Mike Lowery
Actor Logan Marshall-Green, known for acting turns in such diverse fare as “Prometheus”, “Spider-Man : Homecoming”, “The Invitation” and sci-fi gem “Upgrade”, branches out with “Adopt a Highway”, a confronting and very-affecting drama that sees the swap a script for a megaphone.
Moviehole caught up with ‘filmmaker’ Logan Marshall-Green on the eve of the film’s theatrical, VOD, and digital HD release today.
Was directing always part of the plan, sir?
Yes. Directing was always part of the plan. What I needed to do was figure out what I don’t know first and not lean on all of the trope that got me where I am–which are action films, horror films, science fiction. I kind of needed to lean on my weaker points which are human condition, hope, narrative, substance. So I gave myself the exercise of not putting a gun, sex, drugs, rock and roll, death– I just wanted a baby and a man, and I wanted something pure. I didn’t want an indictment of the system, I just wanted a privileged point of view about a man who’s looking for redemption and ends up finding perks in a baby and the baby finds perks in him. And really, in the end, I wrote this thing as a father. A lost father. And that’s what began the story. Just simply lost as a dad. And what that meant.
I’m interested in what initially appealed to you about this particular story but also how quickly the screenplay came together?
Nothing initially interested me in this particular story because I just started writing this story and it kind of became interesting to me after the fact. I started writing the film, again, knowing that I wanted to make something that was commercially viable, but also doable financially. So that’s really what was behind it.
Was Ethan Hawke attached from the get-go? Did his involvement get the project the green light?
Ethan had read the script about a month before I had decided to take a stab at Blumhouse as the potential house. And in meeting with Jason Blum and Couper Samuelson, I told them Ethan’s interest in the film. And of course Jason said “well, you know that I know Ethan, of course. We had Malaparte together. He’s one of my best friends.” I didn’t know that. I mean in that kind of beautiful Hollywood moment, he called Ethan and the rest was kismet. I, as a theater fan, completely had forgotten that Jason and Ethan had formed Malaparte back in New York, which was the hot off-Broadway theater company everybody coming out of NYU at the time wanted to be part of. So it was all very much…had a lot of momentum behind it because all the players had a lot of familiarity.
They say never work with animals or kids. You’ve gone one step further – how hard was it directing a baby?
While I did take out all the explosions and drugs and big sex pieces and car chases, and our cgi budget is nil, all of that money went into…you could just say our cgi budget was the baby. There’s no director that’s ever going to wish he or she had more time [laughs] with the baby. You don’t have enough time when you’re shooting with babies, and you can not wait until the day is over. Because you just simply don’t know what to expect. And with us, all I knew was that I didn’t want to audition babies, I wanted to audition moms. I wanted to audition moms who had twins that we could use that weren’t their first born. So there was a sense of preciousness could be avoided. And in Sarah, the mother of the two beautiful girls that play Ella, we found not just a partner in making the film but we found a mother who of course loves their children saw a team of storytellers who respected and loved their children as well and was ready to roll up her sleeves and become one of the crew members to get these shots. And in these shots, the one thing I refused to do was I would not frame her out. You know, when you’re shooting with babies you always can frame them out. You can always put the baby noises in later. I didn’t want to do that I wanted to put ethan and these babies in the scenes together. I wanted to lock the camera harshly, and I wanted them and the audience to do all of the work for me. I guess you could say im one of the lazier directors. But I knew I needed to get out of the way of this story, and the story itself was not enough. I needed it to come alive with a variable you can’t touch, and that’s the relationship between Ethan and these girls and that’s what you see. And while things are written in the script like “Russel Millings leans over the baby the key falls out of his shirt and she reaches up to grab it” — you can only get those images if you’re A) lucky, and the only way you’re lucky is if you prep and have some semblance of time and luckily we had the best crew and we were totally prepped and ready. So while you do not see a lot of the mistakes and the waiting around for the kids to either cry of be happy, you are seeing all of the incredible moments that Ethan being a father of five afforded us by being so patient with the baby. So while the big long winded answer is yes, don’t work with babies or animals, the second answer is if you’re going to work with babies, cast Ethan Hawke.
I have to ask, as a huge fan of “Upgrade”, any chance of another Green/Whannell collaboration in the future?
Well, as also a fan of upgrade, I hope there will be another chapter in upgrade. There is some talk but I can’t speak any further to it because they’re not official so a lot of that is going to be about me getting some bad whips to sit back down and reapproach the story, and Jason’s ability and interest in it. So we’ll see, you know? I think it might have a future, but I don’t know, and I’ll let the adults make those decisions.
ADOPT A HIGHWAY In Theaters, VOD & Digital HD November 1
