This week TriBeCa film festival begins. Over the course of the eleven days, from 5th June – 16th June, the festival will showcase a variety of feature films and shorts. Of the many movies playing, one to keep an eye on is Calvin Lee Reeder’s The A-Frame.
Starring Johnny Whitworth and Dana Namerode, The A-Frame screens as part of the Midnight strand and blends sci-fi, horror, comedy, and cancer with fantastic results. Whitworth stars as a quantum physicist whose groundbreaking machine inadvertently opens a portal to a subatomic universe while attempting to prove its efficacy. During his experiments on rats, he stumbles upon a radical cancer treatment that could revolutionise modern medicine. Driven by ambition and the desire to legitimise his work, the physicist begins human trials, raising the stakes and blurring the lines between science and ethics.
The A-Frame is a fun and exciting slice of goopy science-fiction. Ahead of the film’s premiere on 7th June, THN were granted time with writer and director Calvin Lee Reeder as well as lead actors Johnny Whitworth and Dana Namerode. Our conversation tackled goopy effects, comparisons to The Fly, and why you should not miss this film at TriBeCa.
Calvin, Mad science stories are so often told from the perspective of the scientist, what prompted the idea to access this story from the subject’s point of view?
CALVIN LEE REEDER: I would say out of respect for the mystery. We wanted to explore the mysteries from the eyes of the uninitiated. So I think that remained the most interesting path to peel the layers off incrementally.
Johnny and Dana, what was it about your characters, Sam and Donna, and the story that you connected to?
DANA NAMERODE: I think the two main things. One, Donna specifically as a character is very interesting in the journey that she goes through. It goes through peaks and plummets and it’s really interesting to see a character go through so much in such a condensed time span. I think that’s a really interesting role to act in and the story itself… I really thought it was interesting, similarly how much it was able to condense such a variety of things that naturally you wouldn’t automatically think go together, like humour and cancer, and science and friendship, and regret and anger – all these different things that kind of mesh together. It’s not a mix that one would imagine would work so naturally and yet it does, and it makes so much sense when you read it as a story. I thought that was a great mix of things. It was very intriguing.
JOHNNY WHITWORTH: Calvin’s the reason I wanted to get involved.I know that it’s genre, but as Dana was stipulating, it’s got a lot of elements to it. I personally was drawn to Calvin and his humour. What I saw as his humour, what I thought was funny. Him and his writing of the script, and then his later work, just to see if we can make the bad guy…because I think he’s funny. I think this is a comedy. I’m looking at the film as a comedy, but it’s set in genre.
Johnny, at the start of your career you played the loveable A.J, but as the years have progressed you seem to have been drawn to characters with greater shades of grey, such as Sam. What is it about these types of roles that you enjoy playing?
JW: Well grey is real and it’s most interesting to have levels of that character and maybe I just bring the darkness. You find the humanity in a character that doesn’t seem very humane from a certain perspective and it’s what that is. No one thinks they are evil and just moustache twists and creates bad things. If I’ve discovered the cure for cancer, that overrides any other moral obligation, if that’s what he wants to bring to humanity. They’re just more interesting characters.
Donna is a very resilient, strong, complex young woman; she must have been a dream to play, especially so early on in your career?
DN: I think complex is definitely the word I would use to describe her. I’m going to agree with Johnny. I think Calvin has a skill of writing very human characters. I think we really see her complexity in her grief and then immediately, this euphoria that she’s experiencing this almost arrogance, this recklessness in what she does. It was a lot of work with Calvin on the character, on learning her, and understanding her, and really digging deep into who she is to understand this complexity. I think that’s what makes her interesting. I think it’s what makes her relatable. Some moments you kind of cheer her on and are on her side, and perhaps on other moments not so much necessarily, and I like that dynamic. I think it makes a much more interesting character than one very easily likeable flat character.
I guess the obvious comparison for The A Frame is Cronenberg, which it is, but also is not. It’s doing its own thing.
CLR: And we love Cronenberg and will stand by that, but I would also like to add it’s not just like Cronenberg’s The Fly. It’s all of the Flys from 1958 through 1989. And it’s also movies like Re-Animator. It’s movies like From Beyond and movies like Dead Heat. Movies about man versus machine, and we just really wanted to explore those places.
The film is dealing with cancer, there’s this potential cure. This is a disease that unfortunately touches the lives of many. How did you go around making sure that, as much as you’re telling a genre story, that you were still being respectful to that sort of real-world aspect?
CLR: That was a priority in the writing for sure. I wanted to make sure that the entire subject was treated with dignity and care, but we also wanted to make it interesting. We wanted to make sure people enjoyed watching this film. I also think that there is just like a common language around that topic because pretty much everyone I know has been touched by it in one way or another, family member, friend, perhaps themselves, so it was not difficult to take that on. I just made it a priority and it remained one.
The A-Frame has plenty of goopy moments to please gore fans. These were achieved practically, how does this help during the shooting process and how do you think it enriches the viewing experience?
DN: I thought it was so fun to work with what you refer to as the gooeyness. I thought the practical effects were so incredible to see in real life, you usually don’t have that opportunity. I thought it was so immersive you felt it’s actually happening. It was just fun. It was exciting, I don’t want to give too much away, but it definitely changed the vibe on set when that stuff was introduced in a very fun way, I think.
JW: I mean it’s all pretend. So it was just part of the process, but this thing got really goopy (chuckles), really goopy.
CLR: I’ve always done practical any time I can. It’s always been a merging of practical effects with digital VFX. I think that’s kind of the best result you can get, but I’ve always leaned into that and it’s such a great privilege to work with the people that can make those things real. I say let’s hire and while we still can.
JW: I just love the idea of being able to throw back to the goopy or practical things to make a movie like this. But when I was first meeting with Calvin, it’s just whatever his inspirations were for the movie he said exactly what it is and I hope people pay attention to the subtleties because the humour is in the subtleties, I think.
Why should TriBeCa attendees be adding The A-Frame to their watch lists?
CLR: Yeah, why do I hope they take a chance on The A-Frame? Because we’ll be there, and we worked really hard on it. I would love to share this strange vision with the weirdos of New York City that may be willing to give us a shot. They would be welcomed and appreciated.
DN: I think it’s a great film. I think it definitely goes past just being contained in its own genre. I think it would speak to people who aren’t necessarily fans of just the genre because of the story, because of the character, the writing and the thrill of it all. I think definitely if you’re going to give a genre film a try, this is a great one to see.
JW: Well, because it’s a good movie and the interest is in the not knowing and the fun is in discovering. I hope that the right people, the people who understand what it is that Calvin was trying to get across and what he allowed me to participate in trying to do and bring whatever I brought to it.
CLR: Great performances, that’s what I want them to see. I want them to see all the hard work everybody did and I want them to see hopefully something different that’s also somewhat familiar. The idea was to take a world that has been explored, but explore it in our own way. I hope they like that.
The A-Frame screens TriBeCa from 7th June 2024.
