#it also just references that one dialogue in mpn

[clownkillsyou]

SANMOS WEEK DAY 1 - PRE-CANON

i like to think that deimos, before and shortly after dissenting, was sort of standoffish and trying to be kind of a loner but would still act like a smartass and joke around (even if it got him into trouble/fights) something about that drew sanford to him, then they were never really able to get rid of each other

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Exclusive Interview] Introducing Mike P. Nelson, Director of THE DOMESTICS

There are a few things about Mike P. Nelson’s life that may seem counter-intuitive to becoming a promising young filmmaker. He doesn’t live in L.A. or any of the other centers of North American film. His CV is filled with sound design work and extensive work as a foley artist. In fact, the only films he has on his resume are shorts that he created and put out with his friends. For most people, this would keep Mike P. Nelson’s name out of the conversation for directors that are the future of cinema. That is about to change.

The Minnesota native has come out throwing haymakers with his feature writing and directorial debut The Domestics, which premiered last week at Cinepocalypse in Chicago and is the first release of the newly-revamped Orion Classics distribution house. He was kind enough to sit down with us to discuss his work on this film and advice he has for all of you aspiring filmmakers out there.

    Tyler Liston for Nightmare on Film Street: First of all, Mike, congratulations on the movie! I got a chance to see it this weekend and I had a great time with it. It was awesome.

Mike P. Nelson: Oh, man… I’m so glad you liked it. Thank you!

  NOFS: What inspired you to write The Domestics?

MPN: You know, it’s a funny story. I wanted to write a movie about marriage. Marriage is a challenge, and I didn’t want to write just another drama. Also, I’m a huge post-apocalyptic fan. I love the original Mad Max movies and the Warriors of course, and I wanted to tell this relationship story but set it in that world. So I thought “Yeah, let’s make a really bloody, violent, and scary action packed movie about how hard marriage can be”. That’s how I started the idea and it just took off from there.

  “You know, it’s a funny story. I wanted to write a movie about marriage.”

  NOFS: That’s what I wanted to talk about a little bit. The Domestics is a bloody, ultra-violent, scary movie with  serious The Strangers and Fury Road vibes, but none of those things overshadow the relationship between Mark (Tyler Hoechlin) and Nina (Kate Bosworth). How were you able to find that balance?

MPN: You know, the stuff that happens to them had to reflect what was going on with them. It was always about making sure that… Let me back up:

One thing that I wanted to do was make sure that we could jump right into it. We didn’t give you much of their backstory, just like we didn’t with the world they live in. So, for me, it was about making a story about a couple that you meet at the dinner table that you’ve known for a little bit, they’re friends of friends or something like that, and you can just see that there’s something that’s kind of off. You can feel it and you can’t take your eyes off of them because you’re like “What is going on with them?”. That’s the vibe I was trying to get. You don’t know these people, but, here you go.

As the story progresses, then you can start to put the puzzle pieces together. Then, what I wanted to do was use the violence and the scares to hit on key moments in the movie that could ultimately bring them closer together. You see Mark protecting Nina at the beginning of the movie. You see him stand up. So you see the good things about him and also the bad things like his reluctance to go on this journey in the first place. Ultimately, the characters around them and these gangs that surround them bring them closer together. It was a case of the brutality enhancing their relationship. That may sound twisted, but that’s what it came down to. 

    NOFS: Once you finished the script, what was the most challenging thing about bringing it to life?

MPN: We moved pretty quickly. Both MGM and Orion wanted to push the pedal down on it and move it forward. We went through some casting stuff, you know. Casting was definitely challenging, as it is with all movies to an extent. 

The thing that I always come back to is that The Domestics was originally meant to be a web series. I went out with some of my film friends here in Minnesota and we shot two episodes of this web series. Everything went really good and I was happy with it, so I thought “OK, I’m going to go get a little more money and shoot another one until we get to 8 or 10 episodes”. Which would make it feature-length. To get that money I put what we had made out into the world.

