5 Questions with Chase Fein
“Boxer,” created, written by, and starring Chase Fein, is the story of a boxer searching for his dad, told as a goof but also with heart and sincerity. We asked Fein how the project started, why he choose three different directors, and about the hardest parts of production…
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I’m a New Jersey kid, born in Manhattan - drummer, guitarist, singer, boxer and photographer. I did my undergrad at NYU Tisch, acting at Stella Adler, had a short stint at RADA in London during that time, then back to London for my Masters in European classical acting at Drama Centre as well as at the Vakhtangov / Shchukin Theater Institute in Moscow. So I’m a theater nerd.
I got the filmmaking bug from a great film community out here in LA called Channel101. My friends Alex, Ariel and I made something that screened and after taking part and talking with everyone we fell in love with the community and what it was about. It’s a large community of all types of filmmakers who create 10 five-minute shorts every month that screen at the downtown Independent theater for a live audience. The audience votes back their favorite five episodes from the night and those shows then create another episode for the next month, while a new set of five enter the creative arena at the next screening. At 101, I basically learned how to shoot for almost zero dollars, to collaborate and work efficiently, get monthly feedback to improve my work, and to be around fun, creative friends who weren’t precious but instead just kept creating every month for the fun and passion of it. I’m very grateful to Channel101 and the friends I made there.
2) What’s the origin story here - what was the original inspiration, and what were some of the first steps to get it rolling?
So one day I was driving in LA with my godbrother Spencer, when all of a sudden Andrew Bird’s Hover II started playing on NPR and I was like WHAT IS THIS HEAVENLY MUSIC SENT FROM ABOVE THAT SPEAKS TO MY SOUL. I must have listened to it a thousand times after that. The next day I was in the car making funny voices to myself, like a totally normal person, and when the song came on I instinctively said, “Hi, my name is Mickey and I’m a boxer” in what would be Mickey’s distinctively husky voice. I recorded the voice memo of that, went home and then talked in the Mickey voice for a couple of hours and started to write the story of BOXER. My brain was on fire and I wrote the whole thing in three days. I remember writing until 3am, finally getting into bed, and then waking up an hour later hearing more of Mickey’s voice saying stuff. I remember thinking I had two choices: Go to sleep, it’s so warm and comfortable, it feels so good, just go back to sleep, please don’t get out of bed, who cares if you don’t write it down, for the love of all that is holy please close your eyes and drift off, OR, painfully jump out of bed and like a zombie keep writing everything down. I’m an actor, not a writer, and this was the first thing I’ve ever written, so I also didn’t know when the Mickey ideas faucet would turn off – so, I was tired as hell, but hopped out of bed, kept going and eventually had the three chapters of boxer, as well as another chapter that I cut from the final presentation, and outlines for five more.
The music was so important and the main catalyst and inspiration for everything. I would play Hover II and the entire album on repeat as I spoke as Mickey and the characters and wrote out the scripts – it gave the rhythm, heartbeat and character of the entire piece. I was lucky enough to work with genius composer Jason Martin Castillo who created the brilliant score, capturing the essence of the music I was living with in my head for so long and translating it into his own original and beautiful creation, which is one of the most important characters in Boxer. I recently went to an Andrew Bird pop up show at Amoeba Records here in Hollywood, met him, told him he inspired the short series that I loved so much and gave him a link to it – I hope he watched it. Or is reading this. Andrew, watch it. And thank you again.
3) I’d love to hear about the 3 director concept. Why did you choose to structure it in this way, and how did it work out? Did everyone meet together and develop together, or were the different segments more isolated?
After I wrote Boxer, I told my DP Nate about it, as well as one of my directors Ariel Gardner. I made them sit down and listen as I read it out loud and did all the characters voices. I remember Ariel was house sitting this place in Venice and there was a large fluffy cat with orange eyes that would hypnotize you, and he (Ariel, not the hypnotist cat) suggesting, “You should get different directors for each chapter” … “and also, I want to do the Hitnosis Chapter 2.” And that was pretty much it. I’ve been friends and a huge fan of Jennifer Ruiz, Ariel Gardner and Kate Freund’s brilliant work for many years so I naturally gravitated towards asking them to direct. I worked with each director separately and it was an easy, fun and beautiful relationship with all three as we’ve worked together for years. I always had a clear vision/compass and instinctively knew what I wanted Boxer to look and feel like – but then I got the huge talents, visions and direction of Jennifer, Ariel and Kate and they brought new ideas, shots, images, filming styles and more to the table that just enhanced what I had in mind by a million percent. Jennifer added a beautiful visual landscape to set up the entire thing, Ariel added story, complexity and emotional depth, and Kate brought such fun elements with high attention to detail, even creating the animatronic storyboard for Chapter 3 at our first meeting. I’m very grateful to all of
them.
