I Feel Like the Audience is Healing: An Interview with Al Warren

Dogleg will be playing at AFS Cinema on Sunday, July 23, with director and star Al Warren in attendance. Tickets available here.

“I don’t want the film to only work for people in the know. Like a waiter at a restaurant, I can feel the same heat from a crazy night with the kitchen. And I hope that it can transcend just filmmaking in general. It is really hard, but also who fucking cares? Everything is hard, right? So I never want to point to the fact that we’ve been working on this like, pat us on the back kind of thing. The truth is it is super hard.”

Watching Dogleg, you get a glimpse into the creative life of a filmmaker but you get so much more. You get a connection with the creative process, with the mistakes and the stumbles but also a peek into the cracks of human connection. I recently had the opportunity to speak to Al Warren, the director and star of his newest film Dogleg. What I got was a very open, honest, and real conversation about both the film and his creative process.

Al Warren (AW): Thank you for doing this and, and thank you for watching the movie. I hope you didn't want to slit your wrists.

Hyperreal Film Club (HFC): It wasn't that traumatizing. Well, it was slightly traumatizing. And I'll explain what I mean, because I do have a question about that, particularly the “wait for Ben” part. It reminded me of a couple times on set. So it was a little, like, I know this. I know this a lot.

AW: Sure. I've been there. I grew up on sets. My dad's a filmmaker and I remember having a distinct memory of being like nine or 10 years old, and my dad is like a DP and a producer and very loved. He's a very kind-hearted guy. Very sweet, lovely to everyone on set. And so when I would be with him, you know, all of the grips and whatever would treat me nice enough. But if he was away these guys that were probably like 15-20 years older than me, would treat me like shit. I remember being a kid and feeling like, man. Fuck these guys. I never want to fucking be like these guys, you know?

HFC: Yeah.

AW: Then later in life. My dad always told me like, treat everyone on the set. From PA to producer the same, like treat them with respect, and it's not even on some shit like, because you never know one day the PA might be [someone important] it’s not even that … the day will go smoother. Your work will be more fulfilling like you'll have more joy. And I remember trying to embody that as a young director, and then feeling that same energy that I was mentioning at 10 years old from producers.

I would be directing these branded content documentaries and it wasn't often, but a few times that an executive would come to my set and be behind the monitor, and treat me like that, just order me around. Just not treat me like a human. It really kind of gave me that PTSD from that behavior that I experienced when I was younger.

So doing that to Ben on set was a behavior pattern that I've seen and kind of embodies in a truthful way, because I've been on the bad side of it. And a funny story. Ben is a kid from Mississippi. His mother and father are good friends of my dad's and of mine. And we've known each other for a very long time. And even though Ben's younger than me, I've kind of watched him grow up. So that was one of the moments in that scene that was happening organically. We didn't script the Ben part. Like I really did have a guy that was a little late and he was showing up at that moment. So I knew that I could kind of pick on Ben as we shot them. And that me and Ben were solid, like the whole crew knew going into it, what Alan’s (Al’s character) temperature is at this moment, and how he's going to be behaving and so many of them have known me for so long that like, they know my history with things and they have a similar history. And also on some truthful shit. I'm not trying to excuse myself either like Robbie, my DP and I have worked together for a very long time. And we have fought in the past—not like that at all—but we've definitely butted heads and had to learn how to agree and how to disagree at certain times and learn to build on pain that we've caused each other and because of that, we have a deeper trust. And now we can satirize those experiences in a way and take them to an almost overblown place like you see a Dogleg.

HFC: That whole scene felt so natural and so real that it kind of elevated that whole part. We started out somewhere very much scripted where the two actors are kind of trying to find their place and then you blow in with all your anxieties from the day and it just kind of gets more and more real. And that scene, if anyone watching that has ever been on a set, will get a very visceral reaction.

