Los Angeles Special Screening of Flag Day

Based on a true story, FLAG DAY follows Jennifer Vogel across two decades as she comes of age while navigating a fraught relationship with her beloved father, the con man John Vogel.

Flag Day is directed by Sean Penn (Into the Wild) and stars Dylan Penn as Jennifer Vogel, Academy Award® winner Sean Penn as her father John Vogel, and Katheryn Winnick as her mother Patty Vogel. Based on Jennifer Vogel’s memoir Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life, the film is adapted for the screen by Tony Award® winner Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth, and produced by Golden Globe® winner William Horberg, Academy Award® nominee Jon Kilik and Fernando Sulichin. Original songs are by Cat Power, Glen Hansard and Eddie Vedder. 

Los Angeles Special Screening Event Photos

At the heart of FLAG DAY is a love story between a father and daughter, but as filmmaker Sean Penn describes, “a complicated one.” It is a story of one woman’s pursuit to find truth in her life after growing up in the shadow of her father’s criminality. We see the bonds of family ebb and flow, with each truthful revelation and each destructive lie. This father daughter story serves as a metaphor for a country that often fails to live up to its highest ideals.  A country that doesn’t follow through on its promises. Stoic imagery of flags waving and fireworks give way to darkened windows, disguises and eventually handcuffs and jail cells. Ultimately, it is a story of perseverance, of truth, and learning who you are in the shadow of someone else. It is a story of uncovering memories of the past and examining those memories from a raw and vulnerable place. Penn tells a dynamic story, and to do so, he brought together a cast and crew of exceptional talent to shepherd a project that he has always considered to be very close to his heart. One that took 15 years to finally put out into the world and the first film he has directed and starred in. 

When producer William Horberg first read Jennifer Vogel’s gripping memoir, he immediately knew it had the makings for a strong film adaptation. “It felt like a truthful window into families and love and loss and lies. I found it captivating.” 

Both humorous and heartbreaking, Flim-Flam Man details Vogel’s tumultuous relationship with her father–who also turned out to be one of the biggest currency counterfeiters in U.S. history–amidst her journey to becoming a respected writer and journalist. Horberg secured the rights and he and Vogel set out on a journey to bring her story to the big screen. Horberg says that Penn was the first actor he thought of to play John Vogel, although it would be years before Penn actually read the book.

Vogel wrote the story for two reasons: one, to figure out why things happened and why people did what they did and two, because she was searching for legitimacy, something she said she did not feel as she was growing up. “I wanted to reach back and resolve some things on a personal level but also tell the story of how I got there.” She’s expressed that there are many people who have similar stories to hers; that coming to terms with her story and putting it out there was important to her because she knew it would resonate with others. 

Horberg shares in that feeling: “As I imagine would be true for anyone who sees the film, you can’t help but see some part of your own life in hers, not in the specific details, but in the way all families are dysfunctional, and all growing up involves separation and the need to forgive our parents for their mistakes even as we relive them ourselves.” 

Dylan has shared that, “Working with my dad as my co-star and director was extremely intense! That said, he is truly the best scene partner and director I have ever worked with. It was nice to play around with him in that way. I felt so unbelievably supported which really allowed me to be vulnerable and essentially, emotionally naked. He really knows how to talk to actors to get what he wants; and although on set it can feel demanding, it’s comforting to have someone who knows exactly what they want, from the way you part your hair to the way you enter a room. To work with my brother is such a gift, he makes it very easy. We have such a close relationship in reality and I think that chemistry is obvious in the scenes we share.” 

Like Sean and Hopper, Dylan’s relationship to the film felt very personal. When thinking back to when she first read the book as a 15-year-old, she says “it felt like reading my own diary.” It took 15 years for Dylan to accept the part of Jennifer, at which point she says that “reading it again at almost 30 was very nostalgic, like looking back at when I was an angst-y teenager. I felt I had really grown up like Jennifer did in the story and it felt like a parallel to my own life.” 

While the father-daughter relationship between Dylan and Sean in real life is more transparent, supportive and loving than the one between Jennifer and John, Dylan feels she similarly strives for an open and honest relationship with her father. Jennifer Vogel calls Dylan “a truth-seeker” who is “looking for the heart of things.” Like Vogel, Dylan feels passionately about how audiences will be able to connect to this story and see parts of their own lives in it. “A big piece of it is finding your own identity…everyone is familiar with that.”