‘The Last Stop In Yuma County’ Director Francis Galluppi On His 1970s Inspired Crime Thriller [Fantastic Fest 2023 Interview]
Mary Beth McAndrews
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Francis Galluppi’s feature film debut The Last Stop In Yuma County is a tense, Western-inspired thriller reminiscent of the early Coen Brothers’ films. Darkly funny, incredibly tense, and soaked in blood, Galluppi directs a stacked cast through a twisty crime thriller that from the first frame never lets up. It was one of the biggest surprises at this year’s Fantastic Fest, where it had its world premiere.
Read the full synopsis below:
The Last Stop In Yuma County follows a traveling knife salesman forced to wait for fuel at an isolated rest stop. When two bank robbers arrive during their getaway from a big heist, our knife salesman makes a fateful decision that will change his life forever.
Dread Central spoke with Galluppi at Fantastic Fest about his feature film debut, scoring his dream cast, and his love of Night Of The Living Dead.
Dread Central: What’s it been like at the fest? This is your first feature, so how are you feeling?
Francis Galluppi: Fantastic. I think it’s just been a fucking dream to be here and surrounded by other really cool filmmakers and just the energy at this festival is just fucking awesome. I feel like it’s a good place to premiere The Last Stop In Yuma County.
DC: Absolutely. Okay, so The Last Stop In Yuma County. Where did this idea come from? Tell me more about the project and the process of getting this sucker made.
FG: I had written all my short films based off locations that we had access to. We were shooting for little to no money, so it was like, “Oh, my buddy had a desert house,” so I would write a script based on that location. My friend had a cabin in the woods, so I’m like, “OK, cool, let’s write that.” So when it came time to write the feature, I kind of took the same approach where I found phrases in Lancaster, this, this is amazing, this feels like a total throwback. And I went there, took a bunch of pictures, drew a map, an overhead of the diner, and started just writing the script specifically to this location.
Then from there, I had a lot of these actors in mind when I was writing these characters. So I just wrote letters to everybody and had a great casting director who got everybody the letters. And then I just got really lucky. I was able to hop on everybody and pretty much got my dream cast. We still were figuring out the financing situation, and my friend James ended up selling his house to finance it.
DC: This cast is so stacked. Who was the first person that came onto the cast?
FG: So one of the first people to read The Last Stop In Yuma County script was actually Richard Brake. As soon as I was done, he read a really early draft of the script and we hopped on a call and talked about it. I mean, I had Richard in mind when I was writing his character. And so very, very early on, probably more than two years before we actually started shooting the thing, Rich, he gave me his word and he’s just been the best. He’s just the sweetest guy and he is so professional. And then also Jim, I knew Jim was going to be perfect for The Last Stop In Yuma County, so I really didn’t want to compromise on that at all. And again, got really fucking lucky. He read the script, we had coffee the next day, and he was like, I want to do it.
I’ve been a huge fan of Jim. I mean, just his whole ethos on independent filmmaking, that’s sort of been my North Star. It’s like I’m out there making short films with my friends. We have zero experience, and we’re like, “Is this ever going to lead to anything? And if it doesn’t, whatever, we’re having a fucking blast doing it.” At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. But seeing that Jim was actually able to make a career out of it was just so inspiring. So to have him be a part of this film was kind of surreal.
DC: That’s so cool. And before maybe isn’t the right phrase, but there’s so much genre stuff going on here. I wanted to hear more about how you approached thinking about genre here or if it wasn’t really a concern.
FG: Yeah. I mean, I love horror. Obviously if you just look at the cast, you can see my love for horror and genre. But in terms of the story, I love that whole 1970s era of filmmaking. So I think the movies and filmmakers that were in my head were like Sam Peckinpah and Don Siegel movies, and obviously Hitchcock. I think looking back, those were probably the movies I was thinking about the most. But in terms of the cast, yeah, I fucking love horror films. I love genre. So it was a dream, literally a dream come true to get this cast. I have been such a fan of Jocelyn Donahue and Alex and Barbara and Sierra.
DC: What an awesome experience for your first movie and just get direct all of these incredible people. I wanted to know if there were any moments that the actors helped you really bring to life and how they maybe evolved something that you had in your head into something even better than you had expected.
FG: I think it was such a collaborative experience, and they were all just game to jump on Zoom calls ahead of time a lot during prep. We would just kind of comb through the script and rehearse over Zoom and anything that felt contrived or forced, I would just rewrite on the spot. And we just had very long-winded conversations about motivations and characters. So I felt like by the time we got to set, everyone had a very clear understanding of who this character was. I sent them all long bios on every character, and they just really took it and ran with it. And it was just a fucking blast really. Every day was summer camp. There were obviously things that went wrong on set. Weather is crazy, things that you can’t control, but at the end of the day, we got to work with some of our favorite people. It was awesome.
DC: How long did you have to shoot?
FG: 20 days.
DC: Oh, wow. Okay. But you were mostly in that one location, so that was probably helpful at least.
FG: It was. And I mean, we spent maybe four of those days outside of the location, but still, it was a lot. There were a lot of people crammed in that diner. That’s true. Yeah, it was a lot of prep. My DP has shot everything I’ve ever done. He’s done all my shorts, all my music videos, everything. So we work really closely with one another. And he and I, we use Shot Designer and we shot lists and we storyboard, we photo board, we just prep and prep and prep extensively.
So we came in there with a very, very specific plan. With the time constraints, we had to move fast. And a lot of those long takes or just things where we just stay in the wide or two shot, we had to commit to that. We didn’t have time to get coverage, so fuck it, we went for it.
DC: Well, would you ever want to make a full-fledged horror movie?
FG: Oh, hell yeah.
DC: What subgenre would you want to tackle or subgenres if there are multiple?
FG: My favorite movie is Rosemary’s Baby, so it would be probably something really dark and Satanic probably. But my first short film was very much a love letter to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is also I think one of the greatest movies ever made. But I dunno. I mean, I have just a love for horror all across the board. So at the end of the day, it’s really just about the story and the characters. It’s really funny. As much as I love [horror], every time I sit down and write, I, for some reason, just gravitate towards writing suspense or crime thrills.
DC: Yeah. Well, I feel like they all are horror in a way. To me, I feel like horror is a weird label and so fluid about crime thrillers.
FG: Actually, I do have a Night Of The Living Dead thing that I’d love to make one of these days, and that’s written, but yeah. It’s a hard sell because of the way I’m doing it. Just got to find somebody who really loves Night Of The Living Dead.
DC: How did you really get introduced to the genre? What was the entry point for you?
FG: I grew up with older brothers who showed me movies I should not have seen when I was that age. I remember watching A Nightmare On Elm Street when I was way too young. It scared the shit out of me, so did Leprechaun. I was always checking under my bed thinking Chucky or fucking leprechauns were under there. But also I think for me too, you grow up and you watch these big spectacles. You grow up watching Back to the Future and E.T. and you’re just like, “God, it would be so fun to make movies.” But it seemed so unobtainable. How do you even do that?
And then, I don’t know how old I was, but I just remember watching The Evil Dead and being blown away and being like, “Well, I think I could do that.” You know what I mean? There’s an energy to that movie where it’s just like, you don’t even need to watch the behind-the-scenes, but you could tell it was just such a fucking passion project. Raimi went out there with his friends in the middle of the fucking woods and just shot something without a lot of money. There’s just so much love and energy infused in that film. And if you watch movies like that and you’re just like, “Well, fuck, maybe we can do that.” So I think horror inspired me to actually pick up a camera and just with my friends.
Categorized:Interviews