AW: That's really fun to watch with an audience… I’ve been to all of the screenings and I like to just stand in the back of the room and just feel like not even like being critical of my work. It's just the feeling of what's working and what's not on various nights and every time the end of that scene happens I feel like the audience is healing, and I think that it's a communal thing. I’ve gotten to play the fool and I'm happy to play the fool at that moment. And in that movie, because I think that Alan is a character who we can be ashamed of and also we can relate to at the same time

HFC: Standing behind and watching the film, have you ever felt a sense of like, “Oh, no. We have to change something.” Have you ever re-edited after the fact or are you like, this is the film. This is it.

AW: So we had a pretty long runway of editing. We started editing in July of 2021. We didn't really officially lock the picture until October of 2022. I don't know, maybe there were like 25 different cuts. We were working nonstop on it. And each time we would have a new cut. I was not ever sending links out. I hate the note process. I don't want to hear from you over an email when it is so important to me.

So Michael Bible is my co-writer. He lives in New York, and I live here in LA and we would have just like dinner parties with close friends. You know, we would make like a night out of it. We would have some dinner and some wine and we come downstairs to where I have a projector and a sound system and try and make it as cinema as possible. And we’d watch it and we did that over and over, rinse and repeat. So by the time we kind of ended that process, I think we were good. We were good at it and it wasn't a prideful thing. It was just like our work here is done and this is the most we're going to try and push this boulder up the hill.

HFC: How do you process the information from these groups that you talk to?

AW: First of all, I think it's about who we're bringing into the fold. I'm lucky to have a lot of people in my life, some work in film, some don't. But a lot of folks that I love and trust and it starts with that. I'm not just going to invite somebody random to take a look. And I don't want someone to just praise us because we made something. That doesn't help. So it's about finding that balance.

The biggest thing is it's all about Michael Bible, my co-writer. I think him and my wife and then his wife, Kelsey, we're all really close friends. Like if Michael is good with it, then I'm good with it. If he's stoked on something that I'm stoked on, we have a very fused taste as far as comedy and cinema and what's working and what's not. We don't always have the same gut instinct, but at the end of the day, it's about how he and I interpret the mood in the room on these various moments in the cut.

Somebody might give us a specific note like, you need to take a look at the end of whatever and nine times out of ten they're right. And then they'll say and here's what you should do. And ten times out of ten, they're wrong on that. So it's what's the note behind the note? What are they really not feeling that they're missing? Without Michael being a central part of that process with me, I don't believe I would have the stamina to withstand all of that energy that comes my way when I show a rough cut.

It's not easy to have a screening with someone that you love or respect. They're coming over. You got this nice wine, you're gonna open and watch it and then the credits roll on a cut. And they're just like, kind of quiet and then they're like, “So do you want to go upstairs and smoke a cigarette?” and it's like, Okay. You go upstairs, and then they're kind of just like, “Yeah, man, it's cool that you made it, dude. It's like, yeah, it's a lot of hard work.” And I'll be like, “Yeah, but like what's not working?" and they'll go like, “Oh, wow, um, how much time do you have?” That can happen, you know?

HFC: I noticed that you made a lot of very interesting stylistic choices throughout the film that gave me feelings and flavors of other films. Were there specific inspirations throughout this film that you can cite back to?

AW: Yeah, I mean, we're watching stuff constantly and turned on by certain things. I would ask you, what kind of stuff did you think of when you watched it? If you don't mind me asking?

HFC: Yeah, there was one specific instance that made me think of this question. After you had talked to your father in the film and there's this zoom into a mirror. That reminded me of like, these really sensitive 1970s films, and it's usually a woman that they're zooming into in this mirror. And I just thought like, that's just a lovely way to show this moment, and then just move on from it. And I just thought that it was a very interesting stylistic choice. You could have just turned around, had that look on your face, but you chose a mirror zoom.

AW: Thanks for calling that out. Marie. I think too, when you watch it again, Sunday, like notice how shitty it is? Notice how like, I'm against smooth zooms or something. But one way to kind of play with the style of this is to ask my DP to do it by hand, because it feels more similar to Robert Altman.

HFC: Oh my god. So yeah, I was thinking the whole time [Robert Altman’s] Shortcuts.

