Devil’s Mile: Joseph O’Brien Interview

9th August 2014

Joseph O’Brien talks up the tar-embossed new scarefest Devil’s Mile, which hits DVD and VOD this month.

Tell us how this project came about?

Devil’s Mile began as a conversation between myself and my producing partner Mark Opausky. I was looking for something to direct and Mark was looking for something to produce, and we were introduced by a mutual friend and started talking about possible projects. I pitched him an idea I had based on a real nightmarish road trip I took in 1997, and that became the nucleus of what eventually evolved into this movie.

The film seems to be a profusion of genres; how was it pitched?

The genre-bending nature came out of the development process. When we began it was a much more by-the-numbers, straight-up horror film. But it was feeling a bit been-there, done-that, and we started looking for ways to explore new territory. I had an epiphany one day while writing the scene at the gas station: “What if they opened the trunk and there were two people tied up inside?” It wasn’t just a horror movie, it was a crime thriller that turned into a horror movie. And that just felt more interesting and more intense, and it opened up a lot of new avenues for the story and for the characters.

What makes the open road such a scary place to set a movie?

We live in a crowded world, but there are still areas, even in North America, that are almost completely devoid of human life. And driving these highways that pass through these desolate stretches, especially at night, it’s not hard to imagine that you’ve fallen off the face of the planet and landed in some other dimension. The road trip I mentioned above was one of my first experiences with that – for various reasons I found myself driving through the Arizona desert at night in a truck that was on the verge of breaking down, having not slept in twenty four hours, slipping in and out of a half-dream state, convinced that if I got stuck out here I was going to die. The desert at night is completely dark; I didn’t see another car or light for hours. All I could see was this little patch of road passing through my headlights, and the rest was limbo. It was hallucinatory and terrifying, and all I could do was push on until dawn.

Where was the film shot?

We shot the film north of Toronto, where I live, on a variety of back roads and on a private airfield, which doubled as our road location for several scenes.

Technically-speaking, the film looks terrific – what was it shot on?

Thanks for saying so. We shot the Devil’s Mile mainly on DSLRs – the Canon 5D MKII was our main camera, but there are also scenes shot on the 7D. At one point I even broke out my own T3i to get a scene. They’re small and compact and we were able to run several of them at once on some of the more complicated scenes, which helped immensely because our schedule was so tight. Also, because so much of the movie takes place in and around cars, their size and portability was essential.

Is sound just as important as video, in your opinion?

I would say sound is even more important than picture, frankly. So many low budget movies blow everything they have on picture and have nothing left over for sound, and they always suffer for it. We budgeted for sound design and mixing and put that money far away when we were shooting, because there’s always the temptation under pressure to pull funds from that cookie jar. But we didn’t and I’m glad, because the sound design and music really brought the whole film up a couple of notches at least. It’s funny the way the human brain reacts to the combination of sound and picture; if you have good sound, it makes your picture look better.

You were involved in the RoboCop mini-series. Were you a big fan of the character? Did you pursue that?

Oh yeah, I love Robo. It was actually brought to me by the producer-director, a guy named Julian Grant. He had been offered the gig by the rights holders, and he needed someone to write it who knew the character. He knew my writing and knew I was a fan. My writing partner at the time, Brad Abraham, and I, worked up this four-part story that everyone responded very favorably to – it was important for us to get back into the character of Alex Murphy and write a story that would have him evolve. It was a great experience, I had a lot of fun on that one.

Did you see the remake? Thoughts?

I saw the remake opening weekend. I liked it. It was great to see some of the things we had wanted to do on Prime Directives but couldn’t (due to budgetary and technological limitations) finally realized on screen. I had always wanted to see a faster, more agile RoboCop in action. And I thought it was admirably committed to telling an emotional, human story when it could very easily have been an in-name-only remake with lots of car chases and explosions. I thought the director, José Padilha, did a great job with it. I do wish the movie had a stronger villain though. A hero like RoboCop needs some serious bad guys to challenge him, and the human baddies in this were a little lightweight. Robo’s antagonists need to be more badass, otherwise he’s just shadowboxing. I missed Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker. Maybe if they do another one. I am available, guys.

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