The Overnight
In The Overnight, LA eccentrics Kurt and Charlotte (Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche) play host to recent arrivals Alex and Emily (Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling, above) for an evening neither couple will likely forget. The second feature from writer/director Patrick Brice, The Overnight, which marked its premier at Sundance, emerges as a funny, risqué and raw take on thirty-something sexual frustration and parenthood.
We met with Brice and Naomi Scott (wife of Adam Scott, who produced the film in conjunction with the Duplass Brothers), at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles.
THN: Tell us – what was the genesis of The Overnight?
Patrick Brice: I had made this other film, Creep, with Mark Duplass and we wanted to work together again. And so he basically said, if you write a script, I’ll produce it for you. I wrote it and we took it to Adam and Naomi as both producers and having Adam act in the film as well.
THN: I’ll assume that the script was pretty good. Mark Duplass didn’t say, just write any script and…
PB: Anything, anything (laughs)…
THN: Did you go through any development with it? What was that process like?
PB: Basically, we knew we were going to have a limited budget with the film, so we set it primarily in one location with only four actors. It was basically going from there and thinking, “What’s something that we can have happen that’s dynamic and crazy, within these constraints?”
THN: You made a horror film prior to this. Was the approach logistically similar?
PB: Actually, this is like a blockbuster compared to the film that we made before. That movie, Creep, that I made with Mark Duplass, we had no crew. It was just the two of us and a video camera out in the woods improvising together. For this, having a full script, having a crew, having a bunch of people around me helping me out was just… Every single thing that we got was just a blessing for me.
Naomi Scott: You had craft service too!
PB: Right! No wardrobe supervisor, though.
NS: No (laughs)…
The Overnight
THN: Tell us about your cast.
PB: The first person to actually read the script was Judith Godrèche. She had been wanting to work with Mark for a while. They had been corresponding and I happened to write this role that was perfect for her. So having her read it and respond to it initially was hugely encouraging for me.
THN: What had you seen Judith in before?
PB: I’d seen her in Ridicule (Patrice Leconte, 1996) and L’Auberge Espagnole (Cédric Klapisch, 2002). But I hadn’t seen her recently though. She has a lot of big comedies, mostly for the French speaking market. So I was sent a series of clips and I was like, “This is it. She’s the one”. Adam Scott is someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time. I was a huge fan of Party Down (Starz 2009-2010)… Taylor Schilling was someone who came up – everyone kind of became kind of involved in the casting and we were all fans of Orange is the New Black and her work in that. So I’m excited for this movie to get out there, because I feel it’s kind of a new version of her coming out into the world. And then, finally, Jason Schwartzman. He was kind of like this dream that swooped in at the last minute and rounded it all out.
NS: He was the last cast. And pretty quickly before we were shooting. But he brought the missing piece that we needed to make it complete.
THN: Jason had worked with Adam before – is that right?
NS: Jason had been on Parks and Recreation…They’d been looking for a project for a while. Something was very close to coming together a few months before and it didn’t work out. So when this came up… It was kind of an easy ask. It had to do with his availability. Jason’s wife (Brady Cunningham) literally just had a baby two weeks before we started shooting. So I think he was up nights already (laughs)…
THN: Which brings us to the shoot. You shot the film mostly at night, I understand.
PB: Yes… We would show up at work around 4 or 5 and then work until the sun came up, basically, around 6 AM, for twelve days… eleven days.
THN: Much to the delight of the neighbours…
PB: (Laughs)… Personally, I loved it. Because you’re shooting a movie at night and nothing else is going on, it creates this really intense focus with both the actors and the crew. Nothing else in the world really matters besides this film that you’re making. It also creates this sense of delirium. I remember when I used to stay up as late as I possibly could with my friends and you’d just be giggling at 3 o’clock in the morning at anything. You know, it doesn’t matter what it was. Everything was funny. And we would get to that point where we would kind of be delirious towards the end of it. That was when we knew we needed to stop. There’s an energy in the film that exists because of that.
THN: One of my favorite scenes is the nude dance sequence with the two guys. Tell us about that. What was it like shooting it? What was it like for them?
PB: For me, as a writer and director, it was one of the most fulfilling moments of my filmmaking life. I was standing there with a full crew watching this happen and just thinking to myself, oh my god, this came out of my head. This is what I saw in my head when I was writing this. Precisely. And so to have a moment like that where that’s realized is just the best. To have people come onboard who are excited, willing, and brave enough to jump into making a moment like that happen, was just the best.
NS: And it was as fun to shoot as it is to watch. I mean, it was as shocking, kind of, for all of us too. You know, Jason felt very comfortable in his prosthetic. It was a prosthetic. And we hadn’t seen it revealed. We hadn’t seen Adam come out like that either. So it was really a big reveal for the crew too. I think we had the best camera guys – that they didn’t break and lose it, because it was really a fun show (laughs).
THN: You took the film to Sundance, which was the first time you showed it with an audience. What was that experience like?
PB: It was amazing. The biggest number of people that had watched it at that point was 12 or 13, just showing it to a small test audience. Going from 12 or 13 people to 1200 people was hugely intimidating. I remember sitting next to Naomi. The lights went down and the film started. And then there’s this moment at the beginning where we were hoping there would be a laugh. When there was one, all the sweat drained from my body. “Okay, we’re going to be okay.”
NS: We had never seen the film on a big screen in its entirety. We didn’t have time to test it. We didn’t have resources to do that. It looked good in our minds, but that was on a small screen in our editors’ suite. So it was so satisfying. I just kept thinking, we don’t know all of these people in this theater. So they’ve got to be liking it not just because they like us. It was pretty sweet.
The Overnight is released in UK cinemas from 26th June, 2015. It is now playing in US cinemas.
