Interview: Director Phillip Guzman Talks SLEEP NO MORE
Austin filmmaker Phillip Guzman and writer Jason Murphy have crafted a clever horror indie with Sleep No More by turning a story about a sleep experiment gone wrong into a horror comedy with its own built-in mythology. Every character becomes a patient forced to stay awake on a new, experimental drug called Cognivan that, if successful, could help rid all humans of the necessity for sleep. What could we do with that other one-third of our lives?
Guzman talked to us recently about the decision to set the film in the eighties, creating a new monster called the ‘Sombnivore’ and using classics like Carpenter’s Prince Of Darkness to help set the tone and vibe of Sleep No More.
Five graduate students are conducting a study to prove the theory that once you’ve passed 200 hours without sleep, you will never need sleep again. As the hours tick by and their struggle to stay awake intensifies, they each start to have strange and unsettling experiences. Visions from the past, violent impulses, and terrifying waking nightmares begin to take hold and turn this experiment into a desperate fight for survival.
Sleep No More is now available on VOD, Digital and DVD.
DC: Who first approached you about the concept, was it Jason [Murphy]?
PG: It’s kind of a roundabout story that ties into Fantastic Fest. I just did a movie with Brea Grant called Dead Awake and she knew I was looking for something with a limited location and a handful of characters. And I was working on a script at the time called Specter about a group of college kids working on this sleep project. Funny that, being an Austin filmmaker, I’d never met Jason in my life and here I get a script from LA from Brea for an Austin-based movie. I think she got it from Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall who developed it with Jason. That’s how it happened.
DC: Going off of Brea’s character, Frannie sounds a little like Freddy, I noticed maybe a cross between Elm Street 3 and a little bit of Flatliners. Cognivan is a little like Hypnocil. Were those movies ever referenced by you or Jason?
PG: A little bit, we definitely had some Dream Warriors talks about this is too similar to that… More than anything I felt like Prince Of Darkness, the Carpenter film, actually had a lot of influence. It definitely has some Freddy stuff in there for sure. Everyone my age, they grew up with Freddy and the nightmare series. It goes back to that, we deal with dreams and sleep and a creature killing you.
DC: The Sombnivore, right?
PG: Yeah, we kind of created our own little creature.
DC: It also made me think about the DJ back in the late fifties that stayed awake on air. His name was Peter Tripp, he kind of went crazy. He was up for, I think, over a hundred hours.
PG: There were about two or three stories…when I first got the script it was in present day and I said, guys, it has to be a period piece. Any of this of comic book science we have, Google kind of ruined that. We have to predate massive search engines and the ability to figure out if what your attempting is plausible. So we set it in the past. There are people that have stayed up longer than 200 hours. One of which was the DJ and another one that was going for a Guinness Book of World Record thing. He stayed up in a glass box and everyone could watch to make sure he wasn’t sleeping. Apparently, he lasted nine or ten days and he was never the same after that. His entire demeanor changed, who he was as a person changed, his psyche changed. So, it does mess with you. And sleep is important.
DC: One thing that is not believable in the film is that every character is such a great artist. Who did the artwork and drawings that are seen in the film?
PG: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, I felt the same way. A guy named Robert Christian, he did all the work. I said we’ve got to make this worse, it looks too good! We went through about fifteen different things and we said, okay, this must be about as bad as he can do it. That was definitely something we talked about.
DC: Honestly, what I want to talk about the most is Night Vulture. Tell me about the movie inside the movie. Is Night Of The Vulture a real film from Incendiary Features or was that a fake credit at the end?
PG: Well, here’s what happened. I love horror movies, I fucking love everything about a horror movie. I just have trouble sometimes, me as a director, putting people in … I try to find the dramatic beats as well which normally doesn’t go hand in hand with a horror movie – which is why normally people in horror movies get killed and no one sees it happened because, then, someone has to react to it. I’m really trying to not be super gross or super violent, I’m trying to find some truth in things instead of just making a Saw movie. So, when we were making it, it might have been [producer] James LaMarr, said, ‘Yeah, but we’re really missing the blood, guts and tits and all the stuff you kind of have to have in a horror movie.’ And I said, ‘Fuck it, I’ve got an idea.’ So, we just went and shot this eighties slasher parody in the movie just so it would check that box. So, I could go off and make a horror thriller with dramatic beats in it.
I don’t like to be in one box. It’s in this world but I want to make you laugh too. I want to make people scared but have a real story as opposed to just having a huge body count with really cool kills. Which I love that just as much, but as a director, I try and do a little too much at times and this actually was able to check that box for me.
DC: I’m sure it was a lot of fun to film. It’s too bad there’s not a fake trailer on the DVD.
PG: We have a whole outline for a movie of Night Vulture.
DC: I want to see Night Vulture versus Wolf Cop or something.
PG: Yes! That’s great, although they’re in different periods of time, so technically, would have to be prescient until the Night Vulture happens.
DC: So, time travel would have to be involved…
PG: Now, we’re writing a screenplay together, I’m diggin’ this!
DC: Just give me a story credit.
PG: Will do!
DC: Are there any other high concept genre ideas you guys are tossing around?
PG: Yeah, so Jason and I have already written five new screenplays. One of which, we’re in production on now called Red Death. It’s a very cool, Giallo style slasher, it’s set in West Texas. Hopefully, we can have that going before the year is over and I can be shooting before it gets too hot. And that one is a straight up huge body count, super violent, not as much drama. This one’s definitely more in the vein of Night Vulture!
Categorized:News
