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| Victoria Film Festival 2006 – A Talk with “Overlookers” director Christopher Warre Smets |
The Overlookers -- Playing at the Victoria Film Festival |
by Jason Whyte
“The Overlookers” is a film that I first heard about by thumbing through my program booklet at this year’s Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival. I thought the synopsis was somewhat interesting (I’m always one for a multiple character study) and made a typical note to check it out during the festival. Things changed when I received an email by my friend Gavin Heffernan (who directed the great “Expiration” which played VIFVF in 2004 and is about now to direct his first American feature “Santa Croce”) a few weeks ago telling me about the film. “Something tells me that you're really, really going like the film...it’s one of those low budget features that the world has trouble knowing about.”
And when Gavin speaks, you listen. Gavin Heffernan made the best film I saw at the 2004 Victoria Film Festival, and here director Christopher Warre Smets has made one of the best films I have seen at the 2006 Victoria Film Festival. A coincidence, perhaps? Maybe, but in my lifelong quest to support the best of indie cinema these two films signal a new breaking ground of low-budget cinema that more people should be seeing instead of supporting the $28 million dollar opening weekend of Big Momma’s House 2.
And in the case of “The Overlookers”, it is a film with a strong passion to tell an interesting story with good characters, all revolving around the quest for love and the lengths that these people will go to make connections happen. The film is a true, bonafide indie film, and is something I would easily spend $10 to see rather than Martin Lawrence in drag. It is brought to the screen by 33 year old Toronto-native Smets, his directorial debut.
I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Smets prior to a screening of the film at the Victoria Film Festival.
Jason Whyte: Would you be able to give me a little look into your background? You have worked in many fields in both New York and Toronto. I’d like to know a little bit about your history and how it led to your first feature film, “The Overlookers”.
Christopher Warre Smets: I started making movies when I was a kid. I wrote my first full-length script when I was twelve and then shot the movie the next summer with a bunch of my friends from school. I had only two days to shoot, and I shot it at my grandparents’ house in the country. I tried to get five days, but my grandmother haggled me down to two. It was like working for Roger Corman. I wrote scripts all through high school and made little short films with my friends, but then I couldn’t get into film school. Ryerson rejected me. I did a year at York in Fine Arts studies, tried to transfer to their film program, and got turned down again. I lucked into working that summer called Ordinary Magic, which starred a very young Ryan Reynolds. It was my first time on a real film set. I worked as a trainee grip for five weeks for free, and at the end of the summer, they actually paid me. I quit school and worked as a grip in Toronto for two or three years, still writing the entire time. Eventually, I went down to New York for a while. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that I would make a better writer than a director, so I really pursued that. I got a New York agent, and then a script that I co-wrote was optioned by a producer out in L.A. Another script got some development funding from Harold Greenberg. I got to work with producer Barry Mendel for a year, rewriting a spec script I’d written. Barry produced Rushmore, one of my favourite movies, so that was very cool. But none of the films I had written were getting made, and I was getting frustrated, because your agent can only do so much for you, and she and I eventually parted ways. I admit I wasn’t as proactive as I could have been during those years, but once I got the idea to shoot my first feature using digital video, things started to fall into place, and I wrote The Overlookers with a real sense of purpose. It took me about six months to write, and I wrote it for actors and locations I knew I could get.
Explain the process in how The Overlookers came about from script to screen. Since you also wrote the film, how difficult was it for you to get this project off the ground?
