9DCU1204HD_Michael_McGuire_Transcript

[upbeat music]

[pleasant organ music]

- Body of Christ.

- Amen.

- Body of Christ. Body of Christ.

- Amen.

- The body of Christ.

- Girl: Amen.

- Body of Christ.

- Amen.

- Hi.

- Uh, Cross, cross your-- yeah. Lord, bless Nicole in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

- Oh.

[Deacon clearing his throat]

- Body of Christ?

- But you're... a...

- But? Whatever, dude.

[blond woman is startled]

[congregation gasps]

Peace be with you!

- Welcome to Director's Cut. I'm Pete Schwaba and that was a clip from Aquarians. A film that follows the journey of a young seminarian who returns to his hometown to fill in for an ailing priest and to make peace with his estranged brother. I'm joined tonight by the film's writer/director, Michael McGuire. Michael, welcome to Director's Cut.

- Great to be here.

- It's great to have you. So, I'll say right off the bat, you and I... You shot this film in Marinette, Wisconsin. That's my adopted hometown. I shot a film in Marinette, Wisconsin 15 years ago so we got to get that out of the there. In fact, your stepmom and my mom mall walk sometimes.

- That's right, we're...

- Competitively. There's some overlap there.

- There's some overlap there. So what I'm saying is it's really great to have you here, a guy from the hometown. I never thought another film would be shot there. And it's just great so really really welcome to Director's Cut. Tell us a little bit about this story. What did we just see in that clip there?

- Sure, that was a scene that takes place in the first act of the film. We've met some of these characters and come to learn that Nicole, who is the young woman with the little bit of color in her hair, is now in a relationship with a girl which came as a surprise to Danny right at the top of Mass. He's conducting the service because right before the scene happened Father Rob fell ill at the last minute and thrust him out onto the stage so to speak. And in that particular moment, Danny's a little flustered when he suspects that Nicole's girlfriend is not a Catholic and also is a little unsure how to deal with the relationship issue of it.

- Pete: So, he's winging it?

- Basically, bingo.

- First Mass, where'd the idea come from?

- I had the original idea for this story from a dream, literally. I had a dream in which my younger brother, who was, like, this, kind of, wandering hippie at the time was a priest and throwing a party for a bunch of kids. And it was just a weird image. It stuck with me over the years. 

And so I started fleshing out this character as a script and it initially was just about a young man who decided to commit to his faith at a young age. And I think in this particular day and age it's a pretty unique thing to explore, you know, for a 25-, 22-year-old kid to say, "This is what I'm going to devote my life to." And I just found that really fascinating. 

But the more I kept scratching at the story, the more I really wanted to get what was underneath it and through a series of rewrites and years of development, it really morphed into a story about the brotherhood, about healing, and kind of overcoming guilt.

- Excellent. Well let's see another clip from Aquarians.

- Where's this other Sullivan boy? Father Rob says we're lucky to have "another Sullivan boy back."

- Danny, Bart Sheraski. One of our biggest local job creators. Owns the river mill.

- Just a little family company.

- Nice to meet you, Mr. Sheraski.

- Dan's brother, Chris, lives in town.

- Jake is the one.

- Oh, Christ. Sorry. Jake.

- What's Jake up to?

- I really have no idea.

- Shouldn't he be here to welcome you?

- We don't keep in touch.

- Well, you've had your nose in the books though, right? The guy's working--

- Young Daniel tells me he hasn't seen his brother, Jake, in years. It's odd for a clergyman to be cut out from his family, isn't it?

- Well, I'm sure he's looking forward to seeing him again very soon.

- Sure, if I have time before I go back to Milwaukee.

- Head back. And you're not ordained yet, are you? Sorry, I thought you said that--

- So, Father Rob and I are hoping that once-- 
(sighing)

- I think she's pitching them the dream. You know, hometown hero comes back. Prodigal son, all that stuff. She's been working Sheraski for like a year. Some big endowment.

- I see. Do you have any idea what Jake is up to nowadays?

- Saw him at the bait shop a couple months ago. Haven't seen him in church in ages but if you find him, tell him I said 'hi'. He was a good student. Both of them were.

- Thank you, Mr. Marx.

- Call me Tom.

- There was some stellar acting in that scene, I have to say.

- It was a little rough.

- Didn't see it, huh? Okay at this point I think I should disclose that I, yes I am in the film. You cast me as Tom Marx and it was really fun. It was great to be part of that cast. And talk a little bit about, if you would, casting the film in a remote area. Now, I happen to live there which probably gave me an inside track on some level.

- It worked out in both our favors.

- Yeah but you got James to be coming in from American Players Theater in Spring Green so there's great talent here in Wisconsin but how do you cast a film in a remote area? You had to bring people in.

