Posted by Larry Gleeson

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Director/writer Charlie McDowell (AFI Class of 2006) and writer Justin Lader (AFI Class of 2008) pair up once again for THE DISCOVERY, their followup to 2014’s THE ONE I LOVE. The film is another high-concept, relationship-based mystery, this time revolving around questions of faith and the afterlife. It stars Rooney Mara, Jason Segel, Robert Redford, Riley Keough and Jesse Plemons. AFI caught up with McDowell following the the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where THE DISCOVERY world-premiered.

THE DISCOVERY arrives on Netflix March 31.

AFI: Tell us about your new film starring Jason Segel and Rooney Mara, THE DISCOVERY, the follow-up to your previous film THE ONE I LOVE.

CM: With Justin Lader, who’s my writing partner, we started with a sort of big universal question: “What if the afterlife was scientifically proven and what would that mean for the world?” How would people react in today’s society or in a heightened society in the near future? We came back to the universal question, which is “Where do we go when we die?” We’re programmed at a young age to think about it, even in cartoons, when a character dies, the character floats to heaven or hell, and these ideas are obviously in religion. These interest everyone from the beginning of time. For us, it’s really interesting to propose a question of “What if it was guaranteed we went somewhere, and we knew if we went somewhere?” That was the first basic question and then we came up with this idea shortly after, well, “Is death ‘death’ anymore because you’re continuing your life somewhere else? Are suicide and murder the same thing as we know them to be?” That’s how we started and we used that as the backdrop to this world that we’re exploring but, really, it’s about our main characters in this world, and it becomes mostly focused on a love story between a man and a woman and a father story as well.

AFI: Talk about your writing process with Justin Lader. Did you guys meet at AFI? He wrote THE ONE I LOVE.

CM: He [graduated] two years after me, but I had a best friend in the Producing program and basically I was looking to team up with a writer for a movie idea, and he said that Justin was such a talented writer. He put us in contact, and I read a script that Justin had written his second year and really loved it, and we ended up developing that script for a couple years and tried to make it. We had a cast and financing and then the financing fell through and that’s what got us to jump into making THE ONE I LOVE for very little money. What brought us together was this other script called “Fighting Jacob” that Justin had written his second year.

AFI: Can you talk about your collaboration with Netflix, and at what point they stepped in to acquire and distribute THE DISCOVERY?

CM: Netflix had really been interested in the idea and loved the script early on, and we had been in talks with them, and they really liked how the cast ended up shaping up so, while we were filming our first week, they called and said they want to acquire this as a worldwide film and have it be a Netflix Original.

It’s such an interesting time in independent film, and there are pros and cons to this new digital era and the way we do movies. I really am mixed about it because I am a traditional thinker in that I make a film with the idea that it’s going to be seen on a big screen, but with this film in particular, to me the partnership really made sense because I wanted this to be something that a lot of people could see. If you release traditionally in the theater with an independent distributor, it will go to 50 cities and very few people will see it, so the idea that 90 million users in 160 countries felt right for the film. We wanted it to be this global idea … because I think people will view it differently depending on your makeup and who you are as a person. It’s definitely a movie I hope people will watch more than once. It’s a movie that, if you see it a second time, it’s a very different viewing, and you pick up on a lot of different things and maybe your view changes. It’s meditative in that way, and it felt like with Netflix, you could watch the film, then you could watch it again two minutes later or you could wait a week and then you can tell your friends about it. The idea that people could view the film that way was exciting.

AFI: You’ve had great success at Sundance with THE ONE I LOVE and now THE DISCOVERY. The festival is typically a great launching pad for American indies looking to break out. How was your experience different this time around?

CM: It was a very different experience this time compared to THE ONE I LOVE. No one knew what that film was. It very under the radar, it premiered on a Tuesday night, after the first weekend. And THE DISCOVERY premiered at the Eccles on a Friday night, opening weekend, and we had Redford in the film. People knew about our film, and there was an expectation for it. Again, there are pros and cons to all of that. People were excited to see the movie and it was sold out. To play the Eccles was such an honor but also there was something I liked about THE ONE I LOVE, having no expectations and letting the movie be its own thing. We had a really strong audience reaction, almost everyone stayed for the Q&As. Everyone wanted to bring their own ideas to the film, which is the reason we made it.

AFI: You took an improvisatory approach to writing THE ONE I LOVE. How about with THE DISCOVERY?

CM: Justin and I developed THE ONE I LOVE together and because it was such a quick situation, Justin was scripting pages throughout the process of filming. While I was focused on shooting he was scripting pages for the next day. It’s an odd way to make a film, but we had worked off of this 50-page outline that had every scene detailed but there was no dialogue. It wasn’t a traditional script in terms of dialogue.

With THE ONE I LOVE, all the twists and turns weren’t improvised. We had a very clear understanding of the story and how it unfolded. We were loose with the dialogue. But with THE DISCOVERY, because it was done in a more traditional way and we actually had more days to do it, we always wanted it to be something that had less improv, where we could focus on the page at the beginning, and then let the actors play loose with the dialogue because we’re not so crazy about saying words exactly as they’re written. We like a naturalistic feel.

AFI: You’ve also directed an episode of Netflix original series DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, based on the film by Justin Simien. What can we expect to see?

CM: Each episode is through a different point of view and the directors bring their own vision to it. Obviously, there’s the umbrella of the show you have to stay in, but [Justin] wanted to give free range to the directors to play and do their own thing. I thought that was such an interesting way to come onto an existing show and do my own thing as well. Especially with the state of our country right now, he’s exploring some really interesting ideas, even more so than when his film came out [in 2014]. It’s even more relevant now.

