During the production of her first feature-length film, she was struck by a car. It was an accident that would not only reshape her life but also become a pivotal moment in the film itself.
Janaé Rachel Ballot, who grew up in Santa Clarita, is finishing post-production on “Dissociated Me,” which she described as a semi-scripted/semi-improvised comedy-drama based on a chaotic past. When Ballot was 12, her mother died, and her past includes teenage addiction and unprocessed trauma.
“I wanted to really lean into absurdity like in an Albert Brooks movie,” she said during a recent telephone interview. “It’s about delusion but also longing — how people can long to heal and be so trapped inside themselves that they’ll do absolutely anything.”
Ballot, 31, was born into a family with strong ties to the entertainment industry. Her grandpa, she said, was a child actor who worked with Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock. Her grandfather’s sister was a stand-in for Lauren Bacall and Jayne Mansfield. And both her grandmother and mother were models.
Ballot spent the early years of her life in Beverly Hills. At age 4, she was a competitive dancer. The next year she started acting.
“So, I acted,” Ballot said. “I hated it. I went into one audition for a Coca-Cola commercial with a Pepsi can in my hand. I didn’t do that as an act of rebellion. I thought I was actually being clever. The casting directors did not, which is totally understandable. I was like, ‘OK, I’m telling you a story here. I’m kind of going against the grain and being a non-conformist.’ But really, to sum it up, I just disliked acting, but I fell in love with movies.”
When she was 5, her parents divorced, and her mother moved with her and her older sister to Santa Clarita. The three of them spent countless hours watching movies together. Even though their house had three bedrooms, they’d often all pile into one room, watching film after film. It’s a time she remembers fondly.
But those days wouldn’t last long. Ballot’s mom died from an asthma attack that led to a heart attack. She was 46 years old. Ballot was 12.
Ballot admits that it was her mother’s death that thrust her into directing.
“It was two weeks before she died that she told my sister, ‘Janaé is not going to grow up to be an actress. She’s going to grow up to be a director,’” Ballot said.
Over the years, Ballot bounced around between living with her dad, her sister and her dad’s ex-girlfriend. It’s a crazy story, she said, that worked its way into her new film. But before she got there, she wrote and directed several short films and music videos, and she also wrote feature projects before taking a stab at writing and directing her first full-length movie.
Her short film “Managed,” which she made during the COVID-19 pandemic, was a proof-of-concept project for a web series she hoped to make that would go on to pick up numerous nominations and awards at film festivals around the country.
“From there it led to short films and short films,” she said. “I was just getting to a point of like — I was pissed off. I just didn’t want to be doing more short films. I’d already done, like, six, and I didn’t even have the energy to promote them. Inherently, the majority of short films don’t really go anywhere. They don’t build a career, in my opinion.”
Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir, who was Ballot’s producer on “Managed” and the editor of 2024’s “The Fall Guy,” 2018’s “Deadpool 2” and 2014’s “John Wick,” encouraged her to make a feature. Ballot felt she didn’t have a story to tell.
Ronaldsdóttir suggested she turn her own life story into a film. At first, Ballot worried it might come off as pretentious. But the more she considered it, the more she realized her experiences held universal truths worth sharing.
During a walk together, Ballot opened up more to Ronaldsdóttir about life traumas she’d experienced. The two decided a coming-of-age story would be the film to make. Ronaldsdóttir was onboard to produce it.
Ballot went off to write. She assumed that putting her story on paper would be easier than writing her previous screenplays, many of which were biopics that required heavy research. This script, she thought, would require little to no research. Sure, she’d need to talk to family members and friends, go to her journal, but ultimately, she was the source.
“I could not write a single word,” she said. “I tried and tried and tried, but there were a lot of memories and flashbacks and anxiety attacks that were bubbling up that just made me shut the laptop and go, ‘OK, I can’t,’ and then I just started all over again the next day with the same effect in the end.”
Ballot’s next approach was to stop thinking about it and just start shooting, what she called the “Christopher Guest approach” to filmmaking. Guest is a filmmaker known for utilizing story outlines and allowing actors to improvise scenes, creating movies like 2003’s “A Mighty Wind,” 2000’s “Best in Show” and 1996’s “Waiting for Guffman.”
The goal, Ballot said, was to discover her story through the filmmaking process — to uncover her truth with the help of her cast and crew. In the end, Ballot and her collaborators became the film’s cast, essentially playing versions of themselves in her exploration of her own life and experiences.
“The movie is me — this filmmaker, writer — attempting to write a biopic based on (my) life, but failing to do so,” Ballot said. “She (her true-to-life character) starts casting family members and actors to play family members, all without a script, and going to Santa Clarita, going to Beverly Hills — where I once lived — to location scout, but she has no script.”
During the shooting of the movie, Ballot was hit by a car and ended up in the trauma unit with a concussion and road rash.
Matthew Monelli, the film’s executive producer and director of photography, followed Ballot to the hospital and filmed her while she was there. Ballot said the video ended up in the movie, as it was part of her journey, both on and off screen.
According to Monelli, his first goal was to make sure Ballot was OK. He also had the task of contacting her family to let them know what had happened. But then his filmmaking instincts took over.
“I remember walking in, and I teared up a little bit,” he said during the telephone interview with Ballot. “We spoke for probably three minutes. Then the first instinct that came to my head was to pull out my phone and record her because this is all I’ve been doing with her for two years — just recording her. So, you know, now that I knew that she’s laying in the bed, she’s being taken care of by the hospital, she’s not dead, she had no broken bones … I just knew, ‘OK, this is fine. I can pull out my phone and start recording.’”
Ballot clarified that the film isn’t a documentary. While she and the cast and crew play themselves, they portrayed slightly heightened versions of who they are, all while navigating very real experiences.
In one scene of the movie, Ballot digs up her parents’ wedding video, which she’d never done before. She described it as an emotional experience, and the moment in which she watches it made it into the final cut of the film.
According to Monelli, Ballot really exposed her feelings.
“She was crying,” Monelli said. “She was going through this thing in her house, and I think the first take was the take that we ended up using because it was the one that was realistic. There were a lot of moments like that.”
Ballot said the film is nearly complete with just a few visual effects shots left to finish. She plans to start submitting it to film festivals soon and will be looking for potential buyers.
Monelli described “Dissociated Me” as a memorable experience and noted that it introduces a fresh, distinct voice poised to make a mark in cinema.
“This is a Janaé Rachel Ballot feature,” he said. “Janaé took who we all were as people and wrote it into a story that’s based off real moments. Some scenes were, of course, rehearsed and planned, but there’s this nice blend of words on paper, and being based in reality.”
He added that it’s a film ultimately about someone who’s searching for something, not realizing that what she truly needs is already right in front of her. It reflects the broader theme of ambition and the shared struggle of people trying to “make it,” capturing that universal drive to succeed and find meaning.
Asked if she learned anything about herself while making “Dissociated Me,” Ballot didn’t give a definitive answer. She acknowledged that she may’ve learned some things, but she couldn’t say for certain. Instead, she reflected on how each family member had their own perspective on shared experiences, and how each responded differently to seeing those memories portrayed when they saw an early cut of the movie.
Ballot may still be in the midst of processing what the experience of making such a personal film has meant to her. As she finishes the project and prepares to share it with audiences, she seemed to still be working through what, if anything, she’s taken from it. The meaning, like the film itself, might still be unfolding.
“I can’t explain it,” she said. “You know what the best answer is? I really don’t know. That’s it.”
For more information about “Dissociated Me” and updates, go to DissociatedMe.com.
