Henry Barrial: Interview With the Writer/Director of "Pig"

If you've been hanging out here at Dark of the Matinee the last few weeks, you know that we've been bringing you a ton of coverage on the upcoming Phoenix Film Festival and International Horror and Sci-Fi Fest. As part of that coverage, last week we had a two-part interview with founder of the No Budget Film School and producer of the new film Pig, Mark Stolaroff. Today we bring you an interview with the writer and director of Pig, Henry Barrial! Check it out below!

Christopher Coffel: Can you briefly tell us what Pig is about?

Henry Barrial: Pig is, on the one hand, about a man who wakes up in the desert with a black hood over his head, his hands tied behind his back, and he can't remember who he is.  So Pig is a mystery about what happened to him.  But, on the thematic level, Pig is an exploration about feeling out of place in the world, about questioning your life, about trying to come to some clarity in relation to reality.  It's about trying to discover what's really going on.  Finally it's a story that touches on the Law of Accelerating Returns (Ray Kurzweill's theory), especially in the area of technology where we are at the beginning of a wave of technological acceleration that will change the way we live forever.

CC: Now the idea came from a story you read in a newspaper, correct? How did that all come about?

HB: One of the early inspirations for the story came when I read about a Lebanese-German named Khaled El-Masri who was taken to a CIA black op site because he shared the name of a terrorist.  After the CIA tortured him for a few months they finally realized he was the wrong guy so they flew him out of Afghanistan and released him at night on a desolate road in Albania, without apology, or money.  But the part that really got me was that when he was eventually found by Albanian guards, they didn't believe his story and instead believed him to be a terrorist. Talk about questioning your own sanity...

CC: What do you hope audiences take away from a screening of Pig?

HB: I want audiences to experience the same level of disorientation that our hero feels.  The audience thinks they know what's going on but then they realize they don't.  It's for people who like puzzles.  Especially puzzles that mirror the questioning of reality.

CC: Are there any films, or filmmakers, that influenced Pig?

HB: I'd say Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, a show I loved as a kid, are really the biggest influence on Pig. Lo-Fi sci-fi/drama that makes you think.

CC: Pig is an independent, self-financed film. Despite some of the limitations that may have presented, do you think overall it allowed you to tell the story entirely the way you wanted to?

HB: Overall these ultra low budget films do allow for a great deal of creative control, and that's a real advantage, but I think the biggest thing for me is that with these films you can cut your teeth as a filmmaker, put theories to the test, really learn about story and find your voice.  I was talking with director Ted Kotcheff in Germany about how he and Frankenheimer and Lumet all came out of TV where they really learned the craft.  I think this type of film-making offers a similar opportunity.

CC: Any plans for after Pig? Have you already started work on your next film?

HB: My next film is called the House That Jack Built, a story of a young Nuyorican (Puerto Rican-American living in NYC) guy who deals pot out of a bodega and uses the money to buy a tenement in the Bronx, moving his whole family back together in order to recapture his "idyllic" childhood. It's Joe Vasquez's (Hanging with the Homeboys) last script before he died in 1995.  It's a phenomenal script that is sort of a throw back to a more story-driven indie era.  I'm Cuban-American, speak fluent Spanish and completely get the milieu and the personal entanglements and I feel very connected to the material as a director.  It was a 40 Acres and a Mule project back in the day but was never able to secure financing.  Based on the success we're having with Pig I convinced Michael Lieber (Jack producer) that we could make Jack on a slightly higher budget level than PIG.  The other two producers are Sam Kitt and Hitesh Patel.  

And I do hope to make more films that spring from Kurzweill's Law of Accelerating Returns.  Paul Mayersberg, who wrote the screenplay for Mike Hodge's "Croupier," one of my favorite films, spoke of that film's story not being about wish fulfillment but about giving audiences a road map to life.  I'd like to make Road Map films that would deal and prepare audiences for the rapid advancement in technology.  Near term sci-fi.


Barrial's neweset film, Pig, can be seen at the upcoming Phoenix Film Festival. For tickets and more information please visit the official Phoenix Film Festival website.
For more information on Pig, please visit ThePigPicture.com