From Youtube Creepypasta to A24 Feature Film BACKROOMS Cast Director Interview

What do you think? I think we're dead meat. Real dead meat. A dead meat! Go ahead and laugh you guys. We're going to find a final group of glasses at this soon. A dead meat. Hey Kane, Chutal, Renan. It's so nice to meet you. We saw the movie yesterday and loved it. Appreciate it man. Yeah. Kane, your career up to this point's been primarily on the internet. What were your expectations before you met him and was there anything different about working with a director who didn't come up through the studio system? I remember because I had seen like these videos of Liminal Spaces and also seen some of Kane's short films but I didn't know like him or I was just intrigued by how big it was on online and six months later we had a conversation because I was offered to do this and that conversation was so great. I understood like how smart he is, how detailed he is in his work and the respect he had for the process of making this into a movie or making sure that that atmosphere and that environment that was kept in also adding these characters and like the characters was so it's kind of like they are marrying each other the characters and that their surroundings so yeah just the way he talked about it I knew that we would be taken care of. I think we had that first conversation I don't know what my expectations were actually I didn't have any I don't you know you just never know I mean I was I watched the the shorts and obviously I you know went down that that particular rabbit hole and it's very exciting it's terrifying it's all of the things and then I could have been meeting anybody you know what I mean I didn't know what the character at the other end of the zoom would be. I think in much the same way I was really taken with the conversation that we had and I think that what one of the things that Kane really emphasized was this desire to really sit in the psychology of these characters and to and to understand and let that kind of play out and and experiment really with finding how these characters sit within the the back rooms and how the environment and the psychology work together. So in that sense it wasn't necessarily I have to say necessarily different to the kind of conversation you might have with any director but it was it was marked by I guess this knowledge prior knowledge that Kane was a little younger than than other directors that I that I'd worked with I think it was basically the last time I thought about that yeah more or less yeah vanish very fast yeah yeah you forget yeah pretty quickly this background and you know relative lack of experience when it comes to at least making films and I find it so interesting that you start by making these videos by yourself on blender you even said like during the pandemic yeah I mean yeah I learned blendering yeah and so you're doing that all by yourself you know and filmmaking is such a collaborative process from everyone brings something to the table whether it's crew cast everyone so I'm curious what did they bring that wasn't on the script necessarily to their characters and was it anything so exciting that like it kind of changed how you thought of the characters or how you how you filmed I think inherently so many things evolved with the script as we went and just just simply from us talking about it like I didn't go into this thinking okay we got the script and now we abide by this like a bible it was sort of here's here's here's where we are now let's talk about it what are what conversations are we going to have that come out of you know you know the discourse of this proposed arc I suppose for these characters and I think we ended up finding uh you know with Mary a lot of elements regarding the the ways in which she she you know relies on these systems that she you know maybe preaches but doesn't practice and you know the method she's used to sort of uh get by over the years um like even the book and stuff kind of arose later on and a lot of those elements uh definitely weren't weren't in the original uh piece and sort of came through just our discussion of of how we wanted uh to portray this relationship with uh you know Mary's character and you know when she does engage with the backrooms and what is she really getting at there within herself like you guys did make my job very easy I would say in the regard of just a pretty a pretty strong intuitive understanding of where things were trending and and even though the specifics changed a little bit here and there I think you know the overall north star of it was pretty much the same I think I think Clark certainly became a more I think the sympathetic aspects of him became a lot more realized just when we were there on the day and just you know witnessing it in person I think you can find a sympathetic avenue in in Clark and you really can't understand where he's at psychologically for most points in the film and I think there's sort of a neutrality to both of the characters experiences where you know it's also kind of representative of I think a wide breadth of life experience within uh you know sort of what culturally we're looking at right now with you know many many different technological surges happening in the past few decades that are sort of uh you know causing some things to boil over and and I think it's you know all kind of a I'd say that was not the exact answer to the question you asked but it makes sense because like there's a tragic element to both characters that I feel is universal and that everyone can relate to just like I don't know the the sadness of what they're going through and uh you know you understand why they're making the decisions that they're making even if you wouldn't agree or necessarily make the same ones yeah I mean yeah that's inherent I'd say I think what I really liked about this movie is it's not um it's not necessarily an easter egg hunt if you're familiar with the back rooms like we're big fans of the web series they're there if you look for them um but you don't need to know anything about it before you go in but there's also references to other just general internet stuff yeah there's there's some stuff um am I imagining things or is there a reference to flea market montgomery in his commercial I notice he's pitching living rooms dinettes bedrooms yeah I mean I don't know if you it's it's it's in there it's in there we reviewed a lot of things and I think it I think it ended up in there whether or not it's a conscious choice uh we it has been consumed behind the scenes on this project are there any other not even necessarily uh like back rooms easter eggs but general internet kind of either references or things that kind of influenced the atmosphere or things to maybe look out for yeah I mean there's stuff that I don't think is like horribly shoehorned in there I think the most egregious thing is there's a track that plays in diegetically uh in the background faintly for for a few moments in like the you know the early portion of the film and people who look for that will know what it is pretty much immediately but even that's like you know within a stretch of the imagination period accurate and and so it's I don't know I'm not big on easter eggs that that don't serve the narrative in some way because I feel like for me the easter eggs