Director's Cut

>> Get them out of there. >> What? >> The barn! No! >> Hey! >> Stop! >> Hey! >> Stop! >> Welcome to Director's Cut. I'm your guest host, Doug Gordon. That was a clip from the feature film "Dead Weight." It's a drama horror film that was shot entirely in the state of Wisconsin. We are joined today by Oshkosh natives John Pata and Adam Bartlett. John and Adam co-wrote and co-directed "Dead Weight." Thank you so much for joining us today, John and Adam. Congratulations on "Dead Weight." It's a terrific film, wonderful. >> Thank you. >> Can we start, John, by asking you to give a brief outline of the story, without of course, revealing any major spoilers? >> Of course. "Dead Weight" is a survival horror story mixed with a post-apocalyptic love story. It focuses on a guy named Charlie Russell, who's in search of his girlfriend, Samantha after the United States crumbles due to a biological outbreak. The film really focuses on his journey, the people he meets, the situation he's facing, while he's also dealing with his own emotional burdens. >> Nicely done. And you have a great tagline for the film. Can you tell me what that is, Adam? >> Yeah, the tagline is "learn to let it go." That's something that we thought about what it could be, in advance, for a long time. That was something I just kind of threw out there, and we never talked about it again. >> No, we didn't have to. It was perfect. >> The film has been described in many reviews as a zombie film. Yet, correct me if I'm wrong gentlemen, but the word "zombie" is never uttered once in the film. Are these zombies? Are they not? Does it even matter? >> We like to think of them a little bit different. But I think at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, because that's really the backdrop for the film. It takes place in this setting, we don't focus on the outbreak or the infected by any means. It's all about the characters. >> Definitely. One of the things I kind of think right now, we're at this point in our history, we're kind of in a moment that I like to call "peak zombie," kind of like peak oil, and the fact that we've been so inundated in popular culture with the undead that people are kind of tired of it. What do you think? >> I think that it's true, that you know, it's definitely like at a peak with popularity, especially with a lot of shows that are on TV, or films that have been coming out over the last few years. It's just sort of widely accepted. It's like it's not even a horror thing anymore for a lot of people, you know, it's just like part of their Sunday viewing. They watch a zombie show. But even though it may be becoming a little bit oversaturated, or maybe reaching like this peak popularity point, I think that kind of could open a path for young people that are getting interested in storytelling, and kind of giving them a device to maybe, I'm really, really into this, but maybe I have this new perspective on it, being a young person growing up in a new world. Because, you know, Romero zombie films kind of came out of a social environment, and were a commentary on that. People growing up now that might be getting into filmmaking or storytelling are in a totally different social environment, and might have totally different inspiration for using that same device to tell a different type of story, or have a different type of meaning to their story. >> So, is that a conscious decision on your part, that you didn't want to label it as a zombie film, because of the zombie fatigue that we're experiencing? >> I wouldn't say directly, but it was in the back of our mind, absolutely. We did, when we started writing, we thought of it being more of a straight up horror movie, where we were going to have a little bit more gore and a little bit more violence. But in the writing process, we kind of slowly started to chip that away, and wanted, really, just to focus on the characters. We thought it would be interesting to do a zombie type movie, where you don't see the zombies. >> It wasn't that we really kind of forced it. It was a very organic process through editing. Through editing the script and fleshing out these characters, we realized that the characters were moving to the forefront of being much more important than a lot of the horror elements that were laying the foundation. >> Yeah, well let's take a look at another clip from "Dead Weight." In this scene, Charlie, played by Joe Belknap, is having dinner with his girlfriend, Samantha, played by Mary Lindberg. Let's roll this clip from "Dead Weight." >> Something amazing happened to me at work this week, and I wanted to wait until we were together to tell you. >> Mm-hmm. >> Marcus, my boss, called me into his office. I had had