I had a really great network of people who were willing to jump in with me and make this movie happen. My producer Damon Middleton had been bugging me for years to write a project we could do together, because Damon works in commercials and music videos and wanted to branch out, so he had lots of connections to equipment and knew how to make sure the set ran as efficiently as possible. I sat down with him and Romano Orzari and basically pitched the idea that we could make this movie for the price of food, shooting handheld without any permits on borrowed equipment with a tiny crew. Then Jenna Ricker came on board as a producer as well – she’s a great organizer and motivator, and working on this project ultimately made her really hungry to learn more about the hands-on of filmmaking for herself. (I love Jenna -- she just wrote and directed her first indie feature last year.) And my great friend Stennar Strom originally came on for his marketing and advertising background, with the idea that he’d get us product placement in the film that would help us to defer costs, but he really took the bull by the horns and went way beyond the call of duty and continues to do so – he’s the reason we’ve been able to play so many festivals in the States, just because he’s such a master at charming people over the phone. He’s like Mr. Fix-It. He’s Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. So, yeah, everybody wanted to get involved and do their part – the biggest struggle was just finding the right window to actually begin shooting. That took almost a year, but once we set a date, things started to move. But even then, we never knew if we’d have enough money to finish it, the schedule was constantly shifting, we lost locations only to get them back again. People had to leave. New people came on board, like Matt Penn, who worked like crazy and wound up with a producing credit because he almost single-handedly took care of our entire post-production. Judy Calabrese got pregnant. Christina Ross had to have a really delicate operation on her back halfway through shooting and needed time to recover. There was always something, so it’s actually amazing that we were able to wrap up inside of a few months. We shot for about four weeks straight, starting in May of 2003, and then we did little pick-up days here and there before we wrapped principal that October. We ended up paying for a little more than the price of food, but still…it’s amazing we were able to do what we did with the resources that we had.
You made the film for a reported $10,000. Was this a difficult film to get financed? How do you think you would have made the film any different with a larger budget?
The budget came in dribs and drabs at first, and for availability reasons, we really started shooting before we had everything in place, which I don’t recommend to anyone. It was a real gamble that just happened to work out. We were really fortunate to have the support of people who really believed in the script and in us, from family and friends who pitched in money, to all the people who gave us locations for free. Frank Toscano, an ex-cop friend of ours who acted in the film and ended up with a co-producer credit, went out of his way to pull favours and get us into locations – like this hospital we shot at in the Bronx – that really helped boost our overall production value. When we played at the Antelope Valley Film Festival, I had a young American director come up to me afterwards who loved the film, who couldn’t stop raving about it, until finally he said, “You know what’s great? Now you can take this movie to someone who has money and you can remake it!” I didn’t know what to say! The film was designed to be shot on a low budget. I got to use the actors I wanted, I got to use the music I wanted, and I got final cut. I guess with more money I would have really gone crazy with the sound design. I would have had better, more consistent lighting throughout. Little things like that bug me, but they’re also learning experiences. I’m sure there are things about The Evil Dead that bug Sam Raimi. Really, ultimately, I ended up with the movie I wanted to make, and I’m incredibly proud of it. I never went to film school, so I guess it’s my thesis film. It’s funny – at the same festival, I was telling that same story to a young German director who was there with his first feature, and when I finished he just shook his head and said, “Fucking Americans – they want to remake everything!”
The film revolves around a group of different yet deeply connected group of characters. Is this kind of storytelling the most exciting to you? Who would you say were your writing and filmmaking influences for telling the story in this fashion?
I do, I love these kinds of films, and I guess they’re pretty in vogue this year, with films like Crash and Syriana especially. I think it’s exciting to watch movies that make you work a little, that force you away from being a passive viewer, and I think a lot of other people are responding to that, too. I wrote a play called Tall Tales from the Little Black Book that played in New York City in 2001, and it consisted of four two character scenes that all interconnected and came full circle, and it was cool to stand in the back of the theatre every night and actually hear the audience whispering to each other as they figured out how everyone was related, and I started to think about how I could make that work on film. Truthfully, I was also thinking that an actor could come in and shoot for a few days and basically be done with their entire role, so it was a practical as well as an artistic choice. Quentin Tarantino is the obvious structural model, because his films taught me so much about how to tell a story in a satisfying, non-linear way that’s actually – and he readily admits this in interviews -- very influenced by literature. I also think his films are remarkably human, which is a quality that often gets missed in among all the pop culture references and violence and swearing. His immoral characters always have a way of finding their own morality, their own sense of honour, in a way that’s very moving to me, and I love finding moments like that. Kill Bill, by the time you get to the end of it, is actually a very touching love story. But someone else who taught me just as much is Atom Egoyan. His films, especially Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, are like these amazing puzzle movies. They’re like games of Solitaire where he’s constantly turning over one card after another in order to reveal the whole picture. It’s sad to say, but I think most of my fellow Canadian filmmakers really take him for granted, maybe because he’s so popular internationally, maybe because he never seems to have any problem getting Telefilm grants, who knows. His stuff can be chilly and austere, but like Tarantino’s films, incredibly emotionally satisfying as well. I’d be honoured to screen The Overlookers for either of them.
