Gary Irwin: Director
Interview: Gary Irwin [Part 2]
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
"Of Darkness" marched across the festival circuit in 2007, winning him notoriety as a name to watch in genre circles. Interestingly, he has not made a pander-to-the-masses movie.
Irwin's film is a challenging example of less-is-more, with a very inviting wrapper. The attraction, the invitation, is a cast of likeable kid actors.
Where a poor cast or a director awkward with young talent would have tilted "Of Darkness" into the abyss, Irwin manages a perfect balance.
Cinescare concludes this months DISCOVERIES interview with Irwin, talking in-front-of-the-lens hurdles and social commentary in the making of "Of Darkness."
Cinescare: How does one cast an all-kids indie horror film?
Gary Irwin: That was a huge concern of ours, going into this. We had [casting agents] Kathy Wickline and Ann-Marie Gillette, and they just put the word out on the street. We saw all different kinds of kids. The kids came in and we'd see somebody we liked -- they'd have the right look -- and we'd put them aside.
With the callbacks, we'd have kids come in and improvise with other kids, interact with everybody. I like to do a lot of improvising in prep, just to see who can connect the dots from point-A to point-B. It was important for me to see if, at this young age, we bring a bunch of kids in and we see somebody we like and they have a little bit of acting ability - can that be sculpted into something?
Right away we could see if a kid was great. He's already making fun of that other kid, he's already giving this kid a hard time. We started seeing kids, like the kid who plays Mac -- Brandon Boyes -- or we saw Adam Montgomery, or when we saw Dallas [Scott] or Dominic [Fera] ... those kids kind of elevated out of the masses.
Cinescare: These are really talented young people. In particular, Dominic Fera, who plays Wallander, and Adam Montgomery, and Dallas Scott. They really stand out as focused. They convey an understanding of what they're doing - whether it's something as simple as teasing each other across the table, or that final shot of Dallas in the window mouthing a word. It's really effective. Because you pulled it off, because you managed to find child actors -- who I take it probably volunteered or worked for meals and ice cream -- they elevate "Of Darkness" from just a genre short to something else. Something really remarkable. It's an ensemble cast of kids in a low budget indie short. If you flub it with kids, the audience would be even less forgiving than if you flub it with adults.
Gary Irwin: There's a lot of great film jokes. Everybody's like, "Don't work with kids and animals."
There was actually a point in the script where we had a dog in it. What were we getting in ourselves into?
We knew that going in. A lot of it did rest on these kids' shoulders. I think they stepped it up. We were so happy with that. I was thrilled with the performances they gave. I wanted people to say, "That was a good movie," and that was all.
I think that was really something I set as a goal for myself. I wanted to people to see this movie. I'd love it if people actually did get scared, and I'd love it if people saw this as a movie with actors in it. Not as a movie with kid actors in it.
I look back now. I see little moments here and there where I think, "That could have been a little better." Everybody does that. Overall, I was super-super happy with their performances.
Cinescare: It works with the kids, but it also occurs to me the story could have been transposed to teenagers, or college-age kids, without a whole lot of transformation of the storyline. It was a very conscious decision to make this a story about young, young people. Why?
Gary Irwin: I grew up with films like "The Goonies" and "Monster Squad." I remember when I was younger, having adventures, and your imagination takes over. There's something about that innocent imagination I really wanted to put on screen. I think Matt felt the same when he was writing it. He wrote a nugget of that story when he was younger. You have these great tales, imagining these things, trying to scare your friends. That innocence is something we really wanted to tap into, but turn it on its ear a little bit.
You think of films like "Monster Squad," or "Silver Bullet," "The Goonies," or even "The Lost Boys," and some of the younger kids seem like they're untouchable. So that was something we wanted to try to play with - the audience's expectations of what to think when seeing a movie like this. These are kids that are telling scary stories. They're going to be fine, though. Nobody's expecting to have anything happen to them. That was something we were very interested in: innocence lost.
Cinescare: That's really the thing that is effective about the end of the film. The final shot of Dallas in the window. It brings you to a place where all bets are off. These little guys just lost. That's it. They're done. It is a kind of supernatural Columbine, the end of this film. It doesn't need to go anywhere after the shot of the young guy in the window. But it does. It brings us through the aftermath, and then it brings us to the kicker-scene in the schoolroom.
Gary Irwin: Right. Where he brings it in. Right.
Cinescare: The stuff that the kids have taken in - the influence of the evil upon them - it's something they bring to their peers, they bring to a public space, a space where other peoples' kids are at risk.
Gary Irwin: We didn't enter into this film thinking this was a metaphor for the Columbine shootings, or anything like that. The idea of these kids being left alone and having an older brother say, "He'll take care of himself," that was definitely a conscious decision.
It's a horror movie. I don't want to say that it's this big social commentary, but there was an element of that. The mother is never around. These kids are basically left to fend for themselves, so they're going to get into trouble. There are going to be consequences for that.
Cinescare: Where does "Of Darkness" go from here?
Gary Irwin: I'll say this without giving away too much, we are right now developing whether or not the story can be expanded. A lot of conversation have been about other ways we could tell this kind of story, with the same essence, but taking on a bigger scale.
