Paul Solet: Director
Interview: Paul Solet [Part 1]
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Paul Solet graduated from Emerson College in Boston in 2002.
In 2003, he picked up a screenwriting certificate. He was already hard at work, pulling together a feature-length script with director Eli Roth and writing his first short, "Means to and End."__The short film came to fruition in 2005. A festival favorite, "Means to and End" garnered awards and sent Roth and co-writer/co-director Jake Hamilton's names to the top. Endorsed by Fangoria magazine, Solet and Hamilton toured and promoted. Along the way, Solet realized he needed to relocate, to get closer to the people that could make future movies happen faster and bigger.
This is his story.
Cinescare: Tell me a little about the journey that got you from doing "Means to an End" to doing "Grace."
Paul Solet: Basically, "Means to an End" was kind of a gag to challenge ourselves [Solet and Hamilton] to see what we could come up with, given no time and no budget. We shot that, from prep through production, in a couple months. We were both working day jobs, so we basically did a lot of our work over the phone at our jobs, me and Jake Hamilton. I was about to go out to L.A. We shot the film in the last five days before I left Boston.
Cinescare: Why did you leave Boston?
Paul Solet: I came out to Los Angeles because I wanted to get some more real hands-on production experience. A writer can write anywhere. If you want to become a director, there's no substitute for getting your hands dirty. Los Angeles was the obvious place to go. I had written a few scripts. I came out here and I started doing as much production work as I possibly could. I've always continued writing. Writing is something that keeps me grounded. That's a big part of my life.
Cinescare: Were you submitting "Means to an End" to the festivals and the awards?
Paul Solet: That was chiefly me. The distribution of labor between me and Jake is always: whoever can do whatever at a given moment. Jake's particularly talented in post. Jake posted that whole project. Jake cut it. He would send me rough cuts as I was crossing the country. So, I would get rough cuts at various hotels along the way and I would give him notes and wait for the next rough cut. By the time I go to L.A., he had a pretty nice final cut. I kind took it upon myself to figure out how the festival circuit works and check into that, and start cultivating relationships with people who were like-minded people. It's not just the filmmakers in the genre scene. The thing I love about the horror scene is that there's this unity that just does not exist elsewhere. It's not there. Everbody's got each other's backs. There such a small quantity of good stuff. Any real genre fan gets so fucking psyched every time there 's something really good. Everybody just gets behind it. That's pretty much how "Means to an End" worked, and that's certainly how "Grace" worked, as well.
Cinescare: How did you finance these projects, going through all these moves and changes?
Paul Solet: On these small-budget projects, you're not able to pay people what they deserve as craftsman and as actors. So, the way it has to work is you need to put in the work to create something that is special. If you succeed at it, people get psyched. They want to be a part of it.
Cinescare: When did you start to work on "Grace?"
Paul Solet: About halfway through my journey across the country, I started writing "Grace." I'd had a conversation with my girlfriend-at-the-time's mother. She 'd told me about this nasty little tidbit of medical science, where sometimes if you lose your child ' if labor isn't induced ' you can carry it to term. It just immediately occurred to me as this just awesome little piece of horror fodder. I was off to the races with that script. A couple of weeks after I had gotten to L.A., I had a draft of that feature. It's very different [now,] but the core was there.
Cinescare: And then you had to find a way to get it made?
Paul Solet: Basically in working production, I met some folks. One producer got interested in some of my projects and he wanted to option the "Grace" feature at the time. I think that's probably 2005. We had some discussions. He made me an offer. It was a generous offer. One thing that he wasn't prepared to do was let me direct it. The only thing I had to represent myself as a director was "Means to an End," which was shot for nothing on digital video in a couple days. So, he basically brought on this director. I was trying to be open-minded, and prepared to compromise here and there for the sake of the project. It really became clear that this guy really didn't get the script at all. He was going to turn it into a paint-by-numbers horror-for-money direct-to-video kind of thing. He wanted to insert a devil-worshipping subplot. It was such a cliched Hollywood executive situation. I really do believe in this project. It occurred to me then that if this thing is really going to realize its potential, then I needed to do the footwork to gain faith from whatever financial backers we end up with - to gain as much creative control as possible and make sure the thing delivers on its potential.
Cinescare: So you walked. What happened next?
