Pat Tremblay – Hellacious Acres interview

Yesterday I reviewed Hellacious Acres: The Case of John Glass for all my independent-minded SF cohorts here at Boomtron.  Today I am thrilled to bring you an exclusive and extensive interview with the film’s director, Pat Tremblay. 

Before we jump into the Q&A, I invite you to check out the official movie trailer, which gives a great tease for the delights and horrors that await you on those hellacious acres of post-apocalyptic ground….

Elena Nola:  What’s your background with science fiction in general and SF movies in particular?  For ex., did you grow up watching b-side campy stuff with your parents, or was it a genre you came to in adulthood?

Pat Tremblay:  Well, I remember clearly at 7 years old going to my school on a couple of Sundays in what seemed to be a heavy winter, just to go see films they were playing in 16MM in the gymnasium. I saw Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla the first time, and another was Infra-Man. Needless to say, those childhood adventures of really wanting to do the movie-going-journey added to the imprinting of those films in my sub-conscious. Plus they ARE great, let’s not kid ourselves….

There’s no denying that Star Wars was big on me, too. As much as this series is classic drama set in a “far, far away galaxy”, the futuristic elements engulfed my curiosity for what life could look like “elsewhere”…

And further on, I went onto discovering movies like Planet of the Apes (when it played on TV), 12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliams rules, to say very little),  Contact (this movie is so brilliant, and really puts a finger on science vs religion and beyond–too many people to this day don’t get the ending; I didn’t get it on the first viewing, either.  Give it a second chance if you haven’t caught on). That led me to consume multiple times the Cosmos series by, I-wish-I-would-have-had-him-as-an-uncle, Carl Sagan. A.I. had one the best sci-fi third acts in a while, and the original Solaris had such a cosmic vibe to it, it was just WOWING. The remake was interesting, too. And in most recent years, Timecrimes by Nacho Vigalondo was a pure delight. All while 2019: After the Fall of New York (which I repeatedly watched with a French dubbing from a teen to a few years ago–I own 2 different VHS tapes of it, BTW ) was a big trip into the “dark aspects of post-apocalyptic mind settings”… (Hey, who didn’t notice that Children of Men (also great) was a rip-off of this Italian classic?!) And Douglas Adams…need I say more? (I’ll be honest, I’ve devoured every other version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy besides the actual books…. Eventually.) I could probably go on for a while..! Oh, and Altered States by Ken Russell, such a trippy chef d’oeuvre…

Thus all of those and more, probably, messing enough with my neurons to concoct what I’ve done with my current film. Although, I must say that my film is first and foremost a comedy with sci-fi elements.

Are there any old favorites or influences in terms of movies and directors in other genres?  What about current favorites/inspirations/influences?

As much as these previous sci-fi “namedrops” went to possess part of my psyche, my biggest thing as a youth was horror movies (which I still enjoy, don’t you worry)–directors such as Sam Raimi, George Romero, Lucio Fulci, Peter Jackson, and David Cronenberg who were not only providing the chills, but also bringing their own “clear unique filmic presentation style”, and by doing so, reinventing the genre. So that was really a school of filmmaking on its own, just watching their movies.

Tim Burton, Michel Gondry, Jodorowsky (damn, where to begin with him..!), Herzog, Russ Meyer, Todd Solondz, and Todd Haynes (Safe), among others, were all part of my cinematic education.

These days? I’m really much more stuck on dark humor than anything else. I’ve loved and adored the The League of Gentlemen British series and movie. Although I had been a fan of Monty Python for a long time, I think that was the show that brought me deep into tons of other British series… Chris Morris is an insane genius (I love all of his works, but JAM is probably the best for me, very close to Brasseye). If we blend back the sci-fi stuff with the UK influence, we get Red Dwarf, which was geeky and kooky, but ALWAYS played superbly with sci-fi and scientific concepts, unlike many other pretenders of the TV show kind… And in the last month, I’ve started watching an “old” show, made by the enthralling Julia Davis, called Nighty Nights. Funny as hell to say the least.

But I also greatly admire directors such as Bertrand Blier (Merci La Vie is the most hermetic surreal of the lot, but watch Buffet Froid or Tenue de Soirée first, if you’re curious). I discovered him by watching Mon Homme, which is a beautifully “perverse” entity.  I’m always hoping Harmony Korine will make more films, I think I’m one of the few who fully embraced Trash Humpers as a piece of fucking ART.  Plus, let’s never forget French comedy master, Pierre Richard…I think my film might owe more to him than any of the aforementioned…

This is a killer question for me, I feel like I’m missing other important ones….

