Danger One is a 2018 action/comedy about two paramedics who, while transporting a dying man, find a million dollars in cash sewn into his clothing.
Director Tom Oesch and screenwriter Steffen Schlachtenhaufen are the filmmakers behind Danger One, now in release. We recently had the opportunity to talk with them about the film and what it took to get it made. Here’s what they had to say.
Hello Tom and Steffen. Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. I’d like to start with you. Could you tell our readers, who might not know, a little about yourselves and how you came to make movies?
Tom: Thank you, David. You know, it’s been quite the journey. I grew up in Switzerland where, as a teenager, I started making quirky short films with my younger brother after being blown away by Jurassic Park in ’93. I was a bit of an awkward kid, so I had plenty of time to focus on that. I got hooked fast, had some stuff shown on TV, but then realized that I should probably learn how to do it right at a film school somewhere. So after high school, being young and eager, I moved straight to Los Angeles where I went to USC. After graduating in 2016, I directed some music videos and commercials but soon ended up in TV. I kept developing feature scripts over the next few years, which got me managers, A couple of them got real close to getting funded but we never quite made it across the finish line. Not until it finally clicked with Danger One.
READ MORE: Review of the Tom Oesch Crime/Comedy Danger One
Danger One is your feature film debut. How did you get involved in the project?
Tom: I sat down on my couch and didn’t get back up until I had a cool idea. You know, after none of those earlier scripts had gotten made, I knew I had to come up with something that was so small and so contained that the budget would be low enough for someone to take a chance on it. As a matter of fact, when I wrote the first treatment for EMT, which was what I called it back then, literally the entire plot took place in the back of the ambulance. It got scaled up a little only once Steffen, the writer, came on board. But let me take a step back and talk about what inspired the story: For one, my father was a doctor and his private practice was attached to the house I grew up in, so I was immersed in that medical world for the first 20 years of my life. The other inspiration was the aftermath of the Great Recession and how millions of people were still struggling to get on their feet even years after it had “officially” ended. Something that, even today, is still everyday life for many. To us, a story about working men and women being fed up and pushing back against the system that rigged the economy against them, like Charles Shaughnessy’s tax-evading one-percenter, felt cathartic. So Steffen then went away to write the script while I spent that time shooting a three-minute sizzle reel. We pitched it to Silvatar Media and a few months later we were making the movie. It was pretty wild to see how this little idea went from just me sitting on my couch to 150 people turning it into an actual movie just a year later.
Steffen: Tom and I shared a manager at the time. I had previously done a rewrite for Tom on another project. Shortly after that, he came to me with this concept.
The movie is a mix of action, black comedy, and drama. What was the larger challenge in keeping these balanced?
Tom: Because our budget was so tight, I didn’t get to rehearse with the actors during pre-production. We didn’t even have a table-read because Tom Everett Scott joined us literally only 48 hours before we started shooting. And rehearsal is where you want to find and finesse the film’s tone, making sure all the actors are on the same page ahead of time. But we didn’t have that luxury. I knew that was risky because some of our characters were so idiosyncratic, which meant that we needed to keep other characters more grounded in order to create just the right balance. If that balance were off, the story wouldn’t feel truthful and it’d be difficult for the audience to lose themselves in it. And so the challenge was that we had to dial all that in right there on set, with the crazy time constraints of a 23-day indie production breathing down our necks. Whenever I could, I’d shoot multiple takes and have the actors give me variations, so that we could calibrate the tone later in the edit.
Is there one of these you favor over the others? I ask only because I found the black comedy especially good.
Tom: I grew up on a steady diet of over the top 90s action movies, so I definitely get a kick out of choreographing something dynamic and exciting. But now that I’m older I’ve also come to love comedy that makes people cringe a little. That makes you go “Wow, I can’t believe they just went there.” In hindsight, I’d push that even further in Danger One. Especially because the medical community is known to have a pitch-black sense of humor, just totally desensitized by the insane stuff they see every day. I remember reading this interview with a former paramedic who realized he needed to switch careers after he’d found a little piece of brain stuck to the bottom of his boot, having stepped on it while out on a call, and cracked a joke about it that left his wife in shock.
The film is basically a two-set project, the ambulance and the garage, though you manage to get a lot of mileage (if you’ll pardon the express) out of both, including the climax. I think your creativity in giving them such really gives the film its edge. Not really a question but more looking for your approach to the limited locations.
Tom: We actually shot all of the ambulance interiors in that same garage, too. We parked the ambulance inside it and placed three huge rear-projection screens in front of it. That hot and dusty garage was like our soundstage. Now, in regards to having so much of the movie take place in just those two locations, the challenge was to make sure the audience wouldn’t get bored. My solution was to make the garage and the ambulance interior “feel” different each time we went back there. To give them an arc as if they were characters. For instance, both the lighting and our lens choices in those locations evolved to mirror the story’s escalation into more and more of a nightmare. Like the lighting, we’d keep lowering the brightness and shifting the color temperature from scene to scene, letting both the garage and the ambulance get increasingly ominous and oppressive. When it came to camera lenses, we used long focal lengths for many of the early scenes, forcing the audience to observe from a distance, almost like a documentary about paramedics at work. But then, as the story got crazier, we let the lenses get progressively wider and wider, having them just inches from the actors’ faces, making it a much more immediate and immersive experience for the audience. Plus that lens distortion helped us achieve that fever dream quality we were aiming for.