- Absolutely, and I always... You know, I'm a film producer, as well as a director. And so when you make a movie, you know that you have to eventually sell the movie and typically that's done with the casting. This was a little independent film so you know we aim for the stars but we had to be reasonable with our expectations. You know, I knew we weren't going to get the $20 million paycheck actors but thankfully we did land an amazing lead actor, Chandler Massey, he's a three-time Emmy winner for Days of Our Lives and he just happened to be free and happened to really like the script. So we worked with casting directors, Lisa Zambetti and Emily Schweber in Los Angeles, who helped bring in actors for the roles and Chandler was a guy that they didn't call in but he'd always been in the back of my mind cause he'd been in a film I had helped produce a few years ago and he just knocked everybody out of the room, you know. He was so believable, incredible with his performance.

So, we ended up casting our four leads. That's Tracey Fairaway as Nicole and Shane Coffey as Jake and then Richard Riehle as Father Rob, all from Los Angeles. Here in Wisconsin, we actually had some guidance from Teresa Boysen, who's a longtime casting director, well-known around the state. My producing partner Ben Fritz who lives right here in Madison was able to bring in a lot of great regional and local talent and sure enough James and Colleen came in for the roles and were awesome. Funny enough, James was actually one of the reasons why I got into the business. He wrote an adaptation of the Three Musketeers that was produced between the UW Theater department and the Madison Repertory Theater when I was here in undergrad as an acting student and that was my first professional acting gig. So, it kind of came full circle for me to be able to bring a project back here and cast him.

- That must have been so surreal.

- Michael: Yeah, he didn't remember me but I remembered him; it was great.

- Probably faked it or did that actor thing, oh yeah. So, it's an indie film, Mike, you want to put your entire budget or as much as you can, in the screen. How do you cut corners—‘cause you have to? Where do you do that and how do you do it without making the project suffer?

- Well, I think my experience producing films has given me a lot of insight as to how to stretch a dollar in a way that doesn't sacrifice the production value. So, I always knew it had to look good, it had to sound good and the actors had to be good. I knew that the locations would be the locations because it's the region that I grew up in. And they were going to be cinematic as they are. S

o, what I tried to do is make sure we hired really professional camera assistant cinematographer, gaffer, sound man, and then we could flesh out the rest of the crew with like kids who were just finishing college and really wanted to get a credit on a feature film or maybe somebody new to the area who doesn't have a lot of credits and they wanted to build those relationships. And so I kind of strategic I guess about how I crewed it up and it was so wonderful. Everybody was extremely hardworking and committed to the show, and, you know to stand out in January for 20 days of cold to make this movie was...

- You got to love filmmaking to do that and let's see another clip from Aquarians.

Who brought those?

- He was popular.

- You still come here after six years?

- Seven. Yeah.

He was my first.

My horoscope told me that I was gonna receive an unexpected visitor.

- Me?

- What's your sign?

- When's your birthday?

- Danny: May 2nd.

- So you're Taurus, the bull. Stubborn, private. But dependable, trustworthy.

- What's his?

- Scorpio. Magnetic. Unpredictable.

- Makes sense. Middle child.

- Class clown.

- Maniac. 
(laughing)

- Yeah.

- And yours?

- Aquarius.

The Water Bearer.

Charming, free-willed. Contradictory. 
(chuckling)

- Sounds about right. 
(laughing)

- I really,

I missed you guys.

- So, Michael, writers bring a little bit of themselves to every character they write. Which of the characters in this film would you say you put most of you into?

- Bart Sheraski.

- Bart Sheraski? That's the James DeVita character who's... yeah.

- That's an interesting question. I really feel like both of the brothers embody. They're kind of like both different aspects of myself in a way, but they're also very much infused by my brothers growing up. Just the kind of attitudes and banter and argumentative kind of stances that we would take with each other. But then how it flips on its head and becomes lively and fraternal and confusing, you know, I think that's really what I was drawing from one of these trying to get at the heart of that type of relationship. Brothers, as you know, siblings of all kinds can be the best of friends and the worst of enemies. I tried to really get dirty and messy with that. And, you know, come out at the end alive and kind of start a new chapter.

- Yeah, I wanted to ask you also, we were there, that scene, the first clip we saw, in the church basement where we're taking the food reminded me of the extras cause extras in LA all want to be actors, you know. They're willing to slug it out. 

In a small town, it seems like, at least in my experience, they love the idea and after like an hour or two they're like when is this over? I'm like they want to get on with their lives. Was that a challenge, keeping the extras there? ‘Cause I know at one point, they were eating the prop food ‘cause they were, like, just trying to hang in there. Was it hard getting people to stick around on these long days of shooting?