I wrote the feature script, which was more of a “Let’s see if I can do it” kind of thing, and that got in the hands of people that make things happen. Then  it happened really fast. The scene where the “Nailers” group breaks into the house where Mark and Nina are, that was the scene that I had already shot for the web series. So, what was really difficult was trying to remake something you’ve already done. In my mind, I was like, “OK, I have to make this look like the other one did”. I didn’t realize how hard that was, and that it was also a big mistake. I was with a whole new crew, a whole new set of actors, set up in a brand new place. I shot for two days on that scene, and on the third day I realized that “This” isn’t “That” anymore. I had to figure that out and make this movie for what it is now. That’s where I think the tone for The Domestics really started to build and I finally found the movie that it came to be. 

  NOFS: One of my favorite characters in the film is Willie Cunningham…

MPN: YES! David Dastmalchian!

  NOFS: Oh yeah! First of all, he’s a fantastic actor, but I really loved the character himself. He reminds me of the pretentious film nerds on Twitter that are amazed that a low being would catch on to their cinematic references. How did you come up with Cunningham and what other characters were fun to write?

MPN: So, I feel like Willy is a weird, demented alter-ego of mine. I think he was a lot of fun to write because he was a part of a moment in the film that completely comes out of nowhere. I wanted to do this scene where, ok, we’ve seen all of these gangs and as an audience you are wondering what the next gang is going to be. Well, its not going to be a gang, its a singular psychopath, a lone wolf who roams the countryside with his strange giant friend chained by his side. 

Listen, I love movies. I consider myself a cinephile, so I wanted him to be into movies. It was funny to me because they never really talk about movies in post-apocalyptic films. I wanted to bring in that conversation. Say what you want about A Clockwork Orange, which Willy references in The Domestics, but I’m not really that huge of a fan. When I was in school everyone raved about how it was the best movie ever and I was like “Really? IS IT the best movie ever?” I mean, it’s good, but…

  NOFS: They thought it was cool to think that it’s amazing and have the poster up on their wall…

MPN: Exactly. I was able to finally have this moment where I could take a jab back at Willy who thinks he’s so cool. Which brought me back to school where I would say “ I swear to god there are better movies than this out there”. 

So, for me, Willy was one of the funnest characters to write but another one that was really great was Betsy (Sonoya Mizuno). She had no dialogue the whole movie, just action and what she did and what she stood for. It was really fun for me to find that balance. I was only writing action for her, which was the exact opposite of a character like Willy. It was challenging, but also really fun to do.

    NOFS: Where did you shoot The Domestics?

MPN: We actually shot it out in New Orleans.

  NOFS: Some of the shots and set pieces you have in the film are just absolutely gorgeous. The abandoned grocery store and the empty neighborhoods really stood out to me. Were these places that your were able to scout and find or did you have to build them out?

MPN: It was a huge team effort. Obviously our location team was incredible, but when you go down to a place like NOLA, there’s a lot of places that still have not recovered from hurricane Katrina. So there were some really eerie places down there that have not been fixed up or have been abandoned. This allowed us to create these really creepy post apocalyptic scenes. The people down there were all really accommodating and they were great to work with.

The grocery store, for instance, was a real, running grocery store that was just kind of tucked away. We went in there and told the guy what we wanted to do and he just let us take over the whole store. I think it was just a day shoot, but we took it over and cleared out all the stuff and he just sat there behind the counter, watching us.

  NOFS: He was just living the dream. Having the time of his life.

MPN: Absolutely. He was having so much fun. My production designer Rochelle Berliner and my DP Maxime Alexandre made the places what they ended up being. We sat down and talked about what I was looking for, but to walk into these places and see a shot that Maxime put up I was just like, “Oh my gosh! I can’t believe I’m standing here”.

When you come from the independent world you work a lot with what you have. You don’t have the same opportunities that you do when you’re making a studio film, even though our production was lower-budget. 

  NOFS: Speaking of being lower-budget, that final act in which Mark and Nina go into her old neighborhood is insane. You were able to capture so much carnage on screen. I don’t want to say it shocked me, but I was definitely surprised that you were able to shoot that much action. Walk us through that final act. What was your vision and how were you able to get it done?

MPN: It’s always been a dream of mine to film a shootout in a neighborhood. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s juxtaposing the quiet “Everything’s OK” attitude of the suburbs with something absolutely crazy. I wanted to push those things together.

