Boxing Helen helmer on her new thriller
This week, filmgoers (and on demand) customers will be treated to quite an unusual thriller in Magnet Releasing’s Surveillance. Directed and co-written by Jennifer Lynch, the film unfolds in a Rashomon-esque fashion as two FBI agents (portrayed by Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) investigate a killing spree by two masked killers. The narrative is told through the divergent accounts of those who encountered the killers during an incident on a remote highway. Lynch, who hasn’t helmed a feature since 1993’s Boxing Helena, pulls together a cast that’s as eccentric as the way the film is told: Look for Pell James, Ryan Simpkins, French Stewart, Cheri O’Teri and Michael Ironside. ShockTillYouDrop.com caught up to this truly interesting creative force at the Standard in Hollywood for a frank and candid chat.
ShockTillYouDrop.com: What’s kept you out of the feature business?
Jennifer Lynch: After Boxing Helena I shot a few commercials and music videos. Then I got pregnant and decided if I’m going to be a single parent, I’m going to be a loyal, attentive single parent. So I decided to go balls deep in that. Then I had to have three consecutive spinal surgeries because of a car accident. Then I got sober eight years ago, there was a lot of…
Shock: Life stuff.
Lynch: A lot of life stuff which has hopefully effected my work in a positive way.
Shock: This film certainly has a lot of darkness…
Lynch: I appreciate that. Wouldn’t it be funny if I didn’t know it was a dark movie? I think that a lot of it was inspired by my daughter and her clarity of sight. I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be so preoccupied with: Do they like me? Am I thin enough? Do I got the job? Will I get laid? Kids just see and they say. They’re a lot more calm than they get credit for so I wanted to examine what it would be like if a child saw more than everybody else thought they were showing. And I hadn’t really seen a serial killer film the way I wanted to see one where it was really about that fucked up situation where sex and violence and all of that intimacy becomes so clouded and wrong. Look at these two people and look at what they’re up to. Each of these killers only recently met and no one had ever looked at them other than victim, or criminal, or loser, or f**k up until they met each other. A meeting of the minds and they’re just going to go out and do this shit until they can’t do it anymore.
Shock: There’s a great tapestry of characters. Did any come from personal life, folks you’ve met along the way?
Lynch: I guess I’ve met people in not these extremes but people who wore wounds and maybe abusing their power. Or not paying attention to their power. I’ve certainly been the kid in the back seat with the mother and the stepfather. There was no brother, but there was a dog. To me I’ve seen or imagined these people for long enough that I wanted to have something terrible happen in broad daylight with all of them involved.
Shock: You really used the open road well. It carried something ominous, like the original Hitcher.
Lynch: We shot this in a town called Regina. In a town that rhymes with fun, it was really…talk about learning something, the crews there are incredible, the production facilities are incredible. They’re hungry to do it. They’re skilled and the prairies look like they’re somewhere in middle America. You get that distance and I just love the idea that there was so much space, but nowhere to hide. I really wanted Stephanie [xxx] to not think about running off the road, that was just too dangerous, but to run the other way. Where do you go? You stay on the road.
Shock: Tell me about that first day being back on a feature. Were you ready to rock? Ready to collapse?
Lynch: I did not want to go home that night. I didn’t want to stop shooting. It was like being back in the arms of someone that I really loved after not seeing them for so long. I was just so happy on the set and there’s that magic where everybody is working towards a common goal that’s so thrilling to me. Whether it’s because I was raised around so many sets, or raised in a house of artists always doing something. It’s just a kick and a half. If there’s anything that’s changed for me, I think with all of the life experience in between then and now, I’m a lot less inclined to make a decision I don’t 100% believe in. That way if I f**k up, then it’s my f**k up and I can own it. But if we do well, it’s because we all did well together and I can sleep at night looking at what we did. There’s nothing worse than failing because you didn’t follow yourself all of the way. It was great. I tried not to listen to people saying how long it had been and just did the next thing and the next thing.
Shock: You have another screenwriter on this. How did that collaboration come about and do you think you could have tackled this narrative on your own?
Lynch: Mainly, what it is, it wasn’t another writer as much as it was another story. Another creator. Kent [Harper] had brought me a script called Tres Brujas, Three Witches, and in that script about witches and the supernatural, were these two cops abusing their power out on the road in this small town. I was really drawn to that, I wasn’t really drawn to the rest of the script. And an argument ensued where, as two passionate people, stuff was piling up – ideas I had always wanted to use, like a child and serial killers. I just started writing it. I have to say, I credit Kent a whole lot for pushing every button he f**kin’ could until I got mad enough, or clear enough, about what the story was. I think that really helped. I consciously wanted to shoot it in order so the characters, the actors themselves, could actually be lying, because they had done all of the outside scenes and they might have been full of shit. That seemed to lend itself to some good times. I slowly wanted to start grabbing people by the short and curlies, tug in a way.
Shock: Who was your most favorite character to flesh out?
Lynch: There are so many. I really enjoyed working with Pell. Bill and Julia. It was really nice to work with Michael Ironside, as a kinder, gentler Ironside. He’s got so much power in him and he’s so kind and lovely and funny and f**kin’ smart. I just want to use him again and again in different ways. I saw him again recently in Terminator: Salvation, but he’s always doing that! Make him do something else. But he’s made a good living doing that.
Shock: That’s a t-shirt I want to see: “A kinder, gentler Ironside.” With his face on the back.
Lynch: [laughs] That’s great!
Shock: Did you deviate from the Three Witches idea so much that there’s still enough ideas from the original supernatural concept to make a movie out of that?
Lynch: It’s way deviated from that. That script could still happen.
Shock: After your next project, Hisss, what’s next?
Lynch: Man, I’m looking. I’ve got a few projects. A romantic comedy with a bit of crazy in there. Then a quiet thriller. I’d love to do some scriptwriting without the intention of directing. And I’d love to direct something I hadn’t written, see what that’s like.
Surveillance is currently available on demand and opens in theaters on June 25th. Click on the title for clips and photos!
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
