5 Questions with Rafael Lorié and Valerie Brooks
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
Rafael - I grew up in Miami watching a lot of animated films. Looney Tunes was a big staple at our house. I remember as a young kid I had a few VHS tapes with behind the scenes extras after the credits (specifically remembering Disney’s The Jungle Book doing this) where you’d see the creative team sorting out all the minutiae that go into making a movie. These BTS reels really cracked open my head because I don’t think I had ever really connected the dots before that movies were made by real people, and usually lots of people, all having to work together. Around that time I had the same sort of realization for novels too, putting together “oh these are just words from somebody else’s brain.” That was a big moment for me. It kind of bridged this big chasm in my mind; these stories or on-screen fantasies didn’t just come from nowhere.
Valerie - I kind of answered this for Pollo Cante already, but I started specifically making films with Rafi after meeting in college and realizing he was the only person whose opinion I wanted to hear in our directing class.
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
R & V - A lot of this movie comes from a time where we both had just moved back home to Florida after living in NYC for a few years and were navigating coming back to our families and back to very unfamiliar landscapes. We were totally taken aback by the amount of development going on along the edges of the Everglades, a place we used to spend a lot of time in as kids. Around the same time, the character of Dent was mulling around in a feature Val was writing. We decided he didn’t really fit in the feature but deserved his own story anyway.
We were talking a lot about the different ways humans have cut themselves off from nature and how that kind of goes hand in hand with the lack of inter-generational communication. We were drawn to the idea of an over eager kid who dreams of bliss through an occupation which he understands little of. His reckless bulldozing has unintended and destructive consequences to the nature and people around him. Dent reminds us of Simba when he goes hunting in the beginning of the Lion King by himself but, he doesn’t even know what hunting means. He’s playing more than honing his skills. We were also imagining what nature would say if it could speak a warning signal to us. And what happens when its message is shared with somebody who doesn’t know how to listen.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the most, and the least?
R - As far as the actual shooting of the film, one of the biggest challenges was dealing with our homemade zebra convertible. By the end of the shoot we were towing it from location to location using each others AAA miles. It wouldn’t actually drive during our chance to film at the zoo so we ended up getting some friends to help us with a digital zebra car for that particular shot. It was great to see how many people automatically said yes to the words “zebra car” and “drive-thru zoo”
V - Everyone we approached about making this film (except our producer Danny) told us it would be too hard to make. We didn’t listen to them and it turned out they were right - it was an exceptionally difficult process. We filmed this movie for over 20 days trying to get all of the different locations we’d written in the script. I think the biggest challenge was recognizing that you can write anything you want in the world, but then to commit to filming it is a different story. Overall, the efforts were worth it. Also Rafi got hypothermia the first time we shot the Ponce de Leon lagoon scene which is why he is "PyScHiC".
R - Yeah that was terrible. I got very confused and couldn’t deliver my lines. Nobody understood how cold I was under the make up.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
V - "The Point of Lease Resistance" by Peter Fischli & David Weiss. They had a very unique sense of humor and were usually poking fun with reality, rather than trying to control it or judge it.
R - I’ve been re-watching this BBC series Val showed me a couple years ago called "Ring of Fire: An Indonesia Odyssey." It follows 2 filmmaker brothers in the 70s as they attempt to recreate naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace’s voyage to find the bird of paradise. What was intended to be a year long journey quickly escalates into 10 years. It’s nuts. It has a sense of mystery I really like and reminds you that there are still many unexplained phenomena in the world.
5) What’s next for you?
We’re currently writing a feature together called Orange Rivers and Valerie is finishing up a short experimental/narrative film called "A-gita" that we’ve been shooting for the last three years. We also just got engaged!
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http://www.dentheadgone.com
IG: Rafael: @raelgoodraf
Valerie: @valentinebrux