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Your new movie Broken
Innocence - in a few words, what's it about?
Broken Innocence is a story about nothing is what it seems or what it looks like
all the time. Life isn’t always black-and-white, and it deals with
heavy themes of sexual abuse in the household and Frank losing the
control of Lily growing up into a young lady and her breaking free from
the fear that she possesses of her father.
What were your sources of inspiration when dreaming up Broken
Innocence? I had a friend that was
being sexually abused by her father. I was 11 years old. She was 14, and
just remembering not being able to do anything for her and her never
wanting to be alone and being completely terrified of him when he does
arrive and remembering her taking her own life, her story always stuck
with me because I just never understood. How can a parent look at
their child in a sexual manner? It just is very bizarre to me, and
researching this stuff growing up and realizing how common it is for
these things to happen. This is just a movie I really want to bring
awareness to because this is somebody’s reality every day.
What can you tell us about Broken
Innocence's screenwriter Charlie Brady, and what was your
collaboration like? I really liked collaborating on this with Charlie.
He was very understanding and took in all information that I mentioned to
him of what I wanted to do, and he was always open to changes because
there was a lot of changes with the script. It started off a complete
drama, but when we did a crowdfunding, we realized that we needed to make
this more of a thriller, and we kind of had to market it a little bit more
horror-related to really entice the audience into watching it, and just
really rebuilding the script was a bit of a process. To what extent could you actually
identify with Broken
Innocence's anti-heroine Lilly?
I think Arianna Harris [Arianna
Harris interview - click here] did a great job of creating a character that is relatable because
watching her process to the character reminded me so much of a friend
that I grew up with that is no longer with us, and it was very symbolic of
watching this come to life. I think Lily is a very relatable character
unfortunately. When women are sexually abused and thrown into society,
they’re told to get over it or it wasn’t that bad or that was so long
ago - so many things that we tell sexually abused people rather than trying to
understand the problem and fix the problem of sexual abuse, we just tell
them to come back to war and they can
adjust back to life and people with PTSD. We as society don’t think we have enough
or do enough with people with PTSD, and I just think we need to be
better as people. Do talk about Broken
Innocence's approach to the thriller genre! Thriller
is amongst my favorite genres because it’s a
perfect combination between horror and dramatic, and dramas and horror
films are by far my favorite two genres and thrillers have a perfect
combination of both, but this one was more psychological than I’ve
ever done, and that was the fun process of watching these actors go to
town and deliver some amazing dialogue, and just their mannerisms and
actions are very fascinating to watch. A
few words about your overall directorial approach to your story at hand? As a
director I’m very hands-on. I love creating and building the character arc, what makes the
person tick, what makes the person think - I love creating every bit of the
process with the actor. I love building the character from head to toe so
the actor and myself are on the same page of what we think the character
is like. I’ve worked with some actors who I don’t really hear from
very much and I tend to not have the best working relationship with them,
so I like actors who understand this is a collaboration and it takes two
people to build character, because as director of the ship, I have to make
sure that everything is agreed-upon, whether I’m delegating with my DP,
my AD team or make-up artist, I am very hands-on with every department.
What can you tell us about Broken
Innocence's key cast, and why exactly these people? Well, the hardest person to find for this particular role
was the role of Lily. I’ve had two people signed on and I just didn’t
feel that they were the right choice, and I’ve been speaking to Arianna
Harris‘s mother Miss Diane, and my only concern was at the time Arianna was
14 years old, just about to turn 15 when I was making my decision, and I
felt she was very young, but they read the script and really liked it and
I asked to speak to her mother directly on the phone because what I
needed out of this role I just wanted to make sure that we were both
comfortable because I really wanted to find someone 18 to portray a
teenager, but after speaking to her mother and seeing Arianna‘s
audition, there was no doubt in my mind that Arianna was the right choice.
I thought Sheri Davis really had to look of a
broken woman that really needed implicate the mother’s character of how
she lost herself, and the redemption at the end. Originally, I had Bill
Junior in mind for the role of Frank but negotiations didn’t work out.
Then my good friend William R. Instone put in a good word to Paul T. Taylor
who played Pinhead
in Hellraiser: Judgment, and we talked and we immediately hit
it off and we built an amazing Frank and completely reinvented who Frank
was, and originally I didn’t agree with Paul ‘s suggestions, but after
he showed me some examples and pictures I really started to trust. and
I’m very glad that I did because what he bought with Frank was
completely, very unique, and I cannot take credit for that. It was
something that he really felt was Frank and I trusted him, and I’m just glad that I gave him that trust. Do
talk about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere! The actual shoot was a 10 day shoot. It was a very
long day shoot. very stressful because it was a lot of scenes that we had
a shot for the most part. I had a great experience with a lot of the cast
members. There were a few people that I did not get along with, but
that’s just part of the process, different personalities, different
methods and different processes, but I’ve learned the valuable lesson
of the importance of making sure that I catch some of the vibes and
intentions, and I see why some directors work with actors a lot more, and
sometimes working with someone and getting along because the dynamics
between a director and actors relationship and dynamics between a director and the DPs are very critical of the success of the film, and
I’m just glad that it didn’t hinder the project at all.
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Anything you can tell us about audience and critical reception of Broken
Innocence?
So far the audience experience to the project is really blowing my mind. It
won some amazing awards across the world. We won the total of 16. I was
not expecting a very big festival run like we experienced, and I was not
expecting people to really love this film the way they do, this is
definitely my best-received film and I’m always nervous about
how people are going to react to things because how you think in your
head and how people react to it, it's never quite the same. Any future projects you'd like to
share? I just finished my first hundred thousand Dollar budget film called
Blood on the Bleachers, and it will be coming
out next year, and in January I will be starting my new movie The Desperate, which is my very first action film and I’m very excited
about it. Thanks for the interview!
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