.png)
About Nessie Stafford
Writer | Director | Actor | Producer | Clown
Nessie Stafford (she/they) is a filmmaker, writer, and actor specializing in schlocky, genre filmmaking from a transgender and queer lens. Her sensibilities tend to be comedic, and often indulgent in over-the-top maximalism. She has a particular fondness for horror comedy, cult, exploitation, and grindhouse flicks, as well as oddball science fiction and fantasy films large and small. Her mission in life is to tell entertaining, unique, and unapologetically queer genre tales of her own.
After graduating from San Francisco State University in 2021 with a BA in Cinema, she co-founded Ghoul Capone Pictures with filmmakers Nolen Sternkopf and Drew Crosby. Together, they have produced and released over 10 short films, 2 microbudget shorter (40-50 minute) features, and have even more projects on the way.
Stafford wrote, directed, production designed, SFX coordinated, and starred in Head Scientist (2024), a sci-fi splatter comedy short film initially shot as her senior thesis film at SFSU. While exceedingly silly, soaked in blood, and indulging in campy practical effects, the story of Head Scientist serves as a metaphor for her own gender transition, written and shot before she came out to anyone beside herself, but officially completed and released shortly after starting to publicly transition. The film premiered in 2024 at the Ghoul Capone Showcase Shindig at the Clinton Street Theater, and is now available to watch on the Ghoul Capone Pictures YouTube Channel.
In addition to acting as a producer on all Ghoul Capone projects, she has served as a writer on short films The Door Dinger (2023), Final Sin (2024), and on Ghoul Capone’s segment of the horror anthology short film “Debut” (2024) created and released by Late Night .99.
An earlier short, Baby Cycle (2018), a slapstick shocking comedy about an incompetent babysitter, which she wrote and directed as a class assignment at SFSU, is currently available to stream on TROMA NOW.
As an actor, Nessie has appeared in the feature comedy Reveries: The Mind Prison (2025) from Director Graham Mason, Deep Cuts (2024) a proof of concept horror short from director Ben Moody, and in the Ghoul Capone Pictures shorts The Door Dinger (2023), Partners in Crust (2023), The Lost Troupe of Lake TitiCrabCrab (2024), and Head Scientist (2024). She has also been known to perform comedy, clown, and improv around LA.
Stafford has also worked as a Script Supervisor and Production Assistant on various features, shorts, and music videos and has served as a festival judge for the San Diego Environmental Film Festival in 2025 and 2024, and as an intern for the Outfest Screenwriting Lab in 2021.
Her creative influences include, but are not limited to, John Waters, Frank Henenlotter, Vera Drew, Boots Riley, Peter Jackson, Louise Weard, Angela Robinson, The Wachowski Sisters, Sam Raimi, Gregg Araki, and Alice Maio Mackay.
When she is not busy working on a film or writing screenplays, she can most often be found at the movie theater.
​
DIRECTING
​
WRITING
​
ACTING
-Reveries: The Mind Prison (2025)
-Deep Cuts (2024)
-The Lost Troupe of Lake Titicrabcrab (2024)
​
