Interview: Director L Gustavo Cooper Talks About JUNE

L Gustavo Cooper's latest flick June came out on DVD on Tuesday. I managed to squeeze a block of time out of the young director this past weekend while he worked away at finishing up Halloween themed commercials for an Argentinian beer company, Quilmes. We talked about his cast, some of the challenges of making June, his writing partner Sharon Y.Cobb, how much hot cocoa is too much hot cocoa, and what is on the horizon. 

Snowfort Pictures producer and frequent skating partner Travis Stevens was lurking in the background and he chimes in at the end about their new project at the end. 

ScreenAnarchy - Let's start with the story first of all where that came from and how the idea of June came to be

L Gustavo Cooper - June stems from my childhood. I was a foster kid and I was super angry about my childhood. I was this kid that stomped around and got really mad. As I grew older I tried to understand why I was so angry as a kid. June is that personification of my anger and my temper that I had. 

When trying to come up with an idea for my next movie I pitched it to the Raven Banner guys, over a hamburger. I just did my first movie for $75000, or something crazy like that, and I wanted to do something bigger, something fun. I told them I had this idea bout this little girl who was living in a trailer park. It wasn't Carrie and it wasn't Firestarter. It was trying to hone in Akira. That's what I pitched them on. They said, that sounds cool, we're going to Berlin in a month. If you can get a trailer together in a month we'll go there and we'll back the film. We think it's cool and we'll get pre-sales going. 

I went home and hit up some friends. I wanted to get this proof of concept and we banded together and made the little short. Raven Banner took that to Berlin and everyone got super excited about the short and three months later we're shooting a movie.

It was a really fast turnaround for that movie. I didn't have a lot of time for anything. 

T - How did you find your cast? You got Victoria Pratt involved in it and I remember the story you told about Casper Van Dien when we were at Fantasia in Montreal a couple Summers ago. 

LGC - Victoria came on early. I met her at a party. One of my friends, one of our executive producers Michelle, told me I had to meet her. Then we had just lost our 'dad' and Victoria was working on a film with Casper and put him on the phone and we talked to him and he said, 'Sure, bud'. 

I had Kennedy Brice in mind anyways. Kennedy was always June. I never had anyone else in mind for that role. 

Gregor, one of the executive producers ended up bringing on Eddie because he was a buddy and they worked together on a movie prior to this one. Lance Nichols came on later on we found out when we were shooting in Louisiana and we found out he was living in Louisiana. We wanted to cast the doctor figure as a black man. 

It all fell together organically. I really can't complain because there was a lot of support when it came to casting and getting that rolling quickly. 

T - The role for Kennedy demands quite a lot from her. At one moment you have her doing water stunts. At another moment you have her rigged and suspended in the air. For a young girl you asked quite a lot from her

LGC - I don't know if I am being judged right now? 

T - You're not but, I'm going, 'oh gosh' when watching certain scenes. You have - not to give it away for anyone who hasn't seen June yet - you've got the scene with the bathtub and you got her doing effects stuff with the rigging at the alter. You put her through a lot for a tiny little thing. She was a trooper.

LGC - She was amazing. there were two times where I had to have this sort of 'Okay, Kennedy, I need you to focus,' thing because she is still a kid. But most of the time she came ready, willing and prepared. She didn't really ask a lot of questions because she knew what we were doing. She brought her own idea of what June was in her head. When you have somebody taking on such a large role like that, you either accept what the director has chosen or you try to tweak it. 

Again, we were moving so quickly. Kennedy was like, "I don't want to talk a lot with this," and when she told me that I was kind of relieved because there's a fine line between a great child actor, a good child actor and a bad child actor. I thought it was intriguing because when she did speak it was supposed to be the time when she felt least vulnerable; like she felt that she was safe and she could open up to somebody. That's what we were trying to accomplish and there was a cool dynamic with Kennedy and the mother figure. I gotta say that she was awesome. She was awesome the entire time.

One time she was the craft table and she had this whole cup of hot coco. We're in Louisiana it is 10am. It is not cold outside. She took a cup of hot cocoa put a lot of sugar in it, put whip cream on top, and cherries and stuff all over it. I took it away from her! I was sitting beside her. "What are you doing?" "i'm making a hot cocoa," and I just snatched it from her. "WHY NOT?" Because  you're going to crash in 30 minutes if you drink this. That could have been the worst situation of the entire film; having to deal with Kennedy downing a whole lot of sugar. Other than that she was amazing. 

I was very aware that the film fell on Kennedy's shoulders. And the funny thing, Victoria Pratt, being so nutrition minded and fit, she should be the first one to call it out, "If she eats that she is going to crash in 30 minutes. You should probably take that away from her". 

We never had Kennedy doing that. She stayed up all the way through everything. She was a trooper. It was pretty phenomenal. 

T - When you are working with a child actor what restrictions are placed on the production? 

LGC - We shot the movie in 15 days. You have the child for 8 hours.but you have to give 2 hours for school in Louisiana. So you actually only have six hours. Imagine trying to shoot someone who is 95% of your film six hours a day in fifteen days. Plus you have to include all the setup times, blocking, rehearsal things. Ultimately on screen we only had her for four hours a day maybe. 

T - When we go back to those scenes where you are demanding much of her physically, the bathtub scene and the altar scene, that takes up precious amounts of time that you can have with her.

