Javier Reyna is a writer and director whose latest film Regionrat is releasing soon. We had the chance to ask him a few questions about his career and the movie. Here’s what he had to say.
Hello Javier. My name is David. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. It’s a real pleasure. Let’s start with you. For those who don’t know, could you tell our readers a little about yourself?
I’m an insecure, self loathing, under-educated wanna’ be artist with no talent for business. I love drama, love film, always have. People who don’t know me well would tell you that I am an asshole, while people who do know me well could definitely assure you I am a huge asshole. Ask Carlos Jimenez, Regionrat’s cinematographer, and he could illustrate the kind of stubborn prick that I can be.
Or maybe you want me to tell you about where I grew up, what my childhood was like, and how I fell in love with movies, but that’s boring.
Ha, Very honest. Speaking of Regionrat, your latest film is about a student who returns to his hometown to complete his final year in high school. I know it’s based on a book by Richard Laskowski. Could you tell me more about how you got involved and what drew you to the project?
I was looking for a script to produce because I couldn’t write one myself, and then a friend of mine told me about the book. She had known Richard Laskowski in high school and she had read his book and thought I might be interested in his story. Once I read the book, I became fascinated by this sad subculture in small town USA, where kids didn’t have a lot to do. But mostly, I loved the author’s honesty. Most of us would never want to admit things we have done in our lives, but Laskowski was never afraid and he never blamed anyone else for the turns his life took.
READ MORE: Our review of Javier Reyna‘s Regionrat
How important was it for you to remain faithful to the book in adapting your screenplay?
It was Laskowski’s story, partially or not, but I felt that my job was to be as loyal as humanly possible to his book. There are things in the film that deviated from the book, but that was due to budget/production issues, never out of creative freedom. The book was my guiding light. It had to feel authentic.
Tell me about your approach. For example, the film is grounded in realism but with a certain style, which includes running narration from the main character. Curious as to your thoughts on bringing your vision to screen.
Ray, our main character, comes back home after a six-month absence. Once home, he sees his town from an outsider’s point of view. The voice in his head tells us what his thoughts were as he was going through all these events. In a way, I kept thinking that maybe I was making a gritty and urban version of The Wonder Years.
What I especially liked about the experience was how you avoided many of the standards of the teen/high school genre, giving it a much more authentic feel. Was this something you decided from the start?
Interesting question because I don’t know what the genre standards may be. I just knew I wanted the film to be serious, and yet have an underlying sense of humor that had to feel natural and never over the top. I was afraid of screwing the film up and turning it into a goofy teen comedy, but I needed some humor in order to avoid the film turning into a preachy lecture. So it was touch and go. Whenever I felt that the story was not real, I pulled back.
‘Goofy Teen Comedy’. That’s it! So, Connor Williams is cast in the lead as Ray. He’s got a strong stoic dynamic. How much freedom did you allow him in developing the character and were there conversations about how remain true to the book while establishing something unique to the film?
I told Connor who the character was and I asked him to watch a few characters from other films and maybe combine them in his head. Not sure he did, though. He doesn’t really watch that many movies. He likes the process, yet doesn’t watch much stuff. So I pretty much allowed him to do his thing and just tried to keep him honest. That was easy because he makes me look good. He is a great actor. I think most of my direction was only about energy level, but other than that he seemed to just walk through his lines with no trouble. Amazing.
Regionrat is your feature length film debut. Tell me about that experience, moving from short films to full length. What would you say has been the most ‘educational’ for you in making that transition?
A lot more fun. It is very hard for me to tell a story in fifteen minutes. I felt like I could breathe. Regionrat could have easily been a three hour film, but nobody would let me. Educationally speaking, I only know that compromising is for suckers. Every compromise I made I regretted it in a big way. I like to plan ahead as much as possible, but due to our lack of funding, we couldn’t put locations on hold. I usually begged for a location the night before. Of course no location looked like what I had hoped for, or storyboarded for, so I had to take a good look and make decisions on the fly. I pretty much winged it for the entire time. That is very stressful. Next film, if funding permits, I will have my locations locked months ahead, or build them from scratch, but I hate surprises.
Speaking of which, what have you got coming next? Any projects you can tell me about that we can be on the lookout for?
I have three films ready to go. One is The Room Above, a noir-ish suspenseful murder who-done-it type of thing. I started writing it as an adaptation from a book from Emile Zola, however, I didn’t like the original draft, so throughout the years I kept tweaking things here and there until it became pretty much an original story. That is my baby and I am currently casting it. Then we have Building 50, another suspense film, about a sane man locked inside an insane asylum in the 60’s. Then I have The Paled Faced Assassin, a character-driven-urban-vigilante kind of film. Three of them involve murder so, definitely darker, however, my sense of humor is always there.
Looking forward to them. Our site dedicates a lot of content to great moments in movies, hence our title. In your film, it is a sensational sequence midway through when Ray encounters another student looking to beat him up. It’s really fantastic. Are there any movie moments in cinema that have had influence on you?
I watched so many films in my life. When I was little, my mom would drag me to the movies and we would watch double or even triple shows. Things just stick in your head without you knowing, I guess. I remember once she made me watch The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur on the same day. I probably was seven years old. Talk about child abuse.
Watching Jaws was a turning point in my life. I was in love with cinema and I also discovered the power of a great film score.
Regarding specific scenes that meant something special for me, I will choose something that may sound unexpected: Jack Palance and Billy Crystal in City Slickers. The scene about the ONE thing. Mitch (Crystal) is disillusioned with the way his life has turned out. Curly says, “Do you know what the secret of life is?” Mitch replies, “No. What?” Curly, pointing his index finger up, says “This.” Mitch says “Your finger?” Curly says, “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that, and everything else don’t mean shit.”
That’s when I decided that I was going to make films or I was going to die trying. So, it did not not influence me artistically, but it changed my life.
Artistically speaking, one of the most beautiful shots I ever saw was in The Shawshank Redemption as Andy (Tim Robbins) plays the record of “Canzonetta sull’aria” through the prison speakers. The camera shows different images of inmates listening and then the camera pans across the prison yard, and we see all the inmates listening and looking up, and we end up on the metal speaker. Everything is topped off with Red’s (Morgan Freeman) voice. It’s a perfect, flawless, heartfelt scene. Magisterial filmmaking.
Javier Reyna‘s film Regionrat is currently screening at festivals.