David Chirchirillo Gives Us The Lowdown On Bad Match
There’s nothing better than getting the point-of-view regarding filmmaking from an up and coming director, especially in the horror industry, and with the recent release of his movie Bad Match, director David Chirchirillo was generous enough to let us delve into his creative brainpool for a short time.
DC: David – can you tell our readers about the film’s premise, and how it came to be that you came up with this story?
DC: I realized that I was making a fucked up, tense kind of film, but I don’t think I truly realized just how much it would freak people out. The film is more or less Fatal Attraction for the Tinder generation, which is how I sort of pitched it to everyone, and it’s about this guy named Harris who is kind of an internet-dating Casanova – a one-night-stand type of guy, and he meets this girl on a dating app named Riley, and she turns out to be a bit more than he initially thinks or can handle. The way that this got started was I originally wanted to write a film that was a mix of After Hours and Something Wild, and I really like making L.A. movies. I also wanted to make a film that included a little but of my experiences with going to some weird parties and dates and all that, all into one crazy night. I believe I wrote two drafts of that movie and I was really struggling with it for a couple of reasons, mostly it was “why doesn’t this guy just leave the date?” How do I keep him here in a non-contrived way? Ultimately I couldn’t solve that, and I talked to my manager and Evan Katz (director of Cheap Thrills), and he said “you really need to turn this into a movie, and the only thing that came to mind was a modern version of Fatal Attraction. I thought against it because I didn’t want to make the obvious movie, and when I was pitching the idea to some studios, I told them what it was about, and they seemed to genuinely dig it, but I found it that they were taking it as “yeah, women are nuts, right?” I definitely didn’t want to make another “crazy-girl” movie, so that’s when I started thinking about how to flip this whole “crazy girl” idea on its head, and there you have Bad Match.
DC: Were there any difficulties in shooting the film?
DC: Well, the whole thing was pretty difficult, I suppose – we shot in 15 days, so that itself presents its own set of challenges. I feel weird because when you’re making these micro-budget movies, there’s this intense labor-of-love to get the project off the ground, and you hear stories about “I’ve had this script for four years” and it took forever. I got lucky when I met BoulderLight, our producer – they read the script, they loved it, and three months later we were making the movie, so that process was great. I think my anxiety came from worrying about getting the movie made, because I have no idea about raising money, but one of the things I talked about with my DP, Ed Wu was making sure that the movie didn’t look like your classic-indie, low-budget film – stationary camera, maybe a little bit shaky, and you let the actors and the script do the majority of the heavy-lifting – we wanted it to feel cinematic. I love Brian DePalma, and this movie was largely influenced by him, but it was difficult to pull off a lot of those shots – and with a 15-day shoot, you don’t have a lot of time to get those shots perfect. It really did work out pretty smoothly, and that was a testament to Ed and our actors who showed up and helped us get done even half of what we envisioned in our crazy brains.
DC: You mentioned DePalma as a big influence – any other directors who get your creative juices flowing?
DC: There’s so many – I just went to see Argento’s Opera, and when I was younger I was crazy for the guy, and I forgot just how awesome he is, but this movie was mostly DePalma.
DC: You’ve had your hand in a lot of roles, between writing, producing, directing – what could you see yourself doing consistently in say, 10-15 years?
DC: Mostly, my career I’ve been fortunate enough that I can survive with writing, and I know that I can do that, and that I’m good at it, but ultimately the goal has always been to be that writer/director, with a transition into directing. My heroes, who I aspire to be, are the Coen Brothers or Tarantino, P.T. Anderson – those guys. Hopefully one day I can get to a place where I’m writing scripts, and those will be the types of films I’ll ultimately be directing.
DC: Lastly, what’s coming up next for you on the work slate?
DC: I’m writing a couple of projects right now, and I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about them, and I’ve got a really cool idea for a horror movie that I’m in the beginning phases of outlining – we’ll see what happens.
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