AW: I love that movie so much. I love Altman. But then similarly on the zoom front. I mean, we're obsessed with Hong Sang-soo, you know? The way that he treats zooms is different from movie to movie, but some of them feel like Canon-like, point and shoot old digital zoom. Some of them feel like Altman's slow and smooth. Some of them are locked up and hand cranked like the one you're mentioning. I just liked that playfulness using that. I think you see zooms more and more now and it's not necessarily such a crazy move like it maybe was ten years ago. But that said, I feel like most of the zooms you see now are very smooth and beautiful and controlled. I like that too. I'm not talking shit, but that was one moment where I felt like it made sense to make the zoom feel a little bit fucked up. With that in mind, the camera sometimes feels fucked up in the movie, and I've intentionally left that into the edit.

So you mentioned the Ben moment in the film. If you notice the camera’s trying to leave me and then comes back and my initial instinct was, “Oh, well of course you have to cut that out.” And then it was like, “No, it feels like it makes me feel something and makes me feel inside this sense of chaos that we're trying. And then in the moment after Alan almost gets hit by the car and Sally comes, he's kind of offscreen for some of that for a moment where he's trying to explain to her. I remember seeing the rushes and being like, “Man, fuck, we missed this. We missed the shot.” And then, no, that contributes to this overwhelming sense of desire for us to create an anxious moment.

HFC: How I saw that is like he's not in control. He's supposed to be the director. The camera is not even on him and he's not in control.

AW: That's right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, so we've mentioned a couple of things, but yeah, I mean, of course, I love Altman. I really love him. And then there's other [influences] that probably aren't as detectable. Chris Marker documentaries. And Chantal Akerman and transcendental cinema, like Something Wild by Jonathan Demme, you know, things like Groundhog Day even.

HFC: The party scene felt real. Like it made me, because I have my own anxiety, but, that's a nightmare for me. Like going to a party. Feeling underdressed, and then leaving your dog, that's a nightmare.

AW: Oh my gosh. I totally feel you. I feel like that's hell. Right? Want to be there? No. Don’t feel welcome. They don't give a fuck about you. Like they don’t care about what you do.

HFC: And that's mainly what people talk about at parties is what you do. Everyone talks about work. And then as soon as you talk about work, it's like totally dismissed. You're like, fuck. Well, I got nothing to talk about.

AW: I'm literally looking at Twitter. Like trying to find a topic to just see. “One of the Kardashians is selling her underwear, crazy.”

HFC: This film has such a large ensemble cast, can you talk about the logistics of working so large? Is it just like one day at a time?

AW: Yeah. I love that. I don't think that I want to make films all of the time that have a lot of characters in them necessarily, but I like that chaos. I like a dogpile of people and feelings and perspectives and then it's fun to wash those around and see what tie dye color you can get from it.

You know, the process of it for sure was to do what you said, almost take it one day at a time. We were starting to be like that, almost like [Richard] Linklater Slacker, like we know it's fast. It'll go from one to the other for the Alan narrative. We wrote that later and kind of wrote that as a foundational element so that the short films could kind of live on top of them and then at some point, we decided to take the piss out of ourselves. And make these incomplete short films like we want him to finish them all the way so that that can kind of serve the Alan narrative.

I have a great team of producers but you know, on the day, I'm getting asked questions about scheduling stuff for tomorrow. Next day, this actor can't come on this time now. Should they come later or should we move in and you're having to make those decisions fast and I don't love that. I don't love producing. If I'm going to produce, I would love for it to be on a conceptual level and then looking at cuts, but I don't like the scheduling or the logistics stuff. It's a real struggle to keep my joy alive.

But as soon as I'm in the scene… it’s worth it because that's what I want to do. That’s how I want to live my life. Doing that thing that I can find with other actors where we're really playing characters. I cast actors that are truthful. And when they're in that moment with me, we're really in that moment together, and that makes it all worth it.

HFC: This film has a very conversational style to it. While you're working with actors, is it mainly about the script or are you doing a lot of improvisation?