Posted by Larry Gleeson

Mike Ott is a four-time AFI FEST alumnus with his feature films LITTLEROCK (AFI FEST 2010), PEARBLOSSOM HWY (AFI FEST 2012) and ACTOR MARTINEZ (AFI FEST 2016), and the short film LANCASTER, CA (AFI FEST 2015). We caught up with Ott to talk about his latest feature, CALIFORNIA DREAMS, which just had its world premiere at the 2017 Berlin Critics’ Week and will have its North American premiere at SXSW in March. (Watch a clip below.)

In the film, Ott presents five unique individuals in pursuit of a big life change. Through auditions set up in small towns across Southern California, the film shows genuine characters with big Hollywood aspirations who, for various reasons, have never had the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

AFI: What made you want to take a documentary approach to this quintessential story of making it big in Hollywood?

MO: The more films I make, the more my work leans toward incorporating documentary into fiction. The purely fictional story of making it in Hollywood has been done so many times and much better than I could ever do it. And not to say that docs on Hollywood haven’t been done to death too, but the approach we took with this film somehow gave us a bit of a strange, fresh look into a story that’s been told before. At least, that’s my hope.

AFI: This film centers around Cory Zacharia, who has been a staple of your films since LITTLEROCK. What is it about Cory that keeps bringing you back to him as both a character and subject?

MO: I remember one of my professors in grad school talking about casting and he said something to the degree of, “Casting is like if you had to spend all evening at a party watching someone. Who’s the person at the party you’d want to listen to talk, or watch interact with others, or eat a sandwich, etc.?” For me, it’s Cory. He has such unique and earnest reactions to his experiences in the world. It’s just something I find so refreshing when the rest of actors (and most of humanity) are trying to be complicated and ironic. It’s nice to explore ideas with someone who has no sense of sarcasm or irony; only pure love and joy for life, along with a point of view that is sometimes so foreign. The truth is, Cory is still such an enigma to me. Every film I’ve made was in some way to get to understand him more and how his mind works. I don’t know if I’ll ever quite figure him out, but making these films has been a big part of the journey for me.

AFI: How did you find your other subjects for CALIFORNIA DREAMS, as they all have such varied and interesting stories?

MO: I had read an article years ago about famous people and what their favorite film was and I saw that Trump’s favorite film was CITIZEN KANE, and I remember thinking how fitting that was. For some reason, it got me thinking about the link between who you are as a person and what kind of art you’re attracted to and what that says about your secret (or not-so-secret) self.

We put up flyers at local dive bars and grocery stores in my hometown and posted on non-casting websites to find people to audition, and the audition was for the person to come in and do a monologue of their choice from one of their favorite films. After each monologue, I’d interview them about the reading and try to find out how the monologue, or the film or the character they picked, related to their life.

But we didn’t want a bunch of out-of-work actors to come in and audition. We wanted to find genuine characters who didn’t live in Hollywood but who had always wanted the opportunity to be part of it.

AFI: This film is exploring some ideas set forth in your previous films, specifically the struggle with the American dream in small town U.S.A. What is it about that landscape and community that keeps bringing you back to tell these stories?

MO: Maybe because I grew up in a pretty small town and these little struggles we have in life are the ones that I find speak to the human condition in such an illuminating way — small things like wanting to go on a first date, move out of your parents house or even just leave the state on vacation for the first time ever. Those are the moments I like to explore and they remind me of what Richard Linklater said about DAZED AND CONFUSED: “Maybe the stakes in the film seem pretty low, but when it’s your life, they’re actually very high.” These are the same kind of characters I want to be surrounded by in my real life. I want to hang out with the weird kid from Bakersfield who works at Arby’s and who can’t make it to Hollywood or who can’t find love but has always dreamed of it, not the cool dude from Encino who’s mildly famous and hanging out at Soho House. That’s why AMERICAN MOVIE is one of my favorite films — and also why we have Mark Borchardt do a cameo in the movie as an homage to the film that inspired pretty much everything I make — outsiders who can’t or won’t ever quite fit into the mainstream.

AFI: This is your sixth film and you have been lucky enough to screen your work at festivals all over the world. How have you been able to master navigating the film festival world? Do you have any advice for other filmmakers who are having their first festival experiences?

MO: I’ve been very lucky in that regard, but a lot of that came from my experience with my first film ANALOG DAYS. While traveling with that film, I was worried that I had to make a certain kind of film next, and found myself trying to think about ideas that I wasn’t that attracted to but thought were “right thing to do for my career.” But the more I traveled with ANALOG DAYS and met filmmakers from all over the world, I found the people I looked up to or connected with weren’t the people with latest hit like NAPOLEON DYNAMITE-type hit film, but instead were the artists who were purely following their interests and making weird shit that no one else could make but them. And that was a very important moment for me, to learn that it’s okay to follow your interests and to be okay with the fact that your interests aren’t always going to be what’s most popular. And that’s why I ended up making almost four films in a row with Cory. I was like, this is who I want to see in films, this is who I find interesting, and if you want to watch it then great, and if not, then that’s fine too.

My advice for filmmakers having their first festival experience is to just enjoy the moment; getting to show your film to an audience is such an amazing experience. Unfortunately I think a lot of people go to festivals with other agendas thinking they have to network, and end up talking about themselves incessantly or walking around pitching themselves and their projects like some robot. Personally that makes my skin crawl, but to each his own. I’d say if you’re really interested in meeting people and making meaningful connections, you shouldn’t talk about films at all (especially your own). That’s how you know you’ve made a real friend on that festival circuit — when you can talk about anything and everything but film.

(Source: afi.com)