“A Storyteller Until the Day I Die” | Shannon Triplett, Desert Road
A young woman driving through the desert stops at a gas station to fill her tank. After getting back on the road, she blows a tire and her car gets stuck on a boulder. Suffering a head injury, she stumbles back to the gas station, but after getting creeped out by the attendant she looks elsewhere for help. She passes an eerie factory where there’s no sign of anyone, but as she continues walking she’s shocked to find herself standing right in front of her car again… without any recollection of having circled back.
There's nothing out there... just her crashed car, the gas station, and the mysterious factory. No matter which way she goes, it's all she can find. As night falls and creepy people from the desert emerge, she fears she's going to die on this endless desert road.
Starring Kristine Froseth (Sharp Stick, Looking for Alaska), Desert Road is a taut and thought-provoking horror-thriller —and an uncommonly assured feature debut from writer-director Shannon Triplett. Screening Thursday, May 8, at 5:00 p.m. at the Music Box Theatre, part of closing night for the Chicago Critics Film Festival, it’s the kind of mind-expanding genre-film discovery that will leave you buzzing.
Ahead of the screening, Triplett graciously took the time to answer this year’s filmmaker questionnaire. Below, her individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
I have always loved stories. I was a big reader as a kid and almost always had a book in my hand. I hid all my family’s flashlights in my bed so I could stay up late secretly reading without my parents finding out. They would catch me, take away my flashlight, but I would just wait a few minutes and pull out another flashlight and start reading again.
I was a rebellious… reader. : )
I just couldn’t get enough, and at some point as a kid I started writing my own stories. So my interest in filmmaking and directing is sparked really by my obsession with storytelling. I’ve been fortunate to be a working screenwriter for years, and directing was a natural (but very difficult!) step in seeing a story through completion in the filmmaking process. I’ll be a filmmaker for as long as the film industry will hire me, but I’ll be a storyteller until the day I die.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
I always knew that if I wanted to start directing, I wanted my first film to be something smaller and simpler. I felt like it would give me a fighting chance to make a good film: make a simple film, but make it really well. When looking back at past directorial debuts, really what I was trying to figure out is what could my Reservoir Dogs be? I’m not trying to compare Desert Road to Reservoir Dogs! That movie is brilliant …but simply pointing out I was looking for a compelling story with maybe only a few characters or a few locations. From a story perspective, Desert Road is not simple, but from a film production standpoint it was: only a handful of characters in a handful of locations. [Let’s be honest though, no film production is simple…and we had dozens of roadblocks to overcome in the process of making Desert Road!] But logistics and approach to production don’t really matter when trying to find inspiration for a film. Most of the films I’ve written or ideas I’ve had were for larger scaled movies, but Desert Road was a “contained” film idea I had. I’ve loved the desert for a long time. I’ve taken many trips out to the desert for hiking or writing, and it’s such an inspiring location…the vast isolation of the desert is so unique. There can be moments of quiet peacefulness, but the desert can turn on you in a heartbeat. I wanted to tell a story that captured that feeling: a woman driving through the desert, one thing goes wrong, and …all hell breaks loose.
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
I wanted to make Desert Road in a slightly non-traditional filmmaking approach. I wanted the smallest crew possible, and as many shooting days as possible. I wanted to create an environment on set that was as close to what the characters were experiencing and I felt like if there were 50 people stood around watching the actors…there would have to be an element of pretending in their acting that I didn’t want. But as a first-time director, you don’t have a lot of goodwill from people…everyone is doubting if you really know what you’re doing. From the get go, saying I wanted to buck the go-to methods of making a film didn’t go over very well. : ) So I absolutely had to have a guiding influence that people could see and know that I wasn’t reinventing the wheel. Essentially, that my approach to filmmaking had been done before. Nomadland became my go-to reference. It had just won at the Oscars so everyone knew it, respected it, and people were familiar with the process. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful film. Small crew, beautiful version of reality with a cinematic style that lets the actors shine. My reference to help people understand what I wanted to do with Desert Road was: like a horror-version of Nomadland.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
We can’t talk about Desert Road without talking about the desert. On independent films, scope and scale can suffer due to budgetary reasons. The desert for us was a goldmine: breathtaking visuals that didn’t require an art department. My first trip out to Death Valley, I couldn’t put my camera down. I snapped so many photos trying to capture the desert in a single frame. Desert Road is maybe me just trying to capture the desert in a film now. I don’t think I could ever grow tired of starry nights, desert critters fighting to survive in the choking heat, and the endless vast stillness.
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
Watching The Martian at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood was such a memorable experience. That movie is everything I love in films: grounded sci-fi, one character caught up in a chaotic situation, and an intelligent plotline. It’s funny, as well, and I’m so glad I got to see it with a big audience. I don’t think we say enough how seeing films with an audience can make a movie even better. I was equal parts in love with it, and unashamedly envious of the filmmakers. Contact is the reason I got into filmmaking and it felt like they were making the next generation of amazing scifi without me. Seeing great films drives me to keep going as a filmmaker, and pushes me to try and be a better storyteller so that maybe I too could be a small part of a great film in the future.