David Robert Mitchell’s first feature, The Myth of the American Sleepover, won Best Ensemble Cast at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival. It portrayed a group of characters having their own unique experiences one night on the last weekend of summer. His follow up film, It Follows, played TIFF and Fantastic Fest. The horror film is about a group of neighborhood teens dealing with a curse where an evil spirit chases the victim and only the cursed can see it. To the others, it’s invisible, but if they sleep with somebody, the curse will follow their lover. RADIUS-TWC will release It Follows next year.
CraveOnline: It Follows had the same style and tone as American Sleepover with a horror twist. Is it sort of in the same world?
David Robert Mitchell: Yeah, you could see it. It’s on some level my creation. I think it comes from a similar place. I thought about taking similar characters, imagining the characters from Myth a little bit older and sort of venturing into a nightmare was kind of the way I approached it.
But after two films for me to pinpoint a style is really distinctive. How would you describe that style? What are you doing differently than other filmmakers?
Well, it’s what feels right to me. I think about it as something on the edge of naturalism but to the side. So something that’s not truly naturalistic but has hints of it. I think of it as maybe worlds that are similar to our own but are not, something closer to a dream. I tend to mix elements of production design and the base level of the world is not necessarily the one that we know. It’s very similar and we recognize it, but there’s something that it outside of time, that is maybe closer to hints of a fairy tale on some level. At least that’s how it is.
Definitely real life is not as calm as your films.
Right, yeah, yeah.
In what era does It Follows take place? I see a lot of analog TVs, old movies playing yet someone has a piece of technology like that seashell kindle.
Right, it’s that. It’s that it’s outside of time. It’s reminiscent of late ‘70s and the ‘80s. There are some modern things and then there are some things that don’t exist. It’s an attempt on my part to try to create a space where the rules are not necessarily the rules that we experience in day to day life.
And that’s what a dream is life. The physics are a little different but it makes sense to us in the dream. Then we wake up and think, “Oh, why did that happen?”
Yeah, totally.
Where do you get Play Pen magazines made?
Oh, that’s something the production designer and art department put together so I’m not really sure.
I feel like whenever it’s a generic porno in a movie, it’s Play Pen.
Uh-huh. That’s what I’m saying. That maybe something that they pulled that they could get clearance for.
It’s not a real magazine though.
No, no, I don’t believe so. I think it’s something they were able to pull. I’m guessing it’s a prop warehouse kind of a thing that they were able to get.
I hope you take this as a compliment, but I got a sense of the spirit of A Nightmare on Elm Street in terms of kids sticking together and watching each other’s backs while this supernatural thing is going on.
Totally. I love the first one. I think I’ve seen all but the first one’s the only one that I’ve gone back to watch repeatedly.
That’s the one where they have the sleepover to take care of Tina, and still when it’s just Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp at the end.
There are reflections of that movie in here.
The supernatural concept is different in It Follows, but the atmosphere of how friends stick together.
And I mean, there are some direct similarities in the sense of the guy lives across the street. There are some very direct connections I think.
Passing it on never really worked. How did that rumor start?
Oh, if you pass it on that it won’t come back to you? The characters’ ability to have figured it out is not really explained in the film. I do have my own explanation for how they could have worked that through and what happened outside of this movie for Hugh to have figured this out. I think that’s one of those things where if you watch it enough, you can start to get a sense of how that could work, so I don’t necessarily want to be specific. Am I not answering your question?
Well, it’s not like The Ring where if you make a copy, you’re off the hook.
Yes, all you can do is increase the distance between you and it on some level. One character could give it to another and if that person gives it to someone else, then you have on some level cut down on the odds that it will get back to you, but it could cut through five people very quickly and be back to you. So no matter how far away it ever gets, you have to know that it could just be there. It could just walk into the room at any point in your life. All it does is give you a chance. To me, I was thinking about it in the sense of our inevitable mortality. It’s always here, who knows when and maybe it can be pushed into the distance. On some level, we live our lives knowing this.
Is It Follows the film you’ve been working on since Myth of the American Sleepover came out?
Yeah, I’ve been working on this for about half the time. My first film came out about four years ago. I spent almost two years trying to do a drama that is great, I love and I’m going to make at some point, but I had a lot of trouble getting financing for that film. I had written It Follows right after Myth and also this drama that I was going to do. I’d written the drama first. When it became clear to me that too much time was passing and I wasn’t going to get my film made, I had intended It Follows to be my third film. So when the other wasn’t happening, I thought, “Okay, I might have a little easier time pulling money together for a genre film.” And I did. It was easier to put that together. I made that next so it was about two years or so, two and a half years.
Do you have other genres you want to explore?
All kinds, yeah. I have a bunch of stuff. I have a satire dark comedy, I have a detective film.
Will you always be a writer/director?
Always. If there’s some great project that someone else has written and I got a chance to direct, and it made sense for me, I felt like I could do a really good job with it then I would do it. But I write all the time and I always want to. There are always going to be things that I’m writing that I want to direct.
Where is the cast of American Sleepover now?
Some of them are acting. I think a few. I know Brett and Amy and Amanda are all acting and all doing well. A lot of the cast, acting was not their life goal but it was something that they liked doing or thought it would be fun to be in a movie and were part of the film. I think they’re all doing a lot of different things. I’m not in touch with all of them regularly but I hear things. I’m curious as well.
It doesn’t always work out so well to use non actors in a film. Sometimes filmmakers want to use non actors for realism but don’t really get a personality out of them. How do you know it’s going to work out? Is it just taking a chance?
On some level, yeah. It’s also auditioning, talking to a lot of people. With non actors, a certain amount of rehearsal, it’s a certain amount of just conversation just about trying to figure out if what that person can bring fits that character, fits within the parameters of what you need performance wise for the film. It’s about having a sense of what the range of the role is and what that person brings to it, and what they bring to it naturally because on some level it’s about what comes from their personality and it’s about seeing that. I don’t know if taking a chance is right. You’re always taking a chance but I’m trying to look for certain qualities and characteristics that you think will connect and resonate, a certain kind of screen presence that’s not really definable that you just have to see.
Do you know what you’re doing next?
I have one project. I have a bunch of stuff written that’s ready and I’m trying to do. I have one in particular that I’m trying to put together. We’ll see. I’m not so bold as to say it’s that one thing, just from my previous experience. It can be challenging, but the things that I have written, I will find a way to make them eventually.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