the worst day. I was homesick and I was overwhelmed with work. And I sit down and he starts gushing about how great I've been. >> Yeah, Sammy-pants! When you're done with the internship, he's going to write you a great letter of recommendation, and then you can come home. >> Well, um, that's just it. He told me that they're expanding the graphics department, and he offered me a full-time position at the company. >> So wait, you're saying... >> I'm going to stay in Minneapolis. I took the job on Wednesday. >> You didn't think to talk to me about this? >> I'm talking to you right now. >> Yeah, after the fact. Didn't you want to get my input on this? We've been together a long time, Samantha. How is this just some small decision? >> Well, I just thought... There's not that much keeping us in Toledo. There are a ton of screen printing shops here, and we work with one of them directly. Marcus goes fishing with the owner all the time. He could put in a good word for you. >> He could? Marcus? Maybe I should date Marcus? We could go fishing. >> You're not being fair here. This is an outstanding opportunity for me professionally. I want you to be here with me. >> We're ready for the bill. >> That's a great scene. That really illustrates just how well developed these characters are. John, is that something that you and Adam talked about as you were writing the screenplay, or even before you were writing the screenplay, that you wanted to create these really three-dimensional characters? >> Absolutely. We have about 25 speaking parts in the film. I would say that 75% of them have essential backstories that we wrote. We spent a lot of time before we even hit the computer to write the script, fleshing out all these characters and their backstories, especially Charlie and Samantha, because that's really what the film is about. It's about this relationship that's falling apart over a matter of time. And then, as that happens, the outbreak happens, and now they're separated by distance. So character development was a big part of it. We have plenty of notes that never hit the screen, but we wrote them, so we knew who the characters were. >> That shows on the screen. It helps, doesn't it, Adam, to have really talented actors, too? >> Yeah, and a lot of the people that were involved, even though they performed amazingly well and surpassed all our expectations, a lot of them were just, we pulled from our groups of friends. Of the 25 or so speaking roles that John mentioned, there were maybe four or five that were filled by people that were experienced actors, people that were from part of the acting, theater groups from Chicago, or theater groups from the area here, or had done some former TV work. The rest of them were people that we kind of knew. We didn't have a lot of money, so we couldn't just cast SAG actors for everything, or people who had done professional work. We just had to kind of reach into our pool of friends, people that we knew were talented, that had some of the attributes we had written in the characters we had, and find people to sit down with and work through, and direct, and do read throughs. For instance, Charlie is played by Joe. Joe had never acted before he was in "Dead Weight." >> Wow. >> So that was his first role. >> That's unbelievable. >> We're very, very proud of the work that he's done, and that everyone did. But for Joe to come in and be in every minute of the movie, except for about 52 seconds, one 52-second scene, is the only time he's not in the film. It was a long process, but we're really happy with how everything came together. >> Oh, yeah, and you have a lot of talented friends. Of course, we have to give you guys props for writing such a great screenplay. The fact that "Dead Weight" is so character driven makes it that much more impressive. I don't know how you guys feel, I want to get your reaction to this, but it seems to me that a lot of horror films today, there's not a lot of emphasis placed on character development. And as a result, we're not as invested in the character as we can and should be. What do you guys think? >> Absolutely. I think nowadays, and probably starting in the '80s when the slasher boom hit, but you kind of just have disposable characters, where you're going to go into a movie, and you know they're going to get killed off, and that's kind of the joy of those movies. You just wait for those death scenes to happen. But a lot of films in the '60s and '70s, and even to nowadays, they're very character driven. I think that's a characteristic that used to happen in a lot of older horror films, that focused really on the character. >> This would be a good time to talk about the structure of "Dead Weight." That scene we just