Sadie Bones is a 19-year-old screenwriter, director, and actor whose debut feature, If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing, is out on digital from October 14. Born in Los Angeles and raised in New York City, Sadie is the only child of actor Kevin Corrigan, and had a childhood infused with the magic of cinema. At just eight years old, she wrote and directed her first short Film, Ellipses, and also directed the narrative short The Vanishing Point and the documentary short film Existential Hokey Pokey. She attended the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts and after graduating early, enrolled in the two-year conservatory program at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute.
Jun 28, 2024
11:29 PM
Dad: Will you and Ridge watch Withnail and I with me right now
11:30 PM
Me: right now??
11:30 PM
Dad: Yes
11:31 PM
Dad: One-time offer. Don’t blow it
11:32 PM
Me: i’m painting right now
11:32 PM
Dad: Up to you
11:32 PM
Me: if i can paint while we watch then yes
11:33 PM
Dad: Ok
11:33 PM
Me: okay!
11:34 PM
Dad: I’ll be there in 2 minutes
11:35 PM
Dad: Here
Withnail & I was a fast new favorite of mine. A few months after that night, it began playing at the IFC Center and I was the first to buy a ticket and recruit as many friends as possible to come see it with me, including my dad, of course. “Can my Dad come?” is something I’m often known to say when invited somewhere. Either that or, “Wanna hang out with me and my Dad?”
In an interview in 2010, when I was six, my dad was asked, “Who’s your best friend?” My dad’s response was, “I wanna say my daughter is my best friend.” In a home video shot when I was around three years, old my mom asks me, “Who’s this guy?” in reference to my dad. Without missing a beat I say, “My friend.” “He’s your friend? What’s his name?” I stare at her, confused. “Kevin.” I say. Like, Uh hello, you know his name?? I guess the bigger surprise to my parents in that moment was not that I was calling my father by his government name in place of “Dad,” but that I was using the correct name, and not one of the other strange nicknames I insisted on calling him over the years including Alex, Alfonso, and Hound.
My dad is accustomed to taking on new names. Uncle Eddie, Professor Professorson, Rocky the Goon and Budlofsky, just to name a few. The first time I ever saw my dad on TV, I was about five years old, at my grandparents house in the Bronx. Their TV was always on in the background. My grandpa pointed to the screen, “Look, Sadie, it’s your dad!” I looked and his chest exploded with blood.
This would not be the last time I saw my dad die. A few years later, he was on a show that was shooting at Walker’s in Tribeca, right across the street from our apartment building. My mom and I watched them set up the crane and the giant light rigs from our ninth story window. We went across the street and my dad showed me all the period cars they were using for the shoot. Then I stood with him and watched on the monitor as his stunt double got strangled to death in the next room.
As I aged into his films I began to be able to truly appreciate how incredible his body of work is. From watching Grounded for Life growing up, to Freaks and Geeks in middle school, and then Goodfellas and True Romance in my film history class in high school, I have always been in awe. Whether it’s Superbad, The Dictator, or The King of Staten Island, I could watch his movies again and again without ever getting tired of them. In my acting-on-camera class at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, I even worked on scenes from Living in Oblivion and Walking and Talking.
It’s no surprise the films he’s done are so iconic. He has good taste. And he made sure I inherited it. Essentially, from the moment I could understand English, my dad and I would watch movies and listen to music together. My earliest favorites included Paper Moon, Little Fugitive, American Graffiti, The Nutty Professor, A League of Their Own, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Kirikou and the Sorceress, Help!, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, The Point, and many more that are huge influences on me today. He lost his movie-picking privileges for a while after showing me Angels with Dirty Faces when I was about eight years old, which – without giving any spoilers – was a heartbreaking betrayal for a child.
With him suspended from choosing the movies we would watch, a few actually child-appropriate movies slipped through the cracks, including The Gnome Mobile, which I insisted we watch so many times he hid the DVD. There was a unique sense of pride I would feel when I picked a movie for us to watch and he enjoyed it. One of my earliest independent selections was Clue. I excitedly pointed out to him that it starred Madeline Kahn, who I knew from Paper Moon, which we had watched together with and without the director’s commentary. I’m still proud as an adult when I can impress my dad with a movie. A few wins I’ve picked over the last few years include Inside Out, The Holdovers and My Old Ass.
