Cooper Raiff knew he wanted to make a movie about a mom. It might not have been the expected move for the director of Shithouse, a micro-budget indie that Raiff made on the campus of Occidental College shortly after dropping out. But after that film won the grand jury prize at SXSW in 2020, Raiff was approached, like so many upstart filmmakers before him, and asked what he wanted to do next. And the story that had stuck with him was about Domino, a woman who had her daughter young and was essentially forced to grow up alongside her. “For the first like 10 pitches of that, I was just like, ‘I think moms are cool,’ and people were like, ‘That’s not a movie idea,’” Raiff says on this week’s Little Gold Men podcast. “And then at some point I had this other character that I was thinking about, which was just the person that I know best, which is a 22-year-old dumbass. And so I kind of put them together.”

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The result is Cha Cha Real Smooth, in which Dakota Johnson—who also produced the film alongside producing partner Ro Donnelly—stars as Domino, with Raiff as recent college graduate Andrew (he’s not really a dumbass, we promise). The film premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, which had suddenly gone all virtual as a new COVID variant spread. Cha Cha won the audience award and was picked up by Apple TV+ about a couple months before its previous Sundance acquisition, CODA, took home the best-picture Oscar—but hey, no pressure. 

If he’s feeling any pressure, Raiff is wearing it lightly. Now 25—yes, 25—he’s the kind of precocious multihyphenate who gets the industry very excited. But rather than finding ways to continue starring in his own films, or even sitting in the director’s chair at all, he’s scheming to take the lessons learned from his scrappy endings and help the generation already coming up behind him. “With Cha Cha it was definitely a battle,” he says. “But I think what I’ve luckily learned, and what I can luckily point to now, is that there’s a sweet spot that makes it very lucrative. People don’t think about a movie with two people talking as something that’s going to make you a lot of money. But when you make it for the right amount of money, then you have maybe a person like Dakota Johnson in it—Cha Cha did really well. And so now, the two companies that made that movie, I know that they’re going to give the next talky filmmaker less grief.”

Raiff launched his career by reaching out on Twitter to Jay Duplass, who has remained a mentor and friend—and a model for how indie-movie clout can be paid forward. “My big goal and my big dream and how I really see my life is not being a writer, director, or actor, but rather just producing other people’s work and trying to champion other people,” Raiff says. “Really the past two months I’ve been thinking about it a lot and what do I actually want to do? And I think what I want to do is just be a part of making movies and help young people. I want to be that fierce protector that I think everyone probably needs in this filthy, filthy business.”

Listen above to this week’s Little Gold Men, which also includes a conversation with Station Eleven breakout star Danielle Deadwyler. Subscribe to Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts, and sign up to text with us at Subtext, we’d love to hear from you.