L.A. Premiere – One in the Gun
Killer Film recently attended the Los Angeles premiere of Rolfe Kanefsky’s new film ‘One in the Gun’ at the infamous Raleigh Studios. Many classic movies were shot at the studio, including King Kong and Casablanca. All the major players in the film showed up and hit the red carpet, as well as a few other famous celebrities. Joining Rolfe from the film were Robert Davi, Stephen Bauer, Steven Man, Katherine Randolph and the gorgeous Russian beauty Kristina Coolish. Arriving to lend their support were Robert Davi’s co-star from Showgirls Rena Riffell, as well as Bai Ling from Crank 2.
Everyone really seemed to enjoy the film, but it was the after party where things really start to heat up. Drinks were flowing heavily as everyone seemed to get into the spirit of having a good time. Pictures were taken, more booze was drank, and free sushi was served of a half naked girl. Good times, good times.
Rolfe Kanefsky was kind enough to give this scribe an in-depth look into his neo-noir film, and in the process giving Killer Film fans some insight into the genesis of this ambitious story.
Inspirations:
“I’ve always been a huge fan of thrillers. I love Alfred Hitchcock movies. I love Double Indemnity and Billy Wilder. What happened was leading man Steven Man wanted to do a film noir thriller vehicle for himself and came to my producer Esther Goodstein and they talked about me. At first I thought they had a screenplay when they realized they had sort of a conceptual idea, they wanted to do a film noir movie. We talked about it and I thought of a premise that would work within the time and budget restraints and everything. I made Steven actually audition as well for his own movie because I wanted to see what his strengths were as an actor since I hadn’t worked with him before. At that point they liked the treatment I wrote, I wrote the screenplay, which came together pretty fast. We just rushed into production on it. It was a good experience, it was something very different for me. I love challenges, things I haven’t done before. The Hazing and some of my horror-comedies where done because I grew up with guys like Sam Raimi. With this one I wanted to pay homage Billy Wilder, Sam Fuller, Shock Corrider, Robert Ryan, Humphrey Bogart, Dead Reckoning, The Hitchiker, and Detour.”
Plot Points:
“My friend C. Courtney Joyner is a huge film noir fan and he gave me about two dozen movies and I watched them all to try and get into the spirit. I really wanted to make sure I did not parody or satire the genre. There’s humor like in Billy Wilder, there’s a lot of humor in film noir, I didn’t want to make fun of the genre. I wasn’t doing Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. That was the inpiration for it and we just jumped into it all. We got a suprisingly good cast because they really loved the script. Robert Davi, Steven Bauer, and James Russo all came on board based on the screenplay. We went into production and it wasn’t a long shoot. I also brought in an homage to David Lynch in the second half and it gets into the more contemporary film noir like Blood Simple, Blue Velvet, and Lost Highway. In the first part of the movie there is not much voice-over at all. I was first going to do it but I thought it seemed kind of cheesy and silly. If you have Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum doing it it’s great, but if you try and do it contemporary it’s comes off like a parody or self reflective. I decided not to do the voice-over until around the first half hour mark where we start telling the story, and we start to see what happens, and then it sort of makes sense. I wanted to give people the flavor of film noir, but I wasn’t trying to ape the venetion blind lighting. I wanted to create a mood but I didn’t want it to be like this is film noir. Although as the movie goes along it gets more and more film noir-ish. By the time Robert Davi gets into it really feels film noir which is on purpose. But I wanted to bring the audience fully into it, so they feel they are watching a contemporary movie that has this sort of throwback feel to it.”
Thrill Me:
“Once we got into Body Double, Body Heat, and Basic Instinct and things like that the sexuality had to be there. It’s done very tastefully. I didn’t want to over do it. I didn’t want to make it a erotic thriller. I wasn’t going into the whole Shannon Tweed 80′s erotic thriller genre. There is some sex appeal and violence in the movie. It’s not overly gratuitous, although it gets more surreal as it goes on. There is some sequence involving lesbians and blood that get into a A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 sensibility. It’s a dark movie and there is a sense of humor to it. There is comedy throughout the thing, but it’s from characters and situations rather than pie in the face kind of slapstick. It’s not that kind of comedy. It was a great challenge. By the time we finished shooting I was very, very happy with the way it turned out. I knew we had the film. And then we went into this whole post production where we tried to find the right placement for it. I think this is in a lot of ways very much a festival movie. We didn’t get into a lot of festivals because the festivals is a whole other game right now. It’s very tricky unless you know people. When we showed it in SoHo the reaction was great. It proved that the film does play. It’s a thinking person’s movie. You can sit back and enjoy it, but at the same time as I said nothing it as it seems. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, guess again. It’s one of those films that keeps you guessing right until the end. It all makes sense but you do have to go back and re-evaluate what you watched. When people read the script and the few people who have seen the movie have said I want to read it again or I want to watch it again. You remember it.”
When and Where:
“We are talking to a few companies that are very interested in repping the film for the Cannes Film Festival, and a few companies who want to release the film. Hopefully we are having some distributors here today. Within a week and a half to two weeks, we’ll probably lock down the deal. There’s a few offers on the table that would be fine right now so if that works then great. Then the film will get out there and hopefully if somebody big steps up and says let’s give this film a small theatrical shot I wouldn’t be against that.”
[...] Kaufman and Troma on September 28. The flick was the film debut of director Rolfe Kanefsky, who was interviewed by Killer Film about his new film One in the Gun just a few months [...]