging on the feature!!! Lesbians and queers and anyone... See more

I did not know that, but in the micro attention span world of TikTok that stopped me and made me say, “no, I did not know that… but I want to know more.”

Other people do too.

Some comments I see on the post:

• “why is this the first I’m hearing of this?!”

• “Why am I just learning this?”

• “How do we watch it?”

• “I did NOT know OMG”

• “I’m SAT”

Mitchell said she hopes that interest can prove there’s an audience for a story like the one in Ripe!

And while Hollywood is unpredictable and fickle, there is hope for short films. Features like Fatal Attraction, Boogie Nights and Napoleon Dynamite all started as short films before being expanded into feature-length productions.

Having watched the full short film, I can’t help but hope there’s a future where, just like in the 2019 World Cup, we can have at least a 90-minute buildup to a climactic, emotional kiss.

(And you can listen to my full chat with Olivia Mitchell here:)

My Reporting

NWSL

For the first time in months, the Washington Spirit played a relatively easy game at home and won 2-0 in a game that largely avoided the drama that has become a trademark for them at Audi Field this season.

In a showdown between two teams who entered the week in the top five in the NWSL standings, it was the team from Washington, DC, who looked the part of a playoff team more than the team from Washington state.

After a first ten minutes where the Seattle Reign owned possession and had a few early chances, it was all Spirit for large chunks of the following eighty minutes. And Washington’s path to victory ran straight through the pairing of the team’s current star and one of its newest rookies.

Trinity Rodman notched all the scoring Sunday, scoring both of the Spirit’s goals, one in each half. She started things off with a poke in the 33^rd minute past Reign goalkeeper Claudia Dickey, timing a pinpoint pass from midfielder Leicy Santos just right.

And then in the 81^st minute, she passed the ball forward to midfielder Croix Bethune at about midfield on the right side, dashed over the middle as Bethune worked her way up the right flank, then received a cross in open space just inside the 18-yard box to launch another one past Dickey.

Seattle coach Laura Harvey chalked the second goal up to Rodman’s top-notch talent.

The goal, she said, “was desire, desire from Trinity, and a good finish. If you look where she passes it to Croix, and look at her run compared to our defending, that’s desire. That’s nothing to do with anything else other than she wanted to score really badly.”

Harvey also didn’t see what she wanted from her team on the play.

“We didn’t want to stop her from doing that. We just let her run. I think she ran past three people. And when Trinity’s going to be on the edge of the box, I’d put my money on her scoring.”

But while Washington’s star winger left the opposing team coach frustrated, a more unheralded teammate was making the most out of her first NWSL start.

Deborah Abiodun, the 21-year-old rookie from Nigeria, made her second appearance in NWSL league play and her first start on Sunday.

The University of Pittsburgh product signed her first pro contract with the Spirit in January but loaned her out to Dallas Trinity FC of the USL Gainbridge Super League for the season. The Spirit recalled Abiodun early from the loan on August 26.

She played like nobody told her she was a rookie, looking every bit like a pro and a veteran on both sides of the ball, creating chances on offense while cleaning up errors and turnovers on the defensive end.

She tied with goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury for most defensive recoveries with 11, while also tying with Rodman for most shots, with four.

And while she played with veteran confidence, she told me postgame that inside, she had her share of rookie nerves.

“If I said I didn't feel any nervousness, I would be lying,” Abiodun said.

In the postgame press conference, Abiodun and Rodman shared the table, and Rodman did not hesitate to heap praise on her rookie teammate. 

“She played insane,” Rodman said. “I’m still tripping, honestly.”

She went on to praise a range of the 21-year-old’s skills.

“I’ve obviously seen it in training all the time. She’s such a smart player. Her decisiveness, her—you just never know where she’s going to turn, where she’s going to pop up, and her physicality too, with stepping into balls,” Rodman said, before turning to Abiodun and telling her directly, “it was so fun playing with you today.”

Abiodun’s fellow midfielder Hal Hershfelt also singled out her teammate’s performance and said it helped her play better.

“I really enjoyed playing with her,” Hershfelt said. “I feel like she’s a midfielder that cares as much defensively as she does, like, attacking, creating and that helps me out a lot.”

There also was a rare case of me possibly breaking some news, albeit in a completely different sport.

At Audi Field, the visiting press conferences occur in what is primarily a medical exam and treatment room. Because many media members are not backed by outlets with major travel budgets, nearly all reporters for visiting teams are virtual and I tend to be the only reporter physically in the room.

The Spirit have limited options to give other teams a separate space for postgame media due to a relative lack of access to facilities from the stadium’s landlord, MLS club DC United. In a first for me, both media and the team’s PR rep were asked to step out so a player could receive treatment.

Staff informed us that Spirit defender Tara McKeown needed treatment for a leg issue, an injury that head coach Adrián González noted postgame.

He said McKeown was dealing with lingering pain with her adductor muscle but praised her for her ability to play through and often shake off physical plays that might take out another player.

“She’s a warrior,” Gonzalez said. “I haven’t seen a player like her.”

As a reminder, McKeown is the same player who fell face first into a retaining wall during the match on August 23 vs Bay FC and kept playing, and then last game sang the hook from the Phil Collins hit “Another Day in Paradise” in her interview after an extremely physical match vs Chicago in which she took several big hits.

But McKeown, a close friend of teammate Trinity Rodman, ran into Rodman’s boyfriend, tennis star Ben Shelton, after receiving her treatment (and after he ambushed Rodman with a surprise postgame interview.)

The two shared a sweet, brief chat, and Shelton also happily took a picture with a stadium security guard who was a big fan. During the chat, where I was just kind of standing there, not saying much but listening, Shelton answered the guard’s question about when he’ll be playing again by saying he’ll be back for the Japan Open in Tokyo, which starts on September 24. 

