Posted in: Horror, Interview, Movies | Tagged: Alan Scott Neal, exclusive, horror, interview, Jessica Belkin, SHOUT! Studios, Taylor Sardoni

Last Straw: Director, Writer on Jessica Belkin, Resourcefulness & More

Director Alan Scott Neal and writer Taylor Sardoni spoke to Bleeding Cool about their latest horror movie Last Straw from Shout! Studios.

Director Alan Scott Neal and writer Taylor Sardoni have been active in Hollywood for over a decade, working on various projects. Both spent time working on their share of shorts, Neal has primarily worked in casting, while Sardoni worked on TV and podcasts. It was an uphill battle getting their first feature off the ground, but fortunately, Shout! Studios took a chance on the duo for Last Straw. The horror thriller follows Nancy (Jessica Belkin), a young waitress working the overnight shift alone at a rural roadside diner who finds herself in a fight for her life when a group of masked assailants terrorizes her. With no one to turn to, she will do everything she can to survive the night, even if it means striking back. Neal and Sardoni spoke to Bleeding Cool about their persistence, how they cast Belkin as lead, how Neal used his connections as casting director to cast the rest of the film and their influences.

Last Straw: How Director Alan Scott Neal & Writer Taylor Sardoni's Persistence Paid Off

Bleeding Cool: What is the inspiration behind 'Last Straw?'

Sardoni: From a writing standpoint early on, it was, "How do we get a movie made?" We had so many projects we tried to push up the mountain, and doing something on a lower budget in one location seemed like, "Okay, here's an easier route." Spoiler alert! It wasn't. It took a couple of years to get off the ground, but wanting to create this pressure cooker for one character and seeing the simplicity of her perspectives on the people around her might create the worst shift and work night of all time for her.

What made Jessica perfect to play Nancy, and what did she bring?

Neal: We auditioned a ton of actors, as it is for every film, and Jess brought a unique combination of empathy and, at the same time, attitude to where she was able to toe the line between it becoming too much of one thing or the other. It was the perfect mixture that would do Taylor's screenplay justice, and that's why we couldn't have made it without her.

How does the rest of the cast come together?

Neal: I come from a casting background since I'm a casting director by day, and a lot of the cast came from my files through the years for other things I've worked on, save for a rainy-day project [Sardoni laughs]. Joji [Otani-Hansen], who played Bobby, was in there. Tara [Raani], who plays Tabitha, was in there. These are great and interesting actors who hadn't worked out for the thing I was working on, but I was like, "No, I'm going to put them in something someday." It was nice having the greatest hits for me all in one place. That's how this cast was put together, then [Jeremy] Sisto came on board. I wasn't too familiar with Sisto's work because Taylor is the one who sat me down and was like, "You need to watch this and this."

Sardoni: It was great, fantastic.

Neal: I missed the boat on 'Six Feet Under."

Sardoni: So good!

What was the most difficult scene to film, and how did you work through it?

Neal: Good question. The most difficult scene to shoot…

Sardoni: I'm shocked you're not saying, "The bonfire." I'm shocked. I thought that would have been your go-to.

Neal: It was the most frustrating to get made, but that went well. One of the hardest things to shoot was in the first couple of scenes of the movie because we shot them on the first day and got our sea legs. At the end of the day, I had a hard time editing them because I felt I did a bad job. What's there I feel good about and I ended up using the first or the last takes, but we were figuring out how to work together. That was the hardest thing. The second hardest was the bonfire. It's one take and lasts an uninterrupted four minutes or 4.5 minutes. We wanted to go through a range of emotions. There were stunts and special effects, and it took place at night. The entire scene was lit by truck lights and a real fire. We went practical. Technically, that was the hardest thing.

Sardoni: I will say, Tom, I will just say that this guy here, Alan, is such a fantastic filmmaker and director, but he was getting in these scenes with these actors. In between takes, he genuinely was jumping up and down, pumping them up, like getting them in this dark frame of mind. Alan, you may have blacked out a few times, so maybe there are some difficult ideas and shots…

Neal: I dissociated, for sure, several times during those night shifts.

That leads to my next question. Since this is your theatrical debut, the first part will go to Alan: How has your experience directing shorts and working in casting prepared you for doing a film like 'Last Straw?'

Neal: It was all preparation; the casting work prepared me for the pressure cooker that would be this film we shot over 19 or 20 days. What I learned, the most valuable piece of skill I picked up over the past ten years doing this, is how to talk to actors precisely and concisely. To get the thing you're going after without beating around the bush. It's like finding a language with the actors, knowing actors want to be pushed, pulled, and to be directed. They want to feel like there is a vision, have the confidence to go in there, do it, and have secondhand language with actors. I don't think I could have done this film if I didn't have that under my belt.

Taylor, how did you fully flesh out 'Last Straw' as the feature compared to what you've done in shorts?

Sardoni: I've been fortunate enough to develop a hell of a lot of content, material, features, series, a lot of new media, narrative podcasts, short digital series in the genre space over many years, and sometimes ghostwriting. There are things I learned along the way that felt prepped and primed. When we wanted to do this film and try to push that boulder up the mountain, it came time to "Okay, here are the limitations. Here's what we'll do and need to revise based on that."

It felt like all that development work and writing so many lower-budget genre films; some went off and did their own thing, or some petered out and died. I could take all that and say, "Here are the concrete things we must do to get this over the finish line." I feel the same way Alan is saying: "So many years of having the experience of seeing things fail, and also developing things and watching them have a life of their own without me." I wanted to make sure we did everything we could to get this one in the can, and we did. It's funny; he and I think this is for many first-time "filmmakers." You've been working in the industry for a long time and building that skill set. This may be the first, but it doesn't feel like that for us in a way. Hopefully, the dam breaks, and there are many more from here at many different levels—years of experience and honing in the craft to then learn from the mistakes.

My final question goes to Alan. Your statement about the films of John Carpenter and William Friedkin and the 70s and 80s independent filmmaking scene, Were there any specific films that had the most influence on 'Last Straw?'

Neal: It's funny; the one I'm going to reference is neither of those directors. It's 'Straw Dogs' (1971) was the way into this film, which Taylor and I bonded over their films, Friedkin and Carpenter, it's in the DNA. Getting down to brass tacks, we tried to lean into that gritty, real dirty, nasty filmmaking Sam Peckinpah brought to 'Straw Dogs,' that was what we were after. I don't know whether we were successful, but that was the chase.

Last Straw, which also stars Taylor Kowalski, is available in select theaters, digital, and on-demand.

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