Q&A WITH OSCAR BOYSON

Q. Our Hero, Balthazar really embodies the issues and anxieties teenagers are facing today with regards to social media and gun violence. What compelled you to focus on these matters in your first feature?

A. We [Oscar Boyson and co-writer Ricky Camilleri] don’t write from theme. There were a few current events that became the kernels of different characters and if you’re going to tell a story about young people today, these issues are going to be pretty hard to avoid.

The first kernel came out of the messages that the Uvalde shooter would send out in mass to try and get a rise out of people. There’s lots of people who do that and the way people respond to these messages speaks to how desensitized we’ve become to bad things and danger on the internet. The Balthazar character was born out of the idea of who would get a message from somebody like the Uvalde shooter and actually do something about it.

I have a very different relationship with social media than Gen-Z kids do. When I was 24, Facebook came out and it was cool. It was something that felt like it was just for us. I’ve always had one foot in movie-theater movies and one foot in internet movies. I always get messages from young people who are trying to make movies on the internet and I’ve always felt bad for young people, especially those who feel like they have to be a brand before they turn 10. So, I wanted to tell a story about young people. Ricky and I both wanted to channel some of the feelings that we had when we first met and were 17. In this day and age, to straight up avoid these issues would be like making a sci-fi movie.

Q. All of the performances in the film feel extremely lived-in. How did you go about casting this ensemble and grounding their performances in these very particular but distinct social environments — from high society soirées to rural Texan bars?

A. Based on the shorts and the work I’ve done as a director leading up to this, I knew that as a producer I wouldn’t be able to give myself that many things. Sometimes, when you’re directing a commercial shoot you feel like it is your job to ask for the world. But since I was a producer, I knew that I couldn’t give myself very much and that the one thing I wanted to prioritize was the performances and anything we could do to help the actors. One of those things was shooting in Texas; most people won’t do it on an independent film — or even on a big budget film — because the incentives aren’t very good, especially not in Dallas.

I felt that if we were telling a story that takes place in Texas, we should go there. It’s going to be worth it for Asa Butterfield, who is an Englishman, to ride in the same van every morning with a guy who speaks in the same accent as his character. We also did not want to make a movie that felt like a country song cliché. Most people in rural America don’t live like that.

It was important for me that Solomon [Butterfield’s character] lives in a trailer park, but that it also be a trailer park where you can see a lot of lights at night. You can tell that he is not that far away from the city and that he’s in between two freeways, much like how a lot of people in America live. It’s on you as a director to find those locations, which inform the choices that come after it. If the scene that you’re walking into as an actor feels like a lived-in reality, it’s just one more thing that I can do as a director to help them step into character and do their job.

Q. There’s both a sense of aggression and immediacy in a lot of the visuals in the film. How did DoP Christopher Messina and you land on this tone?

A. There’s an aesthetic answer and then there’s the practical side of it.

I remember talking to Chris and saying, “I barely have any money. We’re gonna shoot it on your camera.” We have known each other for a while and worked on both Heaven Knows What and Good Time together. We joke about how we’re the guys people call when they have no money, but want their project to be good. So, I was like, “We’re going to shoot on your camera and we’re going to borrow our friends’ lenses. You won’t get an AC, any helpers or lights. Are you down?” He was like, “Yeah.” And then, I was like, “If I get more money, I’m going to give it to the art department.” He was like, “Good idea.” So, I was like, “This is exactly who I want to be going into battle with,” because if you’re upfront about how little you can give and that person is still excited about the project, that’s the ideal collaborator. The practical part is that we don’t have the time or resources to make this thing look like a David Fincher movie.

The aesthetic side has to do with the movies that we both grew up on. The movies that made us want to be filmmakers. For us, those were movies like Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, and Bully. A lot of late ‘90s, early 2000s films where the camera always seems like its in a constant state of discovery, films that weren’t afraid to have a bad cut, or a cut that pulls you in as a viewer because it’s like, “Whoa, I didn’t see that coming.”

Q. What is the last film you saw and loved?

A.Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs for probably the 20th time. It continues to make me question how a movie, or even a narrative for that matter, is supposed to work.

Q. What’s a happy creative accident you’ve had on set?

A. I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s one shot where I wasn’t satisfied with the makeup, so I tried to do a shoot on my own with a prosthetic. It never occurred to me that a combination of both the prosthetic and the makeup would be the best version, so I’m really glad I shot them exactly the same way. It’s not a movie with very many noticeable visual effects, but the only reason this one looks as good as it does is because I used both.

Q. Is there anyone in particular whom you’d love to work with?

A. Alison Oliver.

Q. Who, or what, do you think is the future of filmmaking?

A. This experience has been really humbling, because you see how hard it is and how broken a lot of the existing models for getting your movie out there are. When I saw Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, I was like, this is the future.

These guys go out with a tiny crew and shoot 200 days. 200 days is what a lot of our favorite movies took to get made. We had 22 days on Balthazar. And, I’m lucky to have had 22 days. A lot of people making their first feature might have 15 or 19 days. So, the fact that Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol managed to create a sustainable production model where they could shoot 200 days is inspiring. And, the way that they brought that movie out, like a road show, is also inspiring.

Q. What image would you like to end this interview with?