An Interview with Michael Borowiec and Sam Marine, directors of “Man Underground” [FrightFest 2016]

samandmikeMichael Borowiec and Sam Marine co-wrote and co-directed the feature Man Underground (review here) about a conspiracy theorist who loses his job and his marriage after what he believes is an alien visit.  Michael and Sam worked together beautifully on this film, here they are talking about it with Cinema Crazed.

Please tell us what led to the creation of this movie, its story.  What were your inspirations?
Mike and I were living together, both unemployed, both broke, and we vowed to make a feature film that same year. Our inspiration mostly consisted of indie filmmakers who had shot features for next to no money, like John Cassavetes and Alex Ross Perry. So we pitched each other a few ideas that might be cheap to make, and one concept Mike suggested was based on alien conspiracy theorists. What appealed to us was the idea of taking someone who goes on stage and gives these really out there talks on alien conspiracies, and then following them around in their day-to-day life and see what they do, how they interact with people. The added “movie within the movie” helped make it cost effective so we didn’t have to worry about expensive special FX for the sci-fi scenes.

The film has many themes running through it such as acceptance, loss, regret. What do these represent for you?  Why was it important to infuse them into Man Underground?
Sam and I, when we’ve worked separately, have always been drawn to stories about characters coming to terms with themselves. Telling Willem’s story, we were less concerned with his belief that the government is hiding aliens, and more focused on questioning why he believes these things and the impact it’s had on his life. His paranoia and unending quest to spread “the truth” contributed to his wife leaving him, but these things also bonded him to his deceased friend, Jack. So when he makes the movie and acts out these events from his past, he relives both good and bad, which gradually takes an emotional toll on him.

Why did you choose aliens as the cataclysm for the story?
Aliens are fun to imagine. While writing the movie, everyone we talked to about the idea had something to say about them – the likelihood they exist, whether the government has been hiding them, stories about a strange light they’d seen in the sky or a presence they once felt in their room that they couldn’t explain. It’s kind of a universal topic in that way.

We’re also big conspiracy fans and regularly listen to Last Podcast on the Left, which does a great job of exploring these topics in depth but having a sense of humor about it.

How has co-writing and co-directing been as an experience for you and as opposed to doing it alone?
It’s been a totally positive experience from start to finish. First of all, writing can be lonely, so to have someone with you to bounce ideas off of makes it way more fun and keeps you from getting distracted. Ultimately co-directing was the only way we could make this movie, mostly by combining our money and time which was in short supply…. We both had day jobs, and all of our work on the movie had to be done at night, on weekends or during our lunch breaks. So we were constantly tired and stressed out. If we didn’t have each other to stay motivated and to shoulder the burden, we probably would have given up at some point along the way.

Did having your character make a film within the film influenced how you worked?
When we were shooting the “movie within the movie” scenes, we had to approach them differently from the rest of the movie in terms of both acting and aesthetics. We first had to think about how we were going to shoot the scene, and then how we thought the characters would shoot the scene. Since they’re amateur filmmakers we wanted the shots to look rougher and include a lot of zooming and panning that you wouldn’t find in the rest of the film.

The color would be a little off, the positioning of the actors in the frame would be unbalanced. The actors also had to walk a fine line of giving a good “bad performance”, but gradually improve their acting over time as their characters become more comfortable with each other. Luckily our cast was amazing at finding their own unique ways of accomplishing this difficult task.

How was your strong cast chosen or found?
Sam used to produce comedy videos for College Humor, and during her time there met George Basil, who was the last person to audition for the lead and also gave by far the quietest performance. He was younger than we first imagined Willem, but he blew us away. Once we cast George, we knew we had to find the right counterpart for the Todd character, and Andy Rocco was perfect as he brought an affable sincerity to the role, a foil to Willem’s brusque intensity.

Sam had also previously directed a short film starring Pamela Fila, who plays Flossie, so we had in her in mind when writing the script because of her charm and fierce individuality. Lastly there was our friend Felix Hagen, who had recently taken up acting, and brought pathos and wit to the asshole boyfriend character. The first time we got all four actors reading the script out loud, we knew we had found a dynamic that worked.

As the film is very character driven, how much liberty did you give your leads in how they interpreted the script and were they allowed to improvise at all?
Most of our actors were very strong improvisers and we encouraged them to riff in pretty much every scene. As performers it helped them better embody their characters and bring more nuance to the roles. For us, as directors, they made our lives easier by adding lines here and there, improving on jokes we’d written, and injecting their personality into the film.

What were some of the roadblocks you saw while filming and how did you solve them?
The biggest roadblocks were money and time. We condensed the shooting schedule to 16 days straight and called in every favor we had. The cast and crew slept in the same house where we shot most of our scenes. We had our friend, John Hogan, cook meals for the entire crew to save money on craft service – I don’t think he had any prior experience cooking for a group like that. It wasn’t ideal, but we knew we had to do whatever we could to make the film, and somehow it all worked out.

In hindsight, would you change anything in the film or its production if you could?
If we could change anything we would give ourselves more time for both pre-production and production. We didn’t have time to finish storyboarding the film before we had to begin shooting, and eventually had to wing it each day. We only had 4 hours to shoot all of the diner scenes, which take place during both day and night, so that was a nightmare to rush through. Also giving ourselves a break between shooting days would have been helpful for everyone to catch up on rest – eventually a cold broke out and everyone in the house got sick. Ultimately though, everything that happened help shape the experience and we love the film and everyone who helped us along the way.

What are your next projects?
Sam is currently working on a comedic series called “I Adore Dolores” with Jo Roueiheb and Emily Wilson. Mike recently wrote a horror script, Surgat, which he is trying to get into development.