5 Questions with Stephen Jacobson
The strange farce on American enterprise, “Hardware,” finds a desperate man traveling to a housewares convention looking for business partnership. We asked director Stephen Jacobson about his cast, finding the film’s odd tone, and his vibe on-set…
1) How did this thing get started? What was the first element(s) that came into focus for you, and how did the project build from that?
I was going into my last semester of film school and had nothing I was proud of under my belt yet, and I was watching a lot of stupid 80s music videos at the time. I kept going back to the Careless Whisper video for visual inspiration (very heavy on the cross-dissolves), and I wanted to take that cheesy dated sense of sensuality and have it represent the apex of someone's psychosexual breakdown. So I started from the music video part and built a scenario around it. I think that's where the electronic drumset came from, since it served as a good vehicle for the music.
2) I love your lead actor. He really makes the film. How did you find him, and what was it like working with him? What does he think of the film?
We used Backstage to cast most of the roles, and Ken really seemed to be a sign from above that we would get someone who was perfect for the role. He looked perfect, he played it completely straight like it needed to be, he had a little experience with drums, he had a big ass smartphone already (which were a little more rare back when we shot it), and he even let us feature his Camaro, which was perfect. Me and the producer, Mike, talked about him like he WAS Branch Dangus. Ken was nice to work with—he was a little quiet and I wanted to make sure he felt "in on it," but I couldn't tell how he felt about the whole thing. He was very professional really, and didn't sweat the hot tub scene or anything, even though it seems like he's a bit of a right wing guy from his Facebook page. Ken comes from this weird sect of old school comedy. I know he's good friends with Mike Bocchetti, who seems to have some cult reputation for being a weird old guy in the comedy scene. There's a documentary on him out there somewhere that I haven't seen. Ryan (the DP) knew him by name when we first saw Ken's Facebook page. I haven't straight out asked Kenneth for his detailed opinion on the movie, but he has said that he liked it.
3) There’s such a specific tone here - a strange concoction. Is this how you imagined it would go? Were there instances where something wasn’t working quite in the way you imagined, and how did you correct it?
The tone I think I initially hoped would not be lighter but maybe a little bit funnier, but early on I knew it should be played straight and seriously to make the character work. There was a scene where he irritates the hotel employee at the front desk trying to explain to her unprompted that he was in town for a home and housewares trade show. It didn’t work for a few reasons. There was a scene in his hotel room where he was supposed to see a stupid commercial that made fun of people who buy too much technology, and he calls up the company it’s advertising and yells at them for over-generalizing, but it took too long and broke the pacing and I cut it out in the edit. So what it eventually became was a much quieter start, where we can’t really tell what he’s about or what’s boiling under the surface. From the start I knew it needed to be entirely dry, with no respite from the character’s jarring lack of personality.
4) Can you talk a bit about the production? How long did it take? What’s your general vibe on-set? Do you get stressed out?
The production was pretty Chill for the most part and we definitely had fun on set. That's what I always want to aim for, and there were times where the crew dwindled down to only four people, and that was very relaxed. I picked up a few roles to make things work, but it was much more liberating than stressful. The only truly stressful point was the day we shot in Atlantic City at the convention center. I remember walking off alone to berate myself like a dumbass because it was colder than expected, we were taking too long, and everyone was getting impatient. We got a sign from above there, when a guy equally as big as Ken pulled up in the parking lot at the end of the day in his pristine BLUE Camaro, acting tough because he was in charge of security for convention center and no one had told him we had permission to be there (Ken also worked in security, for what it’s worth). It was a great sight to see. Another sign from above happened at the Home2 suites, where Ryan overheard what sounded like some businessmen talking cryptically about the affair they were having together. Overall, I think we set ourselves up for success because we limited our camera setups and used a minimalistic approach. ARRI threw a servo zoom that we desperately wanted into our discounted student camera package for free and that let us be a little more kinetic with the camera without having to move or having to spend time setting up a dolly. Plus I think I was a little turned off by dollies from seeing so many student films where people put too much effort on looking professional when the films were still bad.
We were able to have several months of preproduction, which was definitely helpful in securing locations and all the moving pieces, but in the end we ended up planning shots and scheduling the next days on the midnights of the shoot, with Ryan providing the necessary brainpower to compensate for me being fried and feeding me kratom to me get me through being very sick. The shoot was 7 days long, with 2 days for the fantasy businessmen scenes before everything else. I edited and did the sound mix for way too long. We shot in May 2015, it was good enough to be accepted into Sundance by September 2016, and I was working on the DCP and the surround mix, testing it a few times in a local movie theater, until the very end of the year. I meant to use Maxwell’s “Til the Cops Come Knockin’” for the music video segment, but licensing fell through after a long time. Our composer, Ari, who already knocked the rest of the score out of the park, made the replacement track and I did the vocals late in the game.
5) What else ya workin on at the moment?
I have a feature I’ve been thinking about for awhile. I didn’t have a feature screenplay ready when I went to Sundance, so I didn’t ride that wave so well. I certainly won’t be making any feature until I can have some degree of success again. I really would love to see if I can get into festivals again with a very low-budget short (though Hardware definitely had a real budget) and go in with more of a plan. For now, after Country Boy, I feel juiced up to make as many shorts as I can. I want at least something I do in the near future to feel more polished than Country Boy, even if I make it for nothing.
Bonus question: How was the reception to this at Sundance? It seems a little stranger than the films I usually associate with Sundance. My impression is that Sundance audiences are sometimes turned off by weird stuff.
People liked it alright at Sundance. Nobody reviewed it there so I’m not sure how a general audience member might have received it. We definitely got a few questions that were like, “Woah, that was crazy. What was that?” I think that’s a pretty good reaction. The best screening we had was when we went into Salt Lake City and had a bit of a younger audience. You could feel more suspense and investment from the crowd. I’m being petty here, but my favorite moment of screening it was having the audience feel the ending note of the movie enough to where they weren’t laughing at the beginning of the raunchy comedy about teen girls jacking off an adult stripper, which was supposed to be a coming of age story or whatever, that screened afterwards.
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