Cinescare: Does this mean you have somebody at a studio you're working with at this point, or does it mean you're working on spec?
Gary Irwin: This is something we're developing ourselves, at this point. We're crossing our fingers. It's something that's been kicking around for a while. At one point we laid it to bed. We were like, can we tell this story again?
I've actually been thinking about. How can we take this story out of the house and into another environment and still have the essence of what we like about the short film? What I like about the short film is that it was a simple storyline but it was effective and it has the potential to keep people on edge.
That's the kind of story I want to tell. I want to tell, like you were talking about, campfire stories and those kinds of things. I didn't want to do a gore-fest film. I wanted to do a film I would be scared watching. If I'm going to do it on a bigger scale, I don't want to lose that.
Cinescare: I think a lot of reasons "Of Darkness" works so well is that it is so conservative, in a visual sense and so expansive in a thematic sense. There are very little if any computer graphics in the film.
Gary Irwin: There's none.
Cinescare: There is very little, if any, gore. Which, I know in the somewhat schizophrenic world of genre -- which we probably share a mutual love for -- is often barometer by which we measure the impact of a film. The real battleships -- the everlasting films -- that you can think of people watching in 50 years are films like "The Exorcist," "Rosemary's Baby ..."
Gary Irwin: "Halloween."
Cinescare: These are not films that throw a lot up on the screen, of anything. They're often films about people talking in rooms, when it comes down to it. The use of light, and sound, and great performances with a good script, and vision, bring us to a place where we fill in with a lot of our own fear.
Gary Irwin: Our imaginations are our own worst nightmare. People lose sight of that. If writers and filmmakes can tap into that, like some of these successful film have done, people will connect the dots. People will look into the dark spot in their room and be a little freaked out by it. The light will go out in the basement and they'll think there's something down there. There's nothing down there. Your mind plays tricks on you, and your mind is your own worst enemy.
We tried to use that to our advantage. Some of the greatest genre films, that I've responded to, do that so well. I would throw into the ring "The Shining," and I would throw into the ring the first Alien film.
They were simple storylines that were well executed. They used the viewers' imagination against them. It's good to have goals because those guys set the bar pretty high with those films.
Cinescare: In great scary stories there is the phenomenon of economy of scare. A few masterful scary moments become iconic within the text of that particular story. In "Of Darkness," there are at least two - and one of them I've mentioned already - that final scene of Jeff in the window. The other is the light bulb, when the character of Wallander is looking at it. There's the way that sequence is cut, and then there's the image of that blackness filling that light bulb. There's something primal about it.
Gary Irwin: I'm glad you've pointed out that moment. I would say that the light bulb is my favorite scene in the film. It was one of the more challenging things to pull off, from a technical side.
It's definitely the most important moment, from a storytelling point of view. That was the moment when we're showing the audience that this is something a little more supernatural than we might have let on. That was our point of not return, really, the light filling up with some kind of supernatural presence. We knew that was the moment we were going to begin the intense cat-and-mouse chase.
Cinescare: I take it you're still living in Pennsylvania.
Gary Irwin: I live in Philly.
Cinescare: You're shooting around Philadelphia?
Gary Irwin: We shot in Jersey. My fiancee's parents' house is in Cherry Hill, N.J. I grew up in South Jersey.
Cinescare: What's the impact of living and working in Philadelphia, as a filmmaker - looking for some notoriety, looking for some notice, looking for some support? Is it particularly challenging? Is it irrelevant in the age of the Internet? How does it impact you?
Gary Irwin: It's harder. I'm not going to lie and say that it's easy to make films here, but I will say that Philadelphia is becoming a bigger and bigger city every year. There are a lot of films made here.
People make films everywhere. For every story you hear about somebody being successful in New York, you hear a story about somebody being successful in Texas. Or somebody being successful in Oklahoma or Nebraska. You could be a really talented filmmaker and make a movie in New York and nobody sees it because you don't know how to get people to see it.
It is a little bit more difficult if you're in Philadelphia or Jersey, and not in New York or L.A. But I think the Internet has helped tremendously. The invention of MySpace helped every indie filmmaker market their film. That wasn't around three years ago. Just in the last couple of years, people can have this online presence and people from all over the world can discover your movie.
Obviously, it's great that there's genre festivals popping up all over the country, all over the world. The fact that we were able to play in Australia, and are trying to get play in Canada. We've sent stuff off to the Dead by Dawn Festival, which I think is in Scotland.
It might be more difficult to get the right people to see your film if you don't live in New York or L.A., but I think if you have perseverance and you are determined to get the right people to see your film, it might take you a little longer, but you can do it. That's the key to the film industry. It's a kind of rinse-and-repeat process. It's about having patience. There are a lot of people who get into the film industry and expect rewards really quickly. Their delusions breed burnout.
If you are a talented filmmaker, and you want people to see your movies - if you continue to do that, I think good things can happen. That's what we're trying to do. I enjoy doing what I do. Matt loves to write. Paul [Irwin] loves to produce. We've had such a great time on "Of Darkness."
For me, it's only about how many people can we get to see the film? It's a matter of believing in what you're doing and having a little patience and a little perseverance.
