[Editorial] Interview with cast & crew of Night Drive (2019)

After reviewing the mischievous thriller Night Drive recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing the team involved: Brad Baruh, the co-director; Meghan Leon, co-director and writer; AJ Bowen, who played the ride-share driver Russell; and Sophie Dalah, who played his passenger Charlotte. I looked around the virtual “room”, thanked everyone for coming to talk about Night Drive and asked whether they were treating this as a Dead Night reunion. “Well yeah” said Brad, “it’s a very different film but we were all involved. Meghan was editor on Dead Night and there with us on set, and she and I had worked together before so we decided to co-direct this one, as she’d been so valuable on Dead Night. AJ was an excellent collaborator too, and we’re all round a good group, lucky to have found each other. It’s fun in all the right ways.”

Maybe it was too cheeky (judging by AJ’s reaction), but I dared offer that this time, they had a better writer. “Exactly,” said Brad: “we did OK on this one.”

So I directed my cheek to Meghan Leon, the writer next, and asked whether Night Drive is a story about a man learning to take responsibility for the situations he finds himself in, or simply a fun piece of entertainment. “A little bit of both,” she answered. “It’s definitely a story about re-evaluating your life and having the opportunity to have a second chance, which very few people get; and coming to grips with poor decisions in your past, getting to right wrongs. Or not: taking the opportunity and using it as you see fit. But also, AJ brought so much to the role that he also brought a fun spin to the film as an entry point, an everyman who is just drawing with the insanity that Sophie brings, non-stop. It was really fun seeing them both bring the characters to life.”

That double act worked really well from an audience point of view. I asked Brad whether there were extra challenges directing what was essentially a two-person film. “Absolutely. Meghan just mentioned AJ’s chops, and having actors like him with Sophie to support, we knew they had the chemistry from Dead Night; obviously a different experience, but offset during prep: everything we saw had that chemistry, which you can’t really direct, so from that perspective it was amazing. You set out to do something small and contained with these two amazing actors, but that provides its own set of challenges of course. So I think from the perspective of the amazing script that Meghan wrote and the two actors together in their existing chemistry we were safe, and it was up to us to figure out how to make it visually interesting and keep it going. But again as we watched them read Meghan’s dialogue, we saw it gel and we were able to really work on blocking, visually tell the story and let them go and do their thing. And we were very pleased with the results.”

AJ certainly brought plenty into his role, from a broad film career, but this time he didn’t bring the You’re Next beard. I couldn’t help another cheeky question: does he take it off when he plays a good guy or what? “No,” said AJ, “I’m just getting older. I look like Santa Clause now. My daughter misses it too, she gets scared when I’m clean-shaven. I guess the beard has its own character, I should have given it some points from my pay cheque. It started off because I have a very Irish round race, so I grew a beard to hide my five chins, and then it sort of stayed there. Usually we have conversations about facial hair, which is kind of silly in a movie, but I don’t remember if we talked about it for this one. Beard or beardless? Sophie got rid of hers for the movie, which was helpful, bleaching it out; because otherwise, she looks really strange: her facial hair doesn’t grow in evenly, so it’s very patchy. And so I agreed to be clean-shaven too.” Brad was hiding behind his coffee at this point!

I carried on with another question for AJ, asked him if he’d like to carry on playing the good guy or whether he’d like a role with a different moral compass. “Typically, you try to find opposites with the creative team. So it’s like what Brad was just saying: this could on paper be a chamber piece, because it appears to have a pretty controlled environment being inside the car. But that doesn’t lend itself to visual aesthetics: it can be non-cinematic, so we have to really go in, very visually drive, because otherwise we’d just be doing a podcast of Meghan’s script. So we wanted it to look visually appealing and think about where to find opposites; figuring out the rigs and everything. I mention all that because it’s the same as the way I approach a performance: if I play a character that’s unpleasant or open to extreme judgement from an audience member, I try to find the humanity in that person. As a performer, my job is the opposite of what modern social media is: I’ve got to not dehumanise, not cast judgement, not end these people, because that doesn’t make for very interesting storytelling. So I’ve got to plug in and find a relation-point with these guys and make a well-rounded human being who just happens to do some bad things. And when it comes to playing guys who aren’t killing people actively, there’s still stuff in there. You know, this guy Russell has made some mistakes in his life, so it’s all shades of grey. The other thing that happens is that after a while you get tired of choking people out because you’re eating the same meal and you want to do something different. Right after You’re Next, we got into The Sacrament, so it was interesting to play a different character who was not only considered to be a good guy but just a different type of aesthetic that informs a lot of what you’re doing. In this one, Meghan already knew Sophie and I, and it was written for us; and Meghan’s aware of there being plenty of things I would change, choices I would do differently if I could. But also there’s a difference in that Sophie and I are about twenty years different in age, so it pretty easily is like this Gen X versus Millennial vibe in our perspectives, so that’s interesting. In terms of a ‘bad guy’, I don’t know: it gets pretty boring after a while being mean to people. I want to do a musical next with all of us where I’m just incredibly nice and I don’t die.”

