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There’s nothing like having someone push a foot in your mouth for a sensual scene on the first day of shooting a sexually charged thriller. Follow along, because follow her She has great fodder behind the scenes.
“First day [co-star/writer Dani Barker] He came to set, we had to film the sex scene first,” he admitted Luke Cook (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Dynasty), who plays Tom in the film, an attractive and mysterious man who hires cash-strapped Jess (Parker), a broadcaster, to help him finish writing a screenplay. “Dani put her foot in my mouth, and we — Danny and I — had just met in real life, so that was pretty intense for me. For some reason, not being rude, I was like, ‘I’m not ready for this. I don’t want to do this now. I want to’ I’m getting to know Danny a little bit, and maybe we can tone that down later.”
No coffee and chatting here, but perhaps diving into the intense scenes first added something richer for the actors to explore. “Sometimes those kinds of scenes happen to be shot first [with scheduling],” noted Cook, who is set to appear in the third season of Hacks After the WGA writers’ strike. “So, we shot that, and it was very intimate, very quickly. I’ve heard of directors doing that. It’s a technique they use to get their actors close together right off the bat. And it worked.” Danny Parker, Luke Cook, Director Sylvia Kaminer Share more about your thriller with MovieWeb.
A story extracted from real life
follow her It’s getting a lot of attention so far. The smash-hit independent film won six Audience Awards, five Best Picture Awards and over a dozen other awards on the film festival circuit. The story follows Jess, a live broadcaster who uses kinks with others to achieve her success in live broadcasting. Ah, the modern age. Jess’s livelihood collapses after the fallout from the live broadcast. After answering an online job, Tom hires her to write a screenplay ending in a remote cabin. Then the seductive “screenwriter” hands her a script in which the two are the main characters. What follows is a psycho-sexual thriller that shines a spotlight on the challenging ethical limits of social media.
The new movie is inspired by writer/star Parker’s real-life experiences taking the weirdest Craigslist jobs online and filming them with hidden cameras. Initially, Parker wanted to write something between two characters in one place, something she could “make on the cheap”. She wanted to have her character Jess suddenly trapped in a house with only one option: to keep her “persona” of Tom’s story alive.
“It always surprises me how frightened people can be when watching it, mainly the horror element in it,” Parker said. And there are some bits that are planted in the movie that not everyone gets to see. I don’t want to give away anything, but there are some things that Hitchcock did throughout that if you don’t watch carefully, you’ll miss them. All of that, for me, was the most chilling moment. her eternity.”
For the film, which was culled from fragments of her real-life experiences, Parker noted: “I was always keen to go out and meet people in public. [in the online show], But we’ve updated the story here, because the live broadcast was something I hadn’t participated in before. I thought it increased the risk even more.
She added, “The character of Jess was a strange mixture of the old parts of me, and her grit that was kind of lost in me.” “So, my preparations have been about finding that and improving that courage, because I’ve been out of the industry for a few years. And getting that courage again, but also bringing these old, naive parts of myself into it. It was an interesting balance to that.”
Luke Cook on those steamy scenes and more
The sexual chemistry between Luke Cook and Danny Parker runs deep follow her. The actors, in turn, are in an excellent performance. Cook said he couldn’t wait to take on the role after reading Parker’s script. “I thought no one else could play that role,” he smiled. I mean, of course other people could play the part. It’s kind of stupid for me to say, but I just thought, ‘Okay, I could crush this, and I should try that.'” I was like, “How is everyone going to experience that? How what are they going to do? I’m going to do it better. Because I can play this guy.”
He said he also appreciated how multifaceted Tom was. It’s such a mystery all the time. You’re like, ‘Wait… who’s this guy?’ what does he want what’s he doing?’ He’s a chameleon. You just don’t know what he’s going to do or how he’s going to change at any given moment. And I love that side of it.”
The audience will appreciate it too. Tom is complicated if not dangerously seductive. After he got out The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, A dark show in itself, we asked Cook if it was hard to play such a shady role.
“For me, it’s not so much about the challenge in drama or comedy,” Cook said. “What I find challenging is subtlety. I like bold characters like myself. I don’t like not acting. I can’t stand watching movies when people aren’t doing anything. I like to act and move, so what I find most difficult is when I’m doing nothing. This Something I have to work on all the time. But this role was bold and energetic. What was challenging were the nuances in the moments that we had to figure out. That was the challenge, not the character.”
The director’s vision of the film
follow her is Sylvia Kaminer’s directorial debut. When she first read the script in 2017, she had recently recovered from a life-threatening illness and was eager to take on a new project. She’s been a longtime fan of genre films, and Parker’s screenplay captures the thriller niche nicely. She felt she could add something to Parker’s exploration of many people’s obsession with Internet fame and the lengths they would go to to achieve it.
“I also love flawed characters. I don’t like anyone perfecting them because it’s not realistic,” Kaminer said. “I love that Jess’s character was so conflicted. Her morals were very questionable, and she’s driven by a need for fame, which is especially problematic for young people who grew up on social media. I saw such great potential, especially the relationship between hero and antagonist, which was really cool.” .
Kaminer and Parker engaged in very frank talks about how to bring the movie to life. “We had to jump off the cliff with each other because it was my first time directing a narrative feature and her first time not only as a writer, but as a lead actress. A movie doesn’t work if you don’t have the lead actor giving the performance or his life. It was like that. With both Danny and Luke.”
The duo spent about 10 months working on the script, then brought in the live component so it felt very modern. “I think the movie is very timely,” Kaminer said. And from the moment Danny and I spoke, we just said, ‘Okay, we’re doing it. And we never looked back.”
follow her, From Quiver Distribution, opens Friday, June 2 in select theaters and VOD.
