|
Your new movie Double
Zero - in a few words, what is it about?
Simple answer… A woman who takes over as the crime boss of New York showing
everyone that she is not to be fucked with.
What
were your sources of inspiration when writing Double
Zero?
Double
Zero is actually a proof-of-concept short film based on a TV series I’ve
written, so it draws from that. The series itself is loosely based on
rumors from back in the 70s/80s and early 90s about NYC Group Homes being
mob & drug crew funded. With each group picking kids out as early as
10 to work for them. In
the show, Alvara would be one of those children who rise through the ranks
over the years, eventually, and violently becoming the head while juggling
a suburban life with kids.
To what extent could you actually identify
with Olivia and Diana in Double
Zero and the situation they've gotten themselves into? And to what
extent with Alvara for that matter? A
few personality traits between Alvara, Olivia, and Diana but nothing
really about their situation that I would care to go into detail about. Do talk about Double
Zero's approach to the thriller genre!
I knew I wanted to give this film an action/thriller feel but didn’t have
action/thriller money. I ultimately decided to go with a more tense,
reactionary, edge-of-your-seat type of feel instead. Unfortunately,
I tend to get pigeonholed into creating/writing dramas so I wanted to step
a little outside the box. The show itself is more of a drama with some
action and thriller elements scattered throughout, so I wanted to give the
proof of concept a feel of those elements while simultaneously showing my
range as a filmmaker.
A few words about your directorial approach to your story at hand?
I tried to keep a more hands-off pre-production approach this time. The
characters in the story were more personalities than anything else and I
didn’t want to hinder the actor's development of them. I went over the
characters, what I was looking for, their traits, the color theory behind
their wardrobe, etc with everyone, and let them craft it as they see fit.
We did a Zoom run-through in character, made a few adjustments and that
was it.
With the crew, we came up with a specific style that we were comfortable with,
and went with that. It took a 180 during the actual shoot and had to
adjust on the fly but everyone did a hell of a job adjusting.
It was also a little harder on everyone than usual because of Covid
restrictions. We had to rehearse over Zoom and pretty much go over
everything via email, text, and phone calls, instead of sitting and
hashing everything out. The only person I was able to sit with was the
cinematographer ... and our plan went out the window rather quickly.
What
can you tell us about Double
Zero's cast, and why exactly these people?
What
can I tell you about the cast… well, I can tell you that the acting in
the film has been criminally underappreciated, and I’ll leave it at
that.
Why them? That’s tough to answer because of the timing. The original short
had other characters, locations, and a different feel to it. We were going
to shoot in 2020 but Covid had other plans for that, running through the
different castmembers and having to push it back. It was originally a
much smaller scoped film, all outdoors, with an all-male cast. While it
was being pushed back, I got the time to sit and think about it, looking
over my series bible I realized that Albert (the main character) would
work better and allow me to explore more as an Allison. So after
re-working the entire bible, pilot script, and short film script I had a
completely different beast on my hands.
I immediately knew that I wanted Jamie Ragusa to play Alvara and Casey
Sullivan to play Ray.
I’ve worked with them before and knew they were talented and could bring
exactly what I wanted to the roles. Justin & the Hitwoman (Jason Alan
& Brette Spiekerman) were both last-minute replacements for no-shows.
The actor I originally cast as Justin texted me the night before saying he couldn't
make it, so I posted an ad on a local Facebook acting group. Jason was the
first to reply with a reel and was close to the area. With the Hitwoman
role, she just never showed up, never replied to a text, and never
answered a call. Brette, who was one of the makeup artists on Double
Zero filled in.
 |
Now to the hard choices… Olivia and Diana were cast about 7 different times.
Due to some catching Covid, insurance requirements at the time, as well as
safety precaution rules that some refused to abide by, the initial casting
choices fell through. I figured the responses from that casting call were
cursed and/or bad luck, so I deleted the casting call and made another ad
on Backstage, in which Caroline Anderson and Vivian Belosky were our first 2 choices from
there. Thankfully they were ok with everything needed because they both
did a great job and going back, I couldn’t picture the film with the
original cast.
Do talk about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere!
For me, the shoot went smoothly aside from the two small cast hiccups and
having to fire one crew member 30 minutes before the cameras rolled. Other
than that, everything on my end seemed fine - but as a director and a
lower-budget filmmaker who can’t stand still and is always moving I
would be the worst person to judge it.
