SXSW Interview: “Chili Finger” Directors Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad

The new comedic thriller Chili Finger just had its world premiere at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival (where I reviewed it). Directed by Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad, the movie follows the misadventures of married couple Jess (Judy Greer) and Ron (Sean Astin) after they discover a finger in their chili at popular Midwestern chain “Blake Junior’s” (owned by an eponymous individual played by John Goodman). Things go south quickly after Blake’s daughter, Blake Junior II (Madeline Wise), and his friend Dave (Bryan Cranston) get involved. With echoes of every Coen Brothers movie ever made (especially Fargo), the movie nevertheless stands on its own as a quirky mystery filled with twisted humor. I spoke with Benda and Helstad at the festival, and here is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed: I know I’m not the only one to note the Coen Brothers influences here, but can you talk about your inspirations for the story?

Edd Benda: Stephen wisely pulled from the headline, “Woman Finds Finger in Chili,” which was a true story. And then during COVID, he had a window of opportunity to spin this incredible folktale out of it. He brought that script to me—what would have been probably a second draft or somewhere very early in the writing process—and it was just so up our alley. And as it relates to influences, I mean, yeah, it definitely had kind of the Coen Brothers-caper dark-comedy element to it. And it was fun to use that as a guiding foundation for our style of filmmaking but then pulling in a lot from other filmmakers we admire.

Stephen Helstad: Yeah, absolutely. You certainly can’t make a dark comedy without at least acknowledging the Coens in some way, shape, or form.

CLR: Plus, you’ve got John Goodman in your film.

SH: Right, exactly. But we are certainly not as foolhardy enough to want to make a Coen Brothers film because they are masters and nobody will ever replicate what they can do. So we wanted to put our own spin on it and make it our own. And we think we’ve done that.

CLR: And like a lot of filmmakers—Coens and others—you mix genre elements: you’ve got comedy, drama, thriller, etc. What was your approach in terms of trying to make those different tones come together?

SH: I would say it first and foremost starts on the page and then you just need everybody that’s working on it—your cast, your crew, obviously Edd and myself as the directors—to be on the same page of what it is we’re making and understand the tone and the balance of that. And we had a lot of conversations with our actors just to make sure that we were making the same movie, but we were just so incredibly blessed with the actors we had, who are masters of drama and comedy, such as Judy Greer, John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, Sean Astin; they got it.

One of the anecdotes I like to share is about Judy after a really intense physical scene. Without spoiling anything in the movie, she’s running, she’s screaming and we call “cut” and run over to make sure she’s OK to go again and she just looks at us and goes, “Was that funny?” And that just for us encapsulates that they knew the kind of movie we were trying to make. 

CLR: Certainly, Bryan Cranston is having a blast in his part. What is he chewing?

EB: Sunflower seeds.

CLR: Before we talk about specific casting choices, what motivated those mutton chops on Bryan Cranston? They definitely add to the comedy of his character.

EB: You hit it right on the head, because Bryan is just a genius character maker and we are beneficiaries of that across so much media, obviously Hal [from Malcolm in the Middle] and then Breaking Bad and now his work on The Studio as Griffin. And so he was so fun to work with because he would bring these zany ideas and he would build Dave out and he would ask us questions, like “What would you think if Dave had a mullet?” And we had to dial back on the mullet, but then, “What about if he had a mustache or what if he had a unique …?” And then we landed on Lemmy Kilmister, from Motörhead, as the ultimate influence.

But what was so fun about Bryan is that he was always finding little nuggets. He always, in every setup, every scene, would be forever just looking for little Davisms that he could pepper in. And so if you’re watching the movie and you only are looking at Bryan, he’s giving you something fun. And he was just a joy to work with. And I think a particular nugget of his performance that we collaborated with him on was looking at the original Columbo series with Peter Falk and how he would kind of play the doofus and then ultimately he was figuring it all out, and I think Bryan brought just the right amount of that to the character. We watched the first episode of Columbo, which is this sprawling episode, and then it ends and it goes … directed by Steven Spielberg.

SH: Which was like, “Whoa,” because you could kind of feel like he’s doing a lot of really interesting things with blocking and camera work and it’s like, “Man, who is this director?” And then it turns out to be Steven Spielberg.

CLR: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the pilot. That’s amazing.

SH: It’s really great.

CLR: So, one of my favorite elements of your film is just how you’ve gotten these amazing actors together and you’ve given Judy Greer this juicy part; this woman who’s almost always in a supporting role. So how did you approach her and what made you want to give her this juicy part? I love Judy Greer. She’s great in your film, as is everyone. Let’s talk about Judy.

SH: We worked with an incredible casting director, Kate Geller, who introduced us to Judy. And not only is Judy, of course, an incredible actress, as you’ve mentioned, but we love the idea of taking those roles that she has played—which are like the wife, the supporting wife or more supporting characters—and then giving that character agency, right? And that’s the character who we are following and watching make poor decisions and be motivated by wants and needs. So in that way, it felt like just a perfect fit because I think Judy has played those characters, but often you don’t see them take personal agency in the world of the story. So, we sent Judy a little gift box that had a fake finger in it and the script and we met with her.

EB: And we brought my dog. We wanted Judy to be in this movie so badly and when she came to us with what felt like an equal level of enthusiasm, we were just feeding off each other’s energy for this opportunity and you hit it right on the head: the world has yet to see what Judy Greer can really do and it was fun to catch her at a moment in her career where she had just done a play at Steppenwolf and you could sense in her that she wanted to bite into something and I think we just presented the right bowl of chili at the right time.

