SLIFF 2014 Interview: Frank Hall Green – Director of WILDLIKE

WILDLIKE will screen at 5:00pm Saturday, November 22nd at the Tivoli Theater as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. Ticket information can be found HERE.  Frank Hall Green will be in attendance to answer questions about his film

In writer-director Frank Hall Green’s WILDLIKE, Mackenzie (Ella Purnell of “Malificent”), a troubled but daring teenage girl, is sent by her desperate and struggling mother to live with her uncle (Bruce Geraghty of “The Hurt Locker”) in Juneau, Alaska. Although her uncle initially seems like a supportive caretaker and friend, the relationship takes an uncomfortably sinister turn, and Mackenzie is forced to run away. Trying to make her way back to Seattle alone to find her absent mother, Mackenzie instead ends up going ever deeper into the Alaskan interior. Lost and with no one else to turn to, she shadows a backpacker, the loner Bartlett (Bruce Greenwood of “Star Trek”), who proves an unlikely father figure with scars of his own. Together, they cross the wilderness and discover sanctuary in the last frontier.

Frank Hall Green took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about WILDLIKE

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 18th 2014

We Are Movie Geeks: Have you been to St. Louis before?

Frank Hall Green: I have but it’s been a long time.

WAMG: Where did you grow up?

FHG: I grew up in Atlanta.I went to college at NYU in Manhattan and graduate film school there, so I’ve been in New York for most of my life now.

WAMG: Was WILDLIKE your first feature is a director?

FHG: Yes it’s my first narrative feature as a director.

WAMG: How did you come up with this particular story?

FHG: It’s really the confluence of a few ideas and desires. The central issue of sexual abuse is something that had come into my mind a long time ago. It’s an important social issue and I knew a couple of people who had had experiences that they had shared with me. When I was developing an idea for my first feature I read an article in the New York Times that talked about the percentage of women who have undergone some sort of sexual assault and how it’s really at epidemic proportions. I thought that would be interesting to tackle perhaps in a way that has not been presented before. At the same time that was going on, I had taken a backpacking trip to Alaska in 2003. I’m something of an avid backpacker and I usually take a trip like that about once a year. I have gone through Denali and some of the places that part goes through in the movie. I recognized Denali as a beautiful location and natural backdrop for a story. For a first feature, I knew I wanted to do something outdoors in nature. I wanted to do something of a journey, something of an adventure, something with the trajectory of a character going out in nature. These things all came together very easily into one story.

WAMG: Was Bartlett based on you or on anyone you know?

FHG: I think all the characters have a little bit of me in them, since I have to write them from scratch. But no, he’s more of a figment of my imagination than anything else. He is the character in the movie that is the least flawed. The great thing about Bartlett is that he has total acceptance of Mackenzie because he has no agenda with her.

WAMG: How much of the journey that McKenzie takes in the movie did you and your crew actually take?

FHG: We pretty much took the entire, exact Journey. In fact, we’ve taken it several times now. I began writing the script back in 2008, have been writing it off and on, and had a completed draft in 2010. I went back to Alaska for about 10 days and I did specifically take Mackenzie’s journey. I took the ferry boat which is a two day run up through Anchorage into Denali National Park and across the state. And then when I had producers, we took the trip again and scouted locations. During the shooting of the journey we covered 3000 miles.

WAMG: Where did you guys stay at night when you were out in the wild?

FHG: It’s wild and it’s very vast but often times we were shooting just hundreds of yards off the road. Off a dirt road sometimes and we would go out in the middle of nowhere and make a journey from point A to point B and stop along the way and shoot at different spots, but we would always be near some sort of lodge or inn or rustic accommodation where we could put the whole crew up. There were some crew members that were up for it and wanted to do some hard-core camping but we had to keep things professional and make sure everyone got plenty of rest.

WAMG: Did you have any weather-related problems?

FHG: Remarkably, we did not. Weather was not a problem for us. We got incredibly lucky in that it actually rained when we wanted it to rain. We had fabulous weather and the people of Alaska were extremely accommodating. The hard thing was just doing the very long days and seeing the script become real day by day over five weeks.

WAMG: Tell me about filming the scene with the bear. Where did that bear from?

FHG: That bear’s name is Joe Boxer. They call him JB for short and this is his second credit. That’s the same bear that was in INTO THE WILD. JB lives in the Anchorage Wildlife Conservation Center which is run by a wonderful guy named Mike Miller who started it. It’s a massive place with huge enclosures for various types of animals. They’re not trained but they have been raised in captivity for whatever reason. Many can’t fend for themselves in the wild. JB was taken in there as a cub. Mike said we could come down and shoot inside the pen. You can see in the movie that it doubles well as Denali as there are mountains all around where the Center is. It’s quite wild. Mike took a tractor with a front loader on it and put actors Bruce Greenwood and Ella Purnell and the director of photography Hillary Spera in it and picked them up and drove them into this massive enclosure that has 15-foot high fences around the perimeter. He then dropped them down inside of it. Mike got out with a pitchfork and a bucket full of hot dogs. He would throw down some hotdogs and JB would wander toward the hotdogs and toward them wanting more more. At this point Mike would throw another hotdog which would send JB back out further away. So JB would sort of do these circles and Hillary and the actors just got out there and did the scene. We did this for about 30 minutes and got some great shots.

