“It was a sandbox of love”: ‘Crumb Catcher’ Director Chris Skotchdopole On His Tense Directorial Debut [Fantastic Fest 2023]
Chris Skotchdopole’s feature film debut Crumb Catcher is best described as Uncomfortable with a capital U. The film is a fascinating look at the lengths we’ll go to make sure we’re adhering to the status quo, regardless of the consequences. Think Speak No Evil, but with fewer children and more really awkward couples who are willing to blackmail you for a chance to pitch their business proposition.
Read the full synopsis:
After blacking out on his wedding night, Shane and his wife head to a remote estate for their honeymoon. That night, there’s a knock at the door; a waiter and bartender from the reception, blackmailing Shane for something he can’t remember doing. But the blackmailers don’t just want money. They’re after business partners for their invention, an outlandish device called… The Crumb Catcher.
Dread Central caught up with Skotchdopole at Fantastic Fest where Crumb Catcher had its world premiere to chat about filming this over five different shoots, creating the film’s tension, and how he designed the titular invention.
Dread Central: You’ve done so much cool work for Glass Eye Pix before Crumb Catcher, and you were a cinematographer on Depraved. How did you get involved with them before you made Crumb Catcher?
Chris Skotchdopole: I met Larry because my roommate’s boyfriend was working there. I remember I helped them find a location for something that never ended up coming out.
DC: Isn’t that just the way?
CS: I just met with him and there was a position that became available and he gave me the role. It was vaguely office something or other. He realized that I was useless in an office, but I’m good at other things. Then, the jobs became whatever I would be decent at doing.
DC: Hell yeah. Crumb Catcher is your first feature film as a director. I would love to hear more about just where this whole concept came from for you.
CS: I talked about this a little bit at the Q&A, but it originally started about a guy who didn’t want to be at his own wedding and had to take photographs. I’ve always hated that. I’ve always hated having to take pictures. It’s such anxiety or going to the barber or whatever. It’s not small talk necessarily, it’s just that it’s you’re the focus of the thing. There’s something about having a camera pointed at you that’s very intense.Â
It started there and then I knew I wanted it to be a contained piece. I had the voice of John for a while. That was one of the first elements of the movie that came in was I knew he’d be very much the way he speaks. It’s a mashup between a couple of different people that I know, one of which is John, the actual actor because that’s just how he talks.
DC: Really?
CS: But it’s also his attitude is not exactly that. His attitude is not as sharply aggressive as the character, but sometimes it can be. Then, we got to the house and I just really didn’t want it to be about money. I thought that just him being dangerous. But then pathetically just wanting your approval is interesting. I hadn’t seen that before exactly or in that kind of way and it just steamrolled from there. I have a brilliant designer, James Siewert, who did the Crumb Catcher design.
DC: I was going to ask about the Crumb Catcher design because it looks like an old car.
CS: That was the whole point. I mean there used to be this whole segment about how he spoke. He does talk about the good old Cadillacs kind of vibe, but there used to be a lot more of it that was stripped away about like, “My father had this and he’d take me around in this thing and I had to wash the car.” He had a whole thing about the good old days with the Cadillacs and this had to do with his father.Â
DC: How did that idea of that invention come about?
CS: That actually came from my partner, Tessa. Basically, I had figured out over the series of many drafts that the aggressor that was going to be coming here was going to be the waiter. I knew I just wanted it to be like he had this idea, this million-dollar idea. I was like, “What would a waiter want? What would he invent?”
I remember I went to this Thai restaurant once and it was a very white dude who was running it. Then, his wife was clearly the cook. He had this little invention. It was on the table and he’s like, “When you’re ready to order just press that button and if you need water, just press that button.” It was a useful thing. He’s like, “Well, if you need our attention, just press that button.” I mean it’s somewhat similar to how Alamo Drafthouse is in a way. He had it on the corner of the table. He was just displaying it to us as like, “Look at this thing I came up with,” as if it wasn’t hard enough to run a restaurant.
I remember I thought of that kind of a thing, but then Tessa was like, “What about a crumb catcher?” I think what a person does for a living in a narrative way should function as their entire identity. I think that John’s identity is slightly like he’s aware that people find him completely annoying, but he doesn’t really know how to back down or doesn’t know how to not be that way. He’s invented this machine that he doesn’t have to be there to interrupt the conversation. This is like he’s fixed the problem.
But thematically it’s also the idea of sweeping things under the rug. Shane and Leah just don’t talk about their problems at all. He says, “Should have eloped,” and she’s like, “Not going to talk to you for 20 minutes now.”
DC: Exactly.
CS: Then, Shane has a serious thing where really he’s blaming her for potentially hurting his father with this book that he put out. He blames her, but it’s also he blames himself. I don’t have a side, I don’t think anyone is right. I think Leah is exploiting his book a little bit, but also she’s not exploiting it.
DC: I want to talk about the cast because I mean you were talking about John, but also just everyone in this cast is so incredible, especially Rigo.
CS: I want to set the record straight that he was in my movie first. I just take so long to finish a movie.
DC: Cool, it’s on the record. We are saying that now.
CS: As Larry would say, basically I just don’t listen ever. We made this over the course of five different shoots.
DC: My God, five?
CS: Yeah, and it’s amazing that you can’t tell. We did 19 days, spent all my money, raised a little bit more, spent all the money, a little bit more, spent all the money. Then, I raised a bunch of money to do the car chase and wedding and that was the last shoot.Â
After I felt like I had lost the 19-day shoot and only had a little bit more than half of the movie, I really felt like I needed to prove myself or be like, “How can I knock scenes off that need to be made, but cheaply? What do I need?” I just put them in the cue cards and I was like, “Okay, drive upstate. I need a person who can hold a camera,” which was my friend James who came for that shoot and he did some additional photography for us. Then, I need my two actors and a sound guy.
I was like, “Okay, so that’s going to cost this much money and I could get those things and I could shoot it over the course of four days instead of one day because I am just doing this with my friends.” That’s what I did. Then, we were able to get these crazy car rig shots. I think with making a movie and working at Glass Eye and just working within these parameters. Your limitations have to become your superpower. I guess I didn’t talk about the cast, sorry.
DC: You’re good! It was an awesome aside.
CS: So Rigo has been my friend for a long time. He wasn’t originally cast, but then I just got really annoyed during COVID with things starting and stopping. I remember calling Rigo up and I was just like, “Do you want to be Shane?” He was like, “Well, why don’t you call me back in a little bit and see if you still want to ask me that,” kind of thing. He’s a very humble guy. Larry loved the idea and I went with that with.
I just wanted to know that I had control. I think as a director you want to have control, but you also want to be able to lose it in the way that’s the right way to lose it. Have your sandbox and then go crazy in the sandbox and make sure you’re protected. That’s why it’s so important to have a wonderful assistant director and producing team. They basically create the sandbox. Plus, we did a lot of rehearsals with Ella and Rigo.
DC: You got to rehearse!
CS: That was because these are people who see this as a big shot and an opportunity. They want to make art and they want to be there to do these rehearsals. This allowed us opportunities to fail, which is always what I’m looking for. I just want to be able to fail so that I can succeed in the next step. I feel like with making movies, if you believe in someone and you say they’re great, they almost always throw it right back at you. The more that you can do that, you’ll start to realize that there are no boundaries between what you want to achieve and what you’re able to deliver if you’re creating this sandbox of love. It was a sandbox of love.
Categorized:Interviews