watched between Charlie and Samantha is a flashback. You used flashbacks very effectively in this film. Can you talk about how you came up with the structure, and your decisions to alternate between present time and flashbacks so effectively? >> That was actually one of the initial four or five bullet points when John and I had been working together, and I kind of presented him with these few ideas I had for what would become "Dead Weight." It was sort of, this guy is on a journey; we don't really know why or what for, but it's post-apocalyptic; and there's flashbacks, and the timelines kind of go like this, and they kind of meet at a certain point. John was like, oh, I never really saw something like that before, and that was pretty much the basis for "Dead Weight, like the way the two timelines worked together, complement each other, that's the spine of "Dead Weight," right there. It was the most difficult thing. We knew it was very important to make sure it worked. That's what we spent the most time on, was drawing out timelines, charting out all the events that happen on both timelines, making sure that all the edits and cuts between those two timelines are relevant to each other, make sense, and help move the story along instead of stalling it out at any one point. So that's what we spent, probably, the most time focusing on, outside of just the general writing, was making sure that these two timelines worked. We knew if we blew that, it wasn't going to work. >> It worked, because you guys nailed it. Let's take a look at another clip from "Dead Weight." In this scene, Charlie and his fellows survivors have encountered three rather sinister survivors. Let's roll that clip. >> Where are you from? >> Let me ask, was it the accent or the mountain oysters that gave it away? >> Yes. >> Well, to answer your question, I'm from Cynthiana, Kentucky. I came up here to visit my cousin, Roy, over here, about the time everything turned to

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. I haven't been able to make it back home. >> Where are you from? >> Me? Roy and I are from Morrisonville >> Where's that? >> Oh, not too far from here. I'd say no more than 20 miles. >> That's it? You mean, after all this time, you haven't even traveled that far? >> Why would we? >> Since everything's gone

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, it seems most people are out there looking for something, or someone. >> We found y'all, didn't we? Besides, we been able to maintain. Surviving this here area. Why chance it trying to find somethin' else? >> What if there's a civilized area? A safe place, where people are starting over? >> Did you find it yet? >> No. >> What are you lookin' for anyway? You're travelin'. You know as much as anyone that the cities are pretty much all overrun. >> I'd like to believe that there's something better than wandering around and eating meals out of cans. >> Good luck. >> So, did y'all find this food at that farmhouse we saw ya at? I'll take that as a yes. >> I'll take that as you've been watching us. >> I wouldn't say it's so much watchin' as it's more observing. >> Observing for what? >> For our survival. You see, while you're out walkin' around tryin' to find your holy land, we stay put. Ain't no reason to go nowhere. All the folks we come across bring everything we need, right to us. >> Wow, those are three guys I would not want to run into in a post-apocalyptic landscape, or even in our current landscape.

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It makes me think that throughout this film, that scene illustrates that in "Dead Weight," it's really the humans that are the monsters, aren't they? These there guys from Kentucky are particularly monstrous, aren't they? Was that something intentional on your part? >> Absolutely. We always viewed the story as, it's the horrors of humanity. Again, it's in this zombie type setting, but that's not the focus. It's all about people, and what happens when you take away our rules and our regulations, that keep us, for the most part, well behaved. >> Adam, where did you shoot "Dead Weight"? >> We shot "Dead Weight" all around the Fox Valley area in Wisconsin, around Oshkosh. Basically, between Appleton and Fond du Lac, and then west of Oshkosh about 15 miles, or so. All of the sort of post-apocalyptic stuff, which makes up probably about 70% of the film, I would say, was shot maybe on three or four different people's private land out west of Oshkosh in the Fisk area. One of our producers, script supervisors, and location scouts, Lee, he grew up in that area, knew a lot of people that had farmland. After he read the script, he came to us and was like, you guys, you need rural. I have rural.

