The short film’s road to the big screen
In 2006, director Paul Solet and his necro-brood (a faux infant slung tight around his chest) became recognizable attendees by the end of the Los Angeles Weekend of Horrors convention put on by Fangoria. He was, as some around him at the show whispered, “that guy with the creepy kid.”
Solet’s inspired William Castle-like showmanship wasn’t simply a way to attract attention to himself, instead he was drumming up interest in his short film Grace, starring Brian Austin Green and Liza Weil. An audience is what he sought that weekend and an audience is what he found. Hostel‘s Eli Roth dropped in to show support. Adam Green was so caught in a promotional flurry surrounding his own film, Hatchet, that he missed the screening.
Later, he caught up to Solet’s film and was struck by its low-budget, high impact effect. The short – focusing on a woman whose unborn child is killed in a car wreck and finds it has come back to life when she delivers the newborn – was created merely to groom potential investors for a feature-length version. A pitch, more than anything.
“As a first-time director you want to make financiers comfortable that you have a vision,” Solet explains to ShockTillYouDrop.com. “I made the short film to show the spectrum of style that we could pull off on a relatively limited budget.”
Green requested to see a feature-length version of the script and was immediately taken by the expanded material. “I showed it to the gang at Ariescope Productions [responsible for Hatchet]” says Green who is wearing a producer cap on the project. “They loved it and at the time Anchor Bay was trying to find more projects to do with us before Hatchet had been released. Grace was the first film we brought to them.”
Shortly thereafter, producing entity Leomax was brought in to help make a Grace feature film a reality.
Solet calls into Shock from Regina, Canada where he begins principal photography on Monday. His dedication to the material is palpable, so it begs the question: What is it about Grace that demands he spend another year of his life bringing this story to the screen? “I think what Grace has is these universal, archetypal themes,” he answers. “At the core of this is the theme of the uncanny power and bond between a mother and child. You have the idea of this obsessive desire to have something you cannot have. Everybody in this story has this burning desire to have someone or something that cannot be had. For me, that’s a universal human feeling and is immediately relatable.”
“What he did effectively in his short is he made the first act of the film condensed in a small format,” Green adds. “It wasn’t the thing where he made a cool short that people liked and then turned it into a feature. People make that mistake a lot. I made short films every year, some of them were too long. But Paul’s short, the last two minutes are what got everybody – where the baby came back to life – and it just ended. You’re left wondering what happened.”
Green likens the film to Rosemary’s Baby in tone only. He’s quick to point out there is no devil and no Chucky-like imp running around slaughtering the cast. “It’s much deeper than that.” And strapped with the dramatic weight the film offers is leading lady Jordan Ladd. “She’s fu**kin’ amazing,” says Solet. “She got the character on that fundamental level, the first time I met with her, I had a 4 1/2-hour meeting and my car almost got towed. Immediately, right off the bat, I knew it was her, she’s phenomenal. She’s ready for this project and the prep we’ve done, she’s just ready to rock.”
For Solet, making the feature film allows him to take a different aesthetic approach to the tale. “The short is much more expressionistic. There are choices in there I would never make as a feature. It’s six minutes long and was made to make you want a feature film. It worked. As far as the feature goes, it’s a significantly subtle much more impressionistic take on the same core idea.”
The director is working on an 18-day shoot. Green, no stranger to the constraints of independent filmmaking is confident Solet can pull it off, however, even with the production’s grocery list of challenges which include working with infants, staging a car wreck (followed by an explosion) and bloody makeup effects. “Paul’s been up here almost a month now. He reminds me a lot of myself, he excitement is contagious. He knows what he’s doing and he has an answer for everything.”
Source: Ryan Rotten
