Courtesy of Sundance Institute
When the megalomaniac CEO of a small company dictates that all her staff attend a strenuous team building course in the New Mexico desert and decides to come along herself, what could possibly go wrong? In the case of Corporate Animals, shown at Sundance London, one heck of a lot.
Trapped in an underground cave, the group have to find ways of surviving as well as escaping and their methods are less than conventional. THN’s Freda Cooper grabbed a few minutes at this year’s Sundance London with the film’s director, Patrick Brice, and screenwriter Sam Bain who is best known for TV’s Peep Show. They talked about the influence of British comedy on the movie and Demi Moore‘s involvement in the project, as well as some of the film’s more surprising aspects, such as the unexpected role played by actor Gary Sinise and Britney Spears’ reaction to one of her songs creating its most memorable scene.
Patrick Brice, director of Corporate Animals. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Read the full interview below.
So which one of you went on the outward bound team-building course?
Patrick Bryce: [Laughter] Neither of us.
Sam Bain: We just made it up [laughs]. I was always fascinated by survival stories like Chilean Mining Disaster and Yuroguan Plane Crash, and always wanted to write one because it felt like there was untapped comic potential in people like, trapped together. Being trapped is essentially where every sitcom starts, The Office or Peep Show, or whatever – any sitcom really is about people forced to spend time together. This is like taking that to the ultimate extreme in being trapped in life or death situations. It felt like something that I hadn’t seen before. I thought it would be fun to write.
And who’s the CSI New York fan?
Patrick: Again, neither of us [laughs]. We’re both big fans of that monologue though.
I have to say that as soon as he started saying those lines, I recognised it and I knew it was episode one.
Sam: I’m so pleased.
Patrick: That makes you and the writer of Arrival.
Sam: Eric Heisserer.
Patrick: Yeah. he came to see [the movie]. He was laughing gloriously. No one else was laughing. We just love the idea of Gary Sinise being the object of someone’s obsession. That’s where that came from.
So, how did you get Demi Moore involved? This isn’t the sort of film that we would associate with her?
Patrick: No, I mean she was someone that had always been on our list as an idea for Lucy. We had an actor drop out late in the game and we needed someone quite fast because we had built this entire film set. The movie was going to be pushed if we hadn’t found someone, so we submitted it to Demi. She read it over the weekend and on a Monday we got the call from her that she wanted to be in the movie. The fact that she said yes was already a kind of a testament to her bravery, but then, having her there and seeing her performance was just like icing on the cake. It was a huge relief because she couldn’t have been nicer or more talented.
Except when she was in character.
Patrick: Yes, she felt bad, for sure.
So can you ever listen to Britney Spears now without seeing that leg injury?
Sam: That was one of my favourite moments because you write and it but you want somebody who actually delivers the CGI wounds. It’s one of the magic parts of filmmaking.
Patrick: It’s like a present that you get at the very end of making the movie. You go through this grueling process of editing and then you get this. You’ve always been looking at this one moment in the movie saying – oh yeah, that going to be a leg thing as some point and then two weeks before we’ve finished or whatever, we finally get this delivered product and it’s this gift from God.
And it works.
Sam: We were lucky to get Britney, obviously.
She was okay with the idea?
Sam: Oh yeah, she was on board.
Corporate Animals screened at Sundance London. A release date is yet to be confirmed.
