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Your new movie Bad Romance - in a few words, what is it about?
Bad Romance is a comedic neo-noir about a socially awkward lonely guy, Rob,
who attempts to track down the man who killed his wife – but not for
revenge, just to make friends and find love along the way.
With Bad Romance
being a film noir of sorts, is that a genre at all dear to you, and some
of your genre favourites? I
absolutely love the noir genre! And while I like both, I actually prefer
neo-noir to classic film noir. Some of my favorite neo-noir films are Memento,
Shutter Island and
Nightcrawler. As for the classic noirs I’d
have to say Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Odd Man Out, White
Heat, and The Third Man all come to mind. Then of course there’s the classic
neo-noir films like Chinatown and Blade Runner (the original cut with the
noir voiceover is the best!), which I love too. (Other) sources of inspiration
when writing Bad Romance? The
main inspirations were Memento and Shutter
Island. There’s a shared idea
in both of those about a flawed protagonist forced to live in a false
reality in order to survive that I really liked. It was really taking that
core structure and combining it with this idea for the character of Rob
that I had – this socially awkward and lonely guy. When I combined those
it turned into this really interesting idea about love and how ‘is love
a false reality we delude ourselves into believing in order to get by?’,
which really resonated with me. Some of the other films I looked at were
Fincher’s Gone Girl and Hitchock’s Vertigo, so you can definitely see
shades of those in Bad Romance
as well. Finally, I’m a huge fan of filmmakers’ first films, especially microbudget DIY efforts. In
particular, I was inspired by Peter Jackson’s Bad
Taste, Christopher Nolan’s Following and Kevin Smith’s Clerks. There wasn’t anything
super specific from those films but I wanted to capture that same
first-time filmmaker DIY energy from films like those.
To what extent could you actually identify with Bad
Romance's protagonist Rob? Well
the character of Rob is actually inspired by an amalgam of characters from
a lot of different movies, TV shows and books that I like. Though, he
ultimately did come from my own psyche so there’s probably something I
identify with deep down. I would say he’s probably an extremely
exaggerated and heightened version of some aspects of my own personality.
And some of the lessons Rob learns along his journey about embracing
one’s flaws and uniqueness and learning to love yourself before you can
find true love certainly resonates with me. But I’m not delusional or
creepy I swear! Do talk about Bad
Romance's brand of humour for a bit? Comedy
is the genre that comes the most natural to me, so it’s kind of like my
natural filter on things. For Bad Romance
it was a blast to find the
comedy working within the noir genre, finding humor in certain tropes and
archetypes and such. Edgar Wright is one of my favorite filmmakers and
he’s a genius at working comedically within a genre. I’m particularly
inspired by his collaborations with Simon Pegg like Shaun of the Dead and
Hot Fuzz. I learned from watching their movies that the comedy also has to
be character-driven. You can’t have a joke for the sake of having a
joke. The humor has to be in-character and make sense from their point of
view, which actually elevates the humor and makes it more resonant. That
being said, you also don’t want to over-analyze humor. I never think
about this kind of stuff when I’m writing. A few words
about your overall directorial approach to your story at hand? This
was my first time directing a feature film so it was all a big learning
experience. I’ve listened to a million interviews with other filmmakers
though so I knew a big part of directing is just casting the right actors,
so I put a lot of effort into that. I’m also a big believer in
meticulously planning everything out in pre-production. I storyboarded and
shot-listed the entire film, though it was actually kind of useless
because we didn’t have the budget or resources or time to do about 80%
of the shots I wanted. However, it did help me wrap my head around
everything and so when we got to set I knew what was important and what
could be sacrificed, which was good. As Bad Romance
was such a low budget
film with such limited resources, my directing approach for this one was
really all about just making sure we got the necessary shots and
performances down. We definitely had to sacrifice some of the style
unfortunately.
