Best Friends Forever was recently released on VOD and digital services, and is an apocalyptic road trip movie starring Brea Grant and Vera Miao, who also wrote the screenplay together. I recently had a chance to interview the two of them and they talked about the challenges of getting this movie made, their love of apocalypse stories, and Brea making her directorial debut:
Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. How did this idea of a post-apocalyptic buddy comedy come about?
Vera: Because we love genre films and are actors, we decided to write a horror film that featured two women and bring our own spin on it. About halfway through, we realized, oh, since we were going to make this movie ourselves, it's going to be a particular kind of torture. Why don't we write a script where we don't also subject ourselves to being tortured and ripped apart as part of the on camera action too? Brea was on a road trip through the Southwest and called me to say, hey what about an apocalypse road trip? And the rest is nuclear history...
What are some of your favorite post-apocalypse movies/stories and the ones that inspired Best Friends Forever?
Vera: We love apocalypse stories of all kinds. Night of the Comet, an 80s comedy film, was an inspiration. As was Another Earth, which is not apocalyptic, but definitely an inspiration in terms of the world on the edge of everything changing, and the mix of human drama and sci-fi backdrop. Monsters, with its matter-of-fact world where aliens occupy most of Mexico, was a reference.
Other straight up apocalypse films that we love? Children of Men, Mad Max, 28 Days Later, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead. And we are always the first to buy tickets to the latest Resident Evil sequel, even though they make almost no sense anymore. Milla. Enough said.
And it sounds like everything is a zombie apocalypse, until you realize how many of the best classics like Aliens, Terminator, etc. were all post-apocalyptic. Having said that, I thought World War Z was real good!
Brea: We also looked at dystopian or sci-fi movies in which the majority of the action happened off-screen, since we knew that’s what we could afford. So movies like Monsters played a big role in shaping how the film would play out, centering the story on the two main leads and their internal struggles rather than giant fights and explosions.
And obviously Best Friends Forever had some Thelma and Louise in there. Not apocalyptic but definitely inspirational.
You two co-wrote the script. Can you tell us about working together and the creative process?
Vera: The script is really 50/50. We spent a lot of hours hashing out a detailed outline and an understanding of the arc of the characters and story. Then we would each take a few scenes, write on our own, swap them with each other, and edit/revise what the other wrote. Later on, we tried other things, like writing in the same room together so we could just ask each other questions and think out loud together while we were drafting our scenes. We put on a couple of script readings to hear it loud and get feedback, and we huddled together after principal photography and a first cut to rewrite some key scenes for additional shooting.
Brea, was this project always something you intended to direct? Why is this an area of filmmaking you wanted to move into?
Brea: Nope. We actually had a different director team attached and, as with every indie movie, our funding fell apart at the last minute. Vera and I still wanted to move forward even though the movie would now have to be made a fraction of what we thought the budget was going to be originally. So I said I would hop on board and direct it. I had been with it from the beginning and knew I’d see it through until the end no matter what. It was a sort of random decision but turned out to be a very big change for me. I had never really wanted to direct. If I had interest in anything outside of acting, it would have been writing. But as cliche as it sounds, it completely changed me and my view of the industry.
What were some of the biggest challenges in getting this movie made? Was the final product very close to what you had in mind? Did anything change or need to be cut?
Vera: Biggest challenges, no surprise, was finding funding, getting funding, and having enough funding.
Brea: It was pretty close to what I had in mind. Obviously when I watch it, I see where things could have gone better or I could have done differently, but overall, given the circumstances we made the movie under, I’m pretty happy with it.
Lots of stuff did get cut actually just because we had some camera problems and used that as a good reason to rewrite the ending. The footage we shot for our original ending couldn’t be salvaged. So there is an entirely different ending to Best Friends Forever somewhere on some computer that will hopefully never be seen by the public.
Brea, Now that your first film is finished and being released are you interested in directing another project right away?
Brea: Nope. I’m interested in getting my life back. I am in the process of pitching around a TV show and am attached to a really badass horror script written by Hans Rodionoff that Ryan Turek (ShockTillYouDrop.com) is producing. But someone else can direct both of them as far as I’m concerned.
Will the two of you be working on additional projects together in the future? What projects do you both have coming up?
Vera: We're still recovering from this one, and still trying our hardest to get it out to as many people as possible. I'm procrastinating really hard on a script I'm in the middle of, that is a 24 hour love story with a twist.
Brea, is it time for us to dust off that horror script now and get bloody?
Brea: Possibly so.
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To learn more about Best Friends Forever, check out the trailer below and visit:
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