This leads me further into your directing style. I want to say I feel some Edgar Wright in there, plus some old school Brian De Palma. Who are your influencers and tell me about what you think was the trickiest shot in the film, or maybe one you would like audiences to pay most attention to.
Tom: Oh, I’d talk about both of them for hours, if you let me. I mean, can we just give Wright that new Bond movie already? I think Danger One has its own offbeat flavor but it does share some of that heightened, lively playfulness that directors like Guy Ritchie or Matthew Vaughn have brought to some of their work. I also have lots of respect for Gore Verbinski and how he’s able to get weird but still make it very accessible. In general, while the 80s have been back with a vengeance, my creative sensibilities got shaped much more by the 90s. I want to bring those back! I miss the Paul Verhoevens, John McTiernans, and Tony Scotts of that era. As for tricky shots, oh man, we had many. Because there was always so much movement in the frame but never enough time. But, you know, sometimes shots that look simple actually took the longest. For example, there’s this fast push-in towards Tom Everett Scott and James Jurdi raising the gurney up on its wheels, with the patient laying on it. But those gurneys are heavy and that turned out to be sooo difficult to do in one quick, smooth motion without snapping your spine. We must have done 30 takes, yet that shot’s probably no longer than half a second in the final cut.
Your cast is pretty strong with already mentioned Tom Everett Scott doing great work with the character. I also like Denis O’Hare as the villain. Tell me about the casting.
Tom: I love casting against type, which is the case with both Tom and Denis. It just makes things feel fresh and unpredictable for the audience. Plus actors tend to have a blast playing characters that they usually don’t get offered, and that excitement seeps into the performance. The big challenge with casting a character like Dean, which Tom ended up playing, was that we needed the audience to be on Dean’s side despite the terrible things he does. On paper, Dean was easy to dislike. And while we didn’t need the audience to agree with his actions, we needed them to root for him despite those actions. That’s why we looked for an actor who was naturally likable and disarming, who had a warmth and vulnerability about him. An underdog quality. And Tom didn’t have to fake any of that because he’s such a great guy and has such a big heart in real life. I can’t imagine that anyone’s ever gotten mad at Tom. And Denis, oh man, he’s such a creative force. He brought all these fun little ideas to his character, which weren’t on the page. Like the bad wig, the headphones, and the two wristwatches he’s wearing. I’m really, really blessed to have had them in this movie.
Steffen: Tom is an incredibly charming dude in real life and I’d say that’s reflected in most of the roles he normally plays. I think he was eager to try on something that was rougher on the edges and we were excited to see what he’d do with it. Dean is a severely damaged, amoral person. I think Tom let just the right amount of charm out so that people could see themselves getting talked into doing something reckless with this guy. If you ever have an opportunity to work with veteran actors like Denis O’Hare, Michael O’Neill, and Charles Shaughnessy, you take it. We were very fortunate to have them. They naturally add layers to their characters that aren’t necessarily on the page. In a short amount of time, I think Tom and I learned a lot from them.
With Danger One now in release, what can we expect from you next? Is there another genre you’d like to work in?
Tom: Fingers crossed that I get to do another one. There are a few scripts that are either ready to go or being written. One’s another crime thriller, with a little dark humor sprinkled in, which takes us into the antique black market in Detroit. Then, there’s another thriller script that I’m super excited about: Single location, high concept, about two women who get stuck in a very extreme and very deadly place. I don’t want to spoil the fun but it’s got some of that Lifeboat and Gravity DNA. And yes, absolutely, I’d love to branch out and do horror at some point. It’s one of my favorite genres. As a matter of fact, Steffen, the writer of Danger One, and I have been outlining a cool concept that would really kind of turn the haunted house genre on its head.
Steffen: I recently teamed up again with Would You Rather‘s director David Guy Levy to do The Mandela Effect, which recently wrapped post. We wrote it together and I also served as a producer. It’s a sci-fi drama with a cool concept and a great cast. We’re excited about it.
Our website dedicates a lot of content to great moments in movies, discussion their impact on cinema. Are there any movie moments that have had influence on you?
Tom: I’m going to circle back to Jurassic Park, just because it played such a crucial part in my life. If I had to pick one scene that made me want to go home and try it myself, it’s the one when Grant and Sattler, and the audience, get to see the Brachiosaurus for the first time. That slow reveal is so masterfully staged and performed and scored. That’s when it clicked and I understood what they meant with “magic”. To this day, I have yet to see a scene that matches that one’s level of awe and wonder. But there have obviously been many other great moments over the years. This is going to make me sound crazy but I was pretty adamant in ‘98 that the walking to the space shuttle montage in Armageddon was the coolest thing ever. There’s even a little tip of the hat in Danger One.
Steffen: This is a great question. Most people can rattle off their favorite movies, but pinpointing moments that had an impact is something different in my opinion. It’s such a grim movie and my brother and I were probably a little too young for some of it, but one of the movies we grew up with Steven Spielberg‘s Empire of The Sun. There is a moment where the base is attacked by American fighter planes and Christian Bale climbs onto a rooftop to get a better look and is overwhelmed when a P51 Mustang does a flyby. The first time I saw it, I started crying and had no idea why. I was probably ten. So that’s one that has stuck with me.
Thanks for taking with me. I wish you the best of luck with Danger One and hope our paths cross again.
Tom: Thank you so much, David. I love chatting about our movie, and movies in general, so I really appreciate you taking the time.