Ruby Modine & Ian Kimble – It’s Just a Dead Giveaway

Ian Kimble and Ruby Modine at the Philadelphia Film Festival Premiere of "Dead Giveaway."

Ruby Modine & Ian Kimble

It’s Just a Dead Giveaway

by Jay S. Jacobs

Don’t you hate it when this happens? You’re out on a Friday night. You hit a few bars, and maybe a party. You have a bit too much to drink. Or maybe a lot too much to drink. Or maybe you literally recreate Marion Ravenwood’s shots-drinking contest scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. You wake up the next morning, still fully dressed in the outfit you had on the night before. You feel like crap, with a nasty headache. You have no memory of what happened last night. And you are laying next to a blood-soaked corpse of a man you don’t even recognize.

This is what happens to Jill, the lead character in writer/director Ian Kimble’s new horror-comedy film Dead Giveaway. Jill is played by Ruby Modine, the actress (the Happy Death Day series, Shameless, the upcoming Silent Night Deadly Night) and singer (lead singer of the band Ruby Modine and the Disease.)

The lesson?

“Be very careful when you drink in excess because you never know what can happen,” Modine laughed to me on the red carpet of the Philadelphia Film Festival’s world premiere screening of Dead Giveaway. 

Of course, Jill doesn’t learn all of her lessons, because when she wakes up in her blood-soaked dress with a dead man, instead of calling the police, she calls her bestie, Lia (Mikaela Hoover of Superman and Love Hard). At first Lia is put out at having to deal with a corpse, but eventually as a ride-or-die she agrees to help Jill take care of the body, with the two women having to deal with a suspicious roomie, a nosy neighbor, a stash of drugs, a mysterious woman and all sorts of strange complications. Lia just has one proviso, that they be finished by three o’clock that afternoon so that they can go to brunch at the local Philadelphia restaurant, Silk City, because she is starving.

Buddy Caine, Ruby Modine, Ian Kimble and Jacquelyne Paige at the Philadelphia Film Festival Premiere of "Dead Giveaway."

This is a story which has been a part of Ian Kimble’s life for over a decade now. He originally made “Dead Giveaway” as a short film back in 2011.

“I watched it. Very fun,” Modine said.

However, the story never let go of Kimble. He actually made a second, slightly longer short of the story in 2015, and now ten years later it has been expanded to an all-new feature film.

When planning the expansion, it was important “To take all of the stuff we had, but use the same time frame,” Kimble explained to me. “I didn't want to add any time before she woke up or after they go to breakfast, you know what I mean? So it's squeezing more madness inside of that three-hour window.”

Just upping the ante and building on the situation was a treat for Kimble.

“It became super fun,” he continued, “because from the short film to this, it's like, ‘All right, well, how do we just get more and more crazy stuff going on?’ The chalkboard of ideas was pretty wild, and we got to pick the best ones, pack them in there so that these two girls have a pretty interesting morning.”

What about this story that keeps bringing Kimble back to it?

“It's the characters,” Kimble explained. “I originally wrote these characters, very much inspired by my two big sisters. They are the ones that got me into movies, and especially horror movies.”

Modine was the first actor who signed onto the feature film version of Dead Giveaway.

“Ian sent me the script, and it made me cry with laughter,” Modine said. “Every page that I turned made me laugh harder and harder. He's a phenomenal writer, just amazing.”

Both Kimble and Modine found a love of cinema through their families.

“[My sisters] always had such a cool perspective on movies,” Kimble said. “They never wanted to scare me when I was a little kid. They wanted me to experience the magic of it. It was always like, ‘This is makeup, and these are people in a mask. They're pretending.’ I fell in love with it.”

Modine comes from a show business family. Her father is long-time actor Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket, Stranger Things) and growing up around acting helped to light the passion for the art in Ruby.

“I loved growing up and being on sets and watching him put on the costume and become a different character,” Modine explained. “Also watching films and just being extremely excited.”

Kimble loved the opportunities to juggle comedy and horror in Dead Giveaway.

“It's like, what do you do at any given moment? Whenever I was writing this really funny piece, it would be like, I'm going to mix this up and throw something a little bit bloody in there keep the audience on their toes. I very much wrote it as a fan of the movie that I was making, and how I would want to feel if I was in the audience watching it. It's fun to juggle that back and forth,” Kimble said.

So, what is the worst thing that Modine has awakened to after a night of partying?

“I've got to tell you, I'm very happy about this, the worst thing that I've woken up to is just a brutally painful headache,” Modine said. “I know that's most boring answer to give you, but I'm grateful because Jill put the fear of God in me.”

Andrew Vogel, Suzann Toni Petrongolo, Buddy Caine, Ruby Modine, Jacquelyne Paige, Jessie Hitner and DK Supersweet at the Philadelphia Film Festival Premiere of "Dead Giveaway."

And does she have a BFF who is so close that if worse came to worse, they would help her hide a body?

“Absolutely!” she exclaimed. “Hayley Griffith, or my very best friend, Samantha Cliffstein. Either one of those people would absolutely help me.”

Kimble grew up in South Jersey and most of the film was made in the Philadelphia area.

“We actually shot a lot in South Jersey too,” Kimble explained. “I’m from Vineland. We shot a lot in South Jersey. In Camden, primarily. In Haddonfield and Haddon Township. They were all wonderful to us. Being so close to home, getting to put money towards the local resources and local places and local people. Bringing these people in this area and this vibe to the rest of the world was the most fun for me.”

Modine has also become a huge fan of the Philadelphia area.

“Amazing,” she said. “I didn't have a huge opportunity to go out and about [while making the film], but I've been here for two days now, and actually have gone out and [it is] so fun, a bit chaotic, and I want to come back.

Now, after all this time, Kimble gets to come back and have his film see its world premiere at The Philadelphia Film Festival.

“It's what we wanted more than anything,” Kimble explained. “We had a good opportunity to premiere it in different places. It was like, I really want to do it in Philly, because it's home. We can have the majority of the cast and crew here. We can have our families all show up without anybody having to travel too far. And again, the vibe of the movie is the vibe of this place. We're all really pumped to do it here.”

There is one sad thing about the film coming out, though. Now that the film has come to be, Kimble may have to finally wave goodbye to Jill and Lia, two characters who have pretty much colored the last decade and a half of his life. (Unless, of course, the film is eventually turned into a TV series.)

“I think because of [my fascination with film], and because of throwing more stuff at these two characters, and how they develop themselves and reacted, I'm going to miss the two of them a lot.”  

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 19, 2025.

Photos by Jay S. Jacobs © 2025. All rights reserved.