Brad approved: “he does have a gorgeous singing voice, FYI.”

Having heard herself being talked about a little, I turned to Sophie and asked what was it like playing someone who was so ambiguous throughout Night Drive? “It was kind of like when I reacted to things, I did so knowing that it could all be fixed. I went through it like that, and if you watch it a second time you might notice that and understand some of my decisions a little bit more. I think I had quite a clear vision, which was I’m using this man as a prop; trying to get to the end of a race and I’ll do whatever it takes to get there, you know? That was pretty much my motivation.”

Sophie’s character, Charlotte, was lucky she had picked a driver who was so accommodating. “I think I tried to become his friend to use him. I remember from the beginning being ultra-chatty with him, to get him on my side from the get-go. And I feel like I made it hard for him to say ‘no’.”

Personally, I saw it as a bit of gas lighting here and there. “Yeah,” laughed Sophie, “probably a bit of that too.”

“Whatever gets the job done,” agreed AJ; and I’m sure it’s easy to look back on his character’s experiences with pragmatism.

Having got my attention again, I referred AJ to the generational issue which he had raised; the ride-share scenario feels particularly contemporary to me and Night Drive is the third thriller I’d seen in the last year that centres on it. I wondered if it’s a phenomenon we’re still a little uneasy about still, and I asked if each of the team had had experiences they brought into the film. Meghan responded “yeah that was kind of the impetus for writing the script. I don’t own a car, so I just take Lyft and Uber; obviously not so much during the pandemic, but prior to writing this film, absolutely. You’re stuck in a car with a stranger, typically a man, driving you around; and it’s interesting thinking about the power tables being turned. As a woman, when you’re in a car with a man driving, you give up a certain amount of control in that situation, so it was fun to kind of flip it and have Sophie more in control in the story. You put so much blind faith in people, but then drivers do the same with their passengers so it kind of goes both ways.”

Continuing with Meghan, I referred to all of her credits in Night Drive and asked whether she wore many hats, or if they blurred into one. “They kind of blurred into one,” answered Meghan. “I think of writing and editing as like doing the first draft and then the final draft of the story and it was very helpful when Brad and I were discussing how to block things or how he was going to shoot things, knowing what we were going to need in the edit bay. And since it was such a small budget it helped us streamline what we were to shoot, so it really wasn’t a lot of fat in the production. It really helped us narrow down our focus on what we needed, make it a more concise experience.”

I had to ask another writing question: why was Night Drive set at Christmas time? “Everybody likes Christmas. It has a good vibe, and contrasts with the terrible things that happen; the jolly lights, the inflatable lawn ornaments. There’s a lot of other great movies that take place at Christmas, you know: all of Shane Black’s movies, and it adds a nice dichotomy to the story.”

I’d seen lots of Marvel and Disney in Brad’s career credits, with some horror in between, and asked him whether one was about paying the bills and the other a personal interest. “Yeah to some degree that’s right,” said Brad. “It’s interesting: I’m one of those lucky people who grew up reading comics, so I was able to hook up with those guys---an amazing team---on Iron Man 2 and I’ve worked on the other films since. In terms of BTS [behind-the-scenes] work, Meghan has been part of that with me, which has dovetailed into some shows on Disney+. So obviously as a kid growing up and reading Marvel, loving Star Wars, that makes sense; but you’re right, it’s kind of our day job. And we love getting out and doing these independent films as well. We can do amazing things with these amazing properties and then sneak away and do our own thing. So from my perspective, I’m very lucky: it’s an amazing career that I’ve stumbled into, and Meghan’s been a huge part of that. Again, there’s nothing more fun than getting out on nights and weekends, making a feature and knowing we’re going to get over the finish line with people like AJ (not only as an actor but also a producer), and Sophie: it’s fun, even when it gets heated, and it does afford a lot of creative freedom. You can get a lot back from this type of career: if you finish it, you hit the finish line and you get to control it in the way we do, and we have wonderful partners in MPI, so it’s been amazing. The passion is there for the Star Wars and Marvel stuff as well, but you’re right; it’s the day job that keeps us going.”

