EXPERIMENTS IN ROAD RAGE: An interview with Back Up, Please writer/director Douglas Horn. By Warren Curry 5/29/03

Writer/Director Douglas Horn

The work of Douglas Horn has been lauded quite a bit on this website, so it seems only natural to bring you an interview with the quite talented filmmaker. With two great shorts -- the comedy, Trailer: The Movie! and the drama, Back Up, Please -- to his credit, Horn is now hard at work preparing his first feature entitled Dreamstate. Horn is one of those rare filmmakers whose writing and directing skills are equally on par. His scripts, whether they be poking fun at the mainstream movie world or studying the explosive male psyche in an ordinary situation turned volatile, are engrossing and, to put it bluntly, his movies look great. Horn possesses a unique command of a wide visual vocabulary, and clearly understands that images should serve stories and characters -- not vice-versa.

Douglas' most recent short, Back Up, Please, which stars Karl Bury, Branden Morgan, Light Wilder and Ron Gilbert, had its premiere at The Egyptian Theater this past Spring and also screened at The Method Film Festival in Burbank, CA. This interview was conducted prior to The Method Fest, which is presumably the first of many festivals that will program the film. Keep an eye out for it in your area, and brace yourself to hear much more from Horn in the future.

(Read the reviews of Back up, Please and Trailer: The Movie!)


You were working as a computer programmer until a few years ago. Talk a bit about your background in filmmaking and how you made the transition.

That would be a short conversation. Basically, I don't have a background in filmmaking. My background is in storytelling. Computer work was a good way to make some money while I wrote novels and screenplays and really learned how a story works.

When I set out to follow what I really always wanted to do, I read everything I could get my hands on. That's just the way I learn. So I read all the best books and applied my English Lit background to watching films. The literature of film is out there for anyone to see, and the basic technical stuff about how a camera works, lighting schemes, and all that is not hard to track down. What you can't learn from a book are the same things you can't learn from a lecture -- just what you discover making a film, working with other people and fostering their best creative work.

When I was programming, I was especially good at fixing bugs and finding creative solutions to system problems. So I was pretty happy to discover that those skills were 100% applicable to filmmaking. Indie filmmakers have to figure out how to get around their lack of resources or systems set up to exclude them.

One thing that really helped me was that I'd spent a lot of time around semi-pro theater growing up. My first real job at about 15 was working at this great community theater in my town. I was always around actors, directors, designers…I picked up quite a bit from that environment that has helped me in working with actors.

You have two shorts under your belt thus far, one a fun satire, the other a dark drama. What moved you to cover such different territory right out of the gate?

This business is so eager to slap an easy-to-define label on you. People say you have to define your 'brand' and stick to it if you want to get anywhere. I guess there's some truth to that, but I would prefer my brand to be that I tell visually and emotionally compelling stories that make you see common things in a different way, rather than just being a "wacky comedy guy."

I don't see myself ever doing a comedy without some seriousness or a drama without humor because that's how I see the world. Humor, really, is our saving grace as a species. So as dark as Back Up, Please is, I tried to put a lot of humor in it, too. The films I admire most are very hard to categorize as dramas or comedies because they touch on the range of emotions. Hopefully my first feature, Dreamstate, will accomplish this. That's what I'm striving towards, anyway.

What inspired the concept of Back Up, Please, and what is it about stepping behind the wheel of a car that can make the most peaceful person turn belligerent?

I wish I knew. I see the drivers in Back Up, Please as guys who would probably get along pretty well in any other situation. But there is something about the sense of security of being surrounded by a ton of steel and the anonymity of seeing everyone else not as a person, but as the car they drive that really brings out a lot of primal competitiveness in people.

I think a big part of what inspired the concept was just feeling this transformation in myself. I try to be considerate of other people, but there are times when I've been those drivers. Most people tell me they can relate. Any time something triggers such a powerful change in us -- and one that so many people experience -- it's worth exploring. So that was half of where the story came from.

The other half is about how we communicate with people. People tend to focus on the standoff aspect of the story, but much of it deals with how these people relate -- especially the husband and wife. I wanted to play off two kinds of failed communication in the story. One between strangers, but another between people who know everything about each other and still have trouble communicating. They talk around this huge change in their life and somehow work out their feelings about it, but of course the world intrudes. I find that pretty fascinating because it's the way I see people in relationships actually communicate most of the time.

In your press kit, you describe Back Up, Please as an experimental film. Why?

Of course Back Up, Please is a narrative story, but within that framework, I wanted to experiment with story structure by removing all exposition and denouement and seeing how that would affect the audience's perception of the film. What's left is pure present action. The audience has to join the story without any knowledge of what came before or what will come after the climax.

To me, shorts are a chance to experiment with the conventions of storytelling in a way that you just can't afford when you've thrown a bunch of money into a feature and need to really make something back. Trailer: The Movie!'s self-reflexive movie-within-a-trailer structure was an experiment. With Back Up, Please, I wanted to take compressed exposition and denouement -- which I always strive for -- to the extreme and see how audiences respond. I wouldn't have tried it if it hadn't served the story, but I think it does.