Paul Solet: The next obvious thing to do was put together a real studio-quality short film. The business model is there if you take a look at "Saw." Those cats put together this great little short film. They had a script that was a good, solid script. These guys were interested in their script, but they hadn't anything to show that they could direct it. So they shot this whole thing on 15 millimeter. It was seven minutes. It looked great and they got the job to direct it. That was the business model. I started trying to raise interest in financing this short. The way to do that was to have a really tight script. It's still amazing to me how people want to circumnavigate the hard work in the process. Just kind of go shoot it, and we'll put it together in the editing room. If you don't have a good story, at core the film is a story. If you don't have a good story, a good script, you're missing the point. No amount of acting and no amount of finesse as a director is going to conceal the fact that there's no story. I basically distilled the key events of the first act of the feature into a ten-page script, until we had a lean product. I was able to shoot a studio-quality film on 35 millimeter. I ask Laurence Avenet-Bradley to DP it. She's got a great eye. She's a really good photographer. We really didn't pull any punches. We were really budget-conscious from the start, but we didn't have to pull any punches because we were able to marshal all our resources to a six-minute film.
Cinescare: It's really clear how much story is banging against the walls to get out in "Grace," as a short. Do you feel that if "Grace" remained a short, would you be comfortable with that? Do you think that the short gave you the spirit of the story?
Paul Solet: The whole idea was to do just that: to capture the spirit of the thing, the tone of the thing and the mood of the thing, and the story, and distill it to its purest form. I do think that it does that. It's not just a pitch film. It was important that "Grace" wasn't just a pitch film. It wasn't just a film that was supposed to end up on a lot of executives' desk. I wanted it to be able to stand alone as a short film. The whole idea was to give it a beginning, a middle, and an end. To really make it into a three-act little film. It does that. If you've done your job as a screenwriter, even a feature-length three-act script has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And within each act you have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But within each sequence you have a beginning, and a middle, and an end. And within each scene you have a beginning, and a middle, and an end. And then you get down to beats. If you 've done your job there, it's not hard to go into it and pick out what the ideal beginning, middle, and end is going to be. That's how we ended up with the short.
Cinescare: The short feels complete. It feels like a real statement. When the story is over, there's a point, there 's a theme, there's a set of tones and higher-level text has been presented. There are some real uncomfortable and important pieces of information and thematic material that come out of "Grace." They go right to the core of what biological horror is. They go right to the core of the psychology between body and self. Tell me how that really strong subject matter has helped you to leverage 'Grace" toward a feature production. Or, in some cases, has it been a challenge in getting people to look at it for its technical prowess and its potential as a three-act movie? Is it a double-edged sword for you?
Paul Solet: That's a fantastic question. The truth is, one of the things that makes "Grace" such a successful project is that it has a kind of universal appeal, because it's such a human story. It's got this underlying theme that everybody can relate to: the relationship between a mother and a child. Even people without mothers can relate to it, because they spend their whole lives missing it. Women are an often overlooked demographic as far as horror goes. It works even better for women. Some of the strongest responses I've got for thing have come from women executives. It really does end up having the very broad appeal. Not by compromising story. And not by pulling punches, thematically, but by tapping into something that's more universal. It's a short cut to making something commercial to just dumb it down. If you start with a more appealing kernel, with more potent, ambitious thematic subject matter, you don't need to compromise. It's not necessary. This script doesn't rely on gore. Don't get me wrong, I am a gore hound. But this script doesn't rely on gore. I don't know about you, but I'm basically immune to gore. I appreciate the hell out of it, but the movies that really disturb me are movies like "Angel Heart," movies like "Jacob's Ladder." Movies that really get in your head and make you think. It's not because somebody is pulling their guts out of their mouth, which I love as much as the next guy ... I digress. It's been very helpful, having some strong thematic elements. I really believe that any horror writer who's doing their job is going to turn off a reader, here and there. Not everybody is a horror fan. If you are producing horrific material, you better get some fucking strong responses from people. So, occasionally, someone will say, 'Well, I don't know if this is the kind of thing we could sell to Wal-Mart." That's cool. On to the next thing.
[Ed. Thursday, Cinescare's interview with Paul Solet continues. We talk gore, content, quality and how it all comes together in those singular, perfect moments. Solet also talks about star power in "Grace," and about the challenges of hauling art out of the air. Be here, Sept. 13.]