CLR: And the right finger. And let’s not forget your dog. That’s a crucial element here. What kind of dog do you have that sold it to her?

EB: (laughs) I have a rescue named Iggy, short for Ignatius J Reilly, and he is half-Australian Cattle Dog and the other half is Pomeranian and King Charles Spaniel. So a goofy looking little guy.

CLR: Does he have the different colored eyes of the Australian breed?

EB: He doesn’t have the different colored eyes. He has very ultra-wide expressive eyes.

CLR: That’s what did it! Those big eyes. (laughs) So, I didn’t know Madeline Wise all that well, though looking through her credits, I realized I had seen her in some things. She’s terrific. She really nails it as soon as she shows up as a character whose name I love: Blake Junior II. That’s brilliant. So can you talk about casting her and then maybe some of the lesser-known supporting character actors?

SH: So were also introduced to Maddie through Kate Geller and she was the last person we brought on board to fill out our cast; we’d been looking for that role for a long time, because we wanted somebody who had a real physical presence. Maddie’s very tall. Also, you need somebody who is able to play with these movie stars and command the scene and feel like they have the power in the scene. And Maddie, her first day was like seven pages of dialogue. It was this negotiation scene and she just knocked it out of the park immediately. It was really amazing to watch her work and just how she was listening to people, as well. Almost more amazing than how she was doing what was on the page was what she was doing while other people were talking. It was fantastic.

EB: Maddie was so much fun to edit because she had such an awareness of her movements and her instrument that we loved being able to cut together the negotiation. It was a joy to work with her. And then we also got to include Paul Stanko, who is a longtime friend and collaborator of ours. Paul starred in our first movie, Superior, that we made a decade ago that Stephen produced and I wrote and directed. And he’s been an actor we can call upon for anything and everything for the last decade. And when we needed somebody to senselessly beat the crap out of … (laughs)

SH: (laughs) He gets thrown around a lot.

EB: He gets thrown around a lot in this movie, but he also is a relentlessly committed actor and I’ve watched him do theater in every kind of venue imaginable and his dedication to his craft inspires me to remain dedicated to mine. And so when we were given an opportunity to get to make this movie, he was always our Trevor and I’m just very proud of him and to get to see him celebrated is a lot of fun and he earned it because he is fantastic.

And then he’s opposite Sarah Herrman. She’s brilliant. She’s also an executive producer on the film. And we met her while huddled under a heat lamp at the No Name Saloon in Park City at Sundance a few years ago. And while shivering, it was a good time to pitch a movie about chili and she bought in early and wanted to be a part of it. Getting to have her as part of the process and see her grow as an actress has been fun. Paul and Sarah were kindred youths in this with us going alongside our veterans.

CLR: Excellent. Well, I also really appreciate the creative crew’s work on the film, from your DP [Director of Photography] Cristina Dunlap, your Production Designer Chris Spellman, your editor Todd Zelin, and then the VFX stuff that you have in there. But I want to talk primarily about the music. You’ve got Baltimore-based composer Dan Deacon and you also have some great music supervision in terms of the music that I’m assuming Dan Deacon didn’t compose that’s playing on the radio. I love the yodeling. I want to know what that yodeling song is. You should release the soundtrack!

SH: Dan was just such a pleasure. He’s a mad genius. It was just so fun because we were looking for a kind of regional sound to this film, but we of course wanted to sound a little bit unique. And when we talked to Dan, he just got it immediately because he’d be like, “Oh, tubas; there’d be a cool way you could like breathe into the tuba and then make an interesting sound.” And just his way of thinking about making sounds with instruments was completely outside the box. And it was fun to develop this sound that way.

And then I think once we added the yodeling component, that’s really what tied it all together because we already knew we were going to use “Yodeling Cowboy,” by Jimmie Rodgers, which plays at the end. That was in the script. We knew that was going to be in there, but then it was really fun to sprinkle in yodeling as this motif and as this way of communicating and it is the Midwest, and Dan just did a brilliant job with it.

EB: He did. It was really fun because we presented to him like the polka band as a palette, which very Wisconsin, very regional; the accordion is very central to it, but we wanted him to play with those as tools. And so what’s fun is like the accordion is heavily present in our score in non-conventional ways, the way he would mess with the squeeze box or use the clicking of the buttons. And so it was fun to watch him expand and then, yeah, yodeling was fun to learn about, technically, how you have kind of the Western cowboy yodel, which is what’s really prevalent in things like Raising Arizona, and then you have Alpine yodeling, which is much more German and that’s what we leaned into for Wisconsin, where you have much more sustained, longer notes.

And so it was just a process of discovery and collaboration and I got to learn a lot about music. And Dan would send us cues and we would just blast them in the edit and just run them back and do it again. And then the opening queue, that was a collaborative effort because “Ievan Polkka” is a Finnish folk polka that is about a woman resenting her daughter for going out and dancing and enjoying her life. So we actually explained the movie in Finnish right off the drop. (laughs)

SH: If you speak Finnish, it’s all there. (laughs)

EB: But it took the combined effort of recording vocals, working with Dan’s team to conform the music within our score to fit our rather ludicrous desire to include this Finnish song. But yeah, it was just a really cool process to create that piece of music and I think it really pays off.

CLR: Well, it definitely is an evocative score that really helps sell a lot of the comedy in the film. Thank you both for talking to me and congratulations on the film and I wish you all good things with it.

SH: Thank you so much for having us. This has been great.

EB: A ton of fun.