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Your new movie Listen
Carefully - in a few words, what's it about?
Listen
Carefully is a psychological horror feature film about a troubled
assistant bank manager Andy McNeary, whose baby daughter Abby is stolen
from his home the very first time his wife Abby trusts him enough to watch
her while she’s out with friends. To make things worse, he must follow
the instructions of a mysterious voice on the other end of a baby monitor
to save her before she disappears and his life is ruined forever.
What were your sources of inspiration when writing Listen
Carefully, and is any of it based on personal experiences?
Listen
Carefully is based on an anxiety nightmare I had in 2018. For context, my
family and I were staying the weekend with my parents in a small quiet
beach town in Central California. We had a nice family meal at a local
Mexican restaurant, indulging in lots of spicy food and margaritas. It
should be noted, I am not much of a drinker and tequila really messes with
my system. During dinner, conversation turned to my younger brother and
what a great, hands-on parent he is. The conversation then quickly turned
into a “post-mortem” on my lack of parenting skills
and how I was deathly afraid to hold my oldest daughter when she was born.
Of course I was defensive about this as I love my daughter, but they
weren’t totally wrong and I also suffer from some pretty heavy anxiety.
To be fair, she was born while I was making my first feature film, The
Truth. My stress level was through the roof. Not just about the film, but
also about being able to provide for my family and be present for my
daughter and my wife. It was a challenging time to say the least.
After dinner, everyone crashed except me. I’m the guy who goes to sleep after
everyone else and wakes up before everyone else. I don’t sleep much. I
spent the first 10 years of my life in Zimbabwe. The bugs at night there
are so loud you can barely hear yourself think. It was creepy and scary as
a kid. To get my mind off my imaginary impending doom, I’d distract
myself, coming up with scenarios and acting them out with imaginary
friends until I fell asleep. I’d often do the same thing if I woke up
too early as well. On this particular night, satiated with spicy food and
tequila, still ruminating on the public shaming I had just received for
worrying about dropping my child a bit too much… I lay awake in this
quiet beach town, waves crashing in the distance, the odd fog horn,
thinking… Why had I felt such extreme anxiety around being a new parent?
Why had it bothered me so much? Why does it does it continue to bother me?
I fell asleep and quickly dropped into the nightmare that became Listen
Carefully. All my anxiety about connecting with my first daughter,
providing financially for my family, about the relationship with my wife
and how the birth changed that, dredging that all back up years later…
It unravelled in my subconscious, reflecting back through a neo-noir
psychological horror lens that kept repeating, over and over again. My
heart raced, I woke up multiple times, only to go right back to sleep,
right back to the terror. It was so intense. I grabbed a notebook,
resolving to write down everything, all the painful nightmarish stuff,
every bit of it. Finally, the anxiety subsided and my notebook was full. I
went back to sleep. A few weeks later, a screenplay emerged that would
become my most challenging film project to date, Listen
Carefully. In retrospect, I think I had a major anxiety attack.
Tequila and spicy food probably didn’t help. I deal with my anxiety now.
It’s always a struggle, but making this film helped me process it and
connect me to others who suffer as well. Turns out, we are not alone. And
for the record… I am able to hug both of my daughters now.
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What can you tell us about Listen
Carefully's approach to the thriller genre?
I have joked that Listen
Carefully is kind of like the Liam Neeson action
flick Taken, but if it was co-directed by David Lynch and David
Fincher on LSD. And when they realized what a mess they’d
made, they handed it over to Nicholas Winding Refn to fix the cut, do the
score and run it through his neo-noir lens. But seriously, from the
script, to the initial shoot, multiple rounds of pickup shoots, all the
way through the edit, test-screenings and the final edit… I always
wanted Listen
Carefully to have a tight dramatic thriller structure, but
not just plot-based, also psychological and experiential, so the audience
could really step into Andy’s nightmare, feel his anxiety and fears, and unravel as he does… like some
kind of horrific onion that just keeps un-peeling… forever.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I've found some dark irony in Listen
Carefully - so would you at all agree to that, and if so, care to
elaborate? I would be hard pressed to point to any part of Listen
Carefully that isn’t darkly ironic. Andy is so corrupt
and it just bites him in the ass, over and over again. I personally feel
the film is laugh-out-loud funny in so many places. I’ve had the
privilege of watching the film in huge theaters with a Brazilian audience
at Fantaspoa, a Mexico City audience at Macabro and an LA
audience at Dances With Films, and they all chuckled really hard in
very different places. Interestingly, our Q&A’s after the screenings
all touched on the same themes though. Themes of anxiety, societal
pressure, patriarchal rage, failing upwards… They’ve been very lively.
