SXSW 2023 – Committed to the Idea of the Beyond: A Conversation with ‘Late Night with the Devil’ Filmmakers Colin and Cameron Cairnes
Colin and Cameron Cairnes recently spoke with Script about the inspiration behind the characters and story, the benefits of shooting in a contained location, collaborative filmmaking, and more.
October 31, 1977. Jack Delroy’s syndicated talk show ‘Night Owls’ has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country, but a year on from the tragic death of Jack’s wife, ratings have plummeted. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other, unaware he is about to unleash evil into the living rooms of America. “Late Night With The Devil” is the recently rediscovered recording of what went to air that fateful night.
Late Night with the Devil is a tastefully horrific throwback to 70s late night talk shows. It's a Twilight Zone episode you didn't know you needed to watch (or had wish existed when Rod Serling was still with us), and it's as if Friedkin and Carpenter had a love child, with what a filmmaker peer quipped, all the greatness of Lumet's Network. Basically, you're in for an edge of your seat ride that leaves you wanting more screen time with this world, these characters...this fictional TV show.
Filmmakers and brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes recently spoke with Script about the inspiration behind the characters and story, the benefits of shooting in a contained location, collaborative filmmaking, and more.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
Sadie Dean: Where did this story and this character that is Jack Delroy come from and how did that evolve to what we see now?
Cameron Cairnes: Yeah, good question. I think it was a couple of things like maybe about seven or eight years ago after we'd made our first feature film, our producer wanted us to get straight into another one. But we wanted to keep the budget down again and keep it to one location. I guess it sort of came out of that - we were thinking what could make a good setting for one location film. And we might have stumbled upon the idea of setting it inside of a TV studio. And then I think maybe that triggered us thinking about our experiences when we were kids watching late night TV, and especially one guy who was quite a big source of inspiration for the character of Jack Delroy, a guy called Don Lane, who was our version of Johnny Carson, basically. And he was an American, which was kind of unusual in Australia, but I guess we were just sort of a sucker for the accent. And he was just a real kind of typical showman.
Colin Cairnes: Yeah, he David Frank Sinatra impressions or something like that. But he was an interesting character, because he just got lucky and got this gig and ended up being the number one TV star in Australia. And we remember as sort of 8 or 10-year old’s watching him. And he clearly had a fascination with the supernatural. He would fly out the Warrens or he'd have James Randi on all those classic sorts of figures from that world. But Don himself clearly was very curious, if not committed to the idea of the beyond. And yeah, there's some classic moments on that show. There was one where James Randi came on, and kind of debunked Uri Geller’s Spoon Bending trick, and Don Lane didn't want to know about it. He just refused to believe it and walked off his own show in a huff, he just sort of lift the table and stormed off and they went to an ad break. And that was it. [laughs]
That just left a lasting impression on us. And in Australia, anyone who was around that time remembers that moment, just a classic TV moment, but I think it was real. It wasn't staged, he was really pissed off with Randi.
So, I think that scene has kind of found its way into the film that way. We love writing sort of interesting characters. An ensemble piece in a TV studio with a cult element that just sounded like a lot of fun. Then the writing happens, of course, you know, seven years later, we've got a script. [laughs]
Sadie: [laughs] Right, because that's how it works. [laughs] Let’s chat about your directing style and staying on the same page with your collective vision but how you communicate that on set. Does say Colin focuses more on actor performance whereas Cameron you’re more focused on coverage?
Cameron: It's a bit of everything, I think. We come in pretty well-prepared. We've always got a plan for every day. And of course, we don't always stick to the plan, but I think preparation is key. But when we're on set, yeah, Colin might have a little more to do with the cast and blocking. I come from an editing background so I'm a little more concerned with coverage. But really, it's pretty fluid.
Colin: If someone wants to say something, we don't sort of have to run anything by each other. And we don't always agree. I mean, we do most of the time, I would say, but there are times when we'll go off and give a note, and we'll come back, ‘So why did you do that?’ You know, it's like, ‘Why not? Let's see it, maybe that'll work.’ And one bad idea begets a good one, and so it's just very open. And I think the cast and crew will see that as well, the way things are fluid with us. And it can be with them as well. We’re so open to ideas and collaboration. And if we can make it work, we will.
Sadie: Best idea wins all in service of the story.
Cameron: Yeah absolutely.
Sadie: Because of this very specific tone and the style, with this extra layer of a documentary lens, and transitioning back and forth from the TV cameras to a handheld film camera – what was the process like working with your actors in terms of “being on” for the TV show and then that other layer of stepping back into their characters? It just came off as so real and natural.
Colin: Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, it was in the script. And I think in conversations with the cast, we were very aware of there's the TV slash public version of themselves. Then there's the off-screen version. I think Dr. June is probably what you see on a TV screen is kind of what she is, it is more of an integrity to her. She is a quack. [laughs] And you know, Gus, he plays up the clown, but backstage they're quite different people at times, but I think that's what makes it fun. It's the same those two versions and you know, these characters and by the end of the film, hopefully, have come together, that those TV masks have kind of been shattered and their true selves are revealed.
Sadie: I could totally see Jack being this real guy, just from David's performance.
Cameron: I think he could have walked off our film and started hosting a tonight show for real.
