Your new movie A Ghost
Waits - in a few words, what is it about?
Jack is a handyman who works for a real estate company, fixing and
cleaning up rental units and getting them ready to be rented again. He’s
sent to a troubled property and tasked with finding out why every tenant
breaks their lease. He soon discovers it’s haunted by a ghost named
Muriel, and his initial fear quickly gives way to something much deeper.
To
what extent can you actually identify with A
Ghost Waits' Jack, and is he in any way based on yourself? Jack
is very much a combination of my co-writer MacLeod Andrews and me, yeah. I
wanted to tell a story about my experience of depression and anxiety,
because typically when they’re presented in film it’s in the more
overtly dramatic forms of bipolar or manic depression. And MacLeod wanted
to give a performance that was closer to who he is as a person. He’d
just played a few very challenging characters which didn’t really use
his natural charm or humor, and wanted to give a more transparent
performance. I think we both have struggled with a severe need for human
connection at times when it wasn’t forthcoming, so we were both primed
to explore the feeling of being left behind or just adrift in society. (Other)
sources of inspiration when writing A
Ghost Waits? The main two inspirations were the
video game P.T., which is a first-person haunted house puzzle game
designed by Guillermo Del Toro and Hideo Kojima, and a web comic called
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. My friends Jenn and Brian Price invited
me over to play P.T. one night, and I had them cracking up laughing at my
reactions. It’s this very creepy, atmospheric game, and there are all
these wonderful horror beats in it, and I would just absolutely refuse to
engage with them. Once Jenn got her phone out to record me playing the
game, I started thinking about how I hadn’t seen a haunted house movie
with a character like me at its center. Somewhere around then, I saw a
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic where a man asks a woman what she thinks is the most American
film and she says, “That’s easy, Ghostbusters. The existence of an
afterlife is proven beyond a doubt, but the whole movie is about growing a
small business and navigating government bureaucracy.” I thought,
“That’s hilarious! But also yeah, she’s right, a ghost does mean
there’s an afterlife. I would have so many questions!” So those two
things formed the spine of what would become A
Ghost Waits.
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What can you tell us about your
co-writers Matt Taylor and MacLeod Andrews, and what was your
collaboration like? Matt Taylor is a film writer whose
pseudonym I will not reveal. We’ve been friends for a few years, and I
was visiting him just before Christmas 2015 and told him I was working on
this new script but wasn’t happy with the ending. We ended up talking
all night about it, and he inspired the character of Rosie and her dynamic
with Muriel. I then went off and wrote the script by the seat of my pants
because we had the budget before we had the script. Once it was time to
film, MacLeod flew in a little early and we sat at my Dad’s kitchen
table and went over the script so that MacLeod could ask questions about
anything he wasn’t sure of. We didn’t have time to continue doing that
during production, but once I had cut together the assembly edit and start
working that down into something closer to what we have now, we could see
clearly what did and did not work. We didn’t have any money left, so
MacLeod was the only person who could come back for pickups, but once we
were back in the same place, we started interrogating the film and
figuring out which beats needed to be eliminated completely and which
could be replaced with or shaped into a better idea. For both sets of
pickups, it was just him and me in that house, coming up with ideas in the
moment and chasing them until we were satisfied that they were as fun or
as cathartic as they could be. Do talk about your film's approach
to both horror and comedy! Honestly I think that’s just
how my brain and heart work. I find absolute horror and absolute comedy in
everyday life. For instance, one time I was sitting with a person with
whom I was in love, and I was thinking, “This is a miracle! How does
something like this even happen?!?” Then I looked around and saw that
most of the tables around us were peopled with couples experiencing the
same miracle, which got me thinking that love is the most boring miracle.
I think there’s something horrific in how we define ourselves with
things that might not even exist.
What can you tell us about
your overall directorial approach to your story at hand? This
was my first film — I had attempted to make a short film some years
before, but that fell apart in spectacular fashion — so I had this
feeling that things might be okay as long as I never reached beyond my
grasp. I’d been writing scripts for about 20 years, so I was confident
in my ability as a writer. I felt like if I just kept things simple and
never lost sight of the point of the scenes and the characters, then
we’d probably be okay. Also, in terms of directing actors, my philosophy
tends to be that their job is to know the characters better than I do. I
might have created the characters, but if we get lucky and the film gains
any traction at all, they will be far more associated with those
characters than I will be. So when I sat down to talk with Sydney or
Natalie or whoever about their character, I didn’t really want to talk
about the script. I asked them what kind of music they thought their
character listened to, or how the character might respond to a car
accident, just things that might show how deep they understood the
character. I knew that I wanted to make something transcendent, and you
can’t do that if you’re executing the world you have in your head.
