Director and writer, Hailey Gates, along with lead actors Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner of 'Atropia,' drop in at our studio in Park City talk about the process adapting a short film and turning it into a full length "screwball romantic comedy about the military industrial complex."
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00:00I once was at a house party and I was dancing and all of a sudden I looked over and there was
00:05someone dancing like really specific and I was like that guy's just like letting it loose and
00:10it was Tom York and I was like okay that's cool and then I was like all of a sudden very
00:14self-conscious of like trying not to dance too weird.
00:20I wanted to make a
00:23screwball romantic comedy about the military industrial complex.
00:28It was kind of like Haley looked to me and said what have you never done really because we were
00:34going to adapt the short film but we're like we needed to make it something else and I was like
00:39well I've never really done proper like romance right yeah yeah I was like I'm I'm writing a part
00:44for you like yeah what do you want what do you want yeah I think once the project started to
00:49come to life we were like who who could you know fill this kind of role. Cal was like one of the
00:57very first people we thought of and Calum's like an old friend of mine and I was like now he's like
01:03a big movie star and I was like let's see if we can get him and I sent him a text and he was like
01:07yeah yeah sounds great send me the script. I didn't I haven't seen the short film or the scripts
01:13we did Green Room together 10 years before and fell in love with Alia and think she's the best
01:18comedic actress of her generation and then I watched the short film I was like I've got to do
01:22this. So it takes place on a train facility how are we described we're describing it as like a
01:30kooky train facility where actors pretend to be in a war zone right that's I mean it's a it's
01:37a real life thing that happens it takes place on a sort of set that the military has built with
01:44the help of Hollywood set builders um to create fake Iraqi villages to train soldiers before they
01:51deploy to Iraq. Hayley knows more than anyone should about this place because she's also
01:56a documentarian so she does her due diligence and has done lots of you know filming and stuff and
02:01so she wrote lots of it into the film um whereas I'm just like I'm just here for the movie but
02:06when all the details that we found out like something that's in the film about like the
02:11smells that they actually have like burning flesh smell you know and sewage smell smell fake I mean
02:19it's quite a bombastic idea that this thing exists before we did green room that's where we
02:27met on one of these sets what do you mean that you were both working that's where we started
02:33oh right but that is the story of Ali's character that she wants to become a Hollywood actress and
02:38she's working there I don't know if in real life the role players there really want to be actors
02:42what is one thing about Luca as a producer that stands out that we might not know people
02:48only on this director I mean I think the thing about Luca is that his his generosity is like
02:54very very fierce and not casual and he gives such incredible opportunities to young people that have
03:01never you know they're very green and hadn't done these things before like I mean I guess the last
03:07couple movies he's done have been first time writers which is incredible um and he's you know
03:15he's he's hard on me and like all the best ways and that's how I know he really loves me I know
03:21him because he sent my boyfriend a fan letter because he was obsessed with Paranormal Activity
03:263 so we had dinner with him like 10 years ago we've been really good friends ever since and
03:33when we were on the set of Challengers somebody got COVID and we were shut down for like a week
03:39so I was there for a really long time even though I'm in the movie for just a hot second we were
03:44talking and I was talking about this another movie that I had written that was having some
03:49trouble and he was like we make another movie okay I was like we do okay great and Alia was
03:55in um Greece filming a movie called Drift with a producer Naima Abed who also made Call Me By Your
04:02Name which also premiered here um and Naima wanted to do something else with Alia so we all sort of
04:09joined forces. Does anyone remember the first time you were starstruck? Starstruck I think
04:18this one's really weird but I was in a restaurant when I was a kid and I saw
04:21Charo and I was like oh my god because she was like the hot frog in Thumbelina oh yeah you know
04:30and I was just like I could was could not believe it that's amazing. What if anyone remembers the
04:37movie that made you want to be an actor or filmmaker? You know I want to say like the
04:41one that makes me sound smart is Harold and Maude because I watched it so many times
04:45but weirdly Meet the Parents. I've seen that movie many times and it holds up it was just like on HBO
04:51a lot. It's a good movie. It's a good movie. I watch Burden of Dreams a lot. Have you ever seen that?
05:01It's a Les Blank documentary about the making of Fitzgeraldo. It actually premiered here um in the
05:0870s you know that I saw that nod um and it's so amazing. It's almost better than Fitzgeraldo. I
05:15always say Main Streets. I was about 15 and I bought the DVD and I had a friend that I'd go
05:21to HMV and we'd buy the cheap DVDs and it was in one of those and we'd be really competitive for
05:27who can watch faster and that was just one of them. That's how you watch movies. Exactly. That's how I started. Watch on fast forward.