The film that closed the Sydney Film Festival last week, Safety Not Guaranteed, is an indie/sci fi/comedy/road trip/time travel/children’s movie with an M rating. Intrigued? It also ends with a twist that might leave you mad, elated or downright confused. Starring Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation), Mark Duplass (who also co-produced) Kara Soni and Jake Johnson (New Girl and 21 Jump Street), the plot revolves around a trio of Seattle magazine employees who respond to the following advertisement, based on a real listing: “Wanted: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.” Pedestrian sat down with director Colin Trevorrow, in town for the festival, to discuss time travel, contentious film endings and the other side of Aubrey Plaza.
Colin, how are you? I’m good, how are you?
Very well. Is this your first time to Australia? It is, yeah I wish I could stay longer, it’s pretty incredible. I like this country very much.
That’s good to hear. How’s the trip been so far? What’s the itinerary been like and what’s the Australian reaction been like to the film? You know, it’s been great. On a personal level it’s just been me walking the streets, looking for good Chinese dumplings. From a professional level, we had the screening last night and people responded very positively. They cheered at the end of the movie and I would say it’s one of the best audiences I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot of audiences watch this movie.
From a personal point of view, what was the reaction like at a marquee festival like Sundance? Sundance, that was a surprise that was even greater because you had all of the crew and the cast there and a lot of the people involved had no idea, especially at the end, what was going to happen. They didn’t even know what happens was even possible, cinematically, based on what we shot. All the applause, it was almost an existential freak out, you know, when she ceased to exist, essentially, and you could hear that energy in the crowd, people were pretty fired up.
So that was the first time even the cast members had seen the ending? It was. Mark had seen it because he was one of our producers so he was a little more intimately involved in the post production process but everybody else had never seen it before.
Wow. Now we don’t want to spoil anything for people, but it is potentially a contentious ending for such a homespun and I think really emotionally honest film. Obviously you guys were leaning one of two ways, was that a hard decision to make and from what place did you make that decision? It was a very hard decision to make and it came very late in the process for me. The number one goal of the movie from day one was for it to be honest, real and homespun like you said and that was something [the ending] that contradicted that and in a lot of ways contradicted the theme of the film, which was up till that point that you can’t go back. It seems at that moment we sort of pull the rug out and say, never mind. It was tough and yet ultimately it came from a very childlike place. It came from a place that I used to live and it was almost my twelve year old self that came to the present and slapped me around and said look, “You ‘gotta end this a certain way or I’ll kick your ass, that’s why you’re here.” It made me feel good. I think when it really came down to it, it made audiences walk out of the film feeling the way that I wanted them to feel and that was always the goal. I’m sure I’ll be defending the final parts of it for the duration, but, you know…
I guess a microcosm of the film is that conversation between Aubrey and Mark where they talk about “Over The Rainbow” encapsulating a time and place and Mark saying that the alternative to holding onto things you love is hollowness. I think it’s true to the film that you chose “Over The Rainbow” over hollowness. Yeah definitely, I even see the ending as sort of an extension of that conversation – that you can’t recreate a time and a place. There are moments of our lives that are indelible that you can’t get back, no matter how hard you try, but I feel like in that moment they’re creating a new time and a place, for themselves. I can only imagine that of all the experiences either of them have had in their lives, that one will probably stick. I think for all the characters there are moments in the second half of the film where they’re creating new memories and they’re creating moments that will be important to them and will probably guide their choices as they head into the future, which I think is thematically relevant.
What were your initial thoughts when you read Derek’s script? The initial script was very funny and it was sort of a comedy/mystery/road trip/time travel film-similar in a lot of ways, but dissimilar in that it wasn’t as much of a love story for a variety of the characters. What we worked on and what I really challenged him to do was, as he continued to write drafts of it, was to delve into the emotional reasons why we need time travel and how it sort of helps us cope with regrets that we’ve had and mistakes that we’ve made. He took that and really ran with it.
Definitely. For you personally, what were the biggest challenges of stepping up to do a feature length? The challenge for me was that we had so little money and so little time. The budget that we had really didn’t match my vision for the film and the scope that I was trying to capture but I just went ahead and did it anyway! There’s no bitterness or anything towards the people who financed it, don’t misread that. I have a lot of appreciation for the fact that they trusted me with a dollar. That challenge, really being forced to get as much onscreen for absolutely nothing, is going to help me throughout the rest of my career in being able to take whatever I’m given and really wrangle as much out of it as possible. It was a big challenge, but an invigorating one.
Tell us about Aubrey’s performance. We’re used to seeing her as this kind of sarcastic disenchanted youth archetype but audiences will see a performance and emotional earnestness that maybe they haven’t seen from her before. Was that a challenge to coax out of her and were you mindful of her not playing too much to type? I was very mindful of it and before we started shooting we talked a lot about how we wanted to very slowly have that other side of her evolve and really come out over the course of the film and it is very carefully rooted out in what we see of her and the moment that we see her smile and she slowly starts to brighten. We did that all the way down to hair and make up and wardrobe. She spent the first third of the movie in a hat and slowly she literally lets her hair down! By the end she’s wearing a dress and it’s blowing in the wind like a Miyazaki film and she looks like an anime character to a certain extent. We decided to shoot her that way. There’s just something that happens when she smiles, she really lights up in a way that very few movie stars can.
Mark’s performance, obviously, is amazing. The character he plays touches on so many different tones and emotions to the point where this guy could potentially be crazy and deluded but underneath is actually quite sweet and charming. How did you balances the different energies of his performance into a coherent character? You know, I think our first 20 miles were just casting Mark Duplass, that got us a certain amount of the way towards that goal. There’s something about his face and just his presence on screen that is soft and warm and accessible and it’s hard for you to really be frightened of him. I think that maybe you could if someone else was playing this character. That got us a certain distance and then the rest of it were choices that he made and discussions that he and I had. Really the last stretch was in the cutting and the editing process which on this film was extensive. We had two editors and it wasn’t because one of them didn’t do a good job, they both did a great job, it’s just that it really took a while and a couple of different points of view to make that tonal balance work. Mark gave us a tonne of options in his performance and it really comes down to the takes that we chose and the performance that we built for him out of everything that he gave us. That results in what I think is a pretty fine balance between insanity and lovability.
For you personally, what’s next on the horizon? The film’s obviously been very well received. What’s next for you? There’s been a couple of really exciting opportunities. I’m unfortunately not able to disclose any of them yet. It’s possible that just based on what I’ve been talking about with people it will be a children’s film. It will be more of a broader audience film. I think our movie is probably the only R rated children’s film that I’ve seen in a while. It certainly has innocence and a childlike quality to it and what, with its M rating here in Australia, I guess its not too far of a leap?
Having seen the film, that makes perfect sense. Colin, thanks so much for your time mate and good luck with everything in the future. Thanks very much.
Safety Not Guaranteed is released September 20th 2012.
