00:00Hi there and welcome into EOM Presents. This is Thomas Manning, Senior
00:03Interviewer for Elements of Madness, and today we're talking with filmmaker Adam
00:07Volerich about his feature film directorial debut, Drink and Be Merry. Adam
00:12has an extensive background in directing short films and also podcasting. He is
00:17the co-host of the Eye of the Duck podcast, which is one of my favorites, one
00:21that I recommend you checking out. After you seek out Drink and Be Merry, which
00:26is a bit of a melancholy Christmas film starring Jefferson White, and I really
00:31enjoy digging into the making of the film with Adam, and we also talk about a few
00:37other Christmas movies, including Die Hard, which, yeah, it's a Christmas movie. I
00:42mean, that's settled. So thank you all so much for watching and listening as we
00:46talk with Adam Volerich, director of Drink and Be Merry. Hope you all enjoy the
00:50conversation. Adam, great to meet you. Appreciate your time today. Likewise. Thanks
00:55for speaking with me. Oh, for sure. And I'll jump right into it. I want to talk
00:59about really the opening of the film, having the credits at the beginning, which
01:03felt very old school and very much in the vein of those classic Christmas movies
01:07that we grew up with. So when did you decide that you wanted to put your
01:11credits there in the beginning like that? Was that something you always intended or
01:14did that come later on in the development? That was something that we
01:17discovered in the edit. I felt like the tone and pace and overall style of the
01:23film was something that, you know, you kind of have to learn how to watch the
01:29movie in a way. And I felt like doing the credits in that manner would be kind
01:33of a really quick and useful teaching tool for the audience and sort of
01:37announcing, hey, this is the kind of movie that we're making here.
01:41Yeah. And so what is your personal relationship to Christmas movies? Have you
01:44always been a fan or are you kind of a...
01:47Yeah. I love Christmas. I love Christmas movies. I'm actually Jewish, but I grew up
01:53in England where Christmas is sort of an all-encompassing, you know, national
01:57event. And so Christmas has always sort of meant as much to me as Hanukkah does.
02:04And Christmas movies are a huge part of that. I am amongst the, you know, the
02:09crowd of people that declared Die Hard to be a Christmas movie. So, you know, I do
02:14watch Die Hard every year, but the other really big one for me is Muppet's
02:19Christmas Carol. I absolutely adore that film so much. I think, you know, one of
02:27Michael Caine's best performances.
02:29Yeah. I agree with you that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. And I will say that
02:34Muppet's Christmas Carol was, I believe, my first introduction to the story of a
02:38Christmas Carol. So I think it was a perfect introduction.
02:40It is for a lot of people.
02:40Yeah. And I think it's probably still one of my favorite versions of it. So
02:44yeah, we're on the same page there.
02:46Yeah.
02:47With shooting this film on location at the Elin Witch Pub, did you have a
02:53personal relationship with that bar prior to shooting this film?
02:56I did. Yeah. So I used to hang out at the Elin Witch when I was a college
03:01student at Rutgers University. It was sort of my go-to spot. I lived around the
03:04corner. And yeah, I would go there a couple nights a week pretty much. And it was
03:10actually where I had the wrap party for my first student film that I made while I
03:16was in school. And so the place, it really holds a special place in my heart. And so
03:20I reached out to Robert, who runs the bar. And I think I said, I promise this isn't
03:27spam, but how would you feel about me shooting a movie in your bar during the
03:34hours that you were closed? And he was incredibly generous and gracious and really
03:40helped us out. And so we got to make the film there, which was a really, really
03:44lovely, lovely experience. And I'm just honestly grateful for the opportunity to
03:49kind of immortalize one of my favorite places on earth in this film.
03:53And I was really struck with how you captured the immense silence of this empty bar. And
04:00I feel like you can almost hear and feel the loneliness that all these characters are
04:04experiencing. Can you talk about maximizing the potential of that isolation that we feel
04:10in that space?