It wasn’t just good taste that my dad helped me develop early. Every weekend, we’d have breakfast together at the Square Diner. I vividly remember telling him a knock-knock joke I’d learned at school. He didn’t laugh. “You can do better than that,” he replied. My dad’s not a hard-ass, but he’s not a liar either. He has always pushed me to be better. We push each other. During quarantine, I took up watercolors. During an argument, my dad (accidentally) smudged one of my paintings. In retaliation, I painted him as a pig, similar to the parents in Spirited Away, another childhood favorite we would watch together. Instead of being angry, my dad was impressed. He ended up getting back into drawing and painting as well, and has since had a solo art show of his portraits at the Astoria Art Center. He’s drawn me a few times, but never as a pig.
Growing up exposed to so much incredible cinema, it’s no surprise I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker. I made my first short film at eight years old, and used a song by my dad’s band for the ending credits. Ten years later, I used that same song in my debut feature, If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing. Yeah, he also makes and has incredible taste in music. I compile every song he ever sends me in a large playlist on my Spotify titled “big kev recommends.” I dug his record collection out of storage and flaunt it to impress cute guys.
I also featured his music in my short film The Vanishing Point, made in 2021, and cast my parents in it to play exaggerated versions of themselves. It’s a dark script about mental health, and I wrote, directed and shot it. Despite how well my dad and I get along, our strong personalities clashed on set. Particularly because he did not learn his lines and tried to secretly read them off a paper towel he had written them on and hidden on his lap. As you can imagine, this caused a big fight, and led him to be demoted to three or four lines in my next project. That being said, he delivers an amazing performance in The Vanishing Point, and there’s even a shot of him stirring a pot of tomato sauce, for those who get the reference.
I began the full-time adult program at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in 2021. I had taken classes at the Young Actors at Strasberg program, just like my dad had 35 years prior. We even had the same teacher, Geoffrey Horne. The poor man had to deal with two generations of Corrigan teenagers. Strasberg shaped and uplifted me, the same way it had my father, and after completing the two-year conservatory program, I was ready to tackle my next film, my first feature.
Even though Dad was only allowed a few lines in If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing, due to my grudge from the short film, he’s all over that movie. The father character, named Alfonso (after one of my childhood nicknames for my dad), is played by David Krumholtz. David put his own wonderful spin on the role, but a few of his lines are airlifted from real conversations between me and my father. Most significantly, one day after a particularly long rant to my dad about how my crush wasn’t ready for a relationship, he turned to me and said, “My advice, start drinking heavily.”
On another occasion, my dad picked me up after a night out turned sour. My heart was shattered, and he drove me home while I was sobbing violently about some asshole “actor/musician.” “Don’t worry about these guys.” “You’re gonna make movies and TV shows one day.” “Don’t let him fuck with you.” My first feature was born from that heartbreak. It was also inspired by an different idiot guy that I dated at sixteen who flushed so many condoms down my dad’s toilet that it got clogged, prompting my dad to send me a very well-meaning and very humiliating text about how he was glad I was being safe, but there had to be a better way to dispose of my … trash. We’ve really been through it all.
November 8, 2023
4:03 PM
Dad: LOL. You were the best little kid
4:28 PM
Dad: 1,2,3 1,2,3
4:32 PM
Dad: I remember you being mad once and retreating to your loft bed. You wouldn’t speak to me. I wrote “Life is a waltz” on a piece of paper and threw it up to the loft. About thirty seconds later you threw it back.
4:33 PM
Me: why was i mad at you
4:33 PM
Dad: You had written “1,2,3 1,2,3”
4:34 PM
Me: i don’t remember that
4:34 PM
Dad: And then you came down the ladder and you weren’t mad anymore
True story
On Father’s Day in 2023 my dad posted to his Instagram story: “My father wanted to be an actor but I became one. I wanted to be an actor/director but my daughter is becoming one. Best Father’s Day present.”
Dad, being your daughter is the best film school in the world. I couldn’t be luckier. I wouldn’t be able to make it through life, much less make a film, without you. I can’t wait for you to direct your first feature, if you still want to. And you can have more lines in my next film, but no free passes because you’re my dad. You have to be off book.