It gives us a glimpse, at least. So what is your background as a filmmaker?

After what you probably call high school in the US (what we call secondary school here in Canada), I had to make a choice with what I wanted to do with my life by choosing a study program in CEGEP (the College equivalent?), and wound up finding that the only thing that made sense was to try out the cinema courses since films had made such an impact on me. I figured I would most likely enjoy learning about the whole process and making some stories myself.  Little did I know it would become an obsession…I was rejected later on in the cinema program at the university, but as you can see, that didn’t stop me from making films since then.

Tell me about how you came up with the concept for Hellacious Acres, and how you would describe the film.  (I would refer to John Glass as a post-apocalyptic hipster, which I hope does not offend you.  Because that’s really how I interpreted his “I’m so over this” attitude, which I found hilarious.)

Although I understand your view on seeing him as a hipster, I do actually believe he’s more a of “post-modern self-conscious complainer”. Well not that much actually, cause I realized at one point that I needed to downplay his cynicism and rewrote a bunch of lines just so he wouldn’t sound too much like an annoying asshole, you know, more “human” and common. I hope it feels more like that, cause this movie was not at all intended to be pretentious or an “in-on-the-joke” thang in any kind of way. Wink-winks are so unnecessary most of the time.

Was the re-writing while you were filming or after the fact?  Since John was behind a mask the entire movie, I am not sure it would be obvious if the dialogue changed.  Actually, to that point, was all the voice-over written in advance, or were some scenes filled in with words later?

Since the beginning, I had planned to do an eventual second vocal session, because I knew that some adjustments would probably have to be done. Since on a set, there are always moments where you see how the dialogue works, and sometimes other minor action changes are done along the way for practical reasons, and that can affect variations in the words and/or delivery.  So that sort of answers your other question, meaning that the dialog was all recorded before the shooting. As for the change in the character’s personality, there was not so much to alter, a few words and such. So it wasn’t too much of a complication.

Was there a conscious intent behind featuring a protagonist whose face the audience never sees?  Was it meant to be a distancing thing, or an engaging “this is every man” thing…or was it just an expedient way to solve a small casting/costuming budget?

Simply all of the above. The “practical” aspects of shooting in a totally masked condition could not be a cheap-out idea, so this intent of me wanting to have a cool suit-like costume in whatever movie I was going to make next dictated what kind of character I would/should write to justify such a conceptual choice. The restraining context had to be implicated in the storyline and vibe of the film. 

So how I did come up with it? I asked myself “What can I do to ‘transcend’ my ~being~ with no budget?” then filtered it through my top-level crazy-keeper strainer and just wrote the script with what remained.

Was the resulting mood of HA what you were hoping for, or did your vision change once you got into the process editing what you had filmed?

The second cut was the best version I think I could come up with (and still think it probably still is), cuz it winds up boring you, exasperating you, up to the point of you not caring for John anymore and you just want the movie to end, but you can’t really stop since you’ve invested an hour or so into it already. Just so you, as an audience member, start to really feel incredibly drained of interest or hope like the character, you know, the opposite of the passive “I-get-how-he-feels” apathetic brain-dead behavior most movies try to convey in such situations.

So if you were trying to make the film boring, can you tell me where the idea to do that came from?  I mean, who sits down and says “I want to make a movie that invests my audience in the situation by boring them”?  I will say, as a viewer it was effective–I really felt it when John just wants to give up in a way that I might not have without some of those long sequences of walking…and walking…and walking….

Boring is actually not really the good word I think, more like making (hopefully) the viewer really feel the “suffering” of such a quest. And, the walking is just one of the easier ideas, there are other long painful moments! Most being totally made for laughs.

Is there a particular scene you’ve found watching it with others, where everyone seems to suddenly get invested in the film?  I know for me, the first 45 or so minutes were me thinking “WTF is this and where is it going and do I care?” but then there was a moment where suddenly it was hilarious. So I’m curious if everyone who watches it seems to have that tipping point where they figure out what it’s trying to be and get into it, and if so if people seem to have the same point(s)?

Actually people are surprised at first, but all start to laugh when John needs to play with his pad earlier in the movie. And then, they’re all in on the fun level of this bizarre adventure, but by the end of the first hour, (some) people are really hoping for something more, and that’s when I start having fun with the concept and its inherit need to switch into some more serious, yet “crazier” territories. All while being extremely similar to the earlier walking treks, since after all, there are also more of those….

