5 Questions with Ryan McGlade
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I grew up in Pittsburgh, and I think that the two movies central to my early life there were the 1973 animated version of Charlotte's Web with Debbie Reynolds, and Space Jam. When I was five or six, I loved Space Jam so much that I washed my VHS copy with soap and water and inadvertently destroyed it. I think that was probably when I decided that I wanted to make movies of my own.
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
The script for Bennifer formed out of a few disparate ideas and images that I’d been orbiting around – the dynamic between Jed, Anne, and Bennifer, the thought of being held in a bunker for many years of your life without a clear reason and then being released, and other stray elements like the jazz scatting and Tamio Shiraishi’s saxophone performance style – and these all ended up congealing into the narrative. The jazz scatting element, in particular, was inspired by a video I saw on YouTube of Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme performing together at the 1976 Grammy Awards. Once I figured out how these elements were interacting with each other in my head, I understood how the film should feel and went from there.
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?
A unique challenge for me on this one was that it was my first project (with any kind of budget and relatively large crew) to be shot on film, in this case Super 16mm. I knew that my DP, Cody Powers, would do great stuff with the format because I’d seen some of his celluloid work before, and we were lucky enough to have the chance to work with some of New York’s best camera assistants and grip/electric crew, so I was confident that it’d turn out well. But I can’t say that I wasn’t terrified from time to time about shooting too much and running out of film. My favorite part of the process is probably casting, because it’s extremely fun to see other people inhabit this thing that was just a set of abstract ideas before – it’s when the movie starts to feel real to me. My least favorite part of the process is probably the paperwork, although it’s very important.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I just saw the 1934 Howard Hawks movie Twentieth Century for the first time, and I was really blown away by it. I love Hawks a lot but somehow I’d missed this one, and it’s absolutely one of my new favorites – completely insane central performances by John Barrymore (like Young Frankenstein-era Gene Wilder doing Daniel Plainview on speed) and Carole Lombard (going as hard as humanly possible as the ultimate Pre-Code diva). It’s like the Metal Machine Music of scenery-chewing, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. I also just love movies that are mostly set onboard moving trains.
5) What’s next for you?
I recently finished a new short called Hoss, which I’ve been sending out to festivals and hope to premiere sometime this year. I'm also in post on a couple of other projects, and I've been working a feature script.
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