Colin: Taking Gus with him. [laughs]
Cameron: With his head back in place. [laughs]
Colin: [laughs] But yeah, the chemistry on set and Ingrid as Lilly as well was just phenomenal. And David was so nurturing with some of those less experienced actors that we had as well. It felt special every day, the chemistry on set was fun.
Cameron: Oftentimes we just kept rolling and let David do his thing. We had some fake guests on, and we would sort of recreate these scenes with guests from the earlier seasons of the show. And he would just come on and just improvise and just have all these questions and gags and you could roll for like 10-20 minutes, and it was just all gold takes.
Colin: And it was all very specific to time and place - he doesn't need to do his homework. He already knows all that stuff, or the pop culture references of the mid-70s, and October '77 itself. [laughs]
Sadie: Did you go back to the characters and kind of refine voices as needed, if at all?
Cameron: No, I don't think we really had to.
Colin: A character like Carmichael Hunt was for us a mixture of James Randi who we're talking about and Orson Welles. There's that sort of bombastic, skeptical, knowledgeable, and flamboyant. Our heads of department did amazing jobs. And once they were in that wardrobe, with those words, in that set, with vintage cameras, everyone just fell into it really easily.
Sadie: And in terms of your other department heads, like your DP down to your special effects team and making all those gags on set, assuming you didn’t have a lot of shoot days, how did you go about making sure you captured all of those big moments that were important to the story?
Colin: We had four weeks - 20 days on set. And I think there were some people who were concerned that wouldn't be enough because the scripts maybe 95 pages. But we were always confident because we had both done a fair bit of TV work. And we've worked in TV studios. And we know how much you can get through if you treat it like a TV show, which was really the asset. We had three cameras running at all times. We even had a live switch - backstage, one of our producers actually was switching cameras, so we could sit there and watch it as if it were going to air. We didn't necessarily use those cuts.
So, we knew right there we were getting what we needed. And that meant we could shoot sometimes there's an entire segment of the show, which could be 10-12 pages, and we would just shoot it straight if the actors were up for it. And they were. It wasn't that laborious a thing…we didn't try to fancy it up or make it cinematic. It was gonna be more cinematic if we were as true as possible to the form which was let’s just shoot a TV Show. So we got through lots of pages some days, which bought us time to do the gags…and that climatic shot.
Cameron: We probably shot that over three days, which ends up being what, maybe a minute and a half of screen time. Like Colin said, I think that advantage of getting through so many pages getting through the drama, just allowed us to concentrate on some of the more fiddly things.
Colin: Yeah, we don't need more time. You know, filmmakers always complain they need more time. This felt right. And this is going back to that idea that we wanted, the sort of initial concept was born of we're going to do something that's possibly a bit low budget in a single location. So, we sort of reaped dividends with that.
Sadie: How authentic did you guys go in terms of lighting? Did you have a billion Par Cans?
Cameron: [laughs] Absolutely, we were raiding the old lighting rental house for their Par Cans and all these old spotlights and things that hadn't come out in years, they were covered in dust. We were pretty true to how they would have shot things back then.
Colin: And our production designer, actually designed TV shows in the 70s and 80s. So, it was right in his wheelhouse. And our DP also got his break doing TV shows in the 80s. They are people we would have worked with regardless because they're just very good at what they do, but having had that background, we didn't have to spend too much time debriefing them.
Sadie: Advice for filmmakers who are looking to produce their first movie, similar to this in that it’s a horror in one contained location.
Colin: I think get as much of it in the script as possible. And I think for us as directors, we feel like that is our blueprint that we, I guess, we write in a certain way that it's very suggestive of the tone and what we're hoping the finished product will be. So, preparation in the scripting, but also, in all those conversations with your collaborators. Things are always going to be different on the day, but have a plan, but be ready to jettison the plan when something better comes along. I guess the trick is knowing when that something is better. That just comes with a bit of experience and trusting your instincts.
Cameron: Like you said, the contained setting is always helpful.
Colin: Yeah. And it's not a constraint. Actually, I think it frees up the creativity. If you have no limits, then it's very hard to make a decision. So, knowing the constraints you're working with, be it the number of cast, location, time, and then trying to come up with creative solutions to make that a virtue rather than, you know, a drawback.
You wanna get people excited. And as directors, I mean, we're not sort of the shouty demanding types - we want everyone to do their best work. And sometimes that means they're going to have better ideas than you do. And it's making sure at the end of the day, you've still got to make sure it works for whatever that vision is. Bring people along with you and have fun.
Cameron: Yeah, invite the collaboration.
Late Night with the Devil had its World Premiere in the SXSW Midnighters program on March 10, 2023.
Late Night with the Devil opens in Theaters on March 22, 2024.
Sadie Dean is the Editor of Script Magazine and writes the screenwriting column, Take Two, for Writer’s Digest print magazine. She is also the co-host of the Reckless Creatives podcast. Sadie is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, and received her Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from The American Film Institute. She has been serving the screenwriting community for nearly a decade by providing resources, contests, consulting, events, and education for writers across the globe. Sadie is an accomplished writer herself, in which she has been optioned, written on spec, and has had her work produced. Additionally, she was a 2nd rounder in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and has been nominated for The Humanitas Prize for a TV spec with her writing partner. Sadie has also served as a Script Supervisor on projects for WB, TBS and AwesomenessTV, as well as many independent productions. She has also produced music videos, short films and a feature documentary. Sadie is also a proud member of Women in Film.
Follow Sadie and her musings on Twitter @SadieKDean