Since I fund my own projects, I make sure that I am doing the most work in pre,
on-set, and in post, so it’s tough for me to really pay attention to the
vibe on set. I’m sure I would benefit greatly from an AD, but the budget
tier I’m operating in doesn’t usually allow for it. Obviously, I
can’t speak for the other cast and crew but I usually try and keep a
light, open and fun set if possible.
The
$64-question of course, where can Double
Zero be seen? Everyone
will be able to check out Double
Zero sometime in April… and at the
absolute latest, early May on Amazon. It’ll be free with a Prime subscription. Please check my social media or website for exact dates in
the coming weeks.
Anything you can tell us about
audience and critical reception of Double
Zero?
The feedback from both the audience and critics has been overwhelmingly
positive, which is a stark change from my feature Into the Valli where it
was very, very love-it-or-hate-it. It’s won a lot of awards and has gotten me in the door to pitch the show
version of Double
Zero a few times, so it definitely exceeded at its job.
It even made it into a book about the Top200 creative short films from
IndieMag which you can get on Amazon.
I did have one bad showing of Double
Zero at a festival which was a really
surreal experience. I’m someone that doesn’t mind negative feedback as
long as it’s something that’s constructive. It kind of felt like
everyone there was in on a prank to give me the cold shoulder. I think it
was more of a programming issue, (which tends to be a bigger issue than
people want to talk about) than a movie issue but it still got a lot of…
“what the fuck was that” stares with zero audience questions at the
end, not one person came up to me after, nothing. It
was the last film in a 6 short block that was full of sad, heavy dramas
and light romantic movies, and then… on comes Double
Zero with its loud
music, foul language, and women using guns. I think it took the audience
out of the zone they were in from the other, softer films. This type of
programming actually happened more than once but the blank reaction was
only once.
Any future projects you'd like to share?
Sure.
I actually have quite a few personal projects this year.
I
have a passion project that I’m very excited about. It’s webseries
called The Eight - it’s a PRE-post-apocalyptic show about 8
survivors and the day they had leading up to the event of a chemical
attack on New York City. It’ll be about ten 8-13 minute episodes. I
have the first five episodes written and the first 8 outlined. I plan on
shooting the first episode in the next few weeks and continue shooting
episodes in my downtime throughout the year. It’s a fully collaborative
effort with some actors and filmmakers that I’ve enjoyed working with in
the past. Everyone wanted to come on and we’re all crafting characters,
storylines, the look for each episode etc. as a team so every episode will
look and feel different yet cohesive.
The toughest project I have is Exit 17, which will be my second feature.
It’s a psychological thriller/horror set in 1980s New York and stars
Casey Sullivan from Double
Zero. We begin principal photography on October
14th going through the 22nd and hope to find a distributor for an early
winter 2025 release.
The next film of mine that people will be able to see is Star
Crossed, which is an emotional familial drama about a woman who loses her family to
illness but then wins the mega millions in the same year. The trailer for
that is currently on my website. I just submitted it to its first round of
festivals, so hopefully that has as much success as Double
Zero. I have
two more films currently in post-production. A dark comedy entitled Method
Man about a typecast actor trying to break free and A Single Strand, which is my dark take on
The Gift of the Magi by O.
Henry.
I also have a few for-hire directorial projects coming this year. The first
begins filming in a few weeks which is The Black Garden, a
romantic thriller. It’s my second time directing for this
actress-writer-producer, and her first film which I directed is in the romance genre and has been well received at the festivals she submitted
to, winning almost 15 awards so far. Because of that, she allowed me a
little leeway in adjusting a few things script-wise to give it a darker,
more psychological feel; which is always a good time for me. The others
are a little later in the year and might be pushed back, so I’d rather
not mention them.
What
got you into filmmaking in the first place, and did you receive any formal
education on the subject?
I started writing and producing music back in 1994 with different groups of
friends that were into rap, metal, and r&b. I was always good with the
written word, as I loved writing short stories in school or while
traveling with my mom. So the group of us would sit in a basement and just
create songs, teaching ourselves how to structure music by listening to
it. I met someone who pushed me towards writing video concepts for his
artists which is where I learned story structure, which immediately led me
to Screenplay by Syd Field.
 |
Writing
videos eventually turned into writing AND shooting music videos for
artists, which turned into writing short films, commercial ads and more
songs for artists while now adding companies to the mix; which eventually
turned into writing feature films for others. Seeing my film in a theater
and not being allowed to tell anyone “hey, I wrote that!” had me more
enraged than proud. The next week, I started planning my first short (for
practice). During the filming of my first short Addicts Abuse I fell
in love with the freedom filmmaking allows you. After that first short, I
dove right into making the first feature Into the Valli (which you can
watch for free on YouTube).
