HOLLYWOOD DREAMS

Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. The entertainment industry is studded with couples who get creative together. Chicagoland’s Shelby and Nathan Slager aren’t dodging paparazzi just yet, but like these marquee names, they’re a team as they pursue success in show business. At the Beverly Hills Film Festival in May 2024, Shelby received the award for Best Actress for her performance in their short movie, Chasing June.

At fifteen minutes in length, Chasing June is what is known as a proof of concept project, a sample of what could, with investment, become a fully-fledged film. Tinged with magical realism, the piece looks at two friends who reunite three years after a tragedy. It’s a story sprung from experience; the death of Nathan’s brother and illness in Shelby’s family. “This may sound pretentious,” observes Nathan, “but I think that art should always reveal something about your inner life that makes the audience feel more human. The two experiences that brought Shelby and me to write Chasing June, the tragic loss of my brother at a young age and Shelby’s family member’s cancer journey, felt personal and also universal.”

Raised in the western suburbs—Nathan is originally from St. Charles, Shelby was raised in Elgin—the two attended North Central College in Naperville. He studied English literature and she studied theater. After graduating, they lived in Chicago for a few years before relocating to Los Angeles in 2023. Like many young people, they held a variety of jobs in the city as they tried to get their footing in the grown-up world. She had her sights set on an acting career; Nathan was less certain about what he wanted to do. “I thought about going to law school, medical school, I enrolled in an alternative licensure program to be a high school English teacher,” he shares. “In the back of my mind, though, I always dreamed of being a writer, a novelist. But Shelby always pushed me to go into film. She’s an incredibly intuitive and empathetic person and I think she just had a feeling that that would be what I am happiest doing.”

Nathan and Shelby wrote the script for Chasing June, and she co-directed the movie with Alana Areyzaga, a filmmaker and makeup pro from Wheaton who studied cinema at Columbia College. In drawing from their own lives for their first film effort, Nathan and Shelby didn’t make things easy for themselves. “As a writer, it was a mixture of the incredibly difficult and the cathartic,” relates Nathan, who was 6 when he witnessed the accident that took his brother’s life. “It forced me to closely examine my feelings about a very hard time in my life and put it on paper—and then on camera—for everyone to see. I felt vulnerable and that wasn’t easy.” As for portraying the title character in the film, Shelby remarks, “There were certainly moments that hit harder than others. My family member whose cancer we used as the inspiration for June was on set. In fact, I wore one of her headscarves throughout the film, and every single time I put it on I was overwhelmed with the emotion of it all. The fact that she was willing to be there and help us shape the story in an authentic and truthful way was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

The learning curve for these newbie filmmakers was steep. “This project was definitely a baptism by fire,” admits Shelby. “We were very lucky that I had made some good connections through the projects I’d acted in, and we reached out to a lot of those contacts, as well as other friends we have that are involved in the industry, for feedback and guidance throughout the process.” That process continues. The couple are currently looking for investors to bring the film to feature length, which will allow them, says Nathan, “to delve deeper and explore themes of repressed grief, the relationship between young adults and their parents, and hereditary cancer.” They are also at work on another short film, becalming, about a young couple, Wes and Cleo, looking to expand their family when Cleo receives an unexpected diagnosis. “It’s meant to raise awareness around inflammatory breast cancer and show that cancer is not all about hospitals and doctors’ appointments, but about the love that surrounds you,” says Nathan.

In the meanwhile, the couple aren’t giving up their day jobs. Nathan works as a server in a high-end steakhouse. Shelby, who snagged a role in short film entitled Spin the Bottle, babysits and dog walks. Says Nathan, “We are constantly juggling the many tasks that come with being filmmakers, alongside our day-to-day responsibilities, but we love the film industry and wouldn’t have it any other way.”

For more information, visit chasing-june.com and for upcoming projects visit interlunarpictures.com.