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Then him and John would just drive around out there. There was one specific location that ended up working great for a number of scenes. They were just driving down a street, going between two places that Lee had in mind, and John was just like, "Stop the car!" And it's this beautiful abandoned house. Neither of them knew who owned it, who owned the land. Lee found out and had us approved to film there within like a week. >> Mm-hmm. >> From knowing nothing about it. So, it was a lot of that, a lot of businesses in the Oshkosh area for some of the flashback stuff, Outagamie Airport for a scene, and then a hotel in Fond du Lac. That really sums it up. There was a lot of support from the community with the flashback stuff, filming at those businesses, letting us just kind of come in when they were closed or right before they open, or whatever, and just kind of taking over for a couple hours and throwing down the lines. >> How long did it take to shoot the film? >> We shot the post-apocalyptic narrative in seven consecutive days in April of 2011. Then, because we wanted the flashbacks to have a completely different feel, we came back in August and shot for 3-1/2 days then. So collectively, the film was shot in just under 11 days. >> That's amazing for a feature film. >> Long days! >> And long nights, I would imagine. >> Absolutely. >> I don't think that we could talk about "Dead Weight" without talking about the post-apocalyptic setting, because it plays such an important role in the film. The landscape is almost like a character. What attracted you guys to the idea of the post-apocalyptic setting? >> It's something that we both enjoy, but is one of my favorite, sort of, like you said, it becomes a character. It's one of my favorite settings for stories. Steven King's "Dark Tower" series, Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," a number of other books that are just about a man or a couple people traveling, trying to get somewhere, and trying to survive, and trying to deal with the survival and how they are handling it. Like John said, Charlie is dealing with his own emotional burdens. That's just as much of a character as anyone else, just like the landscape is and the environment is. So that was something. I knew we wanted it to be a personal struggle for survival, and going on a journey. And a post-apocalyptic landscape really lends itself nicely to presenting a number of problems that you can work with and write into a story and make a character deal with. >> Absolutely. I think that now would be a great time to look at another clip from "Dead Weight. This is a scene in which Charlie is talking to two people that he's encountered during his trip, a couple named Harrison and Ellen. Let's roll that clip from "Dead Weight." >> Where do you plan to go? >> Wherever the road will take us. >> Okay, but where did the road start for you then? >> In the good ol' Upper Peninsula. >> Close to the Canadian border, right along I-75. Truth be known, we had no intention on leaving, but being so close to the border, it caused a problem. You see, once word got out about what was going on, folks in our neck of the woods wanted to cross over into Canada. The Canadian Armed Forces set up a barrier. No one was allowed to enter. No one was allowed to leave. The border became a kill-zone. >> It was awful. The Canadian Armed Forces, they just started killing everybody. Innocent people. Women, children. Some of those people might have been infected, but you couldn't tell. >> It was a slaughter right in our front yard, just because people were trying to survive. >> Jesus Christ. >> Jesus, God or Allah have nothing to do with this. This is humanity turning on itself, plain and simple. This was started by people, not nature, but Americans themselves. >> What do you mean? >> You didn't learn much before you left out, did you dear? >> News, communications, they lasted longer up in the far north. Everyone on Canadian Broadcasting was saying that this was some sort of infection, viral, whatever. This is not about the dead coming back to life. This is about something taking control. Using you. The bite puts whatever into your body. From there it's all over. It's just a matter of time. >> Now, as a Canadian, gentlemen, I have to confess, I was a little disappointed that you guys decided to play the blame Canada card. Why? Why?! >> It's not so much "blame Canada," as much as it's Canada going, we don't want what's going on in the U.S. >> It's smart Canada. Stay out of here! >> I misread it.

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But in all seriousness, this is a very chilling scene, and it lets us know that this outbreak is not just confined to the Midwest. Was that the point of having that scene in there, Adam? >> Yeah, it was a lot of that, and sort of, we just kind of dropped the viewer into the story, without any knowledge. There's the sort of the introductory scene that lets you know that everything has gone crazy. But there's not really much information about exactly what's going on. We don't really, as anyone will know, or tell you, or you can read anywhere, you don't really see much of the infected at all for the first good portion of the movie. It's a lot more just about the characters and them surviving. So people don't really know a lot about the environment, and we decided to kind of throw that in there to give people just a little bit of information about the history of this and what's going on. We have pages and pages and pages of, this is what type of infection it is, this is where it came from, this is who unleashed it, this is how it affects people, this is the incubation period, this is why there's no children around that are infected. Like, we have extensive notes on all that. The way the virus works is based on instances in the natural world, things with animals, and parasites, and insects controlling other organisms, and kind of based around some synthetic biological technology stuff. That's why we wanted that in there, to kind of give people a little bit more to latch onto, to kind of give a little bit more meat to the world that everyone's existing in. >> And we don't have the budget to show all of this. >> Yeah. >> You know, we can get it into people's heads by saying it. >> Exactly, and then the power of imagination, sometimes the scariest things are the things you can imagine. I'm not surprised you guys have pages of notes. You're ready to turn this into a franchise.