Anything I could do to open that up and let the actors and the crew bring
their own energy and experience and ideas to the world, I felt like that
would only add to the film. You
also appear in front of the camera in A
Ghost Waits - so what can you tell us about your character, and
have you written him with yourself in mind from the get-go? To
be completely honest, I play Neal in the film because I knew I could
afford myself and that I’d be available on the day. Though, one fun bit
of trivia is that MacLeod directed me in ADR, and he did a really great
job. If it had just been me in my bedroom, I would not have pushed myself
as hard as he did.
Do
talk about the rest of your cast, and why exactly these people? MacLeod
and I have been friends for years, and have been trying to make a movie
pretty much that entire time. We lived together for a while, and one week
we were working on his acting reel so we watched everything he’d done up
to that point. He’s such a talented actor that he was often cast as
someone who has either lost their mind or is in the process of losing
their mind, which again he is very good at performing. But I wanted to see
him fall in love and save the world, so once this became a viable project
that we were going to make, I seized the opportunity to show the world
what my friend can do. All four main roles were written with specific
actors in mind, though only two of them were actually played by those
specific actors, the other being Amanda Miller who plays Ms Henry. I’d
seen Amanda in a bunch of short films and she was always the best part in
them, so I knew I wanted to work with her. Sydney Vollmer, who plays
Rosie, came in when we were auditioning local actors in Cincinnati. I had
found someone that I thought might be a good Rosie, but once Sydney and I
met on a video call and started talking about the character, I knew Sydney
had to play Rosie. First of all, Sydney obviously has a much better grasp
on what it is to be a teenage girl than I ever will, but also she just had
this great empathy for the character, who is very snotty on the page.
Sydney is a very gentle, sensitive person, and bringing those colors to
Rosie made her a much richer character.
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I’d been following Natalie
Walker, who plays Muriel, on Twitter for a while, but did not know her
otherwise. Like I said, I’d written Muriel for someone else, a friend
who got cast on a TV show and was thus unavailable. I was back at the
white board considering who could play Muriel, and I happened to be on
Twitter and Natalie had posted something hilarious and brilliant, as she
is wont to do. I was laughing, and remembered that she’s also an actor.
So I went to her website hoping there might be some clips of her work,
which sadly there were not…but her email was there! So I emailed her and
said that I was making a feature in Cincinnati and thought she’d be
really interesting in the lead, and asked if I could email her the script.
She said yes and she liked it, so I asked her to record and send over an
audition. She did, and the moment it starts it was so clear that she was
Muriel. I remember thinking that because she’s so fiercely intelligent
and funny, that there might be a sort of parallel to Robin Williams where
by having to sublimate all that energy into a very still performance,
there’s almost a vibration to their stillness, like a whole world within
trying to get out. I know it was hard for her to be the straight-person
and have to keep everything inside, but I think she pulled it off
magnificently. A
few words about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere? Principal
photography was 12 days in August 2016, during a heat wave, in a house
with no air-conditioning. So that was fun. I mean, it actually was a lot
of fun. We had a really tiny crew — 4 of us, many days — and we were
in it together. I definitely had the least production experience of
everyone on set, so felt like it was incumbent on me to create a space
that positive and open and energetic. Which, I was living my dream of
making a movie, so I was VERY positive and energetic. Mike Potter has
remarked several times that every now and then throughout production I
would just say “Can you believe this? We’re making a movie!” I’m
basically a puppy, it turns out. Anything
you can tell us about audience and critical reception of A
Ghost Waits? When you make something so small and
personal, you really don’t know if anyone will ever care. I’m very
proud of what we made, and I remember telling MacLeod that we couldn’t
control what people would think of the movie, or even if people would ever
think of the movie, so our goal had to be making something that we were
happy with and proud of. We’d prepared ourselves for the likelihood that
we would be distributing it ourselves and fighting for every pair of
eyeballs we could get. And then FrightFest happened. 400 strangers paid
money to watch our movie, and it resonated with them. After the screening
and Q&A, I had so many people coming up to me thanking me for the
movie, saying it made them feel seen and heard. Which… at my lowest,
movies have always made me feel less alone, and it was my goal to do that
for someone else. To be a part of that legacy is overwhelming and
validating and just the very best feeling. And the reviews have been good
too! I won’t pretend that I always knew in the moment what I was doing,
but I was always following the same North Star. I’ve always loved
reading film criticism, especially when I was growing up in Northern
Kentucky and didn’t have access to arthouse or repertory theaters.
Film critics are champions and advocates, and I relied on them to tell me
what I should be seeking out. (This was before the internet, too, so I was
scouring books and magazines.) I sometimes struggle with the idea that I
made a real movie, and having critics embrace it has helped me feel like a
part of the film ecosystem.