Our incredible trailer editor from Sweden said he laughed so hard in some
places he felt really guilty about it because he was laughing at another
person’s pain. It’s gonna sound weird, but hearing that feedback
really made me happy! And once the twists start turning in the film (no
spoilers) it just gets worse, intentionally. I have a comedic background,
and comedy that is pitch black is my favorite. I personally love the parts
of the film where Andy squirms under the pressure of his own guilt,
expectations and stupidity. I think he deserves it and the audience wants
to see him get served. A few words about your overall directorial approach to
your story at hand?
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I approached directing Listen
Carefully the same way I approach all my
films. I have a degree in Art History, so I like to be purposeful in the
prep and execution of each film, almost like it’s
a living artwork or painting. I have been quite influenced by all the
great Korean directors of the last 30 years. I remember watching a behind-the-scenes of Oldboy and realizing that all the patterns in the film
mimicked a spider web… Perfectly accentuating the theme of the story…
visually… It blew my mind and inspired me to really work on my
specificity. On that note, I write and rewrite the script until nothing
offends me, sometimes even on the day, so everything is maximized to the
resources available. It’s like music. Even if it’s slightly off… it’s off. So I keep going until it all sounds right. I then storyboard
every shot using a previz program, not necessarily to be rigid, but so
there is a thought out cohesive look and plan before we step on set. I
make creative rules for each project. In this case, I chose to shoot
handheld with as little movement as possible. I wanted the camera to feel
like it was static on a tripod, but with just a slight bit of organic
shake, to give it a voyeuristic creepy feel. I chose to focus on single camera for simplicity and tension. I
wanted a dark, nightmarish and modern look that felt like Los Angeles
(where I live and we shot) but as if it was infected with a
disease, so my DP Sean Ayers and I chose to add subtle green light in the
background of all the scenes. I chose to use one flawed, old Russian film
lens with a wide anamorphic adapter to get a more surreal lonely feeling,
rather than switching between different lenses for coverage. My amazing
production designer Audrey Haworth and I then chose all the wardrobe, set
dressing and design to be slightly boring and vanilla… Reflecting the
main character Andy’s psychological state and personality. And finally I
chose actors who really committed and look like real people so the
audience is able to suspend their disbelief a bit more than usual. I
additionally directed all the acting work, including my own, to be
slightly dead-pan and stylized with the goal of achieving a neo-noir feel
that is slightly off. Lastly… all of this was heightened in the edit
using every trick in the book. I would say it is my most comprehensive and
specific directorial effort so far.
You also play the lead in Listen
Carefully - so what can you tell us about your character, what did
you draw upon to life, and did you write Andy with yourself in mind from
the get-go?
