Here’s a bit of service journalism: when you talk to Caleb Hearon about his hometown of Chillicothe, Missouri — which plays a big role in his screenwriting feature film debut, “Trash Mountain” — it’s pronounced Chil-a-caw-thee. (It’s pronounced wrong so often, the fact I said it correctly to Hearon gave up the game pretty quickly that I am also originally from the area.)
Though certainly funny, “Trash Mountain” (directed by Kris Rey and premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival) might not be what Hearon’s fans are expecting from the beloved comedian. In fact, according to Hearon, this was never even intended to be a movie. “Trash Mountain” is what happens when you suddenly lose a parent, feel like you’re losing your mind, and just need to write it down for sanity’s sake.
Based somewhat on his actual experiences (Hearon co-wrote the script with Ruby Caster), in the film, Hearon also plays Gavin, a Chicago-based comedian who has to return home to rural Missouri after the death of his mostly estranged father. With the help of his grandmother (Jacki Weaver) and half sister, Abbi (Zooey Deschanel), they are tasked with cleaning out his father’s house, who was a hoarder. Gavin has to both face the complicated feelings he had for his father, but also come to terms with a place he left for good. And that it might not be quite as awful as he remembers it being — especially after hooking up a few times with a charming college professor he meets on Grindr (played by Jaboukie Young-White).
“Trash Mountain” is pretty obviously therapeutic for Hearon. But where does his character end and his actual real feelings still reside? Ahead, the Chillicothe native (again, Chil-a-caw-thee) lets it all out in what was a pretty emotional interview (for both of us).
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
IndieWire: I’m just curious how many different pronunciations you’ve heard of Chillicothe
Caleb Hearon: Where are you from? That feels like a local question. It’s Chilli-coth, it’s Chili-cot. It’s everything but Chillicothe, basically. That’s so funny.
I went to high school in Kansas City.
No way.
A part in your movie that really got me is when we see Gavin going through his dad’s closet and he has a Derrick Thomas jersey. This is very accurate.
I mean, hey, I think, hopefully, the movie is for a lot of people. But I think it will be a real tight group of people like you and me who really feel the small shit of it. I’m really, really, really glad that you noticed it. Because it’s one of those things that, when you’re making a thing, you feel like, OK, I’m doing this for the real heads. I’m doing this for a couple people. That is like, yeah, it’s true and real. Damn, that’s cool.
And Patrick Mahomes gets a shout-out…
Patrick Mahomes gets a shout-out. See, it’s funny because tomorrow I go to Toronto to premiere the film and then Monday night I got an earlier flight back because I have to get to a watch party in New York for the Chiefs’ season opener. I’m rushing back to watch it in New York at my studio with a bunch of friends, so I’m really excited for the season to get going.
If there was ever a time to make a movie about the western side of Missouri, this is it. Taylor Swift goes there a lot now…
It’s been funny watching the way that the city has changed because of that already. I do feel, as I’ve gotten older, it’s funny because, in the movie, my character Gavin is loosely based on me and based on some feelings I harbored about home when I was younger, they have really evolved. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve really come to view Missouri and Kansas City and where I’m from as this really beautiful part of me.
Gavin’s not 16 or 17 in the film, obviously, but a lot of those feelings that I imbued that character with are from that time of my life. Because the truth of me going home was that I’d already done a lot of that processing — and that’s not a really interesting movie. I’d be like, “I see how beautiful this place is.” You know what I mean? So, yeah, as I’ve gotten older, it’s become more of the thing I talk about.
I used to rarely go back. After my dad died, I’ve reconnected and I find myself going back more often.
There’s something about my dad dying, I got way closer to home. I bought a place back home after he died, I started going back a lot more. There’s something about mourning him and the complications of loving a guy like him that also made me reckon with home and loving a place like where I’m from. It felt like this weird parallel track that I was having to reckon with my relationship with my father and how complicated it was, but also beautiful and how many ways I feel grateful, but also we could have done so much better.
I feel the same way about Missouri, that I feel like it’s this beautiful, special place and I love so many things about who I am that I got from growing up there, and also there’s fucked up things about it and I hated a lot of things about growing up there. I mourn a lot of the people I could have been had I grown up somewhere else. These big mixed up feelings about those things kind of had to happen at the same time, I think, if that makes sense.
Where did you actually film this? I know it’s difficult and expensive to film in Missouri.
Well, we filmed it in Chicago for four days and then the rest of it we filmed in rural Illinois, like Crete and Homewood and real small towns. I started to say that I wish we could have filmed it in Missouri because there’s a part of my heart that that would have been so nice for. But then we ended up with this, I think 117 or 116 people worked on the film. Yeah, it was really sweet and it did work out really well doing it in Illinois. We were lucky to get a great crew from Chicago, so I’m glad that we did it there.