Back to the actors, and I asked a question that hasn’t arisen in any interviews until now: how do you approach acting and driving, combining those two mind-sets in one activity? Sophie answered “I felt entirely safe driving with AJ. He did not feel great driving with me, and most people would say I’m not the best driver. So it was kind of terrifying, just because when I had the car it felt like a lot of pressure, but it was fun too; I did enjoy it. It’s interesting and it was my first time.”

AJ added his perspective to that. “It’s not something that you’re naturally gifted at doing it: it’s a technical craft that you learn how to do. And I have done it in a lot of movies. For me, the first time was a serious trial by fire in traffic, like in a very busy part of LA. It’s just technique, like anything else; like learning how to be open to camera, hitting your light (which is pretty standard), but also on top of that, not getting anyone injured. That’s an extra element right there. I guess I’m pretty comfortable at this point, but I’ve been doing it for ten years. Now, any time we do lower budget, higher concept stuff, you’re not necessarily going to be able to rig up a process where you’re being driven by someone else. And to be honest, I have done that before, where you’re on a trailer bed and acting like you’re driving; but that’s way less natural than just doing the thing. And it helps with pacing, and it helps with staying present in the moment; a more naturalised performance because you’re actually doing the thing, and not pretending.”

AJ’s talk of being natural made me think of acting as possibly a combination of being yourself and being someone else at the same time, and I asked to what degree both AJ and Sophie were being themselves in Night Drive. AJ answered first. “This character is probably---in terms of personality at least---the closest to myself of anyone that I’ve played. And the circumstances are obviously ridiculously heightened, but without all the animosity, that’s kind of how Sophie and I get along. We trade music back and forth, we make jokes, but we do try not to kill people, though, or run anybody over.”

“Parts of myself were there,” added Sophie, “but definitely no, that was not me. I’m actually a really nice person. But yeah, the banter between me and AJ was natural, though it did all come from the page. We really get along and that’s what was real about us. Charlotte is much more complex than me.”

“And I drive a Prius in real life,” said AJ, “not an exciting car.”

When I spoke with the team, Night Drive was about to hit home release in the USA, and the UK premiere is scheduled for the end of August (at FrightFest). I asked them all how they felt about it now getting out into the world. “I think it’s super awesome,” said Brad, “the fact that we got to do this pre-pandemic and we got together as friends and companions, put this thing together in the way that we wanted and made it into this experience… it’s incredibly rewarding to get to the finish line and people get to see it. As you know, and we all know, making a movie is hard: it’s hard to complete, hard to get out into the world; so getting to the finish line is rewarding. This one came from a place of passion, from me and Meghan wanting to make something together. Seeing it get a release, and go international means the world to me.”

“Yeah, super exciting,” said Meghan, “it’s exciting that people will finally be able to see it. We premiered at Fantastic Fest a couple of years ago, and then the pandemic hit, so it was difficult to get people into theatres. We were in a couple of other festivals, but they were all remote and so you sort of lose perspective on people’s reactions because it’s happening so far away and you’re not involved in it, so it’s really cool that it’s now out into the world, and hopefully people will dig it.”

Of course, I had to ask what’s coming next for them all. Brad came first: “Meghan and I have these shows on Disney+ which we’re thrilled about; those continue, and we’ve just done one based on the show Loki, which is now available and that’s a lot of fun. We have another Disney Gallery show coming in August, which is super exciting as well. So that stuff all continues, while we work on some new features; they’re just currently in production. And we’re always discussing more ideas in the film realm. But this is kind of our focus for now. Sophie has some interesting stuff…”

“Yeah, I’m a chef,” said Sophie. “I’m opening a restaurant/café in west Hollywood, so that’s pretty exciting. I’ve got that going and I’m auditioning and just trying hopefully get home to Australia to see my family.”

AJ added some philosophy: “it’s just an interesting world on this side of things and I’m at an age now where creatively things have changed so much in how we make them, how we get them out, what the expectation is. And I’m looking at myself and thinking OK, there’s this first half of life on this side and what’s going to come next, and for me, it’s pretty simple: I want to continue to make films with Brad and Meghan, because we know how to do it, we have a shorthand, and we’d like to build up our own brand that way. Additionally, I’ve always been a writer and had a hand in production, so when you make movies with your friends, you wear a lot of different hats and that lends itself to being pretty creatively fulfilling. So when we’re not doing things together, I’m probably going to go like the Corman route and put up my own shingle, start writing my own scripts that hopefully we can work on together. We’ll work together but what hat we wear might change from time to time. But I look to be directing as well, myself, and then go to Sophie’s café and leave a review.”

Sounds like there will be plenty for us film lovers to look forward to in the future. 

Night Drive arrives in USA theatres and digital/VOD on 6 August, and has its UK premiere at FrightFest on 26 August. Seek it out if you can.

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