- You know, we really only used the big groups of extras for like three days and in that particular scene, the church basement, I mean it was a long day and it was tricky. I did recruit some family friends and relatives were in there. My Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty were down there. We had, you know, family of some of the performers, but I think we prepared them. I think we told everybody in advance it might be a 12-hour day and they'd be fed lunch. But it was challenging and--

- Pete: The doors were locked.

- My hat's off to everybody who participated and came out and really stuck with it ‘cause I couldn't have made the film without them.

- Absolutely, so you went to school here at UW. You were history and a theater major. That's really interesting to me. Were you still trying to figure things out? And what is the moment when you knew you were going to pursue theater or the arts as opposed to history?

- Sure, I came to UW-Madison, originally thinking I would go to law school afterward. Theater was a passion of mine. Something I really wanted to explore. History was a subject in school I'd always been drawn to. I always read a lot and always interested in. And it was kind of like this dance back and forth. 

And, to be frank, the big moment-- I think where my life really shifted and my priorities realigned is my family had a tragedy and we lost my brother Leo in a car accident. That really put pause on everything and it allowed me to step back and kind of evaluate my life and kind of think to myself like why am I pursuing this path? What do I really get out of it? And I realized I really got a lot more joy out of performing arts and decided if I wanted to go back to law school, it's always going to be there. 

But you know, I'm young, I'm in my twenties. You never know what's around the corner in life. And so I figured, what the heck? I'll give it a shot. So, I moved out to New York with my girlfriend who's now my wife and we pounded the pavement out there for five years, doing all sorts of theater, a little bit of television, got a lot of experience. And eventually, I came to realize that I wanted to be more involved in the genesis of the stories and shaping how they're told and directed.

- You got nice elements of your personal life in this story and that really comes across. It's just great. So let's see another clip from Aquarians.

(phone buzzing)
- Hello?

- Are you trying to kill me before the cancer does?

- Father Rob?

- Father Rob: You got friends making a scene in Church? You stood up the Marxes? You got arrested and the car's been impounded? Am I missing anything here?

- Yes, no. Um, no, you're not. I wasn't arrested really.

- Even better question. Do I need to pull out my I-V and personally come over there and knock some sense into your thick head?

- No, Father.

- I'm assuming you're going to wisely use your time and you're gonna get it together for next Sunday because chances are,

I'm not going to be able to make it again and you're gonna be the one up there in front of the congregation.

- Yes, sir.

- Now I expect to hear a glowing report.

Oh, hell. Maybe I made a big mistake with this.

- No, Father, I--

- Don't talk. Just fix it. And for the love of God, Danny, don't #### it up!

- Don't F it up.

- Father Rob: Yeah, that's right.

- Okay. Bye.

[laughs]

- That's a great scene. Talk about that actor and how you found Richard Riehle. He loves to work. He's got over 300 credits. Did you have a connection to him or did you just make him an offer? Did you know you wanted him right away?

- I didn't. We explored local casting and saw some really good actors for the role, but he was somebody who was again kind of stuck in the back of my head because a friend of mine in Los Angeles, a filmmaker, Ari Aster, who went on to direct Hereditary, had used Richard in a couple of short films and I thought he was great. And Ari had just said glowing things about working with him. And then, it turns out my friends Jason Schumacher, Will Blomker, and Josh Moise made a film here in Madison called Treasury Men in Action and they... I'm sorry Medal of Victory, can I go back and maybe we can edit that. 
[both laugh]

- It doesn't matter, it's too late.

- Well, yeah, so my friends Josh Moise, Will Blomker and Jason Schumacher made a film here in Madison called Medal of Victory. Richard was in that film, as well. They loved him and Ari put me in touch. 

So, Richard and I met up at the House of Pies on Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz and hit it off and what was really incredible about it, and I had no idea, he said to me, "Did you know that I went to seminary in Milwaukee?" and I said, "What?!?" 
So, he was going to become a priest. And he studied at St. Francis Seminary for I think three years before he decided to leave and go on to a career in entertainment. And so that just brought this level of credibility and instantly, it was like, oh, this is so perfect.

- He's been on this show. I say maybe more than once and we've had at least two or three films on this show that he's been in. And when he was here in Madison, when he was a guest, he was at a coffee shop between tapings working on another script. The guy obviously is just consumed with movie making and loves to work and great choice. 

I wanted to ask you, when you were filming in that church basement, you had a smoke machine. You were going for this kind of dreamlike state, I think, if I remember correctly. You didn't use it and you guys went to painstaking efforts to make it work. How frustrating is that, sometimes, when you put all this effort in and sometimes the scene just doesn't work?

- Well, we did use haze in all the church interior scenes just to give it not necessarily like a dreamy texture, but just to give it a shallower depth of fields. Well, you know just to give it a little bit more depth I suppose in the frame.