The climax of the story is perfectly clear -- I was never trying to cop out of that. Personally, I find it unpardonable to do that to the audience without a damn good reason. What's different here is that following the climax, nothing is tied up into a neat little scene where everyone moves on. My intention is that withholding the release forces viewers to reflect back on the story for meaning, rather than having the director feed them some lesson. I hope that people will think about why this very common situation ended in such an uncommon way.

Tell us about the process of selecting your cast for Back Up, Please.

I couldn't have been happier with how the casting came about. There's a saying in Hollywood that you never get the actor you really want, but I think this is the exception to that rule. My first concern was that I wanted really talented actors, but not anyone who audiences had seen much of and already had built-in perceptions about. Without taking time to lay down backstory, I couldn't afford for audiences to look at the actors and be thinking, "Hey, there's that guy from The King of Queens." I needed a clean slate.

I knew Light Eternity (credited as Light Wilder) from last year's Taos Talking Picture Festival, where she had a role in Tony Shaloub's Made-Up. Our films crossed paths again right about the time I was casting this and her performance just stuck with me. I met Karl Bury through a friend not long after The Majestic came out. He was so great at that calm surface/deep anger thing. The characters are completely different, but that element was key to the performance. It really is unfortunate that neither of those films reached the audience they deserved because the performances in both were really strong.

My DP, Clay Westervelt, knew Ron Gilbert from a previous project. When we started talking about actually making this film, Clay brought me a headshot and said we should really consider him for Martin. That's a role where all the lines are unspoken. He's really more of a presence, but then, that's some of the hardest acting to pull off. Ron is a real fan of Clay's work (as anyone who's seen it should be) which is why he agreed to meet with me. Ron studied with Lee Stasberg and had character roles in The Godfather and The Usual Suspects, plus about a hundred other films; the last thing he needed was to be in some short film where few of his character's moments are actually written into the script. I really had to lay out the visual structure of the story to sell him on the role.

The last role is really the only one where I didn't get the actor I'd originally planned on. I wanted to use an actor named Jason McCune, who is just hugely talented, but hasn't been seen much. I'd very nearly cast him in Trailer: The Movie! and wanted to use him in Back Up, Please, but the timing didn't work out. He was in a play at the same time we would be shooting and didn't have an understudy. We tried juggling schedules for a long time for it to work before we finally had to cut bait and get someone in that role.

Once I accepted that Jason wouldn't be in the role, however, I definitely got my first choice of remaining actors. Branden Morgan had starred in an LA stage production of Trainspotting, which was a rave. He was another really talented actor who audiences wouldn't have seen in many other roles. What I didn't count on, though, was that he would get a lot of movie roles right after Back Up, Please. I think by the time most people see this short, they'll have already seen Branden in some features that will be released soon.

You shot the film last summer in Los Angeles. What were the high points and low points of production?

I can't think of a low point. Honestly, I think any time you're able to make a narrative film, you've got to be in the top .0001% of the luckiest people on the planet and your challenges and concerns don't really count as "problems."

There were some challenges, but I view them all as high points because ultimately we conquered them. There were some equipment failures, some unexpected location concerns, and a shortage of resources --none of it any different than what any truly independent film faces. We did shoot this at a phenomenal pace: Five pages a day with every shot being a fight, a Steadicam sequence, moving car dialogue, or some sort of crane shot.

The only time I really sweated was toward the end of the third and final day. We had no generator for lights, only bounce boards and a couple of battery-operated Sun guns for fill, so once we lost the light, the film was going to be done. We got into a situation where there wasn't enough time to do everything on our shot list -- and we'd already cut it down to the bone. Clay and I were trying to figure out how we could get the last pieces we had to have to tell the story. Meanwhile, we weren't shooting anything.

Luke LaFontaine, who was the stunt coordinator/fight choreographer came up to us and said we'd better get off some shot because people were going to turn on us soon. Luke has tons of experience in this business. (His next gig after Back Up, Please was training Russell Crowe and 300 stuntmen in swordfighting technique for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.) He took me aside and in not so many words, reminded me that you have to keep the momentum up or else the hesitation ensures failure. He was right, too. As soon as we stopped trying to plan all the shots we needed to finish the film and just concentrated on getting the next one, everything came together and we could see our way to the end.

Is there any message you are trying to convey with the film?

I really subscribe to Sam Goldwyn's theory that if you want to send a message, use Western-Union. This film tells a story about what happens to these characters.

Hopefully, though, what drives these characters to do what they do is based on some very universal themes about the way people communicate and compete with each other. I tried to include themes about how people become fixated on their own very small immediate goals and are unable to back up and look at the big picture. I think that's applicable to a lot of situations from the interpersonal to international. So if the film makes people think about that, about how striving for our own needs without considering anyone else's can sometimes sacrifice everything, I think that's great. It means people are connecting with the story. But my goal is to engage the audience's emotions, not to convey a particular message.

One unmistakable element of your films is that you favor a very elaborate visual scheme. What influences this, and also talk about your collaboration process with D.P. Clay Westervelt.

