Arrow Video Frightfest returns for its twentieth year of frightful delights later this month. Running from Thursday 22nd August to Monday 26th August, the film festival showcases the best and brightest in films that embrace the darker side of cinema. In the run-up to the festival, we at THN are bringing you a series of interviews with some of the filmmakers presenting the fruits of their labour to the Frightfest audiences.
True Fiction screens at Frightfest on Saturday 24th August and is the third feature from Canadian writer and director Braden Croft. The film tells the story of the twisting relationship between Avery (Sara Garcia) and Caleb (John Cassini). Avery is a wannabe writer whom lands a dream job, assisting her all time favourite author Caleb Conrad. The job involves staying at his isolated home, relinquishing her communication devices and subjecting herself to some intense psychological profiling. As the tests get increasingly more stressful, Avery’s grasp on reality begins to come unstuck.
Unfolding like any good psychological thriller, and having a distinct Stephen King air to it, True Fiction is a very impressive genre film. Ahead of the screening at Frightfest, we sat down with Braden to get a little more insight into the film and discuss the great works of Stephen King.
What made you want to get into film-making?
That’s always the best question to start with. What got me into film-making was I think I’d have to say my dad. He was a big Steven Spielberg fan. He was also the first one to tell me that actors didn’t make up their lines on the spot and what I was seeing. Like gore wise with horror films, he kind of broke down how they made that. Right away as a young kid I wanted to be first an actor, and then the person that wrote the lines for the actor when I found out they didn’t make them up. Then I wanted to be the person who decided what was on screen once I realised writers don’t have any say in that. It progressively went towards a film-making career behind the camera.
You’re a writer and director, which one came first for you?
Actually as a kid I was writing a ton. Stephen King books, a lot of that stuff plugged me into the horror genre, so I wrote a lot as a very young kid, writing really silly stories about dust bunnies under my bed that got published in a provincial catalogue of children’s stories. That started off the writing, and then the writing lead to film-making and naturally I wanted to be a director first and foremost, but after film school you quickly realise that film costs money and it’s a whole lot cheaper to tell a story on paper first. I’m thankful for that, I think screenwriting is the backbone of cinema.
Braden Croft
True Fiction is your third feature, but it’s the first one to be told from a female perspective. What was it about this story that made you feel that a female voice was the right way to go?
I think right at the beginning, when I was trying to find the relationship between two characters in a chamber piece, initially there was going to be an underlying sexual tension. Being a heterosexual male it was kinda obvious – let’s try a female / male, and you couple that with the whole #MeToo movement coming around. I did feel an obligation to stretch myself further than I was comfortable with and take on the opposite sex.
I humoured switching the power dynamic and having a young male with an older female, and at the end of the day I identified with the naivety of a young woman being very vulnerable to seeking fame and fortune and her ambitions. I was also thinking a lot about what if I was an older man, an older screenwriter or what not, and I became jaded. What would be the worst version of that? That was Caleb Conrad’s character.
It was a natural fit [to tell the female angle], but it was a challenge from the beginning to see if I could find a true voice and true character, and push myself as a writer. It sharpened the tools for both sexes, my favourite filmmakers are very male-centric, like Scorsese being the obvious example, but even he made female centred films before too. I think it was just out of necessity that I really wanted to exercise that, and I felt it fit the story really well and it reflected on me as a person, the two sides.
You’ve already mentioned Stephen King… when I was watching True Fiction it has definitely got a lot of The Shining and Misery vibes. I’m guessing you’re a big fan of Mr King?
Yeah, since I was a young kid.
Favourite film or book?
I love The Long Walk, his Richard Bachman story. I heard it’s finally getting an adaptation, which is interesting because it’s such a cerebral film in many ways, but I hope that they do it well. I’m actually a little bitter that I couldn’t make that one. I would say The Long Walk is my favourite book, Salem’s Lot is a close second. Favourite film? Misery is such a good film on so many levels, that’s a tough one, The Shining probably.