This being said, after gestating comments from a first screening with filmmaking buddies of mine, I did realize (three months later), that if I didn’t want to completely alienate potential fans, I could go easier on the pain meter… So I decided not to recut the movie into a different thing, but just remove about 11 minutes that weren’t too crucial to the painfully-intended pace. I think it was for the “current” best.

If you want to know on a technical level, well, this will sound cocky (since the movie also doesn’t look like any sort of invasion epic of the recent years, e.g., a full blown spfx fest), but from the page to the screen, along with my shot list, I literally got 95% of all I wanted the film to be. I’m very, very happy with it.

Wow!  That’s an impressive achievement.  Most of the other directors I’ve talked to don’t make that claim.  So, speaking of you not creating a special effects wank fest…how much was the movie’s story shaped by the fact that you were making a movie on a very small budget?

ALL OF IT.

Do you think it forced you to be more creative (in a positive way) or was it an oppressive constraint?

More creative? I don’t know…. The more you give me money, the more I’m going to juice every penny out if it. And that is to make things much, much crazier. And everyone knows in the business, that with any kind of budget, it eventually becomes a burden of not having enough. Small or big, it’s ultimately all proportional.

Given the choice:  CG or old-school model effects (as filmmaker and as movie-watcher, especially if it’s different answers!)

I’m a pro-technology dude. I will embrace anything that makes a concept being concretized in an easier fashion, like a scene of fx that doesn’t involve having tons of people on your shoulders waiting for the magic moment, like you get on a set. But if it looks awkward/unreal on the screen, it’s simply got to be dealt with via an alternative. Model, live or prosthetic effects, will most often look more real. So if it makes more sense in order to make something pass better, let’s go for the logical option, you know what I mean?

As a viewer, and having a “trained “eye for those things, I often see through the CGI, but if there were no other ways, and its aim was to convey or show an idea that would have simply been impossible otherwise, I often pardon it. I mean let’s be honest, Harryhausen’s creatures were really cool, but they didn’t look perfectly realistic. People’s nostalgia or a child’s POV clouds the cheesiness of old techniques. I’m telling you, this generation of youngsters will say the same with whatever method will take over in the future…they will miss their good ol’ CGIs… I could be wrong, though!

But if we speak of how I dealt with the creatures in my film, well, I tried to bring my vision with my self-taught skills in After Effects, since I couldn’t afford anything else. Yet I nonetheless blended my result with actual shots of organic “elements”. Can you guess?! So in the end, I just did what I could while being honest to the vibe of the movie’s look and budget. I’m sure high grade CGI would have damaged the film, and given the opportunity, I would have passed on them if it had looked too slick. Honestly.

Can we talk about the arm thing?  Because one of the images I just can’t shake from this movie is John walking around talking to an arm.  Where did that vision come from?

It’s all about “succumbing” to insanity. The stuff that can happen in those situations.

What has been the response so far to screenings?  Have you gotten a distribution?  Anywhere it can be seen in the next few months?

The two festivals I could personally attend were at the Fantasia International Film festival a few weeks ago (Australia is far, and plane tickets there cost a lot!), and I was very surprised that everybody laughed at the right moments, and even in a stronger way than I anticipated. Plus the press (Dread Central, Le Monde, Gloaming magazine, The Gazette, 24 Images and Voir.ca) has been talking about the film positively. The film got bought during the festival by Bloody Disgusting Selects, which is so rewarding, not only given that they totally understood what the film was about, but because BD is THE major genre website. So be on the lookout for a limited theatrical release in the USA/Canada, and the eventual DVD and VOD options.

Elsewhere-wise, I wish I was at liberty to tell you about it all, but since 3 out of 5 festivals that invited the film haven’t announced their lineup yet, I can only say now that it will play at the Oldenberg Film Festival in Germany (Sept 14-18), which will mark its European premiere. I thank the crew there for having invited me to present the film!

Here are the screening details (more info at www.filmfest-oldenburg.de):
Sep 15, 2011, 8.00 p.m. (20:00), venue: Cine k
Sep 16, 2011, 0.15 a.m. (00:15), venue: Cine k

Then it will go to Sitges 2011 (Oct 6-16), which is a huge, huge honor to have been selected by the biggest fantastique cinema festival. Really, truly happy with that! I’ll also be there to present it. And while I cannot say which the other three fests are yet, I will say that I’m very, very grateful to have my film play at those… Let’s just say that international shores (for two of them) are on the list, and it’s exciting!

Pat, thanks so much for taking the time to answer all my questions!  Best of luck with the film!

*          *          *         

If you want to know more about Hellacious Acres: The Case of John Glass you can visit the film’s official website at http://www.hellaciousacres.com/ or visit the film on Facebook.