Adam directing Sydney Vollmer |
Any future projects you'd like to
share? Nothing is definite yet, but I’m working on a
script that has some interest so that’s pretty cool. It’s a time
travel road movie with some disaster movie sprinkled in. I’m really
hoping we get to make it soon. What got you into filmmaking in the first place,
and did you receive any formal training on the subject? I
was a sensitive boy growing up in the South and the Midwest, so movies
were always my safe space to go where people weren’t telling me to be
less weird or talk less about the stuff that fascinated me. We lived near
a theater for a while, so in the summers during middle school I’d walk
over and just watch movies all day. I cannot count how many times I
watched Batman or Kindergarten Cop. But whenever I’d read interviews
with filmmakers, they’d always say “If you can be happy doing anything
else, do that.” So I spent a long time trying to do anything else, which
meant I never went to film school or any of the steps you’re supposed to
do before making a movie. My film education came in three phases, I think.
The first was when I started writing for Creative Screenwriting
Magazine,
and had the opportunity to talk with working filmmakers and ask the
questions that I didn’t feel were being asked elsewhere. Like, I don’t
care what it’s like to work with George Clooney, I want to know what the
seed of the idea was and how you knew you were finished with it. The next
step, once I’d left film journalism and started working in production,
was my time as the 2nd AD on the romantic-comedy Split, written and
directed by my friend Jamie Buckner. Doing that job gave me a front row
seat to how an independent film was made. It allowed me to see where money
had to go versus where it went out of habit. I saw how various people
approached the various jobs, and gained a better understanding of what
those jobs were. The third phase, which started around the time I knew I
was going to get to make a movie, was actually watching YouTube videos.
There’s some great stuff on there about film theory and how it actually
serves the experience of making/watching a film. Channels like Folding
Ideas and Every Frame A Painting put concepts into words that I
understood, and deepened my appreciation of an art form that I thought I
knew pretty well. Oh, and I guess making the movie would be the fourth
phase! What
can you tell us about your filmwork prior to A
Ghost Waits?
Nothing really to tell. Like I said, I
tried to make a short film but never did. I had a few music videos fall
apart. I’ve had a few friends remark on how deeply strange it is that
the thing that worked out was a feature, which is certainly not the norm. How would you describe yourself as
a director? I think I’m an enthusiast. Like, I don’t
really start writing something until I don’t think it works, because
then I have a puzzle to solve and that’s what gets me excited and
engaged. Then, once it’s written, I get excited about finding people who
share my enthusiasm for the characters and the world. Then we make it, and
I’m excited to show the world how amazing my collaborators are. Then
people see it, and I’m excited to talk with people about it, whether
they like the film or not. I just like getting excited about people and
ideas and the actual work of creativity. Filmmakers who inspire you?
Oh
boy, how much time do you have? Robert Altman is definitely at the top of
the list, with Joel and Ethan Coen right behind him. Joe Dante has wired
so much of my brain. I think Amy Seimetz is one of the most exciting
filmmakers out there right now - She Dies Tomorrow was like Bergman doing
a film in the style of 2001. Oh, Bergman is a huuuuuuuge inspiration. I
remember the first time I saw Scenes From A Marriage, I told my friend
that my sense of story was out the window because apparently the most
fascinating thing in the world is two people talking. I also adore what
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are doing - Spring is a favorite film.
And Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jonze. Jonathan Demme. Barry Jenkins. Bong
Joon-Ho. Park Chan-Wook. Dorothy Arzner. Jeremy Saulnier. Steven
Soderbergh. Karyn Kusama. Jennifer Kent. Guillermo del Toro. Alfonso
Cuaron. She hasn’t made a movie yet, but Phoebe Waller-Bridge is
ridiculously inspiring. Lorene Scafaria! Steve McQueen! Don Hertzfeldt!
Mike Flanagan [Mike Flanagan
interview - click here]! I adore every movie Chris McQuarrie has written and
directed (I can still quote swaths of The Way of the Gun).
Seriously, I can just go on and on. I told you, I’m an enthusiast. Oh,
and Mike Nichols is probably next to Altman as the most influential
directors for me. Your
favourite movies? Do The Right Thing (HOW DID I
FORGET SPIKE ON THAT LIST), Gremlins 2, M*A*S*H, Fargo,
Arrival, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Requiem for
a Dream, The
Silence of the Lambs, Punch-Drunk Love, The
Apartment, Paris, Texas - I’m gonna stop there or this
will just turn into another massive list… ... and of course, films you really
deplore?
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I’m sure there are movies I hate, but I’ve
done a very good job of putting them out of my mind. Your/your movie's website, social media,
whatever else? Twitter: @adamstovall @aghostwaits Website:
aghostwaits.com Instagram: @notadams Anything else you're dying to mention and
I have merely forgotten to ask? Nothing leaps to mind.
Thank you for such wonderful questions! Thanks for the
interview!
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