Red Stewart chats with director Mike P. Nelson…
Mike P. Nelson is an American filmmaker who has been working in the film and television industry since the mid-2000s. He is best known for his work on various short films including The Retirement of Joe Corduroy and The Goodbye. His latest movie is his feature film debut The Domestics, starring Kate Bosworth, Tyler Hoechlin, and Lance Reddick.
Flickering Myth had the privilege to speak with him, and I in turn had the honor to conduct it:
Mr. Nelson, it is nice to be speaking with you sir. It’s always hard to pinpoint rising stars, but I think the label more than fits you, so thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
I love it man!
You know, reading over your filmography, I can’t help but see you as less of a director and more of a jack of all trades. You’ve done writing, editing, production design, sound work, make-up, and so forth. I’m just wondering, was it always your intentions to become a filmmaker, or do you find it more fun to hop between these different departments and learn different skills?
You know, for me, it all kind of stems from indie filmmaking: you kind of have to have a good concept of all the departments. You want to be able to touch everything and get a good sense of how everything works, especially with low budget movie-making. So for me, I would say I’ve been making little movies my whole life, so there was always that feeling of “yes, I want to be a director,” but I also like doing the other things in the production process. I love doing the blood effects, for instance. I had a friend who was making a film, and I was finding some crazy ways to craft some special effects and make it awesome. And sometimes people would ask me to shoot some of their stuff, and I’d go and do that.
So I wanted to learn all the aspects of filmmaking and see what things I was really skilled at and what things I wanted to continue to do. And for me, it was I like directing and I like writing, in addition to being a sound designer and foliage artist for about three years. So it all comes together.
That skill range definitely shows. With The Domestics, I never would have guessed that it had a low budget, not only because of how beautiful it’s shot, but also how it looks from a production standpoint. So it definitely shows. You did a great job mastering all these other departments.
Now, prior to The Domestics, you did, as you said, a lot of shorts that revolved around the horror and thriller genres. For you as a filmmaker, what is the biggest difference between doing a horror film like Summer School versus a thriller like The Domestics? Because the genres do share similarities of relying on suspense, jump scares, and so forth.
There’s definitely crossover. For me, I love working within that genre, and while The Domestics may not be a proper horror film, I always like to add, no matter what I do, elements of the horror genre into my movies. A perfect example is there was a film I did called The Retirement of Joe Corduroy. It was this short film that you can watch online, and overall it was a revenge flick. Like it was kind of my love song to the Charles Bronson Death Wish movies of the 70s.
But I didn’t want to leave it as a revenge film: that this guy was getting revenge on these people who had hurt his nephew. I wanted to give the ending just that little bit of creep factor, and throwback to Race with the Devil. So I think, for me, it’s about what horror can do to kind of flavor your movie at times. So yes, The Domestics isn’t just a straight up horror film, but I like to season it with some horror elements because I’m such a horror genre fan and I love watching those movies, and I would love to make some straight-up horror films as well.
Yeah, I think back to that initial house scene. It hearkens back to those great home invasion films, so I definitely see the influence in your work.
And I gotta give my shout out to one of the biggest influences, which was Alexandre Aja’s High Tension, which is still, I fully believe, one of the greatest home invasion sequences put to film. It’s absolutely terrifying.
Oh, the French one right?
Yeah, and actually Maxime Alexandre was our DP, and he shot [High Tension] as well. So being able to have him on our set shooting the stuff that I created was just a mind-blower.
No, like I said, it definitely shows; the craftsmanship of The Domestics is on-point from beginning to end. And on that note, let’s talk about the film. Now, when it comes to the post-apocalyptic genre, there are two different ways of going about it- there are stories that try and hit the macro picture, you know the cause of the apocalypse and how to possibly reverse it, and there are stories that target a microcosm of the world, focusing on a smaller story set in that universe.
Obviously with The Domestics it’s the latter, but in the beginning we get hints at what caused this dystopian scenario through the chemtrails and Kate Bosworth’s narration. Was there ever any consideration on your part to explore the bigger backstory, like having the characters do something about it, or did you know from the beginning that you wanted to keep things smaller and grounded?
I always wanted to keep things smaller and grounded. At one point, there wasn’t even the chemtrail thing. I had an idea about what had happened or how the world had broken apart, but there was a time where I didn’t even want to get into it. I just wanted to make it about this couple dealing with a relationship, which, the world may die but relationships don’t. And that was what I wanted to focus on, and not get into this whole “what happened to the world?” And I feel, where we start in the movie’s timeline, people wouldn’t be sitting down talking about the end of the world because it had already happened, they’ve already had these conversations: it’s unneeded exposition.
