Interview
WAMG Interview: Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz – Co-Directors and Writers of ANTEBELLUM
Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz are former advertising creative executives who founded their agency Bush/Renz in 2008. The duo has a long and successful history of viral and effective short form marketing and entertainment. Their debut feature ANTEBELLUM, is about a woman who finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality involving slavery.
Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about their careers and about how ANTEBELLUM came to be.
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman January 13th, 2021
Tom Stockman: I recently watched your movie ANTEBELLUM and found it very entertaining. Gerard, I heard that this story was inspired by a nightmare that you had.
Gerard Bush; Yes it was shortly before we moved to LA . I was having a lot of weird dreams at that time. This particular nightmare felt different. It felt like this woman Eden was so desperate for help that she was screaming across dimensions. That’s how we got the original idea.
TS: I’m curious about what you did as soon as you woke up from your dream. Did you write things down? Did you call someone and tell them about it?
GB: I’m very respectful about dreams and I get a lot of inspiration from them. I usually keep a notepad next to the bed but in this case, I didn’t. I had my phone and I was contemplating whether or not to open the phone because I felt like if I did, that would keep me from going back to sleep. At first I decided to just wait and write it all down in the morning but something inside me said not to do that and I’m so happy I didn’t. I opened the note app on my phone and wrote everything down.
TS: There’s a big twist in ANTEBELLUM so I don’t want to talk about the story too much, but was that twist in your dream?
GB: Yes. That’s what boggles my mind. The nightmare followes the whole story right down to the sign and everything. That’s why this woman was so desperate to reach for help. I wondered if this was happening in the future or an SOS from the past.
TS: Christopher, how did you get involved in this project?
Christopher Renz: Gerard and I have been together as writing and directing partners and also as life partners for the past 12 years. I was on board from the morning he woke up and came to the kitchen and told me about the nightmare We discussed it and it was such an incredible story that we wrote it as a short story that same day.
GB: We wrote the short story with the idea that it was just going to be that. We had no intention at that point that it was going to be a film.
TS: It’s definitely high-concept. Was this a difficult story to describe to studios and investors to get funding for?
GB: It’s a difficult movie to describe because when describing it because you just want them to experience it the way audiences would experience it. We were pleasantly surprised that there was a bidding war from almost all of the major studios.
TS: Let’s talk about these plantation scenes that make up part of the film. Where were those filmed?
CR: Those were filmed in Louisiana at the Evergreen Plantation. That’s also where DJANGO UNCHAINED was filmed. It’s an oddly beautiful place considering the history.
TS: Who owns this plantation now and what do they do there?
CR: The lady that owns this particular plantation is very dedicated to educating people about the enslavement of black people and what that meant for us as a country and as a society and how it’s still rears its ugly head in so many crevices in corners of the country even today. She told us about some of the neighboring plantations. When you see people taking tours of those plantation, they are virtually all white but I don’t want to make assumptions about what those people are thinking or what motivates them to take those tours, but some of what I saw didn’t feel so good. We liked what Miss Jane, the owner of Evergreen, was doing and how respectable she was. Outside of the aesthetics, that was one of the main reasons we chose that location. Some of the other plantations felt so dirty and wrong. People went through the slave quarters and then went into the gift shop.
TS: Do they have a gift shop at Evergreen?
CR: No, not at Evergreen. There’s a whole part of Louisiana there called Plantation Row.
TS: Was there any discomfort or tension between the white actors playing the plantation owners and workers and the black actors playing the slaves?
GB: Not at all. Everybody that was part of the film went into this project with the best of intentions and motivations. We were very respectful of one another and engaged in in-depth conversations prior to even getting on set. It was important to us that we had a set where everyone was there for all of the right reasons. We were so fortunate to have an all-star cast that was really motivated to stay true to the script.
TS: How did you keep things historically accurate?
GB: First and foremost, we are both history buffs and we wanted to make sure that everything that we were including in the film had some value in terms of historical contacts even right down to the enslaved people whispering what is the national black anthem; Lift Every Voice. Some people who might take just a cursory overview, and not really look at the film, may think they see things that don’t feel appropriate for the period, but it’s not until you see the entire film that you understand that everything we did was quite deliberate.
TS: You tell your story very visually, which I always like. What were your backgrounds prior to becoming filmmakers?
CR: When we got together 12 years ago, our intention was to always become filmmakers. Within the first three days of being together, we were writing a short story about aliens. We didn’t want to move to Hollywood on a wing and a prayer so we spent the next 10 years honing our skills with the advertising shop that we had started, Bush/Renz. There we worked with clients such as Porsche and Harry Winston before we really went in headfirst with environmental issues, social justice, and politics. We were able to use a lot of the concepts of the writing and filmmaking that we had done on behalf of luxury brands. We then applied that visual identity, one that had became really unique to Bush/Renz to the political and activist work that we were doing. That just translated into the filmmaking work and ANTEBELLUM and others moving forward.
TS: Explain to me how the pair of you work as co-directors.
GB: It’s funny because I don’t know, and Christopher doesn’t know, anything else because we have only written and directed together for the past twelve years. We’re not the same person but we have shared values in those places that are most important to a creative process. What makes it work is that we are very respectful of the other person‘s perspective, point of view, and how meaningful that is in terms of a contribution to what we are trying to do as a whole. There is never a time on set that we are not making those decisions together. The DGA says “one Director one vision” but Janelle Monáe ended up buying the entire cast and TScrew T-shirts dedicated to Chris and I that said “two directors one vision“, So we are like Siamese twins in that way.
TS: I remember seeing trailers for ANTEBELLUM at the theater. It came out in spring right about the time the theaters are closing down because of Covid. Were you guys ever able to go to a big premiere of this movie with an audience?
CR: No. We had screenings with people and we had a drive-in premiere that was incredibly well done. It was on the rooftop of The Grove here in Los Angeles. But it was not the same as being in a movie theater and having that communal experience. We designed and made ANTEBELLUM to be experienced in a theater with a group of strangers in the dark. It didn’t happen that way obviously with Covid, but we felt an urgency about getting the film out given the circumstance and relevance and how prescient some who had seen it thought that it was for the time. What we have learned is that Antebellum is the sixth most looked-up word in 2020 because of our film. It wasn’t a word that was in heavy rotation. Here’s a film that pierces pop culture and the collective consciousness of the country here when we are in the middle of a global pandemic and what feels like the end of times, We are really satisfied with the outcome, all things considered.
TS: What were some of the biggest challenges in making ANTEBELLUM?
GB: This is our first feature so there was a bit of a learning curve but we are quick learners. We got there. I think that making a movie is not an easy thing. It’s difficult. You have to fight for your vision throughout the whole process, from the script notes all the way through the final edit.
CR: We learned a lot throughout this experience, and will be able to use that experience in our next film which is called RAPTURE.
TS: When you’re making that one, let’s talk again. Good luck with your future projects.
CR & GB: Thanks a lot
ANTEBELLUM is currently available on Streaming and on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K.
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