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You also appear in front of the camera in Bad
Romance - so do talk about your character, what did you draw upon
to bring him to life, and have you written him with yourself in mind from
the get-go? I loved playing Antonio! I had never acted before and actually never planned
on being in the film myself. I auditioned quite a lot of actors for the
role but nobody really felt right. Antonio actually wasn’t even in the
first draft of the script. After I write a first draft of any script,
usually my process is to take a few weeks off of writing and just watch as
many movies as I can to build up ideas and get reinspired for the second
draft. I got the idea for Antonio from a few different things: rewatching
Kevin Smith’s Clerks, where the character Randall plays a snobby video
store clerk as well as the (totally epic) British TV show Spaced where
Simon Pegg’s character plays a comic book store clerk. Those characters
were the initial inspiration for Antonio but I wanted Antonio to be a
really “bad” and delusional version of that pop culture junkie
archetype. And he fit in perfectly to the story as a mentor figure to
Rob’s crazy murder mystery plot. Oh, and I also really like how Taika
Waititi gives himself these great little hilarious roles in his films, so
after I couldn’t find anyone to play the part I was just like “ahh
what the hell… I’ll just do it”. I’m really glad I did because I
had a blast and found out I really like acting! What can you tell us about the rest of
Bad
Romance's key cast, and why exactly these people? Oh
I hit the jackpot with the cast. When I was casting Bad
Romance, I was
looking for actors who could not only nail the performance as well as the
comedy aspect but also actually elevate what I had written, and all the key
cast did just that. Sanjay was absolutely incredible and really elevated
what was on the page for sure. I mean he totally carries the film. Rob was
intentionally written as a very awkward and strange character but somehow
Sanjay brought a real empathy and likeability to the character and I’m
still not quite sure how he pulled off that balancing act. It really sells
the romance between Rob and Hannah. And Emily who plays Hannah was great
too. She could really hit the comedy beats, which is actually really hard
for some actors to do. She could also hold her own when Sanjay would go
off script and improvise (which he's a genius at). I intentionally cast
actors who had the ability to improv but I didn’t realize how good
Sanjay and Emily would be at it until we started shooting. The film is
actually really tightly scripted but they were so good at improving that I
let them go off script quite a lot and that’s honestly where we captured
some of the funniest moments. Also, Jeff Riberdy was amazing as well. He
was, by far, the best actor who auditioned for the character of Frank but
he could also really nail the comedy beats and he really understood the
tone that I was going for. He also has a perfect ‘deceptively good but
actually bad guy’ look for a noir film (he’s actually the nicest
person in the world, so no offense Jeff).
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A
few words about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere? It
was a really fun, collaborative and creative atmosphere. You want to have
a great on-set energy for magic to happen, especially for comedy. That
being said, it was also pretty chaotic. Everyone was wearing multiple
hats. I had locations and crew back out, sometimes the night before the
next day’s shoot, which had me pulling all-nighters trying to figure out
solutions. A lot of actors I cast for some of the smaller roles just
literally didn’t show up to set, so all my crew ended up having to play
multiple little roles in the film, which I actually think they really
liked haha. On the positive side, our crew was so small and nimble that we
could hop around from location to location really easily and shoot in
places without permits. One of the biggest lessons I learned on Bad
Romance was to make sure you have your script totally locked before you go
into production. I had to re-write a lot of scenes in a total braindead
state when we were in production and it was the most stressful and
miserable thing in the world. Never again. Anything
you can tell us about audience and critical reception of Bad
Romance? I’m thrilled that the film seems to be resonating with people! I really hope Bad
Romance continues to click with audiences and critics and more people
hear about it. However, it’s not a film that got into Sundance or Cannes
or TIFF or anything like that so it’s a lot harder to get the word out
about small little indies like this. I’m a believer in the idea that a
film will find its audience when it’s meant to find its audience, which
sometimes isn’t necessarily right when it comes out. So if people
find Bad Romance months or even years from now that’s cool with me, but
hopefully more people hear about it now too. I’d certainly love for it
to help springboard my next feature film off the ground! Any future projects you'd like to
share? I’m almost done writing the second feature film I plan to direct. I don’t
want to say too much about it but it’s another comedic genre film and
I’m really, really excited about it. I actually started writing it when
I began editing Bad Romance,
and so it’s been a few years now that I’ve
been working on it. It’s definitely really polished!