that are most valuable are just you know symptoms of plot points that have yet to be fully realized later down the road and then and things that you can come back to it's more of a series I guess like mentality but like you know you have something far in the end that that you know adds a lot of additional context to stuff that was sort of thought out earlier on so I think it's things like things like that things you can derive little context clues from we gotta talk about the back rooms themselves because it's such striking imagery we've had you know we live in the horror world uh so we've known about this for a long time but as soon as the trailers started playing we've had so many non-horror people ask us about this movie like the interest is so high I think part of it is like the striking imagery and you both said you were familiar with the liminal spaces coming across your timelines even before this project so it's just something that I feel uh once someone sees it they can relate to it and like it just I don't know it taps into something almost primal so I know that 30,000 square feet of the sets were built I'm so curious about what went into it did you have any hard and fast rules that dictated the construction of these rooms or the things that go in them was there anything that you said it can't be like this ever because that would throw off the vibe of what we're going for yeah I mean there's there's undoubtedly a specific set of design principles that I use in the YouTube series and here it's I mean same when I talk about it it's all the same continuity but when building these spaces I think the same principles applied which are usually I guess like a distinction just might be worth making like two are that I feel often because the backgrounds is obviously a you know a pretty public concept and there's a lot of different interpretations there's two things that I don't always personally think are the most effective one which is the inclusion or over-reliance on like non-euclidean geometry and whatnot and and and that's a preference that's definitely a preference you can pull it off and it can be great but I feel as though you know there's something I like quite strongly about the backrooms feeling like a building built by people and then it's just the you know certain construction choices that don't make a lot of sense and you know a hallway that's slightly too narrow or you know like a crevice that you can even put a desk in so why is it there in the first place stuff like that like lots of it's sort of like gets absurd and impossible through your continued you know exploration and probing of it rather than an immediate like I walk this way and then I walk back and ---- wait this is a different room I think I think the I think it's scarier to me thinking that you end up getting lost in there wandering for a while knowing that you can backtrack and be in like a you know it works for your brain your your primate brain is able to kind of understand but I feel like if you just like immediately if the environment's changing all around you you you lose the game too quickly there's not like a you could it could go on for longer before you have to give up at a certain point I think so I think it's that and then it's just sort of avoiding stuff that's too expected like it's not human centric it's not picking these icons that it knows are important to the human race and it's not reading people's minds and deciding this is the most you know you know special little little spot from your own life to look at it's it's more like people are projecting their own importance onto what kind of feel like almost randomly selected elements from outside and there's obviously a logic to it and it's populated with so much weird stuff I'm curious where things were sourced from and did anyone take anything home there's certain movies where I feel like it must be so tempting to bring stuff home yeah I took one of the chimes the wind chimes and at the time we did like this you know big kind of violent scene with those uh over and over and over with that sound but I really like I find comfort in it now it's like uh yeah it's it's ringing all the time in the wind in Norway yeah you only told me that a moment ago that's I love that yeah yeah that's a good practical one it'd be tempting to take something really huge and then regret it yeah I have the sun paintings in my apartment oh so that's all the art I have there where there's like a bunch of okay yeah oh cool yeah and and playing in that environment must have been so refreshing as an actor just having these weird things to play off of and and run through it's so physical these roles uh was there any training that you had to do for that like especially right now I feel like you know not to get too spoilery but late in the film you're you're running around it's in the trailer you're like squeezing through yeah I love the like physical acting and I even though I do a lot of like indie movies I do some very small stunts that you can't even see because they're so emotional but um no I I when I first watched this like the liminal spaces videos I was I was so struck by how lonely I felt because of how many people that had seen it and I was not sure what they saw if they saw the same as me and I couldn't articulate what it was or understand exactly what it was that I felt it just felt very uneasy it kind of hit me in so many different levels watching it and then coming into those it was the same I was I I didn't like being in the well I loved that that it was built and the just whole construction and it was so impressive but it was I was never alone I always asked someone to follow me through people would get lost and stuff in the 30,000 square feet of set yeah yeah and was all that used do you think uh or was yeah it was all because the thought of like building part of it and then you never get around to shooting it like that freaks me out oh like the idea that there's like some yeah that's true no sorry there's definitely areas in the sets that are not used uh all the technically each set is at least somewhat shot but but yeah there's hallways you see them you see them in the background you see I think you can appreciate that they exist and there's doors that lead to areas we don't quite see I'm sure it affects the performers as well you know even if the camera doesn't see it and the audience doesn't see it you're seeing it yeah yeah you've got your own back rooms on the set yeah outside the kitchen and everything like areas going back there and whatnot so I love the theming too of the the store uh oh yeah should we yeah unless it's real fast no no I just wanted to know was he always a pirate were there options uh yeah no it was a pirate from the beginning great there's a lot of yeah and I won't say more but but I think people will dig into it and look at some of the I think symbolism can be a crutch a lot of the time and I wouldn't ever lead with it but but in this case yeah yeah see that's what I mean it's like you you get to feel smart for having things layered but but but uh no there's some specific reasoning behind like the you know pirate steering wheel parrot ocean all that all right well thank you so much we could talk for so long but uh you've got other interviews to do so thank you thank you thank you so much can't wait to see you again