Courtesy of Filmofilia.com
On Aug. 16, I had the pleasure of interviewing Evan Glodell, the writer and director of the hit indie film Bellflower. It wasn’t published until today due to the PR company’s request.
Bellflower is a twisted love story and well… check out this quick description from Coatwolf Productions via IMDb:
Bellflower follows two friends as they venture out into the world to begin their adult lives. Literally all their free time is spent building flame-throwers and weapons of mass destruction in hopes that a global apocalypse will occur and clear the runway for their imaginary gang “Mother Medusa.” While waiting for the world to end, their call to excitement comes unexpectedly when one of them meets a charismatic young woman and falls hard in love. Quickly integrated into a new group of friends, they set off on a journey of betrayal, love, hate, infidelity and extreme violence more devastating and fiery than any of their apocalyptic fantasies. Often life’s simplest and most obvious truths are the hardest to see, but once you’ve burned everything to the ground it may be the only thing left standing.
We also have a review of the film coming in tomorrow, so be sure to check it out. Also, the trailer of the film is below the interview.
Courtesy of Collider.com
I’m sure you get this question a lot, but what made you decide to become a filmmaker and do you have any particular directors who you feel have influenced Bellflower?
Um, yes, I’ve been unable to answer this question so far because I need to make a list, so I can never recall off the top of my head, but I think I made the decision to be a filmmaker when I was about 18. I went to school for engineering, but after I was there for literally about a week, I realized that’s not what I wanted to do and that’s when I decided to drop out and at that same moment movies seemed like a good idea or choice.
The visual style of Bellflower, it’s so much different than all the other films I’ve seen. How did these visual qualities emerge in your head when you were making the film?
I think it’s one of those things like between like the hobby of having the camera and building optics and stuff and also just working with Joel (Hodge, cinematographer for Bellflower) for years and years, it’s one of those things where they feed into each other. I’ve had the hobby of building cameras for such a long time and so like we’d talk about each finished project and talk about “Oh, wow, look at how this camera looks” and this cool feeling of how it looks and all of the sudden that gets incorporated into the individual ideas you’re working on for the script, you know.
Yeah, and you also built your own cameras right? Did you ever experience any trouble working with them?
It’s not really professional machined so it breaks all the time, so the whole time we were shooting like every day at least one of our cameras would break, so we’d have to hold up or, you know, I’d be up all night fixing it for before having to shoot with it the next day after a long day of shooting.
As far as any other stresses making the film, you shot the film over 3 years right?
Three years from the day we started shooting and almost 4 years from the time we really started pushing pre-production before we needed everything to happen.
So what kept you motivated to follow the film through, was there ever a time over those four years when you weren’t sure if you would get it completed? Because I know it’s tough as an independent filmmaker to get all the finances together and keep all the actors to follow through and stuff like that.
Yes, there were tons of times when it looked like all hope was lost… I think the reason that it got done is because the only reason I was even able to start it, because we never had enough resources to even start, I just decided “We’re just gonna start and figure it out as we go, because the film will never be ready. There’s too much to do and we’ll never have enough money, to do it or whatever.” For me, it was like this movie is the only [thing], like I didn’t have any other secondary plans for what to do in life, like another career or something. This was the only thing I had to focus on, to, you know, to look forward to in life in general. So, it didn’t really seem like an option to give up.
What made you decide you wanted to act in the film, was it more out of necessity, or was it more like you thought you would be best to play the part because you wrote the script?
It was definitely that. I thought like, this stuff is so personal, I’ll probably understand parts that I don’t even realize that I understand…I decided to play the part for that reason, and all the while I was hoping that someone would turn up and I’d be blown away and be like “That’s the person who’s gonna do it,” but that never happened, so I just decided to move forward with it.
How was it to both act in and direct the film and see it from both perspectives at once? Was it difficult to get out of the acting mindset while you were directing?
Oh, it was very difficult. I feel like the whole time I was focused on just figuring out the movie, so it’s almost like the acting had to come secondary. There was so much to do to just even keep the thing going. For each shot I would have to like jump in at the last second and then I wouldn’t have a choice but to just let go and go for it and hope that it worked. The acting part was definitely the most stressful for me.
Everyone seems to have a different reaction to the film or a different take on it. How do you feel about seeing people’s reactions to the film to far?
I think it’s been awesome. But just in general, yeah I mean it’s cool that everybody’s taking different things away from it. But, from my point of view the overall response to the film and how people are accepting it, I could have never even wished for.
So what’s next for you, I’m sure it’s hard to think about right now, but do you have anything you’re working on?
Yes, I’ve actually had a script that I’ve been working on in the background for a while that is ready to go. So, the second stuff slows down with Bellflower, I’m gonna try and pull the trigger on it. I will pull the trigger on it.
Can you fill me in on any details?
Ugh, I can’t, it’s just, I haven’t figured out an easy way to explain it. But I still haven’t been able to figure out how to explain Bellflower, like I thought that somebody else will figure it out at some point… It sucks because I ’m super excited about it, so like I wanna tell people about it, but I don’t have a name for it, and I don’t have a way to explain it easily.
When you saw the film afterward, what were you impressed with the most and what did you think you saw that you needed to work on for the future?
Overall, usually whenever I see it, or I have to sit through it or anything, I’m like “wow” I’m like super happy with how everything turned out, but obviously there’s also lots of things to improve on. I think one of the biggest things, for me, um, I almost don’t want to say because I don’t want to point it out to people. (laughs) But there’s definitely some certain areas that I feel like need some extreme improvement that I’ve already kept focusing on a lot. I guess that’s sort of a total cop out answer (laughs).
No problem, you don’t have to reveal all your secrets.
(Laughs)
As far as the car, Medusa, is concerned, the car is super sweet and you drive that around as your regular car, right? Do you get a lot of weird looks from it?
Yes, and now finally since the movie’s been out for about a week, um like it just opened in Ventura last Friday (Aug. 12), which is where I live, and in L.A. a week before, so now people are starting to recognize it. People used to be like “Hey, whoa what’s this car!” and yell at you and stop you and want to know what it is… I’ve been driving it around for about a year now. And then now I’ve been getting people that are twice as excited as anything I had gotten before because people are now recognizing it from the movie. And they start honking at me and flashing their lights and like screaming out the window at streetlights. If the movie continues to do well, I’m actually going to have to park it soon (laughs) it’s so recognizable.
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