How much in the film is different than your original script? Is it drastic or pretty close to your original vision?
The film actually hews pretty closely to the original script. It’s shorter. The biggest changes were made to the first two stories – “Designs” and “Negatives.” Some of the scenes in “Designs” were cut before they were even shot. Two others we filmed but then removed pretty early on. The audience would have been getting restless. I found that even with early versions of that first story, you really wanted to cut to the chase and get on with things. It really ends up being a relief to remove stuff like that.
“Negatives” got a complete overhaul in the editing, just in terms of shuffling scenes around. I cut a whole sub-plot involving Zelda’s photo editor, and in doing so had to completely remove the performance of my friend Matt McIver, which killed me. His was the first scene I assembled and the first one to go. It took me months to work up the nerve to tell him. Thankfully, he’s the only actor who ended up on the cutting room floor – and even then, you can see part of Matt’s ear during Ophira Eisenberg’s roll-call credit at the end of the film, so it’s not like he never existed, although I guess that’s not much of a consolation to him. That story actually played much wackier and sillier on the page and I think became more interesting and enigmatic with some of the cuts we made. One thing I learned from reading the Michael Ondaatje/Walter Murch book The Conversations was that if you keep your actors in the same clothes, the audience just accepts it, and it becomes much easier to juggle the order of scenes later. Look at Coppola’s The Conversation; that movie was completely rewritten by Murch in the editing, and you’d never know it because Gene Hackman wears the same suit through the entire film. So Ophira wears the same clothes, and so do most of the other characters. Reading that book really helped inform a lot of the choices I made during pre-production and throughout filming.
I also revised a few scenes during shooting, but that was pretty rare, because I like to stick as closely to the script as possible. I guess I’ve read too many books by David Mamet. The rehearsal process was instrumental on this film – the actors had their scripts months before we actually shot, and we used the time to get them familiar with their characters and answer any questions they may have had. I’m always surprised that more directors don’t use rehearsals. It definitely helped us save time and money on this film, because it’s a micro-budget, dialogue-heavy picture and every line counts.
The acting in the film is a strong point, even somewhat surprisingly as we have never heard of many of the performers in the film. How did you arrive at getting such an eclectic cast into such a small film? Did you know everyone involved or were there extensive auditions?
First of all, thank you so much for saying that. I love my actors, and I was so fortunate to work with them. I actually knew most of them as friends first, so almost all the main roles in the film were written specifically for them in order to play to their strengths. Romano Orzari (Max) is one of my best friends. He’s from Montreal and speaks fluent French, but he’s lived in New York City for years, so he has this great tough guy quality that’s perfect for a private detective. He starred on this huge show in Quebec, this French-language mob show called Omerta, and while not a lot of people know him in the rest of Canada, in Quebec, he’s George Clooney. No joke – we were standing outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles a few years ago and I stood and watched as he got mobbed by a crowd of Quebecois tourists. He’s been chased down New York streets by French-Canadian schoolgirls. It’s insane. He actually just finished shooting another TV series there, and people are going crazy already.