What got you into filmmaking in the first place,
and did you receive any formal training on the subject?
I was a late bloomer to filmmaking. I found my passion for film in college.
It was my sophomore year and I had no clue what to major in at the time. I
was having a bit of a crisis and I remember I’d get home from class at
like noon and have nothing to do the rest of the day (I mean who actually
does homework?) so I just started watching movies. Like 3 a day. And up to
that point I hadn’t really seen any of the classics yet. Imagine
watching a triple feature of “the greats” like Rear Window, One Flew
Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Die Hard – having never seen them before
– all in one day. It broke my brain. Specifically, it was The Lord of
the Rings trilogy and those making of behind the scenes documentaries in
the extended editions (if you know you know!) that really sealed it for
me. I knew what I had to do after seeing those; it was literally like I
was given The One Ring and a mission to Mordor haha. However, I originally
thought I only wanted to produce, so I ended up getting my undergrad
degree in business but eventually found my way into writing and directing.
I never went to film school as far as going through an entire filmmaking
program but in between my junior and senior year in college I did a summer
semester at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts where I took a film
production class. It was actually the most valuable thing I could have
done. The entire class was only like 6 or 7 weeks but we had to make 5
shorts films in that timespan, which was crazy. It’s really the only
technical training I have but it was the best as we had to do literally
everything ourselves; we had to write, direct, shoot, and edit all of our
films – it was like a 3 year film program crammed into 2 months.
What can you tell us about your filmwork prior to Bad
Romance? To
be honest it was a lot of failed attempts leading up to Bad Romance.
I’ve made quite a few microbudget short films but not very many people
saw them. I attempted to produce a feature film that didn’t work out.
And then there was my first script that I wrote for myself to direct
before Bad Romance. I spent years writing it (and it’s actually an
awesome script and I still want to make it one day) and another year
trying to raise money and put it all together - but it ultimately just
didn’t come together. The good thing though is that I got so depressed
that I couldn’t get it made that it led me to just say “screw it”
and write a microbudget feature that I could make DIY-style with the
resources I already had, which ended up being Bad Romance. How would you describe yourself as a
director?
My approach to directing is to just try to get the best out of everyone and
shine a light on their work. As the director, you have to have the grand
vision but you don’t have to have every great idea to get there. I try
to just be open to other people’s creative input and inspire them to
bring great ideas to the table and then it’s just about filtering things
out at that point. So I would say a collaborative director. Filmmakers who inspire you? The
most inspiring filmmakers to me are Edgar Wright, Christopher Nolan, Peter
Jackson, David Fincher, Martin Scorsess, Spike Jonze, Charlie Chaplin and
Buster Keaton [Buster Keaton
bio - click here]. Also, Matthew Vaughn and his ability to allow his directing
to shine through because of his great and creative producing, which is
really inspiring to me as I also really like the producing aspect of
filmmaking and plan to produce films that I write and direct. Your
favourite movies? It’s
always changing but the ones that I always come back to are: Shaun of the
Dead, The Lord of The Rings, Hot
Fuzz, Fight Club, City Lights, The Departed,
Being John Malcovich, Rear Window and The
Shining. And of course, films you really
deplore?
This isn’t a cop out but I really don’t deplore any movie! Every movie is a
miracle, even the bad ones (cliché but true!!)!
Your/your movie's website, social media,
whatever else?
You can follow me on Instagram @chad_d_hamilton. I
also just started a Twitter with the same handle that you can follow as
well. Bad
Romance is currently available on Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and
Tubi (and coming soon to Google TV and Apple TV). You can find out more
about the film by visiting www.BadRomanceFilm.com
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Anything else you're dying to mention and
I have merely forgotten to ask?
These
were great questions and I had a lot of fun answering them. Thank you so
much for the opportunity and everyone please check out Bad Romance!
Follow @ChadHamiltonFilms everywhere!
Thanks for the interview!
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