Scooter Downey: Young Director Talks About His Debut Feature, "It's in the Blood"

Yesteryday as part of our coverage for the upcoming Phoenix Film Festival and the International Horror and Sci-Fi Fest, we brought you an interview with Sean Elliot, co-writer and co-star of It's in the Blood. Today, as promised, we present to you an interview with Elliot's writing partner and the film's director, Scooter Downey.


Christopher Coffel: Can you tell us a little bit about It's in the Blood?

Scooter Downey: It's In The Blood is a crazy mix of survival horror, creature feature, psychological thriller, and arthouse drama.  Ultimately it's about a father and son stranded in the wild who must confront the horrors of their past to escape with their lives.  Lance Henriksen, star of Aliens and TV's Millennium, plays the father, and he delivers one of his best performances ever in this film.  He's just very raw, and very vulnerable.

Thematically speaking, It's In The Blood is a film about going eyeball-to-eyeball with one's own personal demons and escaping from the monsters that live in the wilderness of the mind.  We wanted to make a genre film from the inside-out; that is to say, we wanted to show the typical journey of a 'creature feature' through the inner viewpoint of psychology and symbol.  Part of the fun of the film's structure is the way this recognition unfolds and dawns on the audience.

CC: The film has been labeled as a "psyche-saga." What does that mean exactly?

SD: Psyche-saga is a combination of theatrical, naturalistic, and epic styles within one story that represent, respectively, the mind, body, and spirit.   Usually filmmakers will pick one style over another.  But I've come to believe that each of these ways of telling stories has an 'inner consistency of reality', and to communicate the full range of truth, a filmmaker ought to use all of them in the same work.  For instance, in a Psyche-Saga, a naturalistically rendered love story (body) might be intercut with a mythic tale of star cross'd lovers, (epic/spirit), or suddenly take on the appearance of a Hollywood rom-com (theatrical/mind).  This 'transcendental' technique encourages the filmmaker to compare and contrast patterns of metaphor, and offers opens up whole new ways to tell stories.  You might also call it an attempt to bridge art and entertainment.



screenshot from It's in the Blood

Now for the long answer. Psyche-Saga is something I came up with after I finished editing the movie.  Sean and I were sitting in his apartment talking about the state of movies and art in general, and complaining like college freshmen about how everything sucks.  The conclusion we came to on why everything sucks was that our culture doesn't want to represent reality truthfully, on any level.  Hollywood tries to tell their stories mythically using an epic style, but they end up just making empty spectacle because all they really want to do is sell toys.  Indie films tell their stories naturalistically, but end up boring most people because audiences demand immediate gratification and don't like watching paint dry.  Most everybody else hides their story in a specific genre, but often end up repeating the same old hoary, theatrical cliches. 

We're told that all of these ways of representing reality (mythically, theatrically, and naturalistically) have equal merit, but what actually has ended up happening is that we are getting the worst aspects of all these styles.  In the attempt to appeal to everybody equally across the globe, films today appeal mostly to the lowest common denominator of the human experience.  This is why art has moved to the postmodern stage where truth is relative, everything has to be deconstructed and mocked, and the twin terrors of nihilism and kitsch are all-pervasive (the characters in It's In The Blood view the world in a similar manner).  We are either told that we are precious little snowflakes, or that we should all engage in mass suicide.  This has been the secular cultural response to the horrors of World War.  That era is now coming to an ignominious end.  We as a society must now respond to massive economic fraud, political totalitarianism, and the decay of pretty much all of our institutions, including the entertainment industry. 

That's why psyche-saga is a movement.  It's not out of a desire to promote some kind of pretentious artistic dogma, or as a marketing tool, but because if we start to compare/contrast the different ways we speak about reality while still telling one cohesive story, we might actually get closer to telling the truth about the human experience.  And we're in desperate need to speak about spiritual, psychological, and natural truths right now.  I'll be the first to admit that it's extremely difficult.  The next psyche-saga I make will be a lot more sophisticated because I'll actually be trying to make one from the start!

CC: Are there any particular filmmakers or films that inspired not only It's in the Blood, but just how you approach filmmaking in general?

 SD: I'm inspired by nearly everything -- from arthouse auteurs like Tarkovsky and Cassavetes to popular entertainers like Steven Spielberg, Monty Python, and Mel Brooks.  The list goes on and on.  I'm a movie fanatic. 

It's In The Blood was probably most directly inspired by The Edge, and by Jacob's Ladder.  Actually in the original draft our antagonist was a pack of wolves ala The Grey -- glad we didn't end up going that route!

CC: Lance Henriksen stars in It's in the Blood. What was it like to work with someone with so much prestige?

 SD: It was intimidating, but Lance made it very easy.  He's very down-to-earth and surprisingly sensitive.  We really put him through the ringer in this movie, both physically and emotionally.  But he was down for anything.  When Lance walks onto the set, he puts his entire soul into the role, and it inspires everybody on the cast/crew.  We're very blessed to have had him.

CC: And while we're talking about Henriksen, do you have a favorite role or film of his?

SD: I'm tempted to say Bishop in Aliens because that was the first movie I ever saw him in, but I must say that my favorite Lance performance is in Powder.   The scene he has with his wife and the reaction he has at the end of the film just blew me out of my living room.  Easily in my top 10 favorite movie moments of all time.  As Neo says, "Whoa".

 CC: What's next for you after IT'S IN THE BLOOD? Have you thought that far ahead yet?

 SD: Next up is a political satire about the Occupy Wall Street movement.



If you're going to be in Phoenix from March 29 until April 4, you'll be able check out Downey's debut feature, It's in the Blood at the International Horror & Sci-Fi Fest as part of the Phoenix Film Festival. For tickets and more information please visit the official Phoenix Film Festival website.