Ptolemy Slocum (Cameron) and Christina Ross (Kate) both acted in my play Tall Tales. This was Ptolemy’s first feature, and he went right from this and into Hitch with Will Smith. Ophira Eisenberg (Zelda) is a stand-up comedian from Calgary who I met in New York, and this was an opportunity for her to show a more dramatic side. Arlen Dean Snyder (Mr. Goldman) is that character actor you’ve seen in a million TV shows and movies. He’s been in two Clint Eastwood films, and he’s constantly playing crusty sheriffs and grizzled police chiefs – I think he’s as good an actor as Jason Robards or Philip Baker Hall. Arlen was my upstairs neighbour in New York. Frank Toscano (Mr. Taylor) is, like I said, an ex-cop, but he’s also a writer himself, and he’s brilliant at making dialogue his own. Hannah Dalton (Natasha) has done lots of indie films and commercials where she just gets to be pretty, and here she basically gets to be Bacall to Romano’s Bogart. I was so proud when she won the Best Supporting Actress award at SMMASH Fest in Minneapolis – I think she’s really talented. I just wish she had more scenes! At festivals, everyone’s favourite seems to be Eugene “Machine” Allen, who plays Louis the barfly. Here’s a guy who comes from an acting family – his aunt is Nancy Allen, which basically means that Brian De Palma used to be his uncle, and his cousin is Jim Breuer from SNL – and he makes his living doing extra work and dinner theatre, so he’s a working actor. I wrote the part for him. Eugene came in, worked his ass off on his two scenes, learned every line verbatim, made it sound natural as hell, and basically knocked it out of the park. He’s the humblest guy you can imagine, and he couldn’t believe it when I told him the reaction he was getting during early screenings. I could really go on and on about Joseph Brooke, Judy Calabrese, Frank Bianco, Vincent D’Arbouze…and they all worked for free! I was just so incredibly lucky.
What did you shoot this film in (negative format) and what were your reasons for filming The Overlookers in this way?
We shot the film with what at that time was the brand new Panasonic 24p MiniDV camera, the DVX-100. Months before we went into production, my producer Damon borrowed one from the production company he works for, and he and I took it out and shot the locations we wanted to use, side by side with just a regular MiniDV camera. There was no comparison. A regular MiniDV, shooting at 30 frames a second, would have given us a grainy, Dogme 95 quality. The DVX gave our movie weight and made it look like film. Some people have even asked us if we shot on 35mm. Again, we just got really lucky – the emerging technology gave us exactly the look we needed for the budget we had, which obviously wasn’t much. Now everybody uses it. It’s phenomenal.
Did you run into any creative or financial roadblocks while “Overlookers” was in production?
Starting to shoot before we had our budget in place was a pretty big roadblock! We only had a certain window with Tom Khan, our director of photography, so we had no choice but to plunge in and hit the ground running. I mean, thank God that Stennar came through that first day with boxes of product placement crackers and chips that could double as our craft service, but I still ended up paying for most of that first week and a half of shooting myself. And then, just when it looked like I was going to run out of cash, in stepped our executive producer, Jimmy Lategano, and basically saved our lives and the film. Jimmy was a real angel to us on this project, but as far as how he gave us the money…that’s a much longer, much funnier story that I can’t tell here. I’ve told it at festivals and screenings, and it always brings the house down. Maybe I’ll save it for the DVD.
The film would make a good special edition DVD where we could get some background information on the story and how the film was made. Should the film make its way to DVD, what special bonus material would you be interested in providing (commentary, audition footage, deleted scenes, etc)?
Our producer Matt Penn shot tons of behind-the-scenes stuff that he swears he’ll cut together into a documentary one day. I have Joseph Brooke’s audition footage and tons of rehearsals on tape. We have a blooper reel that we showed at the cast and crew screening that’s pretty hilarious – you’ll get to see the beautiful and demure Hannah Dalton swear like the sailor she is. I don’t know if you’re going to see any deleted scenes, because I kind of feel the way David Cronenberg does – that those scenes were cut for a good reason. On the other hand, I’m a commentary track whore. I own tons of Criterion laserdiscs that I’ve bought on eBay just for the out-of-print commentary tracks – movies like Taxi Driver and The Fisher King – and I think they’re incredibly fun and educational. Ideally, I’d love to do one track with as many of the actors as possible, one with Stennar and all the producers, one with the technical crew, maybe one with me and Romano just drinking beer and joking around like John Carpenter and Kurt Russell do on theirs. I’ve also talked to my friend Paul Tatara, who’s a great screenwriter and a former CNN film critic, about doing a track with me that’s just about the writing process, because he can talk movies like nobody’s business. The danger is that you can get really self-indulgent. Ultimately, if there’s a commentary track that makes people laugh and another one that’s actually helpful and inspiring to other first-time filmmakers, then that’s enough for me.
