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"Anchorage" Q&A with Director Scott Monahan
Due to the limitations of the 2020 film festivals and the gradual inclusion of in person screenings this year, many film festivals, including the San Diego International Film Festival, have adopted a hybrid screening format including both in-person and online screenings.
One of the films I caught online was Anchorage, the debut film by director Scott Monahan. The film follows two brothers, Jacob (Monahan) and John (Dakota Loesch), as they run a trunk full of drug stuffed teddy bears from Florida to Alaska. Their drug fueled trip goes unexpectedly as they face the consequences of a split-second moment of violence.
I was lucky enough to run into Monahan while we were both in line waiting for a screening and got the opportunity to ask him some questions about the film. Our conversation went as follows:
First things first, how does it feel to have accomplished making your debut feature film, and the fact you have gotten the opportunity to show it at the San Diego Film Festival and others around the world?
Scott: I feel very confident. There are so many stages in the process of an independent feature film but this one has been one of my favorites. I didn't go to film school and I haven't spent my life going to film festivals so all of this is very new to me. Getting to travel the world and meet other filmmakers, see different perspectives, and present your work to different audiences of diverse backgrounds has been such an exhilarating experience. While it is true that I think you should be as true and honest to your story and its characters first and foremost, I think it is equally important to think of the audience and how they will be affected by your story and weave an emotional journey for them. This doesn't have to always be a fun journey, but personally, when I watch a film I want to be moved. It fills me with so much gratitude to know that audiences from New York, to Germany, to San Diego, have been along for the ride with Anchorage.
What inspired you to direct this film?
Scott: This project didn't start with titles in mind. It started as a conversation between Dakota Loesch and I. It started as almost a joke, a thing we would say, "Buddy Flick or Bust". We had been working together for years with our immersive theater company Ceaseless Fun and worked on a film together called Love Shot directed by Steven Fine, and we felt like it was time to tell our own story, from our own lives. As we started to get deeper into the project the movie started keeping me up at night, I would see the movie when I closed my eyes, it became all I could think about. When it came time for us to look for a director I told Dakota that I wanted to do it and he said yes. I had worked with Dakota as a fellow actor so I knew how best to work with him as a director and an actor. The trust he gave in me and continues to give me as a director bled into every single step of this process. Dakota is a fellow actor that became a friend, who became my brother in a movie, and now is my family in life.
Are there any films/filmmakers that inspired the film?
Scott: Kelly Reichardt's 80-minute films taught me that movies don't need to be 2hrs long to be considered great films. Elaine May's ability to weave comedy and drama and theatrical presence into filmmaking with movies like Mikey and Nicky, or Ishtar. Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. And, obviously, we must give credit to great road pictures like Queen and Slim, Easy Rider, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thelma and Louise, Kalifornia, and the early A24 picture The Rover. But, this movie would not be what it is with Dakota Loesch and I's shared love of movies like Hook and Cocktail. The baseball scene where John is jeering Jacob as he's playing baseball is an homage to when Peter Banning sees his son playing baseball with Captain Hook and the pirates, even the imaginary game is a play on the imaginary feast scene. It's also not hard to draw some comparisons of Jacob to Brian Flannigan and John to Doug Coughlin in Cocktail.
The film looks really impressive for a debut indie film. How did you guys approach the production of the film with a smaller budget?
Scott: I could not have made this film without the advice from all of the filmmaker friends and strangers I reached out to and the openness in which they shared their experiences and warned me of money pits to avoid. We had a very light and tight crew. Most of the locations were derelict and abandoned so we weren't paying for those. Dakota and I also had the luxury of spending so much rehearsal time and pre-production time, that by the time we went out we were a well-oiled machine. One budget cut was that it was going to cost me approximately $500 a day to rent a car, so rather than spend $2500 on a car I bought the Crown Victoria on Craigslist for $1500. That enabled us to also do whatever we wanted in the whip, and not worry about burning cigarette holes in the armrest or getting fake blood on a velour interior.
What were some of the challenges of shooting the film in five days? Were you restricted to only shoot for five days, or was the production schedule loose and just happened to only take five days to film?
Scott: It wasn't something that we just winged, we planned it, plotted the sun and where it would be, we rehearsed the scenes so we could move quickly, and we location scouted many times to be prepared for as many variables as possible. When we did our first location scout the locations that we chose architecturally went backward in time, so from that moment we decided we could shoot this thing chronologically and it could save us the back and forths and also feel more like a play for ourselves and for everyone on the crew. This also gave us the ability to add to the story or a scene without needing to worry about continuity. I'll never forget getting to the final day of the shoot and the emotional weight we all felt on set. We had all experienced each beat of this story in order from the beginning and were saying goodbye to the film and its characters and the world we built for Anchorage.
Did you face any challenges while both directing and starring in the film?
Scott: Filmmaking is a team effort. In order for me to be able to act, direct, and produce, I needed a team that I could trust to be autonomous if I needed them to be. In every role, I hired people that could stand on their own, and who had way more set expertise than I had accrued as an actor. I think there is something beautiful that can happen with artists and technicians when you give them space, autonomy, and trust to follow their instincts and ideas. I also brought on Meredith Treinen who is an incredible director of immersive theater and movement-based work. While she had never been on a film set before, I trusted her completely in her understanding of these characters and the story. There was beautiful chemistry and flow we built between Dakota and I and Meredith Treinen and our cinematographer Erin Naifeh, which made working on this film in this specific multifaceted way much easier than it could have been.
What do you hope that audiences will take away from watching your film?
Scott: Dakota and I have spoken a lot about not wanting the movie to glorify drug use and not to demonize drug users and abusers either. We wanted to show characters in the throes of their addiction. The sickness that it can cause and the hold it takes on you and the effect it has on your family. This film isn't about rehabilitation, there are no scenes of detox, we wanted to show the world the life of the addict, and also their own humanity and emotion. Pharmaceutical addiction walks right in your front door. In the case of opioids, they are designed to be so addictive that they design a drug that you pay for to get off the addiction. This is a real and current problem in America. If you feel any emotion at all for Jacob and John, two low-life, violent, addicted, foul-mouthed, chain smokin', drug runners, then we've succeeded. It's easy to have compassion and empathy for the good people in our lives, the true test is finding empathy and compassion for people at their worst.
Last but not least, is there any advice that you would give to someone looking to make their first feature film?
Scott: Ask for help. Do not be afraid to say there are things you don't know because there will be. Nobody will have the exact same passion that you do for your project, but you can find people that are pretty damn close, and if they give their time, their energy, and their creativity to you, you better at the very least treat them with the utmost respect from the top all the way down. Save money for post, save money for festivals and travel, and save money for distribution costs. If you are writing your own script to direct, and are planning on making it yourself, don't write yourself into debt, write something you can make with what you have. This last one is the most important, once you've acquired all the advice, the ideas, watched the reference films, prepped, and you're ready to go, forget all of it and just listen to your movie.
Thank you for your time Scott, and the best of luck to you and the crew as the film journeys onto screens around the world.
Scott: Thank you!
Anchorage won the “Best Film” award at the Stoney Brook Film Festival in New York, as well as “Best Film” and “Outstanding Performance by an Actor” for Dakota Loesch at the Oldenburg Film Festival in Germany. The film is traveling to Wrocław, Poland next for the American Film Festival. It will be screening from November 9th to the 14th so be sure to check it out if you are in town.
Written by Michael Schnee
29.10.2021 | San Diego Film Festival's blog Cat. : FILM
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