I have a soft spot for Maximum Overdrive.
(Laughs) I saw that, again going back to my dad. He said, ‘oh you like Stephen King? You’ll like this’, he’s not a big horror film guy, but he recommended Maximum Overdrive and I was like, ‘who in the world directed this one?!’ and yeah, Stephen King’s only film.
Braden Croft
Sticking with Stephen King and The Shining, I’m not sure whether it was intentional or not, but when I was watching True Fiction, I thought that John Cassini had a very Jack Nicholson vibe mainly to the way he was speaking, was that something that you guys discussed doing?
It certainly wasn’t a direction on my part, but whether John channelled that or not I’m not sure. I do know there’s a couple of moments when we’re shooting over his head and he looks up over his glasses at Avery, and at the time I definitely thought that was something very Nicholson / Kubrick look.
The film is all set in the one single location, how did you track down the location?
That’s a funny story, initially I wrote it as a very big Hammer film giant Gothic mansion, and no such thing exists in Alberta, Canada. So our next best bet was to find something remote and open so that someone can run and hide in the context on the film. It couldn’t be too small, and the best that we found was a Polish couple’s luxury cabin of which they lived right beside in a smaller little attachment that used to belong to Jann Arden. Jann is a famous folk / country singer, which is really funny because you would never associate her with anything like horror films, but it really served us well. We did our best to make it seem like it was bigger, more corridors, more rooms than there actually was. That’s how it came to be a cabin in the woods story of sorts, which is what I was trying to get away from in writing, haunted mansion. I’d rather go back to the Robert Wise The Haunting setting, but that wasn’t in the cards.
Braden Croft
The film goes to some weird and wonderful places and has the audience themselves questioning what is reality and what isn’t. How hard was it to write in those beats?
That was the fun of it, just putting it on paper. Maybe I have a little bit of ADD, but if I’m not into my own story while I write it, I immediately shut off and writer’s block sets in. Right away developing the script I found that I had to have a lot of twists. I had to have a lot of, call it like back and forth of a snake’s body to get the movie moving forward at a quick pace. It was really all in the plotting and the character work at a writing stage. I kinda put my faith in, if I wasn’t bored, then the audience wouldn’t be bored.
In many ways the audience have to make up their mind who is right and who is wrong.
That was a huge interest of mine, especially from Bill Paxton’s film Frailty. I absolutely loved the big reveal at the end and I just thought what if we had an unreliable narrator that kind of went back and forth, but the audience has a full film. To get that feeling of back and forth, who am I cheering for?
Braden Croft
Ahead of it’s European premiere at Arrow Video Frightfest, True Fiction has already had it’s World premiere, what was the reception?
It was good. I was nervous because I went to quite a few other films and it was hit or miss as to how many people would come, but we did pack out the theatre. I’m a nervous wreck, I can’t help but sit in the theatre and watch it with the crowd, but I’m also wringing my hands and just pulling my hair out. The few laughs that are in the film really hit, and there were gasps, and yeah there were a few natural reactions out there, not enough to put my anxiety at ease, but altogether I couldn’t say it was a bad screening at all. It was really good.
What are the Frightfest audience going to get from True Fiction that they might not get from some of the other films screening?
I think it’s a break from the norm. Hopefully people find that the film subverts their expectations, which I know is a double-edged sword. Sometimes they go in wanting a certain thing and only that, but you have to cleanse the palette. I think this one is a palette cleanser. If you want a little bit more head space in your film, then maybe this is the film for them.
What are you working on once True Fiction is out of the way?
I’ve got a few. I have a cyberpunk thriller – they’re all in different stages of development – Julian Black Antelope is a producer and actor and I know that he’s got a period piece that he wants to collaborate on, which is a monster tale of sorts. I also have a siege film that’s basically Evil Dead meets Green Room. I’m really excited for that because it is a one location film, and I think it may just tickle genre fans a little bit more than True Fiction might.
True Fiction screens at Arrow Video Frightfest on Saturday 24th August.
