Au Pair: Directorial Team of Downs and Gage Give Us the Lowdown on Their Latest Project
With their initial feature-length film, Anarchy Parlor, receiving great reviews back in 2014, the directing duo of Devon Downs and Kenny Gage have been constantly cranking out projects from behind the lens ever since. I recently had the opportunity to speak with them for a few minutes (after a hellacious 4th of July fireworks show) regarding their latest project, so crack open a few cold ones and enjoy the read!
DC: All right guys, what’s the deal with your most recent work – what do you two have cooking?
DD: This last one is a suspense thriller, currently titled Au Pair – it’s written by Adam Rockoff, who we worked with on A Neighbor’s Deception, and he also did the 2010 version of I Spit On Your Grave, and it’s a really cool twist on the Nanny Killer theme, and that’s all we’ll really say about it. The au pair moves in, and bad things happen – the lead in the film is Michelle Borth (“Hawaii Five-O”), with Antonio Cupo (American Mary) playing her husband, and we’ve also got Olesya Rulin (“Powers”). It’s a really great cast, and there’s a lot of fun stuff shot on some great locations out here in L.A. We’d like to thank the EP Mike Moran and Marvista Entertainment for having us on another quality production! We just wanted to let everyone know that we’re now on our fifth movie, and we’ve got a lot more cool shit planned.
DC: Having worked together for some time, do you both just get to set now and say “hell with it – let’s roll,” or do you have creative differences that result in a little push-and-pull?
KG: Not really – we’ve been friends for over 20 years, and we’ve been writing together since 2000, and we believe in a lot of preparation – we prepare like a motherfucker before we get into a shoot. We think about the storyboards and we do overheads, and when we get there we’re able to adapt to where we’re able to speak as one, and we direct as one as well.
DD: We actually alternate shots on set, so one of us will be with actors while the other is on monitors, and then we’ll flip, and the actors seem to totally dig it, and we can move really fast this way – we both trust each other implicitly, so there’s not a whole lot of playbacks – we always have eyes on monitors and actors at all times.
DC: Your projects have ranged from both the film and television spectrum – what do you both see as the biggest mode of preparation when getting ready to shoot something for either one?
DD: Well, for me I think the biggest difference on the film projects, you have a wider latitude on how much you can push the envelope, content-wise. It’s a bit easier when you’re not working with TV parameters. No matter what we do however, we’re always trying to push the creativity, and build the tension and suspense, and take the viewer on a ride no matter what it is, if it’s a hard R rating or a TV-MA, we always want that to come through.
KG: Not compromising quality for budget – we shoot big, and do a lot of set-ups – we just don’t believe in compromising quality at all.
DC: When you debuted Anarchy Parlor, you blew the doors off and shocked people with the film’s content; then you directed A Neighbor’s Deception, which aired on Lifetime – did it take a lot to almost scale down your work from one level of intensity to another?
DD: It wasn’t so much as us scaling it down as much as we did that because we wanted to show people that we could do it. I think it’s safe to say that when we came out with Anarchy Parlor, it was pretty extreme, and the people that get it, they get the satire in it, and the humor and all the Easter eggs we planted in there, but as far as content-wise is concerned – you’re still going with a lot of the thriller aspects, but just not to that much of an extreme level, but we still try to walk it up to the line.
DC: What could each one of you two see as your dream project, and if you want, throw in one actor or actress that you’d love to have in it.
DD: We’ve been working with producer Bill Ceresia on an adaptation of the book: Every Move You Make – The Relentless Quest to Catch a Serial Killer. Set in mid-80s New York, this true story follows investigator Jim Horton’s 13-year friendship/manipulation with Gary Evans, a notorious jewel thief/informant, but who turned out to be a hiding a much darker secret…he was actually a serial killer. Dream actor to play Gary Evans: Tom Hardy
KG: As a big fan of the Star Wars universe, the film would have to be the origins of Yoda, let’s go back 800 to 850 years prior to the Battle of Endor with visual stories told by Yoda’s mentor of the great Jedi Master Chuang.
DC: So what’s coming up next for you guys – any more work in the pipeline?
DD: So here’s what we’ve got: we shot that comedy/horror piece last year with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Robert Lasardo, Lynn Lowry (film called Cynthia) – hopefully the word will come soon about a release date, and that’s already in the can. We actually just signed an attachment to a script called Within, that was written by Don Deleon and Tommy Honton – they just came off of a Lionsgate movie, and this is a really cool horror/thriller with a super-deep mythology, and it sets up for a trilogy. We’re trying to get into that later this year, and we’ve got a female-led action thriller called No Good Times, and it’s about a female biker who gets crossed up with a tattoo artist and the LAPD who are running a human-trafficking ring – don’t want to give away too much about it, but it’s a super-cool action/thrill ride. We’ve also got a bunch of horror movies being pitched in meetings all the time as well, so there’s a bunch of stuff that’s lined up.
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