04:11Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's two things, right? It's picture and it's sound. And so
04:16I wanted to, as far as visually, like favor wider lenses so that you would always feel the space
04:24itself and trying not to be super shallow in my depth of field too often so that you never were
04:33kind of let off the hook from being in the bar. Like you're always in the bar in every shot. And the
04:40dimensions of that place, it's kind of long, but it's also quite tall as well. And so when I was on
04:48my initial tech scout with Jack Mannion, Cody peed the film with me, the, you know, my initial
04:55instinct had been, let's shoot this two, three, five, because to me that screams movie more than
04:59anything else. But we got in there and I started taking, you know, images on my phone using one of
05:05these viewfinder apps. And I just realized how much detail and quite frankly, story we were losing by
05:12not showing the full vertical space. And I thought about four, three for a minute, but then three,
05:17two, which is the kind of standard aspect ratio of a photograph kind of felt like that's actually
05:22the perfect way to create that sense of stillness by leaning on a sort of photographic trope versus
05:27a cinematic one. And as far as the audio component goes, on the last film I had done, a short film
05:35called Misprint, which also starred Jeff White, was also produced by my producer, Brendan Hubbard,
05:40featured a number of returning cast and crew. That film had a scene in a diner. And when we got in there,
05:48we found that the diner was never actually quiet. There were all these machines that were always
05:54humming in the background that we couldn't really turn off. We couldn't even find how to
05:57turn off some of them. And my sound designer, Nick Massetti, sort of discovered that if we
06:04wanted to, we could kind of tune into those frequencies and start embellishing with them
06:11and actually increasing the tension in the way that we were manipulating them. And we very much
06:17carried that process over onto this film where, you know, it's the taps have a sound, the fridges have a
06:23sound. Just the actual, if you do turn everything off, there's just all these sounds that only exist
06:29in the kind of pure quiet, the neon signs, the fluorescent lights, all of these things. And so
06:34a lot of what we ended up doing in post was making sure that that silence was at times quite deafening.
06:40Yeah. And I think, uh, you mission accomplished as far as that's concerned. And, uh, you know,
06:47so much of this movie is on the shoulders of Jefferson white, as you mentioned, and I know
06:51y'all go way back, uh, and I was, you know, very impressed, but not surprised with how he delivered
06:56on the task that you gave him. Um, so, you know, what are some things in his performance that made a
07:01lasting impact on you from your standpoint as director? Yeah. I mean, uh, Jeff's just a wonderful,
07:09wonderful actor and a wonderful guy. And I love working with him and I hope to, to collaborate
07:14many, many more times after this. I, I always feel like when I'm, when I'm working with Jeff,
07:19like I have, I have had a moment on every project I've done with him where I've, I've looked in the
07:23viewfinder at a certain point and he will just do one little mannerism and I'll find myself smiling
07:30because I'm realizing we've got a movie here. Like this is, you know, this is all going to work.
07:34Um, and Jeff was such a sort of perfect person to play this role. Cause as you've brought up already,
07:40the, the film is about these silences and the stillness and Jeff is such an energetic person
07:47and Chet, I think at his core has a lot of this energy and, uh, uh, within him, but has found himself
07:56very stuck in this scenario. And I sort of knew the moment I started reading, um, Leo's, uh, script,
08:03Leo Winters, the writer, that placing Jeff in this environment and kind of trapping him in these
08:10little boxes, uh, and, you know, and, and sort of forcing him to try and contain all of that energy
08:17in these tight spaces would make for the most sort of interesting contrast and make for the richest
08:23version of this character. And, uh, with the introduction of Griffin Newman's character,
08:29um, uh, with his entrance, I think you play to every one of his strengths as an actor in that
08:34sequence, but often unexpected ways. Uh, you know, I might, I didn't go so far as to say stealing a
08:40line from you that that's your eye of the duck scene. Uh, you know, would you agree with that
08:45assessment or is there another scene that stands out that you're either dog?
08:47You know, I, uh, I, I, I don't like to share what my eye of the duck scene is on this one. Uh,
08:54just because I, I, you know, I believe in kind of the death of the author a little bit and I want
08:58folks to, to have the freedom to choose their own, but I've had a lot of people tell me that that is,
09:04that is their eye of the duck. Uh, and, uh, I'm, I'm glad to hear that's a pick for sure.
09:10Yeah. And, uh, was this your first time working with Griffin on a film?
09:14It was. Yeah. I've, I've known Griffin for a while through, through the podcast world,
09:18through eye of the duck. Uh, he's been on a number of times and just a really lovely guy.
09:22And I've always thought he was a fantastic actor and someone I've always wanted to work with in
09:27this capacity. And when I was reading the script, the, I think the character sort of initially called
09:33for someone who would be incredibly physically imposing. And I felt like the more interesting,
09:40uh, version of the character was someone who is threatening in an entirely different kind of way,
09:46uh, and who, who you maybe don't expect to be, to be coming in there saying and doing the things,
09:52uh, that he's doing. Uh, and, and so Griffin, uh, immediately came to my mind as someone who would,
09:59would be really interesting and exciting to, to cast in that kind of role.