with Simone Barton-Grimley |
When I wrote the script, I wrote it with myself in mind. I am Andy. I’m a
dad, I have daughters, I suffer from anxiety, I feel the pressure to
provide and I feel the alienation of not being able to connect to kids and
family. In a sense… all of us are Andy. I also had the initial nightmare
that led to the story, the script and finally the film. I couldn’t see
it any other way. I’d always wanted to play a spineless, anxious, middle
management white guy who seemed normal, but could also be killer. Not
because he’s scary, but because he is corrupt and covering his ass. Andy
is just smart enough to get in trouble, but not smart enough to stay out
of it. We all know people who are not quite this bad, but they’re in the
neighborhood. New parents are all stressed out and stress can bring out
the worst in people. The overwhelming pressure on men in our society to
provide and just “suck-it-up” is alive an well in Andy. He is so
repressed… but it’s a survival mechanism. I’ve been there and I can
relate. I really wanted to capture this. Do talk about the rest of Listen
Carefully's cast, and why exactly these people? I
chose the actors in Listen
Carefully because they are my favorite actors
and I’d worked with them in previous projects. I admire their work, I
trust their instincts and I like their look. Ari Schneider [Ari
Schneider interview - click here] who plays the
voice and the cop has been in all my films and has collaborated previously
on scripts and scores. He is hilarious and I knew he could nail the feel I
wanted for the voice… like a twitch streamer who does crime on the side,
so the whole time he could be distracted playing video games, but also
order you to your death or make fun of you for being a pathetic parent.
Simone Barton-Grimley, who plays Allie, Andy’s wife, is my wife in real
life. She is an incredible performer and always brings an emotional
authenticity to her work that is effortless and complex. I was lucky she
agreed to play this role and help me produce. Richard Gayler who plays the
janitor at Andy’s office is the most talented actor I’ve ever worked
with. His ability to really listen makes his work so clear and natural,
but his intensity gives off an ominous feeling that is very scary without
much effort. Lastly, Patrick Pankhurst who plays Andy’s boss is an
incredible acting teacher who just really nails the “old privileged
white guy” character every time. He knows those guys in an out. All
these actors are so talented and always so prepared. It was such a joy to
play with them on set.
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A few words about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere? As
I alluded to above, I’m pretty extreme in my prep, so we can really let
go and have fun on set. We did an initial shoot of just twelve days right
before Covid and then three rounds of pickup shoots during Covid for a
total of eighteen days. I love working with a small, nimble crew and we
never went over 8 1/2 hours in the day. So we have these insane bursts of
productivity and then we go home. It was exhausting to be director and
lead actor in almost every shot, but I would not have it any other way. We
shot at our own house and all around our neighborhood, so it was all
encompassing for our whole family, since mom and dad were making a movie
and being in it. My daughters were finally old enough to come on set and
see how the sausage is made which was enlightening for them and exciting.
One really weird thing that happened the day before we started shooting
which really changed how Simone played Allie and how I played Andy was us
having to put down our favorite cat Ellie. We’d had her since before we
became parents and she had cancer. It was like losing our first child. We
dedicated the shoot to her. And I think it really colored our performances
for the best. The $64-question of course, where can Listen
Carefully be seen? Listen
Carefully is available to pre-order on Apple TV now and streams worldwide
on Amazon Prime, Tubi, Roku and many other places starting on December
16th, 2024. Anything you can tell us
about audience and critical reception of Listen
Carefully? Listen
Carefully had its “world premiere” at Fantaspoa in Brazil, its “North American
premiere” at Macabro in Mexico City at the Mexico National
Theater, and its “United States premiere” at Dances with Films at the Mann Chinese
Theater where Star Wars also had its premiere. It’s has been had an
amazing reception for a small challenging film made for $50,000. Our
audiences have ranged from hardcore horror fans, to couples on date night,
all the way to national film critics. Our Q&A's have been deep and
enlightening and our reviews reflect a similar tone. I have had amazing
conversations with audience members after all the screenings about how
they relate to Andy and his anxiety. It’s been really touching. Any future projects you'd like to share?
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I am working on multiple projects in the horror and sci-fi genres at diverse
budget levels. Everything from a huge teen zombie flick to a family
friendly ghost film I hope to shoot next year with Simone and my
daughters. Nothing has been announced just yet, but look out for something
later this spring. Your/your movie's website, social media, whatever else?
Website: ttps://listencarefullyfilm.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/listencarefullymovie/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/listencarefullyfilm
Twitter: https://twtter.com/listencaremovie
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7365436/
Thanks for the interview!
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