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Your new movie Delicate
Arch - in a few words, what's it about?
You know, it's interesting. I somehow was able to write an entire
screenplay, get it financed, shoot it, finish it, get it into
festivals and eventually land a distributor, all without ever really
coming up with a good logline or elevator pitch! Essentially, it's
about four college students in Salt Lake City in a vaguely near-future
dystopia who need to get out of town due to an atmospheric climate
calamity. They head down for a weekend camping trip in Arches National
Park, in Southern Utah, and once they get there weird things start
happening to them. This is all seen through the lens (both literally
and figuratively) of Grant, our protagonist, who's this sort of
problematic film school guy obsessed with his ex-girlfriend. Grant
starts to eventually suspect that the four of them are characters in
a horror movie, and their reality starts to break down around them
in hopefully this sort of weird, innovative way. What
were your sources of inspiration when writing Delicate
Arch? And is any of this based on personal experiences?
Yes! The whole camping trip scenario is loosely based on a real outing
that me and four other friends went on when we were all students at the
University of Utah back in the 2000s. Some elements of the story are
specifically autobiographical, some are totally invented, and some are
sort of exaggerated. Certainly nothing supernatural happened to us on
that trip, but we did take mushrooms and hike up to the titular Delicate
Arch, and speaking for myself I had a really sort of profound
psychedelic experience, this being maybe one of the less than a handful
of times I've ever tried mushrooms. Also, at one point in Delicate
Arch the characters shoot this short film, and that
film-within-a-film is basically a shot-for-shot recreation of a short we
shot as part of that camping trip. For some reason, that short and its imagery
really stuck with me. Being a filmmaker yourself, to what degree could you identify with Delicate
Arch's Grant the film student - or with any of the other
characters for that matter?
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Yes, Grant is definitely the most autobiographical character, but I want
to make clear that I never did any of the wildly inappropriate stuff he
does in this film. More just so in some of his attitudes and obsessions,
particularly around his obsession with film and filmmaking and sort of
seeing everything in life through the lens (again, often literally) of
cinema. I think all people who love movies go through this kind of
obsessive phase and hopefully they grow out of it. I think I mostly did,
but I do think there are a lot of people who become obsessed with movies
in their youth where that sort of fantasy mindset persists into full
adulthood and can do a lot of damage. And the other characters are
loosely based on the other friends who went on the real-life camping
trip with me just sort of exaggerated and molded to fit the story
requirements, but probably also other aspects of myself as well.
Do talk about your movie's
approach to horror for a bit! Well, I'm a horror lover and obsessive from way back. I've done a
lot of extracurricular academic research into the genre -- both its
history but also its mechanics, trying to figure out how and
why horror movies work, when they do work. Even though it's
a fictional narrative, I almost consider Delicate
Arch to be
sort of a 90-minute video essay about the practical mechanics and
morality of horror movies, especially the audience's relationship and
complicity to what's happening on screen. I'm not saying Delicate
Arch is
that scary in a traditional, visceral sense, like the Terrifier
movies.
It's more insidious in its themes and implications and on a sort of
intellectual level. A lot of viewers don't engage with the film on that
level, and for them the movie generally falls flat. But for those who
do, those folks have had some really profound reactions. A few words about your
overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
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It was complicated with this movie, especially as my first
feature-length project. There are several different layers of reality
that we're playing with here, and they're all represented by different
visual approaches. So we have traditional widescreen cinema, done with
vintage anamorphic lenses that really show off the beauty of our
locations. And then we have Grant's anachronistic VHS camera, which
gives you this gritty, handheld, found footage sort of thing. And then
you have the world as it's seen through the characters' smartphones,
overlaid with TikTok and Snapchat filters and other augmented reality
elements that further distort the reality of what we're seeing. So we
had to balance all of that and know how to shoot it, because you don't
shoot any of those things the same way. It was a real challenge, and I
think I relied heavily on my assistant director, Josh Long, and my director of
cinematography, Matthew Rogers, to help me figure that out
and point me in the right direction. What
can you tell us about Delicate
Arch's cast, and why exactly these people?
This is the greatest cast ever, and I have our casting director Kara
Sullivan to thank for that. Kevin Bohleber, who plays Cody, was the
first person we found. He came to us through a Craigslist ad when we
were just trying to find some performers for a script readthrough, and
he basically was sticky enough that he never left the project (at least
in my mind) after that. Since Delicate
Arch, he's done a lot of cool
stuff, lots of TV spots and a role in the latest V/H/S movie,
among other things. Rene Leech was a great find, they're going to be a
big star, I think. We were looking for nonbinary performers and I think
we reached out to a casting agency that specializes in that sort of
thing. Kelley Mack we were super excited to have, she had been on The
Walking Dead and a few of the big network procedurals and is a
great writer and filmmaker in her own right in addition to being the
nicest person ever. She was the only person we auditioned virtually,
because she was in Chicago shooting Chicago Med at the time,
but she was pretty much a lock from the beginning. And William Leon was
this incredible find who I almost missed the first time. I was looking
at a lot of self-tapes and hadn't marked his audition as one to
move forward with. I was really burned out and snowblind at this time
looking at potential Grants, but Josh Long, who was also one of our
producers, nudged me to take another look. Once I had fresh eyes, I was
like, "Oh yeah, duh." He's such an intense young actor and
100% committed, also super nice and sweet.
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You
of course also have to talk about your wonderful outdoors locations, and
what was it like filming there?