There have been movies about people who live in big cities having to go back home to their small town. When were you like, OK, mine is unique enough that I’m going to do this?
I say this and I guess sometimes it feels like I worry that people think it’s a line that I cooked up for the press or something: genuinely in my heart, when I started writing this script, I did not ever think this movie would get made. I didn’t think that I would go and pursue getting it made. I was writing it because I was like, “This is fucking insane and I feel crazy and I need to put this down.” I thought maybe someday in the long future, when I’m too old to even play this character myself, maybe someday we’ll do something with this. But I started writing just because it felt cathartic and I felt like I was losing my fucking mind.
Losing my dad so suddenly, it conjured feelings I never could have imagined. We joked about him dying a lot and every time we joked about it, I was always like, “Well, when Mom dies, it’ll ruin my life, but when Dad dies, it’ll kind of be whatever because we have this complicated thing.” Then it happened and it just wrecked me. I started writing because I didn’t know what else to do. Which is all to say, to your question, I don’t know that there ever was a moment that I was like, “This story is worth being told.” I feel that way now, but I don’t think in writing it I was like, “We must do my version of this.”
In real life, was your father’s death similar to how the father dies in the movie?
I’ll just tell you what happened in real life. In real life, my dad went home from work, he had to call an ambulance because he couldn’t breathe at work, and he went to the hospital. And I got a voicemail from him that I still have and I listened to a lot when we were filming the emotional scenes in the movie. It was the last voicemail I got from him, where he said, “I went to the hospital. They’re pretty worried about my COPD. I smoked and drank for way too long. They’re sending me home. I’m good. I’m going to figure it out.”
I called him the next day and begged him to let me come stay with him for a while and take him to his doctors’ appointments, because I knew he wouldn’t do it on his own. And then he refused. Then, like a week later, he died alone in his house and they found him a couple days later when he didn’t show up to work. They sent a wellness check. It’s a mix and match between true and making a movie, but the suddenness of it and the phone call and that whole part of it felt very close.
The suddenness is tough. My dad had visited me in New York, but couldn’t walk two blocks without being out of breath, and he was fit. But he refused to go to a doctor. A couple months later, I got a call one morning that he had a heart attack and that was that. So I understand the feeling of losing your mind.
I mean, I know we’re doing an interview technically and we’re both at work, but I do, as a person, I would love to read anything you wrote about it. I don’t think there will be 25 million people who watch this movie and understand it in the way that you and I can understand it. Even you saying, “My dad couldn’t walk two blocks and keep his breath and he refused to go to the doctor,” is such a Missouri dad. It’s like having a fucking finger chopped off and being like, “I’ll just wrap it up.”
You’ve got your script and you’re acting in this. Was there any part of you that’s like, “I can direct this”?
It came up. And I love having collaborators. An, to be honest, the idea of directing myself is just not interesting to me. I do want to direct, and I’ve directed some small things, but I just don’t want to direct myself. I want to be fully in the seat that I’m in. Even writing it and acting in it was tough because I would go home every night after set and do rewrites for the next day. It’s this weird thing of I think that directing myself in anything, let alone in this, would have been so fucking difficult.
I was like, “No, I should actually maybe get a director who’s really fucking good at this.” Thank God, Kris related to it and wanted to do it in the end. I’m really grateful that I didn’t because I needed to be directed a lot and I don’t know that I could have directed myself in this.
I tried to put myself in your shoes for a second doing this press tour. I think I’d be worried how people perceive rural Missouri. I can criticize it, but I also get defensive when people are dismissive.
It’s a really conflicting thing. You nailed it, because, yeah, as somebody who’s from there, I’ve gone through many phases where there are phrases that people use when they talk about places like Missouri and they’re not from there that hurt. They go, “You escaped,” or “You got out.” The reason that upsets me so much, I think, and the reason it hits so close to home is not because I’m an easily offended person. I’m really not. It’s because I also used to feel that way and now I think I have some level of guilt about it.
The dismissiveness of places like Missouri and this classism and this dismissiveness of the middle of the country… I play that in the movie, even though in real life now it’s something I feel opposed to. But I hope that the movie does a good job of making clear that Gavin’s wrong about that and that it’s actually doing him a disservice to act that way. I hope that the movie effectively communicates my present day feelings, that these places are valuable and the people that we leave behind when we go to chase our dreams are still worthy of our respect and love and attention.
It reminds me of 2016, when Trump got elected for the first time, I was doing an internship in New York and a bunch of my friends were saying things like, “We got to start thinking about the middle of the country.” I was going, “Wait, hold on. Was that something you guys weren’t doing?” I was like, “That’s news to me because I’m over there.” I do have the fear you’re talking about, but I guess I have more hope that people will see it the way that I tried to make it.
“Trash Mountain” premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.