PRODUCTION INFORMATION
A satirical comedy that looks at what choices we have to create the life we want even after we're dead, "Career Suicide" is the first 35mm short film from directors Dan Huber and Alex Kang. The film follows Sandy, whose morning goes from bad: being dumped, running late for work and being hounded by a door-to-door evangelist; to worse: slipping, falling on a pair of scissors and dying. When she wakes, she finds herself in Retrobution, a corporate purgatory, where working your way up the ladder seems to be the only way to salvation. Her courageous choice to not blindly accept the fate she has been handed is the basis of this film's unique commentary on corporate life, religion and finding the path that is right for you.
Four years ago, both working in corporate jobs, Huber and Kang chose to join forces and do what they had both gone to New York University to learn: film directing. With Huber living on the east coast and Kang on the west, these friends since the age of 12 began sketching out the idea of the story they wanted to tell. "Some people Alex worked with at the time were really into this corporate self-help seminar and we thought that a parody of this could be very funny," Huber says. "Dan was dealing with a situation where a good friend of his betrayed his trust, so we worked that into the script as well," Kang adds. That early version of the script stayed with them all the way through to the storyboarding stage.
"Something about it wasn't really working for us," Huber says, "so we took some time off, and then we took a fresh look at what we had written." They realized that they had drawn a strong parallel between organized religion and the corporate world. "We noticed that most corporate jobs and religions tend to use the same idea of work hard, stay on track, move up slowly and one day it will all pay off for you," says Kang. "People tend to just accept the job they fall into in the same respects they just accept whatever religion they are born into." Huber agrees, "We've always believed that everyone is in control of their own destiny, so we decided to make that our message, and to parody organized religion in the process."
The film weaves the intermingling of religious and corporate imagery together, as most clearly seen in the inspirational seminar speaker, Ken Osgold. "We noticed that both motivational and religious speakers tend to use the same techniques to get people to listen and, more importantly, to follow. We chose to blend those elements into the character of Ken who is this sort of Messiah/Devil," says Huber. Kang adds, "We wanted everything in Retrobution to feel drab and lifeless, so we pulled a lot of the color out of the film, except in the scene of the inspirational seminar. The idea was that the company would entice people into the seminar with color in an otherwise drab world.
"With a film that deals with such a large and heavy subject as religion and corporate America, Huber and Kang chose to go with telling their message through humor. Kang says, "We've been friends for so long I think because we share the same sense of humor. We really know how to make each other laugh." Huber adds, "We really wanted to make sure that we made something that was funny, first and foremost." The film cleverly blends the use of slapstick and situation comedy to create a story that is not only humorous, but poignant. "I had been watching re-runs of "Laugh-In" on cable, and I loved the way they had a show that was hugely popular, very entertaining, and delivered a message all at the same time," says Huber. "We decided to make that the goal in all of our projects," says Kang.
ON PRE-PRODUCTION
After their script went through its final revisions, Huber and Kang were ready to start production. "Shorts tend to fall into three basic categories," explains Kang. "They either look or sound bad, the acting is terrible or they end with a one-note joke ending that the whole film was a set up to get to. We knew that we wanted something that could escape those pitfalls. This is probably what took us so long with the script. We wanted something that was not a punch line movie, but made you think."
They knew they would need all of the help they could get so they brought on producer, Marcus Nash. "What we really liked about Marcus, besides having the qualifications to help produce, was the fact he truly believed in what we were doing. That really struck a cord with us. He got what we were saying and appreciated it," Huber explains. Nash was brought on board and the three began working on pre-production.
"I really liked that Dan and Alex really knew what they wanted from this project. They were not going to settle for second best and time and time again said we would rather hold off on production than do anything half-ass," recalls Nash. "As a producer, that was quite a challenge to live up to, but an exciting one. Locking in a location was our first concern. With Dan on one side of the country and Alex and myself here in Los Angeles, we had to figure out where we were going to shoot this thing." Luckily, Nash's wife worked for a location scouting company and helped point them in the direction of some buildings with great lobbies that would work for the story.
"We had this idea of what the lobby of Retrobution was supposed to look like," says Huber. "It was sleek, sort of 50s looking. We came very close to securing a place but with the timing of the shoot it did not work out. So we went with our second choice, The Herald Examiner Building."
Built in 1912 and previously the downtown headquarters of Howard Hughes' newspaper, this historic building is now used by film crews. Nash explains, "This place is fantastic. It has this ornate lobby-" Huber interrupts, "Which we thought was too ornate for what we wanted to do, now looking back on it, it was a blessing in disguise. It really worked in adding to the feel of the film." Nash continues, "With this place, each area of this building is a different set. So for our archives where Sandy ends up working, we utilized the morgue set that was there."
Getting the right look for Archives was through the production design of Bryce Holtshousen. "Dan and Alex wanted to make the place feel very oppressive, like Sandy was completely trapped in files. Luckily, we found filing cabinets in the building and used all of them to decorate the room." Kang adds, "The funny thing is we had to rent all of the paper!"