No formal education at all. I am completely self-taught, unless you count a
book or two, or actually reading the manual for the equipment. I always
had a love/hate - well more hate than love - type of relationship with
school. Honestly, there’s a high probability that I would have given up
if I had to attend classes for film. To me, it sucks the creativity out of
people.
What can you tell us about
your filmwork prior to Double
Zero? Prior
to Double
Zero, most of my work was as a writer and music video DP/director. Music videos aside, I wrote,
directed and shot a short film
called Addicts Abuse, which came out soooooooo bad it’ll never see the
light of day, unless someone breaks into my safety deposit box, steals the
hard drive, and watches the shit show projects that are on it. After that,
I helped write/direct and shoot a short called Weight of the Pen, which is
also on that hard drive. From those two terrible shorts, why not dive into
a feature AND put up your own money to fund it!!! Realizing how badly we
fucked up the other two projects, my film partner at the time, Nick
Buscarino, and myself decided to just hire out the crew and hope for the
best. Although it got mixed reactions, mostly due to the ending not being
your typical ending, I am very proud of what Into the Valli turned out to
be. Aside from Into the Valli, every project between that and Double
Zero failed to get off the ground or see the light of day for one reason or
another. How would you describe yourself as a
director? Collaborative. Yes, I do know what I want and
will get what I want, but everything is shot on digital nowadays, so as
long as something won’t take hours to set up I’m always ok with
changing things on the fly, it may or may not work but it’s worth the
shot. Quick example, for Double
Zero the interior scene I wanted to be
shot a certain way. Since I originally planned on editing the film, I knew
exactly what I wanted to get for it. After a few takes one way, Jamie
wanted to go through the whole scene in one shot, instead of piecing it
together, as it would be easier for her to stay in certain mindsets. My
vision for the scene was grittier and closer which didn’t align with the
logistics of how the one-shot would work. So with only time to lose we
shot the one take, and after watching the playback I liked the cleaner,
more detailed look to it. So we shot it one take from a few other angles
and kept it. Filmmakers who inspire you?
I
know it’s not the sexy response, but I tend not to use other filmmakers,
or even people for that matter, as inspiration. I have my own plan, my own
vision of where I want to take my filmmaking career,as well as where I
want to take each story I have, so what someone else does never really
enters that inspiring atmosphere to me, I can like other filmmakers
without being inspired by their work. If I ever do get inspired by other
filmmakers, it would be the ones that I’ve worked with in the past,
whether it be the actors, the writers, the directors, or the crew,
achieving success in their fields. Your
favourite movies?
There are hundreds that I love, picking a few favorites would be tough. Each
with their own reasoning but a personal top 5 would be… A Street Car
Named Desire, Godfather 2, Man on Fire (the Denzel version), The Sandlot
and either Die Hard or Roger Rabbit depending on my mood or time of year.
Obviously, if I was to name the BEST 5 it would look a lot different, but
those are the 5 I would consider my favorite.
... and of course, films you really
deplore?
I used to have a long list of films that I hated BEFORE I actually made a
feature-length. I know how insanely difficult it is to make even a bad
film, so I don’t like to shit on anyone actually making them, especially
the crew. Writers on the other hand…
Realistically,
there are a ton of shitty pointless movies that fail to do the bare
minimum to entertain someone out there, so it’s hard to answer that. At
the end of the day, a film's main purpose is to entertain first, not push
your message, agenda, or point of view; if you can add that in there while
still making an entertaining film, good for you. If not, it most likely
will fall into that deplore category.
Your/your movie's website, social media,
whatever else?
My website is www.AlwaysWritePat.com -
on there you can sign up for a newsletter to be updated on which festivals
my films will be showing at, and release dates, you can watch some
trailers of mine, as well as contact me in regards to any for-hire writer/director/DP work.
All my social media accounts are @AlwaysWritePat across all social networks
except for Tiktok because I don’t like to dance.
 |
Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned) |
The links below
will take you
just there!!!
|
|
 |
Anything else you're dying to mention and
I have merely forgotten to ask?
I know this is where you plug social media etc, but I’m not very active on
it. You guys can follow me if you want but don’t expect anything than
pictures of my dog or the occasional film updates.
I’ll just say thanks for having me here for the interview, I appreciate it.
Thanks for the
interview!
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