You know it was really interesting, because this was a piece of private
property just called literally "The Land" that we were hooked
up with through Bega Metzner at the Moab to Monument Valley Film
Commission, which is incidentally the oldest active film commission
in the world. Bega put us in touch with these folks, who have this
entire little creative oasis out there right behind the mountain with
Delicate Arch on the other side. It's sort of miniature Burning Man
vibe, they do all sorts of music concerts and different kinds of
performance art out there. And it's all designed and set-decorated in
this really cool, post-apocalyptic Mad Max sort of way. If anything, we
didn't take big enough advantage of it. But we had all this great stuff
that was already there to play with, not to mention the gorgeous
scenery, which really adds a lot of production value when you're on a
small budget. A few words about the
shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere?
It was a lot of fun, just speaking for myself. I don't think we really
ran into a lot of issues, other than just the normal boring stuff like
fighting the light and stuff like that. I don't know, maybe there was
some drama going on I wasn't aware of, but in general I must say I felt
really calm and relaxed and happy the whole time. It was sort of the eye
of the hurricane. There was a lot of stress and anguish beforehand, in
pre-production, and frankly there's been a lot of stress and anguish
every day since, just trying to get the damn thing finished and out
there in a way that's successful. But the actual shoot itself was a
pretty zen experience, personally. Anything you
can tell us about audience and critical reception of Delicate
Arch? It's been polarizing. A lot of strong feelings on both the positive and
negative ends, though generally a lot more good than bad. I sort of knew
that it was going to be a "love it or hate it" type of movie,
which I think is where all art that's great and innovative lands upon
its initial release, if not even outright reviled. Like I said, I think Delicate
Arch is provocative on an intellectual, thematic, and maybe
even spiritual level, but a lot of people who don't key into what we're
trying to do are just going to think it's goofy and stupid. But yeah, we
got votes for Sight & Sound's "Best of 2024" list
as well as people posting very earnestly to shame and censure the film
festivals that have programmed us. So I dunno... your guess is as good
as mine!
Any future projects you'd like to share?
Yeah! I'm currently in the earliest stages of pre-production for what I
hope will be my second feature as writer/director/producer. It's about
as far away from horror as you can imagine; it's a romantic comedy for
grown-ups about the ups and downs of the gig economy and trying to
sustain yourself both fiscally and emotionally as an adult who still
harbors creative aspirations. So yeah, not autobiographical at all
[laughs]! It's also a love letter to my new hometown of Louisville. I
hope that it'll sort of have the same connection to time and place that,
like, Singles did to Seattle in the early '90s, or that Slacker did
at that same time to Austin. I'm co-writing the script with Aaron
Nelson, one of our producers on Delicate
Arch, and I hope to make
the movie with a lot of the same creative team from Delicate
Arch as
well as the folks from the great film community out here in Kentucky. What
got you into filmmaking in the first place, and did you receive any formal
training on the subject? Yes, I majored in Film at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. I
grew up loving movies and when I was a really little kid I had dreamed
of making my own Superman and
Dick Tracy movies, which never got past
the storyboard stage [laughs]. But I was a good artist as a kid, and I
thought that was what I would do. So I started out at the U of U as a
graphic design major. But somehow all my friends there tended to be film
majors, and I myself would daydream constantly about movies that I
wanted to make. I resisted it for a while because I didn't want to seem
like I was copying my friends, but I eventually switched my major to
Film. What can you tell us about your
filmwork prior to Delicate
Arch? For about 20 years, I've been working in the digital space in Los
Angeles. I've done a lot of short-form digital content work, both
scripted and unscripted. I've made original web series like Matt
& Dave Are So Depressed (which won some awards) as well as
branded content for places like Disney. For the last 10 years, I was the
senior manager of digital content at Film Independent, the nonprofits
arts organization in LA that produces the Independent Spirit Awards. And
that was great, but it was like 10 years of additional film school and
where I met a lot of the people who helped Delicate
Arch get off the ground in its beginning stages. How would you describe yourself as a
director? I want to continue to be innovative and formally inventive, no matter
what genre of film I happen to make. I also want to foster a safe, fun
environment on set. I think people always do their best work when they
are happy and relaxed, so I want to make that a priority on any project moving forward.
Filmmakers who inspire you? I mean, I'm inspired by great directors and great films of every kind.
But if there's anyone whose career I sort of aspire to mimic or echo,
it's gotta be Steven Soderbergh. I'm starting a little bit later in life
than he did, so I'll never have that comprehensive of a filmography, but
I want to be as prolific as I can be and make all sorts of different
movies in different genres and have lots of room to play and experiment
and do weird stuff. I definitely don't want to make only horror movies
or only comedies. I'm also not married to the idea of only directing my
own writing, or only writing stuff for me to direct. I want to
collaborate and work with different creative people and see what emerges
from that weird alchemy. Your
favourite movies? The Night of the Hunter by Charles
Laughton, Midnight Cowboy by John Schlesinger, Monty Python and the Meaning of Life by
whichever of those guys got the credit for directing that, Wings of
Desire by Wim Wenders, Repo Man by Alex
Cox, Brazil by Terry Gilliam, every Coen Brothers and David Lynch movie. ... and of course, films you really deplore?
I just did not get Longlegs in any way, shape, or form. But
as a filmmaker with a horror movie out right now that's also deeply
polarizing, far be it for me to yuck anyone's yum or disrespect the
hustle. Your/your movie's website, social media,
whatever else?
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The best place to find us right now is @delicatearchpic on
Instagram. If people want to follow me personally and look at pictures
of old cats and old houses, I'm at @mpmwarren Anything else you're dying to mention and
I have merely forgotten to ask? I just want to specifically shout out Larissa Beck, our lead producer on Delicate
Arch, who is truly a magical human being I hope people
find out about through this film. She's going to run all of Hollywood
one day. Thanks for the interview!
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