But yeah, there's always technical glitches happening and you have to roll with it.

I don't know what to say. I think in those moments you can't stop the train, you know, you have to say, "Oh, get rid of it, let's go" because you're just always up against time and money on these films, even on the big blockbusters, it's never enough time or money to really get everything precisely the way you want it. But sometimes you get lucky and if you stay loose and you kind of respond and see what's happening, you can really capture some unique moments and I think we got that in the film.

- Definitely, let's see another clip from Aquarians.

- So, what, Jake?

Chris dies and you say screw college?

Screw getting a job? Screw my family, screw everybody?

- Pretty much.

- Why can't you get your #### together?

- You haven't stepped foot back here in years.

- You could've gotten out of this ####hole!

- I barely finished school. What did you? What was I gonna do? Move with Mom and Dad to Phoenix? You were halfway across the country. At least I had friends here. What did you expect?

- We were all crushed, Jacob. We all had choices to make.

- Yeah, yeah, and yours was to ditch me for a bunch of hypocrites and pedophiles.

- The seminary saved my life.

- No, the seminary saved you from living your life!

Yeah, no, you just had to make sure that you were gonna be broke and alone. So, I guess we have a little bit in common, you ####### hypocrite!

- Don't call me that.

- The first girl who lays hands on you since college and you're ready to dip your ####, Mr. Chastity.

- Shut up!

- Or what? You'll hit me? 
(smacking)
 Huh? 
(smacking)
 Come on, you little bitch! Hit me.

- Stop that!

- Come on, I dare you! 
(groaning)
 
(thudding)

(yelling)
- Stop being a piece of ####!

(thudding)

(ice crackling)

(Danny groaning)

(ice crackling)

- Hey. Come on, get up! Come on, quick, quick! 
(crashing)
 
(dramatic music)

- That's pretty intense.

Tell us a little bit about that scene. You're working on an Indie budget. You got two guys falling through the ice, actors. They did their own stunts. How did they respond when you told them what was happening or what they had to do in that scene? And talk a little bit, if you would, about setting it up.

- Well, as far as the actors go they read the script so they knew that this was in there. It wasn't my expectation that they would perform their own stunt. We had our stunt coordinator Jason Schumacher read to double for Danny and Brian Bell, who's my producer, he's an experienced scuba diver and had just gone ice diving a couple of weeks before that. He was prepared

- Up North? Yeah, while we were shooting. Like he went on a Saturday and he was prepared to stunt double for Jake. Now, Brian and I had done a polar bear dive on January 1st up in Menominee, Michigan

and I think that inspired Shane and Chandler to toughen up a little bit and they sort of like had this idea of like maybe we should do it ourselves. And I told them I really wanted to get a close up of Chandler. I was like I need a close up of you. Can we at least put you in a suit and have you go under for a second and up. And he was thinking he was willing to do that but then once we got there, it was like well they just might as well do the whole thing. And it became this game of chicken between the actors like are you going to do it? I think so, are you going to do it? But before they could chicken out they were there in dry suits. 

We did a lot of preparation for it, obviously. So, I was out there testing the ice, the thickness and the depth a few weeks before we shot. And we picked an area where I knew it would be about four feet deep roughly. So, we cheated the location a little closer to shore for that specific stunt. We had pre-drilled, carved a large hole and this really great guy, really smart guy back home that I grew up with, Chris Kamin devised this really cool trap door mechanism for me to allow the actors to stand on it for a moment while crew members off-camera could tug on cables that would run under the ice to open it up so that it can fall through at that particular moment.

- It helps probably, too, that you're kind of an outdoorsy guy, you probably knew a lot of the stuff. You had ice fished and snowmobiled and all that kind of stuff and, well, I just want to say thanks for letting me be part of it. It was fun to be in the cast. It's great to have you here. I'm glad that Wisconsin Public Television wanted you here cause it's a kick for me to interview you, us two... You know what I think though, Mike, I think we need to pal around more.

- Alright.

- What do you say? Couple of Marinette guys out on the town, here in Madison.

Excellent job, great to have you here.

- It's a please being here, thanks so much.

- Pleasure is ours. And thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information on Aquarians please go to WPT.org and click on Director's Cut. While you're there, learn how to submit a film and don't forget to 'like' us on Facebook. 

I'm Pete Schwaba and I challenge every filmmaker watching to make another film in Marinette, Wisconsin where the entire community pitches in. Just bring a sweater, it's pretty chilly. We'll see you next time on Director's Cut. 

[spacey music]
 
[playing guitar, fireworks bursting]
 
(cheering)
 
(yelling)
 
(cheering)
 
[partiers holler "Whoo! Yeah!"]

[group cheers and applauds]

[group cheers and applauds]