Let’s All Go To The Movies - Director’s Statement

I started making movies for one simple reason: I LOVE MOVIES.  I love everything about them.  I love great acting, I love great photography, I love great stories, I love great cinematic music.  I love twists, I love turns, I love being shocked, I love discovering new things about myself after seeing them reflected on the screen.  Since I was a small child I’ve often pictured things happening in my everyday life as if they were happening within a movie.

Benjamin Karl and I met in the summer of 2008 when he agreed to produce my entry into a 48 hour filmmaking challenge.  I was apprehensive about our first encounter as I am whenever I meet anyone for the first time, but it was clear within seconds that we shared a love for motion pictures and would make an excellent team.  Whenever you find yourself in a conversation where the topics of the computerized bird noises within Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and the homemade camera tracking system utilized in “Evil Dead” come up in the first five minutes, you can pretty much be guaranteed that you are talking with a fellow lover of film.  We were able to communicate on a cinematic level instantly.  Come to think of it, in the two years plus that I’ve known him, I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation about anything except our movies, other peoples’ movies and Shakespeare.

It was an absolute hoot making “Fatima’s Ghosts” in 48 hours with Benjamin and our team.  We took one look at the rough cut before turning it in and thought we had just made Godard’s “Breathless.”  Upon further review, however, we realized why successful movies take longer than two days to complete.  Although I’m still very proud of “Fatima’s”, I felt empty and dissatisfied after the weekend was over.  I wrote Benjamin on the following Monday and asked one thing: “What’s next?”

He told me he had an idea for a psych thriller and sent over a one page treatment about a guy who kills a girl because he thinks it’s this other girl he killed in self defense a year earlier.  Immediately I set to work on the script.  After a good six months of script development the project was placed on hold while my family and I relocated.  It was placed on hold again when Benjamin and I teamed up for a second 48 hour challenge in the summer of 2009.  And then pre-production began in earnest with the securing of a location and the selection of a fantastic cast and crew. 

I can’t begin to describe what a joy it was working with our cast.  Melanie Schmitt brought the exact energy, youthfulness and innocence to the role of Sheila I was looking for.  Theodore Hoelter displayed the precise, intense naïveté critical to the role of Charles.  And my only regret with Anita Jung is that the part of Beth wasn’t larger.  She amazed everyone.  Our cast performed exactly as needed with every take.

Our crew was beyond measure.  From the three-camera gang being able to alter setups in seconds to the boom ops spending hours under tables to our continuity supervisor adjusting muffins on a plate and our assistant director keeping everyone ahead of schedule for the entire shoot . . . I hope to work again with all of them sooner than later.

“Let’s All Go To The Movies” is a psych thriller for movie lovers.  It’s for anyone who has ever spent their days thinking they were in a movie.  It’s for anyone who has ever felt the line between film and reality blur, if even for a moment.

Joseph Johnston

Director, “Let’s All Go To The Movies”

September 2010