Besides the awards the film has won at various festival screenings (such as winning the Best Feature at the 2005 Canadian Filmmaker’s Festival), how has the audience reaction at festival screenings helped shape the film? Have you had any interesting reactions at Q&A’s or after the screenings?
I did go back and reshoot a couple of insert shots of Romano after our very first screening, just because they were kind of dark and some people told me that it was hard to tell it was him. But other than that, the film has done really well with audiences. It’s amazing how many laughs it gets – if you watch it at home by yourself, I think it plays like a drama, but with a crowd, it’s definitely a comedy. Audiences are incredibly smart. They really pick up on all the awkward, uncomfortable moments right away. And the Q&As have been amazing. People have had lots of great questions, really insightful questions, and it is fun when other members of the cast and crew are there with me to help answer them. You kind of forget that once you make your film, all kinds of strangers will be seeing it and drawing their own conclusions about it, but that’s been the most exciting part for me, just learning things about my own movie. It’s also gratifying when other creative people who you really respect see your film. Sarah Polley saw the movie and spent ten minutes asking me questions about it and telling me what her favourite scenes and performances were. I called all my actors the next day and told them. That was a greater gift to me than any award I could have won. That’s when you really feel like it was all worth it.
This is a film made through the independent scene rather than having studio financing. What are the biggest challenges you have had on the making and releasing of this movie? If you are having problems securing a distributor, do you think the problem lies in the studio's ignorance that people may not want to see this movie?
Well, first of all, just getting people to see the film is a challenge in and of itself. Whether it’s getting them out to screenings or sending them DVDs, people in this industry are so busy, it’s hard to get them to pay attention. We’ve been turned down by a couple of bigger indie distributors who really liked the movie, but felt it was just too small for them. And I totally understand. I don’t blame them. They’ve got a business to run, and it’s hard to put money behind a low-budget movie with a bunch of unknown actors unless it falls in the horror or the action genres, or if it comes with the benefit of a Grand Jury Prize from Sundance, like Primer did. But on the other hand, they haven’t seen this film with an audience. They’ve seen it on DVD as a screener, and I think The Overlookers in a sold-out movie theatre and The Overlookers at home on a TV are two different movies. It’s frustrating. But we’ll see. We’re still out there pushing it.
Do you have a next film or a future project lined up?
Stennar and I are working on the next film as we speak. It’s called Sentimental Fools, and it’s a comedy-drama about modern relationships. It’s a bit like a ‘30s screwball comedy, but with the feel of a more melancholy movie like The Apartment or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s also different from The Overlookers in that we follow one character throughout, a really strong female lead. We’re working together with a great young producer named Naomi Zener. Our executive producer is Martin Katz, who also did Spider and Hotel Rwanda, and he came on board because Naomi gave him The Overlookers and he loved it. We’re putting things in place now and we’re hoping to get rolling by later this year. And I’m also writing something for Romano that will show off his lovable goofball side, which he’s never shown onscreen before.
What is your favourite film of all time?
Can I do a Top Five? Broadcast News. Rushmore. The Untitled cut of Almost Famous. Raiders of the Lost Ark. And the non-Special Edition version of The Empire Strikes Back, [which] is a perfect movie. It has action, romance, comedy, philosophy, and a downer ending. I love Han Solo’s line to Princess Leia after he’s been tortured by the Empire. She holds him and he tells her, “They didn’t even ask me any questions.” Breaks my heart every time.
Very special thanks to Christopher Warre Smets for a great interview.
For more information on the film including photos, clips and press material, point your browser to the film’s official website HERE.
“The Overlookers” screens at 9:30pm on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at the Victoria Independent Film Festival. For more information about the last few days of the festival, feel free to check out the site HERE.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1705
originally posted: 02/04/06 12:54:37
last updated: 02/17/06 02:34:06
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