Adding to the specialized look of the film, Huber and Kang hired on Patrick Dolan as the Director of Photography. "Pat and I have worked on a lot of projects together," says producer Nash. "Everything he shoots looks beautiful. Dan and Alex expressed they wanted high production value and I knew Pat could deliver that."
After focusing on locations and the look of the film, production moved to casting. Through scouting of local comedy groups in Los Angeles, "The Groundlings" and "Improv Olympics West" the directors extended invites to various improvisational actors to attend an audition. At the same time they were going through the hundreds of headshots they received. "Nothing is harder than casting. You sit there looking at a still of someone and think is this THE person? Granted there are many people who do not fit the look of what you were envisioning, but you spend so much time questioning the close ones," says Kang. "We knew with Sandy we wanted someone who could go from being frazzled to being confident and strong." Huber adds, "As soon as we saw Deborah Vancelette, we knew we had our Sandy."
Around the same time, Huber received some good news. "From the minute we wrote our door-to-door evangelist character of Dhwaza, we always described her as being like the Pine-Sol lady from the television commercials. Since we referenced her, we figured we should see if she was interested in playing the role that we wrote for her. I was very excited when Diane Amos called," says Huber.
For the role of the sharp-tongued receptionist, Tammy, Huber and Kang auditioned many women. Angela Kinsey, who was a friend of Nash, came in for an audition after helping Huber and Kang with their talent scouting. "Little did we know how hilarious Angela is. She's this little firecracker and so full of comic energy that she brought to the character. I still crack up every time she speaks in the film," says Kang.
With the casting falling into place, the directors were surprised again with the casting of the seminar leader, Ken Osgold. "We had an idea in our minds of what Ken should look like. He was supposed to be this cheesy guy, very Tony Robbins in appearance," says Huber. With their second round of auditions, Nash pulled another surprise and invited his friend Chris Chauncey to come to the audition. "Chris totally did not look the part, but then during the audition we were completely blown away with his performance," explains Kang. Huber says, "Alex and I really doubted the character of Ken until Chris came along. We didn't think the character was entertaining. We even thought we should rewrite it. Everyone that had auditioned up to that point was doing Ken as this loud, screaming, in your face guy.
Then Chris auditioned and changed our complete outlook on the character." Through his intelligent approach to the role of Ken, Chris turned this seminar leader into a devious character. "Chris brought this sort of good/evil feel to Ken that was missing and at the same time he made us laugh," says Kang. "He was brilliant."
All of the main characters were in place except for Rod, the mailroom guy and love interest. With two weeks until shooting, Huber and Kang had the role tentatively filled with someone from the audition process, but they were not 100% behind that choice. At a party, Kang bumped into his friend, Colin Ferguson ("The Opposite of Sex" and "More Tales of the City") and they began talking about the film. With a little free time before NBC's "Coupling" began production, Ferguson asked if there was a role for him in the film, and Kang offered him the role on the spot. "The funny thing is we were going to ask him!" says Kang. "Colin was perfect for the role. He does such an incredible job of presenting Rod as sexy and charming and then being able to turn him on a dime to become this smarmy and sleazy guy," says Huber.
There was one role that evolved out of the casting process. "New Girl didn't have any lines. She was supposed to just be flirting with Rod when Sandy walks up on them. But Marcus suggested that we create some lines so the actors had something to do at the audition," says Huber. "When Steffany Huckaby auditioned, we realized that we needed to keep these lines in the film. She cracked everyone in the room up with her performance and created a character that still gets laughs at every screening. I say we are lucky to have gotten her early on in her career. You can just tell that she is going to be a huge star one day."
With the location and casting in place, production could begin.
ON PRODUCTION
"Is all of this for us?" Kang asked as he and Huber drove up to the set. The two shared a moment in awe at the amount of crew that was on the set the first day. "Marcus did an amazing job getting a big budget crew to work on our low budget project," says Huber. The two directors could not believe how incredible the whole moment was.
"You spend so much time in this sort of ambiguous stage when you make a film. When you are in the writing process everyone is like 'oh, you're writing a script, huh?' But to actually be standing there on set the first day and see all of the work that led up to that point come together was an incredible feeling," says Kang. "I had to call my mom. She was so excited."
"I'm sure the crew had doubts on how two directors would work together," recalls Huber. Nash agrees, "I was amazed at how seamless the two of them worked together. It is almost as if they both know what the other was thinking. If there was ever anything one of them forgot the other was already doing it and vice versa. They are like two brothers."
The production process went pretty smoothly for the team. Besides having their camera die and go down for part of a day, having to work around a two day availability for one of the leads, having their extras think they were getting paid and having them almost walk out on them, having the crew refuse to work overtime one day, production went very well. "Even with all of that, we look back and say that we were so blessed with production," says Nash.
|