AW: I'm really proud of the scripts that Michael and I write and I think that it's on an actor-to-actor basis how I direct them. So for instance, the guy that plays my dad on Zoom is David Aaron Baker. He's an amazing New York stage and film actor, television actor, voice actor who went to Juilliard. He prefers the page, you know. So everything you're seeing in that scene has been scripted and rehearsed. For a guy like that we give each other permission to step on each other's lines and to kind of like, go around, so it's improvisational in the sense that we're keeping it truthful and alive.

The scene where Alan comes into the shoot and is dealing with the crew, that is treated more like a Larry David [Curb Your Enthusiasm] scene where it's written out as beats in a paragraph or almost like a short story. And then on the day, I absolutely want it to feel different from take to take. It would not make sense if people were hitting their mark. So if they do and I'm in the scene with them, I will fuck them up. You know, like, I'll confuse them and I'll go to a different part. I want that chaos in a moment like that. So I think that the writing always starts with me and Michael and ends with our edit and our interpretation of what I got on the day.

HFC: With all the chaos and struggle of filmmaking. What gives you energy and what keeps you going over the finish line?

AW: I guess it makes me kind of tense up a little bit because I don't want the film to only work for people in the know. Like a waiter at a restaurant, I can feel the same heat from a crazy night with the kitchen. And I hope that it can transcend just filmmaking in general. It is really hard, but also who fucking cares? Everything is hard, right? So I never want to point to the fact that we've been working on this like, pat us on the back kind of thing. The truth is it is super hard.

And you're right, it's a lot on your personal relationships. It's a lot on my bank account. I'm not a rich person. And I've kind of gambled a lot of my money away on this thing, and we'll see if it was worth it or not. But I get that energy from what we're talking about. It's almost like I'm paying to play. If I can be in a scene with David Aaron Baker, I'm happy.

If I can get actors like Courtney Pauroso and Angela Trimbur, Ella Smith, and Bridey Elliott, make a deep connection with them as the camera is rolling, then man, I've deepened as a human in some way that I might never know or I might not know until I'm an old man.

But to me, that's where I get the energy from. The experience of it. And then also when you work the way that we do for such little money and most people are not being paid, I bear a huge responsibility for those people's work to be finished, at the very least. Work to be put out on display for as many people as possible. And for that work to be something that we can all somehow be proud of. This mutual trust has to be paid back from my end. Once an audience sees it, it's theirs. I really don't get off on people complimenting me. That’s fine. I'm totally cool with that. What I'm not cool with is promises being broken. And that is a big time fuel.

When you're kind of staring down the barrel of a really bad cut, or a really bad screening test screening the night before, or a bank account that's low, the motivation is real because your personal relationships are now on the line. And they've trusted you to do something with their work and it's your responsibility to make that happen. So if it happens over the course of five years, and you start in 2018, and people don't see it until 2023, then so be it. It's better that it comes out in 2023 than never, right? That motivates me.

HFC: I love that answer

AW: I just want to shout out a couple of people very quickly. I've mentioned Mike Bible a lot. He's my closest collaborator, but I also have to mention Braindead Studios and the folks at Yours Truly, they were truly my partners in the film. They paid for the film with me. And the way that we would do it is they're they're also not a financing company or rich. They would just get projects and kick them to me to direct and then we would split that money and half of it would go into the film and then half of it we would pay our bills. That’s a huge gamble for a company to do that, and I really appreciate them for that.

Robbie Piantaanida is such a talented director of photography, but also just artists in general. The time he has spent with me for no money whatsoever, is amazing. It's a miracle. And I owe so much to him and I want people to hire him and work with him. The list goes on and on, but it's hitting me in a deep place because it's reminding me that this is important. We're fucking nobody. We're not trying to become celebrities. We're just trying to live our lives. And to do that we need each other. So anyway, thank you for asking that question. I appreciate that.

HFC: Well, thank you for taking the time and energy to talk with me. We're excited to see the film on the big screen on Sunday. And I hope you have a great afternoon.

AW: I wanted to say hey to your dog behind you there.

HFC: His name’s Zephyr.

Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.