I want to give a shout out to the immensely talented Morgan Locke, a visual genius, who directed and filmed such a fun chapter which wasn’t included in the final presentation, as the flow of the other chapters together ended up giving Boxer the filmic feel that I felt was just right. Although, I am going to revisit the hidden chapter, finish editing it and will release it in tandem as it deserves to be seen.
4) What was the biggest challenge with the project in general - both in terms of the production of it, and also which scene was the hardest to get right?
To conquer the biggest challenge of post-production - and after the sprint/marathon of getting pre-production and filming done - next time I’m going to hire a producer so that I can have another person to help prioritize, keep everything on track, moving forward, and to have the bandwidth to keep going when I would get fatigued. Too much time alone and trying to do everything, organize, produce, figure out and execute big picture / delegate each move all by myself in my apartment on my first project, I’ve learned isn’t the most efficient way to keep things moving. In post – the tank runs outta gas. Also money is a nice thing too as I would love to have paid everyone what they deserve and enough so they can keep working and live at the same time! But I’m so grateful because I was so lucky to have incredible directors who also edited initial cuts for each of their episodes, so that got post-production started off nicely. Ariel then took over editing each episode and the overall project that helped unify everything which was amazing. Jason and his incredible musicians were perfection recording the sessions and Castillo was brilliant in mixing. Barrett with his sound magic and Asa with his visual magic, I’ll always be in awe.
As for scenes that were hardest to get right, it was mostly technical stuff here and there. The final scene of Frank and Mickey in the tent was a tough one because our sound guy Darren was awesome but had to leave after we wrapped the night before, in order to make another job in the morning. So Brad Gage was a trooper and laid on the ground holding a shotgun mic with his arm outstretched as close to our mouths as he could get, while this massive wind tunnel just blew non-stop against the tent for the entirety of filming. Flap flap flap wind wind wind scratch scratch scratch. Barrett Slagle ended up working magic and recreating the ENTIRE audio landscape of that scene, he’s just incredible. Also I’d say the scene where Mickey is pissed and punching the bag in Chapter 2 after confronting the therapist and his inner demons was tough physically because I didn’t pace myself regarding cardio. We shot it a bunch of times from a bunch of angles and the scene is a good amount of time. Now, I was in shape and am used to working hard from boxing training, but after going all out the first three takes I started getting tired and winded. By the end, my noodle arms just ran outta steam.
A bunch of scenes that could have been much harder to shoot just kind of worked out and ended up being it’s own wonderful thing. For the opening shot, Jennifer, Ariel, Nate and I went on an adventure and jumped in the car at 3:30am to drive an hour and a half to Ojai in this field that was supposed to be full of beautiful flowers (whoops, wrong time of year), to catch the shot starting from the sun being down and ending with the sun being up when Mickey walked to camera (whoops, I liked the take better when the sun already came up), to me realizing mid take, walking for 4 minutes towards camera, that there were snakes and spiders in the field... but it all worked out, phew. Those cats cats and kitten cats in Chapter 1 were tough to wrangle and hand off during the take at first but then they were pretty chill and their performances were purrfect, sorry had to do it. Jumping into the ocean was pretty chilly in Chapter 2 but Aaron and I were troopers and we all went to Neptune’s Net by the beach to eat hot clam chowder afterwards.
5) What’s a film you’ve seen, new or old, so far this year that you really loved and why?
I just saw Barton Fink for the first time and thought it was really amazing - the story, how it was shot/edited, and performances were all top notch. John Goodman is just damn incredible. I loved a documentary called Mistaken for Strangers made by a bud from acting class and wonderful artist, Tom Berninger – the doc was off beat, full of heart and so well done. I also loved The Square and Force Majeure – I mean, wow. Not a good explanation of why, but, seriously, both of them, wow.
Bonus Question) What’s next for you?
This year is all about “write, film, edit, release and repeat” - and letting go of preciousness and procrastination. I just finished up two comedic short projects of mine with one more coming up in two weeks. I’ve got some Shakespeare scenes I want to film as well as a comedic horror short and 1920’s inspired physical comedy piece. And the one I’m really excited about, which I’ll most likely start filming in August, is a short I wrote called Radio Silence about a lonely home radio show host - silly, heartfelt and funny. I’d also love to be acting on any Armando Iannucci projects so hopefully that happens soon too.
Contact Info:
IG: @thechasefein
Twitter: @chasefein