As far as organizing this shoot for The Domestics, we all knew that we were up against a huge challenge. We went in and just went big, you know? We didn’t have a ton of money and I only had like 5 days, which isn’t a lot of time to shoot something like this. I remember my AD Bill Clark was like, “Just to let you know for the next one, we normally take about 2 weeks to shoot something like this. Maybe more. But, I’m going to make this happen for you.”

It was insane. We had 1-2 takes for each shot, and that’s it. We had to plan out everything. Nick Gillard, who was our stunt coordinator, and I sat down and played this thing out with action figures and Matchbox cars and got it stitched together. We knew who was dying when, and how, and where the camera needed to be. It was insanity. We would get a shot and yell “Ok lets move!”. The camera crew was picking up their gear and literally running to the next set up, but without this insanity we would have never got this thing done. 

  “It was all about creating this sense of chaos [..] It was just about being in it, moving around and chasing people. Catching moments.”

  NOFS: I mean, when you’re flipping a giant plow you usually only get one take.

MPN: Oh yeah. You get one take for flipping the plow, one take for smashing through cars, and, actually, even for the bigger squib hits, we had one take. For some of the gun stuff, like if they were just shooting their guns, we could get a couple out of them just so we could get another angle. At one point we had three cameras rolling, which really helped. That was a life saver. 

It was all about creating this sense of chaos. There weren’t a lot of stylized action shots, except for maybe one where Kate is ejecting a shell from her rifle as she enters the fight. It was just about being in it, moving around and chasing people. Catching moments. That was the vibe I wanted to go for and I feel like we captured that.

  NOFS: You’re originally from Minnesota, correct?

MPN: Yep. Born and raised and still here. 

  NOFS: Do you feel like being from, and working in, the Midwest was a roadblock for your career as a filmmaker?

MPN: Not at all. I think I actually have more opportunities because I am in the Midwest, to be honest. Mainly because we have a great film community here and I have some of the most incredible friends and they’ve worked on all my short films and I’ve worked on their short films. We just set out to make good stuff, you know? Being somewhere bigger like L.A. or New York, I feel like you just get lost.

For me, living in the Midwest, working in the Midwest, making films in the Midwest was one of the things that gave me a different flavor. Especially when I pitched The Domestics to the studios, it was a big deal. A story set in the Midwest written by a guy from the Midwest, it was just something different and unique. So, for me, being located in the Midwest was a plus. 

    NOFS: You mentioned working on a lot of your friends’ short films. You have a lot of experience in the sound department, both as an editor and as a foley artist. What type of advice would you give aspiring directors out there about this experience?

MPN: In college, everyone wants to be a director or a cinematographer. I say “Find a trade”. Find something within the film world that you’re good at that’s not on of those two things. One thing that I liked to focus on when I was making my films in college was sound. I wanted to make the best sounding films I could. So, I learned how to do sound design. That’s how I got my jobs after college. I did foley art and sound design for several years, so for me, going into The Domestics and even when I write something, I write with sound in mind. I direct with sound in mind. 

Obviously, then, being able to work with Nathan Barr on the score was a “Dream Come True” type of situation for me. All the sonic stuff, working with Trevor (Gates) at Wildfire, getting that sound, getting that world building sound was so much fun. 

  NOFS: Ok, last one, Mike. What, if anything, is the message that you want audiences to take away from seeing The Domestics?

MPN: I feel like, with The Domestics, we made a pretty nasty world. When I was writing it, I wanted the message to be that, yes, This is a terrible world, and here is this broken relationship, but ultimately love can still push through all that in the end. No matter what your political stance is these days, this is a message that should resonate with everybody. Love is number one. Love will get us through anything. 

  NOFS: Mike, thank you so much for your time. Congratulations again on The Domestics,  and I cant wait to see what’s next for you. 

The Domestics is being released in select theaters on Thursday, June 28th and will see a VOD release June 29th. Do yourself a favor and find a way to see this film. When you do, head over to our Facebook group, Horror Fiends of Nightmare on Film Street, and let us know what you think!

  The post [Exclusive Interview] Introducing Mike P. Nelson, Director of THE DOMESTICS appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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