In THE SCOTTISH PLAY, a successful actress accepts the role of Lady Macbeth at a small New England theater, where she begins a flirtation with her charmingly awkward young director, and finds herself haunted by the ghost of William Shakespeare – who’s keen to do some rewrites. Director Keith Boynton talks about his very original new film, available Digital December 6 from Giant Pictures.
When did you kick off your career as a filmmaker, Keith?
Well, I’m not sure when it became a “career” (or if it has yet!), but I made my first movie back in 2003. It was a road-trip/coming-of-age movie called Miles, and it was disastrous – but by the time shooting wrapped, I was hooked.
And I’m assuming you’ve a background in plays – based on the movie?
I do, yes! I’ve been doing theater longer than I’ve been making movies: community theater, then high-school theater, then college theater, and eventually an MFA in playwriting from Columbia. You might say it’s my first love!
And how long have you been working on the film?
I wrote the script back in 2016, so it’s been a bit of a journey. But I’ve done other stuff in the meantime! In fact, I shot another movie after The Scottish Play, while we were trying to figure out our distribution plan. That one is a romantic drama called The Winter House, with Lili Taylor and François Arnaud, and we’re hoping to release it sometime in 2023.
What a great ensemble. Are these folks you’ve worked with before?
Mostly no! Peter Mark Kendall, who plays Adam, was in my previous movie Seven Lovers, and Will Brill (who plays “Will”) was someone I knew through mutual friends, but for the most part these were glorious strangers – although I was able to give my mom a cameo. (She and I are the two audience members who do not care for the final production.)
How has it been, as someone in the arts, during the pandemic? Hard?
I was really lucky, because The Winter House, wrapped shooting just a few weeks before everything shut down. I was able to spend the first “lockdown” period in post-production, which, as you can imagine, is much more pandemic-friendly than shooting. And it was definitely good for my mental health to have a concrete project to focus on during those early days of uncertainty. It wasn’t till post-production was completed that I started to feel like I was losing my mind…
Was the film affected by the pandemic at all?
It’s hard to say, honestly. I think everything was affected by the pandemic, in one way or another, but as far as how our release plan might have been different under different circumstances … it’s kind of unknowable. The main thing is, we’re still here!
What’s the release plan?
Out on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, etc. on December 6th! Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell that weird guy from college who follows you on Instagram!