Now, what I did decide to do was add this little glimpse of what could have happened, but for me it was important that, if I show something in the beginning of this movie about how the world ended, that it’s still cryptic and still illusive to what actually did happen. So I kind of found a compromise where there’s a little bit of a hint, but I still got my little “what exactly was it?” It’s not important to me and it’s not important to the story right now.
So, believe me, I know there’s going to be a lot people who hate me for that, but that, to me, is much more interesting storytelling.
And I’ll admit, that opening scene really did intrigue me; however, luckily the rest of the film provided another story that hooked my attention. But I definitely do think that you have a very interesting mythology going about in this film because of that scene. So that was a wise decision.
Now, as I said before, I think that The Domestics is well made, and one thing that I especially appreciated about it, and I know it’s going to sound dumb, but one thing I really especially appreciated about it was that you have the actors actually get dirty. When you watch a lot of action films, these characters are tumbling through dust and grime, yet emerge with their hair intact. Like I remember in King Kong, there’s a scene where Naomi Watts goes rolling through the dirt, but she looks perfectly fine after. But here, I was happy to see, especially on a lower-budget film, you took the time to make sure there was that realism. Was that something you always intended to do or did it come up during the production process?
You know, it was about finding this balance, especially for our leads and Lance Reddick and his family. The story is about these domestics, if you will, and we made a very clear distinction between the domestics and the gang members. Yeah, the gang members are going to be a little bit greasier and a little dirtier and they haven’t taken care of themselves, whereas the domestics are people who are actually trying to regain civilized life and still sort of live as though that idea is somewhat okay. You know, through smaller things like cleaning themselves or brushing their hair. Like with Kate, there’s a scene where she smells some perfume. There’s still that longing for that normality of what we were used to before everything fell.
So it was about finding that balance and making sure that viewers knew that they were not filthy, because I don’t think that would have been truthful to who they were. But also showing that they weren’t super pristine humans either. Now granted, Tyler and Kate are both beautiful people. [laughs]
[laughs]
So, even at the point where we beat them up, it’s hard to make them look unpretty. But I think what’s also interesting is that concept, which is you have these two people who are very attractive who have to deal with grave situations, and we don’t let them get away with too much. We kind of kick the crap out of them at times, and I think that somewhat lends some fun to the movie.
For sure. That’s really how you create immersion, making sure that there’s no discontinuity or anything that can ruin the viewer’s investment, so once again congratulations on that. Now, speaking of Tyler and Kate, and of course Lance Reddick, you’ve assembled a terrific cast. Given that The Domestics was your feature directorial debut, was the prospect of directing these established actors intimidating at all in the beginning, or was the chemistry between you all on point from the get-go?
Yes, there was some intimidation. I mean, I remember the first day on set: right away I was working with Kate and Tyler and filming that first shot and my heart was beating really fast and I couldn’t eat anything for breakfast because I was so nervous!
So yeah, there was some nerves. And I had met them before, so it wasn’t like that was the first time I was interacting with them. But it was more like “wow, this is happening with these people right now; it’s time to put our game face on and do this right.”
But they’re super sweet, kind people. Professionalism is in their craft. And as long as you can see actors that way, you’re just speaking with another person and you’re trying to get a really freaking cool job done together. So ultimately it came down to having so much fun working with the cast because they had so much fun with this.
And you can definitely see that. You can usually tell when an actor is phoning in a performance, but that wasn’t the case here. It’s not a blockbuster, but these actors are putting as much into it as they have in past projects, and I think that’s absolutely attributable to you. You’ve managed to attain that respect from the beginning, and it speaks well to who you are as a person.
Going off that, I just have one last question: what are your future plans? Do you plan on making more independent films in the thriller genres, or perhaps expanding into other avenues?
You know, right now, I would really like to stay in the action horror kind of realm, whether it’s action, whether it’s horror, or whether it’s action-horror. There’s just something, at least right now in my life, that’s really exciting about it. Whenever I go see action films or horror films, I love to be scared and freaked out and it makes me feel alive, you know what I mean? So I want to make movies that give people that same feeling.
That’s not say that something won’t change down the road, but right now I feel like I kind of know what I want to do, and that’s action, horror, revenge, or anything that’s a little off-kilter.
And you managed to create a high quality piece of work with The Domestics; I can only imagine what you can do on a bigger budget! So I wish you the best of luck in your career Mr. Nelson and thank you once again for taking the time out of your day to speak with me.
Red, it’s been a pleasure man. I really appreciated the talk.
Flickering Myth would like to thank Mr. Nelson for sitting down with us. The Domestics is out in select theaters now.
Red Stewart
