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Q+A: Will Canon, director of new DVD release Brotherhood

The film Brotherhood has just literally made it’s debut on DVD in the UK, and I had the opportunity to interview the film’s director Will Canon this past week. The film is a superb low-budget US thriller which revolves around a fraternity initiation prank that goes horribly wrong, and I really dug it (read my review here).

Here’s my interview with Will, for more info on the film, click it over here.

Hi Will, thank you for taking the time for us. I watched the film last night, and I thought that it was truly superb, quite a pleasant surprise. Can you tell me where the idea for the film came from?

The film is based on a short film that I did in film school. I knew I wanted to do something about the process of getting into a fraternity and specifically about hazing. I was never in a fraternity, so I was asking all of my friends who had been through it to tell me about the craziest things that had happened to them and a friend of mine said something to the effect of, “There’s this thing that people talk about, but supposedly it’s never actually happened…” And he went on the give me the idea for how the film starts and the rest of it came from that idea.

The best way for me to describe this film is a kind of cross between Reservoir Dogs and Animal House. Where did you draw your inspiration from?

I think I was particularly inspired by the efforts of filmmakers making their first or second films and by the stories behind the scenes. I tried to learn from the determination that other filmmakers had to tell their stories and sometimes their struggles to bring their films to life were just as inspiring to me as the films themselves. Reservoir Dogs fits into that category. Narc fits into that category and so does Clerks, The Brother’s McMullen and She’s Gotta Have It.
It also reminded me of films like Go, even Very Bad Things and obviously the aforementioned Reservoir Dogs. Being a filmmaker of a certain generation, are you a fan of Tarantino?

Certainly being the age that I am, the filmmakers who came out of the 90’s Independent film movement were important to me. I love so many of those films and I think they showed a path to being a filmmaker that wasn’t as available before that time and to the degree it was available, it wasn’t a path that was being taken very often. Those 90’s filmmakers were some of the first to really say that you can just make a film. You don’t have to have a lot of money and more importantly you don’t have to get permission from anyone to make the film you want to make and I think that message is really great. But specifically Steven Soderbergh, Ed Burns, P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, Doug Limon, Quentin Tarantino and also a big one for me as well early on were the Coen brothers. I was a freshman in college, not pursuing film at the time, and The Big Lebowski came out and I saw it three times in the theatre and a few months later the path of my life changed dramatically and a year later I was at NYU.

The film is going to find its audience on DVD in the UK. How would you sell it film fans?

It’s a really fun, really tense ride that doesn’t mince words or pull any punches. It’s also got a moral component to it and has some really personal things going on underneath the rollercoaster ride, so I think audiences in the UK are really going to dig it. The people I’ve heard from so far have really enjoyed it.

You went to film school at NYU (I hope my research is correct). Did you belong to a fraternity, and if so, were there any crazy initiation rituals?

Your research is correct, I did go to NYU. I was never in a fraternity and in general fraternities weren’t as big at NYU as they were at some of the other schools that my friends went to. I had to go through some very minor hazing things in high school, but nothing anywhere near as intense or scary as what the things the characters in the film have to go through.

Any crazy university stories to tell, or did you put them all into the film?

Thankfully my university experience was much more tame than what happens in the film

So, how did the film get off the ground? How did the financing come together?

The film was originally set up at a much bigger production company to be made as a much bigger film. But pretty soon after we made that deal the folks we were in business with started to request a bunch of changes to the script and wanted to do some other things that I wasn’t crazy about, so the question became, do you want to make a film, or do you want to make your film? So my producers and I were able to get the project out of that situation and we set out to raise the money independently and thankfully I had some producers and executive producers that were able to do it.

The film has quite a large, talented young cast… was there a lengthy casting process?

It wasn’t really that lengthy in terms of finding the people that I thought were right. I saw Trevor Morgan in Mean Creek before I started meeting people and when Trevor and I met, the role was his. He just embodied who I wanted his character, Adam, to be. Arlen Escarpeta was the same way. I saw Arlen in a movie called American Gun with Forrest Whitaker and Arlen was amazing and was holding his own with an acting great. Lou I saw in Thumbsucker which is an iconic performance and Jon I saw in Stay Alive and it was the first thing I had seen him in where he was older. The things I knew Jon from were things like The Door In the Floor when he was much younger, so when I saw Stay Alive I was so excited because I saw that he had the chops to be this guy who has a great deal of charm and charisma, but also has an edge that goes beyond a typical leading man.

How long did this take to shoot, and did you go for 35mm or HD?

We shot for 19 days on 35mm. I wanted this film to have a very edgy, rough, gritty quality to it and it was very important to me that we shoot on film. When we processed the film we did a bleach bypass directly to the negative, which is about as aggressive of a process as you can do to the film. It adds grain and gives a texture and depth to the image that I really wanted. Michael Fimognari photographed the film and really did a great job capturing that edgy, gritty feeling.

How did you find the transition from making shorts to this, as it’s your first feature as a director?

This is indeed my first feature as a director. My short films I had made with a lot smaller crews than I worked with on Brotherhood. I would say that was the biggest adjustment. There were a lot more moving parts, but that was a big part of the fun because I was able to do things that I couldn’t do on more shorts.

What’s next for you?

I have several upcoming projects that I’m really excited about. I’m finishing up a new script with my Brotherhood co-writer, Doug Simon, which is a thriller that takes place in the financial world. I’m also working on a film adaptation of a five-part comic book series called Forgetless that was written by Nick Spencer. Nick just had a big article written about him in USA Today.


So, lastly, you can have anyone in the business that you want. Who is the ultimate to work with?

Wow. That’s a heck of a question. Mamet or Lumet would be two of the top guys for me, but ultimately I think you’ve got to go with Scorsese.

Great movie. Thank you for your time.

Thanks so much.

BROTHERHOOD is available on DVD in the UK now.

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