Shelton pulled out of the U.S. Open on August 29 during his third-round match vs Adrian Mannarino after suffering a shoulder injury and already has pulled out of the upcoming Laver Cup set to start on September 19.

Shelton is on the entry list for the event in Tokyo, although that had been posted before his injury. From what I have seen, and I’m no tennis news expert, there have not been any reports since his injury on his status for this event.

I certainly did not expect to be breaking tennis news while covering a soccer game for fun as an unpaid side gig from producing political news but hey, sometimes things like that happen.

MSNBC

On Wednesday afternoon, I chatted with the senior producer of our show at work as we prepared to interview Sen. Jon Ossoff. I made a case based on some research I had done.

Ossoff had majorly criticized Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during Kennedy’s confirmation process.

But even as Kennedy made decisions to devastate public health, and after employees at the CDC headquarters in Ossoff’s state of Georgia blamed Kennedy’s rhetoric for a shooting that killed a police officer near the agency headquarters in Atlanta, Ossoff had not called for Kennedy to resign.

We talk it over and decide that it’s worth asking. Other Democratic senators had said it. Would he?

Our host Jen Psaki was on board and during Wednesday’s edition of The Briefing, she posed the question to him:

“There were over 1,000 HHS employees who have written a letter calling on [Kennedy] to resign. You opposed his confirmation, I should note, but you have not yet called on him to resign. Have you seen enough? Do you think he should resign?”

“Absolutely he should resign,” Ossoff said. “I mean, he never should have been confirmed to begin with. He is utterly unqualified for this role and in any normal Senate, he would have never gotten so much as a hearing.”

“What he is doing at HHS is gross mismanagement that is putting this nation at risk,” Ossoff added. “And the demolition of the CDC has lowered our nation’s defenses against deadly disease outbreak and is putting lives at risk.”

Also, no clips of it seem to have made it onto official MSNBC social media, but before Labor Day, we snuck in an interview that brought me a bit of joy.

We taped an interview between Jen and former Olympic swimmer Summer Sanders, who won two gold medals at the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

As President Trump issues executive orders about college sports and Congress weighs passing the SCORE Act to reshape the revenue-sharing picture for athletes who can now be compensated for their work, it’s unclear what the sport-by-sport effects will be. 

A worry is that a shift from the current setup, where athletes earn money from third-party entities paying to use their name, image and likeness, or NIL, could drive schools to send money exclusively to higher-revenue sports like football and basketball.

USA Swimming, the body that organizes the Olympic swimming team, worries that many schools could put their swimming programs on the chopping block.

Since there’s virtually no other pathway for American swimmers to Olympic consideration and no major professional league, they worry that cuts to college swimming could kneecap the prospects of America finding more swimmers to follow in the footsteps of Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky.

Now, there’s more to it than just Sanders’s swimming career, although Jen did admit off the top that her 12-year-old self would be extremely excited. (A former swimmer herself, Psaki was all-state in Connecticut in high school and swam competitively at William & Mary.)

Sanders also played a minor role in my childhood, hosting a pair of kid-oriented TV staples, NBA Inside Stuff on NBC, and Nickelodeon’s panel guessing game show Figure It Out.

Before the interview taped, I chatted with Sanders about some of the behind-the-scenes joys of working at peak Nickelodeon (it feels good to be slimed, she says), and the connection she feels with the kids who went on to do all these big and bright things (I guess that’s me now!)

There also was quite the excursion getting her out after the interview finished. She was racing to the airport for her flight home and it fell to me to get her out of a side entrance… a side entrance I had never been to before. We went up and down in different elevators, through windowless basement hallways, into parking garages… we had to even break out a bit of Spanish for a parking attendant who did not speak much English to help guide us to the exit.

Poor Summer was hauling her luggage with her the whole time. Once we popped out into the hot DC afternoon, I realized I had been carrying a cold mini water bottle I pulled from the fridge, originally for myself. I asked her if she wanted it and she looked at me like I told her she won the lottery.

Considering “Figure It Out” was all about stumping the panel with a phrase describing your talent, (one kid’s phrase was “bites cheese into shapes of states,” and honestly… I wonder what he’s up to now.) I’m confident that “navigated Summer Sanders through basement hallways” would win me that Sega Saturn and a trip to Smugglers Notch.

Something Good I Ate

For possibly the first time, I’ll tell you about something I ate that was… Just Fine.

On my fiancée’s urging, we went to Just Fine Donuts, a shop in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, VA, that shares space with a neighborhood ice cream shop.

Just Fine offers daily, fresh made, all-vegan donuts. And honestly, they do not need eggs or dairy at all. They are doing… just fine.

Between the two of us, we had four delicious donuts. She had a chocolate frosted and a strawberry frosted, while I had a cinnamon sugar and an apple pie “honeymooner.” The cinnamon sugar donut was good, with a thick, cakey taste—think of it having a texture like an Entenmann’s donut.

And the apple pie honeymooner was extraordinary and one of the single best donuts I can remember having. It balanced a sweet, caramel frosting with the both sweet and tart apple pie filling sitting above the center.

I’ll be running back to Del Ray sooner rather than later for another one of those, although even without eggs and dairy products, I’ll probably have to run there and back to offset all the sugar and fat!

Just a note: Any work here or opinions I express are solely mine, and do not reflect the views of my employer, my coworkers, or anybody else affiliated with me. The newsletter is not monetized in any way and everything in here is written and reported with my own resources on my own time outside of my working hours unless specifically noted otherwise. “I’m Curious” is just for me, the author, and for you, the reader. Thank you for reading. I’m glad you’re here.