WAMG Interview: Cody Stokes – Director and Writer of the Netflix Hit THE GHOST THAT WALKS

By Tom Stockman | April 22, 2020

Shot in St. Louis by former St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase award-winner Cody Stokes, THE GHOST WHO WALKS is a huge hit currently on Netflix. It’s breathlessly paced ride through the hidden underbelly of the city. After five years in prison, Nolan (Garland Scott) is given his freedom, but his release required that he rat on his former boss — a betrayal that carries a death sentence. Nolan must now scramble to find his ex, Lena (Alexia Rasmussen), and the 5-year-old daughter he’s never met before Donnie (Gil Darnell) can track him down and kill him. Nolan’s quest is simple: Put his family back together and escape. But to build a better future, Nolan first must face his past in all its forms. Can Nolan survive the night? Or is he already a ghost, doomed from the moment the prison doors opened?

Cody Stokes took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about THE GHOST WHO WALKS

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 29th, 2019.

Tom Stockman: You’re from St. Louis, correct?

Cody Stokes: Yes, I still live here now although I did move away early on in my career and was working in New York. Really my bread-and-butter activity is directing TV commercials. Having kids gave us a reason to move back, but I bounce back-and-forth between here and LA for my commercial work. I do some work here as well, but mostly my work is on the coasts.

TS: Where did you live growing up?

CS: I lived in North County, and then my parents moved us to Saint Charles. 

TS: Were you something of a movie buff growing up? 

CS: I was obsessed with them, but movies weren’t something that were readily available to me. When I was a kid, we didn’t have cable TV. We barely had TV with the basic channels. My dad was a firm believer in “getting out to ply” My parents have always been supportive, but movies weren’t something we thought much about when I was younger. I wasn’t really exposed to good cinema until I was much older. I always wanted to be a stuntman. I would do stunts in my backyard and I would storyboard films incorporating stunts, but I never actually had a camera. My parents just figured it was me playing out in the yard. I would jump off the roof and crash my bike.

TS: Did you ever hurt yourself?

CS: Fortunately I did not! When I was a teenager, I started making some stop-motion animation films. I was inspired by Nick Park and his Wallace and Gromit films, but I don’t even know what happened to those films.

TS: Let’s talk about THE GHOST WHO WALKS. I liked that you used St. Louis locations, but didn’t make it obviously the this was the city it was set in. For example, I never saw an establishing shot with The Arch, which you so often see in films shot here.

CS: Yes, and that’s fine for a filmmaker who wants to set his story in St. Louis, but I wanted THE GHOST WHO WALKS to be set in more of an unidentified city. The city could be anywhere. It could be New York City, or it could be like more like one of these Rust Belt cities that I spent time in. It was very natural for me to set this in a generic city in a sense.  I wanted people to see the film and relate to it in their own lives, and I think that helped. 

TS: What were some of the locations you used here in St. Louis? 

CS: We shot primarily in North St. Louis city and also downtown. There were a lot of locations in the city where I had worked when I was in the construction business years ago, and I wanted to go back to those places and utilize ones that I remembered.

TS:  I noticed that you shot at the Dogtown Liquor store.  

CS: Yes, we shot there. I think that’s a pretty iconic location for people from St. Louis. We also shot at Billy’s Diner off South Broadway, which I believe is now shut down.  We filmed at Bastille in Soulard, which is a pretty well-known gay bar there. They were really kind to us when we filmed there. One reason we shot in St. Louis was that we simply did not have the budget that the film required, a common problem for independent films. We had so many locations where we really had to rely on people’s enthusiasm and love for the project. Locations were no small part of that. We needed to film a scene inside of a jewelry store. Ironically, there had been a series of jewelry store holdups recently in which the robbers used the guise of a filmmaking crew scouting locations. So when we wanted to find a jewelry store, nobody would talk to us. They didn’t trust us because of those recent crimes. Fortunately I knew someone who knew somebody who had a jewelry store that was able to put in a good word and let us shoot there.

TS: How was it working with the city of St. Louis and the Saint Louis Police Department on this film?

CS: They were great to work with. The city of St. Louis really cooperated and seemed to welcome us with open arms. They were able to shut down entire blocks from traffic while we shot. That’s something that can be very expensive to do on the coast.

TS: If you had a larger budget, what would you have done differently?

CS: I may have put a name performer in the cast, but I love the cast that I had. 

TS: Tell me about the casting of Garland Scott in the lead. Did you write this script with an African-American in that role?

CS: No, when I wrote the script I really wasn’t thinking about the race of any of the characters. Garland was the first to send an audition tape for the film. We ended up looking at over 100 more auditions, but we ended up going back to him, and he was perfect.  Garland and I were very much in sync together about how we wanted to work. It was his first starring role. He had been in some shorts. He’s in almost every scene so it was important to have someone that looked at the project the same way I did.

TS: Yes, he’s very good. He’s charismatic and has a certain quiet menace about him. Tell me about Dasha Nekrasova. Where did you find her?

CS: Joni Tackette was our casting director here in St. Louis. Of course I wanted some local talent in the film, but she and I discussed getting some nationwide casting going for it as well. Whenever you cast a role that’s a female in her 20s, that’s going to be the biggest demographic for someone looking for a role. For that role, I think the number of auditions was close to 600. There were a lot of great auditions but something about Dasha Nekrasova stood out to me. There was something so real about her and I really fell in love with the idea of casting her as Mitzi early on and I’m just thankful that it all worked out .

TS: One thing I liked about your film is that it has exploitation elements that an R-rated crime film should have. There’s violence and there’s nudity. Those are things I want to see when I watch a crime film.

CS: Right, when you make a movie that takes place in that world, those are things that think you have a responsibility to include, but it needs to be realistic and that helps. I was watching JOHN WICK 3 recently and, while I enjoyed the film, there were so many bullets going through heads, it just became too much.

TS: I agree. The violence in your film is not overwhelming but when it’s there it’s realistic and shocking. 

CS: Yes, and the nudity is natural as well. People who are in that life aren’t going to simply cover themselves up out of modesty.  I don’t film nudity to titillate an audience but to keep it real.

TS: How did you get this idea for this story?

CS: Really it was about the bond with my children after being on the road early in my career. All time with your kids is important, but especially those very early years. And I also thought about what my kids were missing from me. So it was really about fatherhood. When I first started on this film, it was much different than it turned out to be. 

TS: How did you go about financing this film?

CS: We went out and raised money with investors, and it was all made with St. Louis money, even though St. Louis is not well-known as a hotbed of filmmaking and financing, so that was good.

TS: How has it been received at festivals so far?

CS: It’s been received wonderfully.  I think it’s one of those films that people connect to. There’s enough familiarity with the crime genre for an audience, but I think they are surprised with some of the twists and turns in the film. I think there’s something exciting for audiences to find something new, in the sense that I am an unknown and the cast is basically unknowns.  We won the St. Louis Filmmaker Showcase here over the summer and in October we won Best Dramatic Feature at a film festival in New York . Before that we were at the Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham. After the St. Louis International Film Festival, we took it down to Anchorage for a film fest there.

TS: Best of luck with THE GHOST WHO WALKS and all of your future projects.

CS: Thanks, man!