Caleb Hearon grew up in a small town in rural Missouri with a population under 10,000. It’s the kind of locale that can — especially for a young queer person — leave lasting scars and simultaneously build up an enduring sense of humor. The comedian and performer has long excavated his Midwestern roots for his stand-up. Now, Hearon’s life acts as the inspiration for the TIFF-bound indie Trash Mountain, Hearon’s most personal project to date.
Directed by indie vet Kris Rey, Hearon co-wrote and stars in Trash Mountain as Gavin, a gay man who lives in Chicago but is called back to his small Missouri town by his half sister — played by Zooey Deschanel — after the death of their hoarder father, each of them tasked with cleaning up the emotional and literal mess left behind.
Several years ago, Hearon‘s own father unexpectedly died. “We had a really complicated relationship — but a beautiful one,” says Hearon. “I feel lucky that we got to a really good place before he passed.” Along with his family, Hearon, who was working in a writers’ room in Los Angeles at the time, was confronted by the not-oft-talked-about logistics that come with a loved one’s passing: locating paperwork, cleaning out homes and jumping through a seemingly endless number of bureaucratic hoops.
He started writing the screenplay for Trash Mountain as a cathartic exercise: “I never thought we would honestly make a movie about it.” But after sending it to filmmaker friends Colin Trevorrow and Lilly Wachowski — who each signed on as producers — the production process began in earnest. Typical of indie filmmaking, there were years of false starts, with funding and casts periodically materializing and disappearing.
Hearon has built a career that spans prestige TV (Fargo, Mr. & Mrs. Smith), a well-regarded podcast (So True with Caleb Hearon) and stand-up, with his debut special, Model Comedian, released by HBO in 2025. It was during a small break in the middle of filming The Devil Wears Prada 2 — his biggest project to date where he stars alongside Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway — that Hearon got a call from Trevorrow saying that they finally had the money to make Trash Mountain but that they would have to pick up cameras the next month.
“I was like, ‘What the hell?’ ” he recalls. “Because you’ve got so many years in your career of dreaming of scenarios like where you’re at a job, and you’re talking about me having another one.”
The backbone of Trash Mountain is the relationship between Hearon’s Gavin and his sister, Abbi. It’s the kind of effortlessly funny dynamic that makes the heartaches that come with having a sibling look truly worth it.
Hearon shares an agent with Deschanel at CAA, and the rep told him that the actress happened to be looking for a new project and was available during Trash Mountain’s small — very small — production window. “I was like, ‘Look, if the job is pretending to love Zooey Deschanel, it’s gonna be like the easiest acting job in the whole world,’ ” Hearon says with a laugh.
At a lunch in Los Angeles with Deschanel, Hearon remembers: “I swear to God, I said, ‘Why would you do this?’ I knew everyone was going to have to do it for like $7 and a handshake in rural Illinois in the winter.” Deschanel was sold nonetheless.
Trash Mountain
Courtesy of TIFF
Production on Trash Mountain was only 18 days and came with all the stories you would expect from true indie filmmaking, stealing locations and chasing light.
One day, filming in a local big box store, Hearon kept overhearing a loud conversation from the next aisle between who he thought were members of the crew. Unbeknownst to him, they were local shoppers trying to decide which T-shirt to buy. He remembers, “I was in the middle of the take going, ‘I’m so sorry. Can we cut? People are being really loud.’ And [director Kris Rey] was like, ‘Yeah, we couldn’t afford to shut down the place, and we have about an hour left, sorry!”
Trash Mountain also marks Hearon’s first time at the top of the call sheet. “During filming, I kept joking, ‘You know what this film needs? 30 pages where you don’t see Caleb.,’” he laughs. But it was also a position he didn’t take lightly, saying, “There’s this thing I’ve learned through the years of not being number one on the call sheet where I watch the people who are, and they have so many other jobs. Everyone’s energy, everyone’s tone, everyone’s gratitude flows from the director and the leads.”
For already established fans of Hearon’s comedy or for audiences watching him onscreen for the first time, Trash Mountain is the kind of discovery people travel to a film festival hoping to see. A true indie with craftsmanship and heart that is bigger (much, much bigger) than its budget.
“I was acting before I was ever a presence on the internet. It’s funny because sometimes I do feel that pressure of wanting people to know that I’m an artist,” says Hearon. “I do want people to know that, sure, I have a popular podcast that I’m very fucking grateful for, and I appreciate that so much, but this is what I got into all this for.”
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