I think that's just my style. I'm very deliberate about visual elements like composition and camera movement. I admire films that use camera movement and framing to enhance what's happening in the story, rather than just to document everything. I think it adds emotional dimension that audiences feel without necessarily knowing why. So I try to include that in my work. Within the confines of our resources, each shot moves in a way that enhances what's going on in the story. The great thing about moving the camera a lot is that then, when it's locked down, you're also conveying something by that lack of motion.

Clay is absolutely invaluable to me. One reason I'm able to direct films without having gone to film school is that he's always there for me as a resource. I sometimes feel that he deserves partial director credit. But I actually feel that about a lot of people. If you surround yourself with a great cast and crew, the director's job just becomes selecting from a lot of wonderful ideas and approaches and making sure that all of them work to move the story in the same direction. It makes the process a pleasure.

The way Clay and I work is that I bring him a script and full storyboards -- usually my second or third version of the boards. They include ideas for framing, lighting, design, and movement. But they're all sort of the wish-list version. Clay and I work out how to actually translate them into something we can create. He makes very insightful suggestions that force me to refine my ideas about how the framing, lighting styles and overall look help tell the story. Clay's ideas really spill over far beyond the traditional DP responsibilities. But then, everybody on the project tends to do that. I don't think any of us care where a great idea comes from as long as the film benefits.

I love it that Clay doesn't just stick to the traditional DP role. He constantly challenges me about the script, the characters, the pacing -- areas that don't strictly translate into what's happening with camera and lighting. That's really what I expect of everyone I work with. Lisa Guzman, Brandon Roberts, Paco Farias, Robin Kirk and others do that as well. Everyone comes into the project at the very beginning and we all collaborate to make all elements of the story work for us. It means that you don't end up with people coming from a million different angles on something. The different areas of the film are integrated.

Trailer: The Movie! has played and been very well received at film festivals, but I understand festival programmers have been reluctant to program Back Up, Please. What are some of the reasons you've been given so far and what are your personal thoughts about the matter. Do you think some people may have been surprised by how extremely different the film is from Trailer?

I was initially surprised with how Back Up, Please was received by festival programmers. I know that it always takes a while for a film to catch on: Every festival wants to premiere films, but no one wants to be the first to show them! Still, I was very surprised that so many festivals passed on the film initially: the performances, the story and themes, and the production values are really the type that festivals tend to embrace. Festivals programmers I knew personally would tell me that the film had "too much emotional impact" and was very difficult to fit into a program.

You make a film to be seen, so it's always disappointing to miss chances to show your work. Especially when you've been to a festival before and know the people who put it on. And when I see some of the films that get selected instead, I do scratch my head sometimes. But then, I'm a bit partial.

Some really good things have happened with the film, of course. The American Cinematheque selected it, which is a lot more prestigious than most of the festivals that passed. Festivals are starting to recognize it-- it's an official selection in this month's Method Fest, for example. Industry people have been very positive, and I've already had an offer for television rights from an Emmy-winning series. So I know that the film will be seen. I think the slow response from festivals would be more frustrating otherwise. But I try not to dwell on that. Not having your film selected by film festivals rates pretty low on the list of life's real problems.

Speaking of the American Cinematheque, Back Up, Please had its premiere screening as part of their Alternative Screen series. How did it go?

Wonderful. I can't imagine a better place to see a film. The screen is about three stories high and has a real movie-theater-as-cathedral feel to it. And the sound system is amazing. The audience was very responsive -- it's like you could feel them responding to the film. There was a great Q&A afterward where people wanted to talk about how the film was made, the relationships of the characters, and all the things you really hope will come up in a Q&A rather than the standard questions of "What was your budget?" and "Where did you find your actors?"

One great thing about the enormous screen was that we had shot this film on 24p HD video and transferred it to 35mm, so I had only seen it in Alpha Cine's little screening room. Until I saw the print projected at the Egyptian Theatre, I wasn't sure how the film transfer would hold up. But that really cleared up my concerns. I have no doubts now that the print can be projected on any screen without people recognizing it as originating on video.

About the only drawback I can imagine about the American Cinematheque screening is that the theater is so enormous that you could have four hundred people watching and still feel like you've got a pretty empty house. For a film lover like me, there's no better way to watch a film than with every seat filled. The rest of the audience somehow enhances the experience.

What's next for you?

I'm putting together my first feature film -- a psychological thriller called Dreamstate. So far, the people who've seen it are very excited, but I'm taking my time to get everything right. I know that M. Night Shyamalan rewrote The Sixth Sense a dozen times before he finally committed to the script he had. I think Dreamstate has that kind of potential, so I don't want to show any less patience or commitment.

Any closing comments?

Thank you for dedicating space on CinemaSpeak to reviewing independent films, especially shorts. It's so hard to get any kind of attention to a short film. Your review of Back Up, Please came before I'd had any of the other acceptance that the film is getting now, and it was very encouraging to know that someone who wasn't involved in the project saw its merit. So thanks. And please keep finding other great films that aren't getting seen or reviewed elsewhere.

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