By Keri O’Shea
It’s always a pleasure for us at Brutal as Hell to get to talk to indie directors about their work; it’s important too, because as often as we deal with the finished product here at the site, it pays to dig a little deeper sometimes and think about the motivations of the good folk who put the films together. With that in mind, after reviewing the short film Nicky late last year I was keen to speak to its director – Dom Portalla – about his experiences in the business so far.
BAH: Your short film, Nicky, came into being thanks to a chance viewing of a photograph…can you tell us more about this?
Ken Flott, who wrote the original short story and plays the lead character in the film, came across a photo on foundmagazine.com back in 2006. Pictured in it was a little boy in a white tuxedo standing in front of a women’s restroom, likely taken during the 70s if you were to gage by the condition of the photo or all of the gnarly wood paneling that’s behind him. For whatever reason, Ken felt compelled to start writing a short story in the first person that described the picture, the boy and his relationship to him, which ended up being a very dense 45 pages when all was said and done. The two of us were shooting our first feature film, “Duality”, at the time and Ken was posting the story as he went, chapter by chapter online. I was enamoured with the material from the jump and when Ken finally finished it, I suggested that it might make for a really amazing film some day. He agreed and it took us about six years to finally get around to it, but here we are…
BAH: How pleased are you with Nicky, and what has the feedback been like so far? Where next for the film?
I love the flick and am really proud of what we were able to accomplish with it in such a short time span. We’d originally talked about possibly adapting it into a feature length movie, but opted to go with a short subject instead for two major reasons: firstly, we wanted to experiment with crowdfunding (Indiegogo, specifically) in order to learn the dos and don’ts of that platform with DSLR cameras, and secondly, we wanted to have the flexibility of working within a very limited budget and time-frame. Based on the overall positive feedback we’ve been getting, I feel like we were successful on both accounts.
As far as what’s next for the film, we’ve completed our first wave of festival submissions, so we are hoping to take the film around the country over the course of the next few months. We are also holding our Boston Premiere on February 7th at the Kendall Square Cinema, which is probably my favorite independent film theater in the state of Massachusetts.
BAH: I gather that it was always your ambition to be a filmmaker: how does the reality of your chosen career match up with the expectations you had?
I think that in order to be successful in this business you have to put aside all expectations, be that of fame, fortune or accolade, and really just love the process of making films. If you’re not a person who absolutely needs to be making films from deep down in your bones, than it’s probably not something that you should be doing. Early on, I was a bit naïve in that I thought all I had to do was tell stories that were really personal to me, try my absolute hardest, and the rest of the story would write itself. The world of indie cinema has changed exponentially since some of my heroes made their way into the industry and since the time that I began seriously pursuing this as a career, I’ve learned how difficult it is to stand out amongst all of the white noise that’s out there. Ultimately, I continue to make movies because otherwise, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. In continuing to write, work with actors, and explore all aspects of my craft, my expectations of how gratifying this all is has been met and exceeded tenfold. And in going through this process time and again, the rest of the story is writing itself.
BAH: Are there any films or filmmakers that have had a significant influence on your own work?
Early on, it was definitely Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino. In as much as their work inspired me, I was maybe even more influenced by their stories of breaking into the business. I identified with those guys immensely having been a video store clerk (a job that basically doesn’t really even exist anymore) who had seen everything, had a lot of opinions on movies and wanted to create something they could identify with themselves. I especially loved their specific attention to detail of language and dialogue, which when done wrong can be incredibly pretentious, but when done right is fucking poetry. Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick have also been filmmakers who helped shape my view of the power of cinema, as a medium which can transcend entertainment and really become art.
BAH: What do you think of the state of play of indie cinema today, and how do you think the scene could be improved?
I think at a time where technology has reached the point where anyone empowered to pick up a camera and make a movie can do so, you should be seeing a lot more truly independent films out in the market. The powers that be seem to play it safe these days though, when they should be taking more risks. Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch, Ed Burns, those guys were risks. If you’ve got a 12 million dollar budget and a cast of A-list celebrities and you’re calling your film “independent”, it sort of seems like you’re hedging your bets. There are a lot of very interesting filmmakers out there putting their work together with spit and glue who have audiences that are waiting to find them.
BAH: Finally, what’s next for you? What are your plans for 2013?
We’ll be finding “Nicky” a home on the festival circuit and we’ll finish developing our third feature film, “Saint Joey”, which is another project we’ve had in the works for years now and is easily the most ambitious script I’ve ever put to paper. If everything goes according to plan, you may even see the wheels turning with that before the end of the year!
Thanks to Dom Portalla
http://doorelevenproductions.com/