WAMG: Tell me about casting Ella Purnell in the role of McKenzie. She’s a Brit, right?

FHG: Yes she is and she did a terrific accent. I tried to find a girl who was age-appropriate and fit the style of the film and had sort of a natural tone. I had a casting director, Stephanie Holbrook, who was fantastic and we were struggling to find the right person. We had met with several agencies out in LA and had held several auditions. After this I was sort of exasperated and went back to my hotel and there was a movie on called NEVER LET ME GO. It’s a British film with Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan. Keira Knightley’s character has a younger version who was played by Ella Purnell. When Ella came on the screen I watched her for about five minutes and I knew she would be perfect for Mackenzie. I had just happened to meet with Ella’s agent that day so I called the agent at midnight and we talked.

WAMG: Did she have any problems with the physical demands that you asked of her?

FHG: She did not, no. She’s a real go-getter, so not at all. I think the hardest thing was that she joined the production about a year and a half before filming. I went to London a couple of times and met with her and her mother and made sure they were comfortable with the subject matter of the movie and make sure she was willing to go 100% with the production. Ella and I did a lot of talking and skyping. I gave her a lot of material, some of which was hard for her to absorb, but she did some research on her own to get in to the mindset of what some young girls have gone through. Everyone had a blast shooting in Alaska. Day after day of beautiful scenery really kept us going.

WAMG: Was the entire movie shot in Alaska?

FHG: Yes, everything.

WAMG: I noticed when McKenzie is being sexually abused by her uncle the first time she doesn’t put up much of a fight. Was this character supposed to have had a history of being abused?

FHG: Yes, Brian Geraghty who plays the uncle, and Ella and I all talked about there having been an episode earlier where the uncle had crossed the line in a number of ways, probably multiple times, so the Mackenzie character is not surprised when it happens   But I have found in my research that it’s very common for young women to become in this sort of frozen state, to not be able to do anything and in a lot of cases it is eerily quiet – nothing is said.

WAMG: Brian Geraghty does a good job as the uncle. I recognized him from FLIGHT.

FHG: Yes, he was in THE HURT LOCKER as well.

WAMG: That’s right, he had a big part in THE HURT LOCKER. Did you consider any other actors for the role of Bartlett?

FHG: We considered a lot of actors. We had a whole pool of people that we were looking at, but we really liked Bruce Greenwood. He’s a Canadian actor and he had gotten his start in films by director Atom Agoyan. I had just seen him in a film by Kelly Reichart called MEEK’S CUTOFF. I got on the phone with him and we talked for about an hour and a half and hit it off. I think it was luck of the draw that we came together, he is just perfect for the role. I think the tone and the mood and the look and feel of the movie was reflected in the script. I worked really hard to put on paper what I wanted it to look like. That way, when the actors read it, they had a real feel for what it was going to be.

WAMG: What filmmakers have inspired you?

FHG: I’m a big fan of Kelly Reichert, and some of the more quiet, neo-realist directors like her.

WAMG: Did you grow up a movie buff?

FHG: I did in a way. I grew up more an artist and sculptor and photographer. My father used to buy movies from the Columbia House Movie Club and he amassed a big collection of films from the 40s and 50s and 60s, art film and foreign film, most of which I had no idea what they were. When I was in high school I got on this kick of coming home every day after school and popping one of these movies in. So by the time I got into college, I was pretty well informed in film. I got the film bug when I was at NYU as an undergraduate even though I was a photography major and that set me on my current trajectory.

WAMG: What are your release plans for WILDLIKE?

FHG: We have a wonderful sales agent Kevin Iwashina who is handling the picture. He’s going to be talking to distributors pretty soon and we hope to get the movie out of there. We’re determined that it’s seen by a lot of people. The audience response so far has been great so we’re just excited to keep showing it more and more.

WAMG: What’s next for Frank Hall Green?

FHG: I’m a producer as well so I’ve got some things coming up. I have a small movie called REMITTANCE shot in Singapore and the Philippines which is coming out in six months and then I’ve got a project that I’m just starting, an adaptation of a book called Boy 21 by Matthew Quick who wrote SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. That will be directed by Lasse Hallstrom, so I’m really excited about that.

WAMG: Good luck with WILDLIKE and all of your future projects.

FHG: Thanks and I look forward to my visit to St. Louis.