10:03Yeah. Yeah. He was a great choice. Um, and there's a few scenes in this specifically early
10:09on where, uh, Jefferson wide is looking directly into the camera. Um, and I think this is usually
10:14because he's watching something on the TV, but I found that it'd be a very fascinating decision
10:19and visual device. Um, and so what were some keys for you to, you know, capturing the right
10:24emotions from those moments, which obviously you don't always want your, your actor looking
10:28directly into the camera, but when a specific moment calls for that, uh, I'm sure that was a fun
10:32to play around with. Yeah. I think, uh, it came from a couple of places. You mentioned the
10:37television already. The film takes place almost entirely at nighttime inside the bar. So the
10:44windows are always dark. You can never see out into the world. And so I felt like the kinds of
10:51people that sort of willingly trap themselves in that kind of space, the only window out into the
10:57world that they actually get is the television and what they see on the television sort of becomes,
11:02uh, all they understand of the world itself. Um, and so for someone like Chet, who is obsessed with
11:09movies, uh, he, when he's looking out into the world, he's looking out at movies and imagining that
11:15he could, he, he could live a life worthy enough of being on screen. Uh, there's a line later on where
11:21he, he more or less says as much. And so we were kind of even joking on set that the kind of monologue
11:27he, he gives sort of into the television, it's almost like the, I want song in like a Disney musical.
11:33Um, and he's speaking sort of directly to us in those moments. And he's, and because, because we
11:38are the world outside the bar. Um, and then the other times when he's, he's looking into the, the camera,
11:44uh, uh, trying to sort of speak to this idea that, you know, he is worthy of, of kind of being captured
11:51and being put on screen and, and even his kind of small quiet life, uh, and the, uh, kind of
11:59idiosyncratic things that he has to do every day. Like those are worthy of, uh, of a story as well.
12:07And, uh, I really love the black and white silent film rom-com montage you have in there. Uh, can you
12:12walk me through a little bit of crafting that sequence and, uh, you know, was that something
12:16you shot on black and white film or how did you achieve that look?
12:19No, we, we shot that. Um, I mean, we, we shot everything, uh, digitally and then, uh, my colorist
12:26Jerome Thelia, who's immensely talented, helped us with a, uh, kind of defining a sort of a celluloid
12:32look for the movie in, in post-production. Um, and we had done a number of camera tests to
12:37make sure that, that we could get there. I, we shot the film on, uh, vintage lenses,
12:42these, these old Zeiss contacts primes, um, they say like made in West Germany on them.
12:46That's how, that's how old they are. And, uh, with heavy sort of diffusion filtration over
12:52the lens, uh, as well. And so when we were in post, uh, my, uh, Dominic Nero, who, who edited
12:59the film with me and who co-hosts Eye of the Duck with me, uh, it was his idea to, to put
13:03that sequence in, uh, black and white. Uh, it's, it's not just black and white. It's also
13:08handheld and it's the first time in the film that we go handheld. Everything else is on sticks
13:13up until that point. And it was a way of number one, kind of breaking up the reality a little
13:19bit and, and sort of just completely changing, uh, how things work because up until that point,
13:24we also haven't left the bar either. And so, uh, it, it gave us that contrast, but it also,
13:30I felt, uh, heightened the, um, romantic in a literal sense between, uh, Chet and Maeve,
13:37but also romantic in terms of what Chet's idea of Christmas is and what a Christmas movie is.
13:42And so giving him that, uh, black and white space to exist in if, if only for a moment.
13:49And, uh, you know, it's obvious that you love movies as with, with your podcast. And I think
13:53that comes through in this film as well, with as many other film references we have to Tarantino.
13:58And, um, I will say, I love the after hours referenced, uh, with the drawing on the bathroom
14:02wall. I think, uh, that's the top five score says here for me. So, uh, I love what you put in there,
14:06but, uh, you know, we're, um, how did you kind of pinpoint exactly which films you wanted to allude
14:12to, uh, was, was that a difficult process? Did you have to kill your darlings a few times and leave
14:16out a few? Yeah. I mean, some of those were in the script, uh, some darlings were killed, but,
14:22uh, a lot of it was just organic and thinking about, you know, uh, what would a guy like Chet be into?
14:28Yeah. The, the set decoration of his bedroom was, that was a really, uh, I think you delivered
14:34exactly what you wanted with that. It was great. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. A lot of credit goes to,
14:38uh, Christina Coleman, our production designer. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Adam, it's, uh, really
14:42been a privilege chatting with you and congrats on your film and, uh, obviously love your podcast.
14:47So, uh, hopefully, uh, hopefully we show more conversations in the future. Absolutely. Thank you
14:52so much. And, uh, great questions. I really appreciate it.
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