Fantasia Fest 2020: Interview – Brea Grant Talks 12 HOUR SHIFT and LUCKY
Fans of independent horror will recognize Brea Grant from short films like My Monster (2018) and Fatale Collective: Bleed (2019), as well as feature films like Dead Night (2017) and After Midnight (2020). She has also directed the short film Megan, 26 (2019) and the feature film Best Friends Forever (2013). This year, she has two films screening at Fantasia International Film Festival: 12 Hour Shift, which she wrote and directed, and Lucky, which she wrote and stars in.
Written and directed by Grant, 12 Hour Shift is a dark comedy starring Angela Bettis (May) as a drug-addicted nurse involved in an outrageous organ-harvesting scheme gone wrong. You can read my review of 12 Hour Shift here. Grant wrote Lucky, which was directed by Natasha Kermani (Imitation Girl), and also stars in the film as a woman named May who is forced to repeatedly fight for her life against a masked attacker.
These are very different films, but both deal with strong women. In 12 Hour Shift, Mandy (Bettis) might be a drug addict and a criminal, but she knows how to take charge of a situation. In Lucky, May (Grant) has to figure out how to use her deepest fears to overcome the unknown. Keep your eye on Grant, she’s doing amazing things and representing women in the process.
Dread Central was delighted to have the opportunity to talk with Brea Grant about her inspiration for 12 Hour Shift, what she hopes audiences will take away from Lucky, and a lot more. Read on to find out what we talked about!
Dread Central: You wrote and directed 12 Hour Shift. I’ve worked in hospitals in rural southern areas, and I feel like I’ve known some of the characters in the movie. I know you’re from Texas, so I’m wondering, what was your inspiration for this story and the characters?
Brea Grant: It was my hometown growing up. I grew up in a small town in East Texas, called Marshall, and I just knew a lot of interesting people and a lot of women who were real hardasses [laughs], who worked their butts off and didn’t necessarily get the appreciation that they deserve. I always thought hospitals were a really interesting place because there are so many people in and out of them. That was sort of my jumping-off point. Then I just combined a bunch of other weird, urban legends and various stories I heard growing up as a kid [laughs], and came up with this bizarro, one-night heist movie.
DC: The casting is absolutely perfect in this movie. Angela Bettis and Chloe Farnworth make horror comedy look effortless. It reminds me of why I’ve been a fan of Bettis’ work since May (2002). Did you write the role of Mandy with Angela Bettis in mind and how did you end up casting David Arquette as Jefferson?
BG: No, I didn’t write it with her in mind, but like you, I’ve been a fan of hers for a really long time. I’ve seen her do a number of things that were really interesting. I know her from May, but also, she did this movie called Drones a few years ago and she played such a different character and I think she has such range. I always just followed what she’s been doing and when we were talking about 12 Hour Shift and who would play the role of May, we knew we needed someone really grounded. The role was actually written a little bit younger, for a woman closer to Chloe’s age, but when Angela came up, my producers and I were like, “Yeah! That would make it a really cool movie.” We knew she would come in and do something really different than anyone else and give the role more gravitas, and make it really interesting in a way that would jump off the screen for people when watching it. Plus, I just wanted to work with Angela Bettis [laughs]. The nice thing about being a filmmaker is that you can fangirl out on people and they still want to hang out with you [laughs].
David Arquette is a producer on the movie. He was on the movie from the beginning because his wife Christina was a producer and we were having a meeting really early on and I said, “Well, which role do you think David would want to play? There’s not that many male roles in the movie.” And she said, “Whatever you want him to do, he’d be happy to do.” So, we ended up casting him as the convict who wreaks havoc and then shows up and then disappears for a while, and I think it worked really well, both with him and his schedule, because he’s a wrestler and he’s very busy [laughs].
DC: You wrote and star in Lucky, which is directed by Natasha Kermani. I can’t imagine anyone other than you as May. How did it feel to become a character you created and to tell her story?
BG: I never intended to play that character. I always thought it would be [laughs], for lack of a better way of putting it, a woman who feels like she has it more together than I do [laughs]. I’m quite goofy in real life and pretty silly to be around and May is not at all. Before Natasha came on, I had taken it out a few places and there were various actresses interested in it who seemed like they would be self-help book authors to me, and they made more sense. But then when Epic read it, they said, “We want to have Natasha Kermani. We really love her as a director, but we would like you to play the lead.” I thought about it for a while and I was like, “Yeah, maybe I am getting to an age where I can play these kinds of roles.” And it’s also interesting for me as an actor because a lot of times I get cast as somebody’s girlfriend or somebody’s best friend and I’m only there for a few scenes. So, it was a big challenge for me to take on and that was very cool.
DC: There are some very important messages for women in Lucky, and I really like the way you present them. What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
BG: I think I wrote it, in part, as a catharsis for me, dealing with a past event in my life that was quite scary and involved a man I didn’t know. That was sort of my jumping-off point and then I went back and made this female character kind of complicated, so it ends up being twofold in some ways. The sad thing about experiencing violence or trauma as a woman is that when you tell other women about it, they all nod knowingly, because we’ve all been through it. There’s not a woman who can say that she hasn’t been followed down the street or been scared by something. It’s a very universal feeling to feel unsafe as a woman, and I think that was what the intent of the story was for me, especially when I first started writing it, to sort of talk about the universality. I think the character of May chooses a lot of things that I would not choose to do, and I wanted that. I wanted her to make choices that were like, “Wow, that’s not really a feminist choice or a great choice.” And that’s okay, to have leading characters who make poor choices and aren’t necessarily the most black and white protagonist making one hundred percent great, moral choices, or just generally great choices all the time.
So, that didn’t answer your question at all [laughs]. I think people should walk away thinking about the state of feminism and women in America, and the way we treat women; the way we believe them or don’t believe them; and the way different women are treated based on the way they look or the way they respond to these situations. That’s a very complicated thing to walk away with [laughs], but I do think that that was the goal.
DC: How does it feel to have not one, but two films at Fantasia International Film Festival this year?
BG: Thank you for asking. It feels great [laughs]. I think I’m a person who really downplays things that I’m doing, especially in real-life. It’s not the kind of thing I bring up, but it’s kind of hard for me to ignore, which is good for me because I’ll just keep my head down and try to keep going [laughs]. Instead, I think I’m feeling very proud, which is good. I love Fantasia. I’ve only been there once, and I wish we were all there right now, but I’m feeling very proud. These are two really different movies and the fact that they’ve both been so embraced by various genre festivals is really exciting to me.
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