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You've got enough material there. I wanted to ask you about Steve Herson, who plays Harrison in that scene. He gives a really great performance. He's not on the screen very long, but he makes the most of his screen time. While watching the film, during this scene, I had the sense of, wait a second, can Charlie trust him. There's something kind of menacing about him. I'm just wondering, was that intentional, John, or was that just me? >> I think it's actually a little bit of Steve. We definitely wrote that character a certain way. Originally, we expected them to be a little bit older, more in their late 60s, early 70s, but we just couldn't find anyone that fit that type of casting. Then we came across Steve at a table read in Chicago, and he was very passionate about the project and wanted in. We brought him on board, and Steve just has this very welcoming charm to him, but he does have that little bit of that persona. We were like, is this is a good guy? I know I can trust him, but he's a little questionable. He definitely added a little flavor to Harrison that we didn't expect. >> Let's look at one more clip from "Dead Weight." This is from near the end of the film, when Charlie and Samantha have been reunited. Let's roll that clip from "Dead Weight." >> Doug was getting worse. He attacked me. He came after me. At the time I didn't understand what was... what he was doing. But now I know he was infected. He kept coming after me, and I warned him to stop, but he didn't. I swung the bat. I hit him in the head. He fell down, but it didn't really stop him. I didn't have it in me to hit him again, so I just ran. I was on my own for three days. Thankfully, I found Bruce and Janelle. >> God... >> What? >> Getting here? The things I've done. >> What are you talking about? >> I just wanted to get to you. That's all I've thought about. That's all I've cared about for weeks. >> You're not making any sense. >> I've done terrible things. >> We all had to do things that we normally wouldn't. >> Not like this. >> What did you do? Charlie? >> Another very powerful scene from "Dead Weight." John, I'm curious about what kind of reaction you've gotten to the film, especially because in your press materials, you even describe it as a drama-horror film. How have people responded? >> We've been really pleased with the response. We had positive feedback from both the horror crowd and the non-horror crowd, because it does have enough drama that it pulls in non-horror viewers, but then it also has enough of the horror elements to pull in those really diehard horror hounds. So, we've been very pleased and we've screened it at about 18 film festivals, and won some awards for the film, so we couldn't be any happier. >> No, congratulations. So, what's the next step? Adam, when can we look forward to seeing "Dead Weight" coming soon to a theater near us? >> Well, we're working on it. Securing distribution for an independent self-produced film is an uphill battle, for sure. But we've been talking with people. We have some people working in our favor, and time will tell. We'll see what happens. We keep giving them information and tools to work with. We keep submitting to film festivals, and we keep on sending it out for reviews and sitting down to talk to people like yourself. We're just going to keep doing that as long as we can until it gets someone's interest and we can see it across the nation. >> Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on the film. >> Thank you. >> It's really terrific. I was just really, really knocked out by how good it was. It's just fantastic. >> Appreciate it. >> It's an independent film, I appreciate you guys joining us today. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. John Pata and Adam Bartlett are the co-writers and co-directors of "Dead Weight." Thank you very much, again, gentlemen, and thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information on "Dead Weight," please go to wpt.org and click on Director's Cut. I'm your guest host, Doug Gordon. Until next time, remember, we can always fix it in post. >> What good is a gun with no bullets? >> Well... We know the gun is empty right now, and you're pretty uncomfortable.