LGC - The altar scene was insane. That was the most run and gun stuff I have ever done. I think that sadly it does show, compared to the rest of them movie. It does feel a little bit rushed. 

But the bathroom stuff was a lot of fun. We put her in this little bathing suit. We cut out the side of a bathtub and putting Plexiglas up. and shooting her through the Plexiglas. We shot that in the hotel room where the whole crew was staying. In the scene you know she is splashing around and screaming? If you were walking by the hotel room there is like fifteen dudes standing over this girl drowning and like we're shoving her head down under the water. This cleaning lady peaked her head in for a second and we all just turned around and looked at her. She didn't say anything. I thought, "Fuck. We're going to get the cops called on us. This is going to be a horrible situation". But it ended up turning out pretty cool. 

T - That alter rigging. Was that a composite or was that all on set? 

LGC - That was all on set. We rigged her on set. We had a crane come up. We had a pulley system to harness her up. I had a certain way I wanted her to lift off the alter. I wanted her to be this limp body then twist. It was a very complicated move for the certain amount of time we had. Those were all night shoots. I remember it being super cold that night. We did it over the course of three nights, all the alter scenes, because there are three different scenes throughout the movie. There was the beginning, then the dream, then the end. Each one we had a night to shoot. 

T - Another thing that surprised me about this production is your writing partner. 

LGC - Yeah? Sharon (Cobb)? 

T - Yeah. I'll tell you why. Someone looks at you and here you are, skater dude, tattoos everywhere. Okay, this guy makes horror films. You look at Sharon and you say, "Ah, she seems like a nice lady".

LGC - She's crazy!!!

T- It doesn't look like it is a partnership that...

LGC - It is Harold and Maude! 

T - And you guys have continued working since then.

LGC - Yeah. We have. We've got another movie that we teamed up on that Travis (Stevens of Snowfort Pictures) is producing along with a couple other guys.

T- The monster one? 

LGC - Yeah. It's called Who's in the Dark? That's the title right now. Sharon and I wrote that together. 

T- How do you know Sharon, and what did she bring to June?

LGC - I know Sharon because I am from Florida and she is a Floridian. We actually lived down the street from each other. I met her during the 48 hour film festivals. I had done a couple of those when I was in college. One year we ended up sweeping the contest and next year we won a bunch of awards. we won nineteen awards or something crazy. 

Sharon had been doing the same thing. She was writing a lot of them. Every year she'd write one for her team. I met Sharon around then. We just talked about what I was doing, what she was doing. We ended up saying hey why don't we do something together. 

I think it was after I wrote the short for June. I really wanted June to be this emotional thriller. I wanted everyone to care about this girl. I didn't want to make a movie about this girl with telekinetic powers fucking up everyone's day. I wanted someone to care about the girl, the relationship between the mother and husband and daughter. The dysfunctional family. What a family means and what it means to be a family. 

How do I get that maturity in the film? it makes sense for Sharon to write something like that. That is something that she brings. This perspective of emotional content to things that I am trying to do. If anything Sharon's very very good at format, understanding what it takes, like the beats of a good story. What you need to do to get from a to b to c to d. Especially when you're some punk skater kid trying to make a movie, you need to have your brain wrapped around it, is good to have someone like her around. That is how our relationship works. 

I come up with these crazy ideas and I say I want to do this and I spin them at her and she tells me, okay this is how we would have to do this, or , this is a version of this, or, this is a version of that. Then she grounds everything. And we go back and forth until we pump out something that s ready for someone else to read. 

T - You base the goddess of Aer on anything?

LGC - Yeah, Aer is a Greek goddess. She is the goddess of nature, destruction and chaos. That was exactly what we based it on. The idea was, what if there was a whole group of people... you ever hear of a group of people that believe that nature will prevail... that was the idea. 

What if there was a group of people that really felt this way. Some kind of Earthly evangelist cult. We wanted Aer to have a physical presence - the cult and the cult leader. They were supposed to be that form of something that you couldn't see. That was the idea there. 

Every time she appeared or showed up we didn't want to have June become something else, like the Exorcist. We didn't want to do that. She was supposed to be like a dog without a leash. Any time her emotional wall drops, whether it is because she is super happy, super sad, or scared. The fence comes down, the dog takes off. that was sort of what motivated the character throughout the story. the character Aer. 

T - Are we allowed to talk about the upcoming project? 

Travis Stevens - (Off camera) No!

LGC - We can talk about it a little bit.

TS - We can talk about creatively.

LGC - It's still early.

T - Just maybe a description on what the upcoming project so everyone knows what is coming. Try to sell what is coming up. Pitch it. 

LGC - This is how I pitched it to someone else earlier. They asked me what i was doing, what is my next movie. I told them I am making my first horror movie. 

T - Okay

LGC - So this one is going to be much more in the vein of something want to do for my audience. But also keeping in the line of the stuff that I have done. Basing it around family. What is a family. What it means to be a father. It's going to be ambitious project. 

TS - It is going to sound generic. It is a movie about father and son living in the house with a monster. While that monster is physical it is sort of a metaphor too.

LGC - It is a metaphor for the father and son's relationship and the tragedy that is in the house. 

TS- The monster represents everything that is fucked up between the father and son over the last ten years. 

T - Nice 

LGC - It is super cool. There is a lot of really great things going on in the movie. But it is also fucking scary. It is also really terrifying. There is really cool moments. Stuff that people will get really excited about. And I got a lot more to play with this time.