Interview: Jay Baruchel Discusses the Long Journey of Making RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE and More

This week, yet another fantastic horror film is headed to Shudder—Jay Baruchel’s Random Acts of Violence—and I cannot recommend it enough. An adaptation of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s graphic novel of the same name, the film follows comic creator Todd (Jesse Williams) and his closest collaborators (which include Jordana Brewster, Niamh Wilson, and Baruchel, who also co-stars in the film) as they take a road trip from Canada to New York. Along the way, Todd must reconcile the violence he brings to the page when his creation “Slasherman,” which is based on a real-life serial killer, ends up tracking the group during their travels, and finds his own gruesome sense of inspiration as he gets closer and closer to Todd, where real life and fantasy clash in the most horrific of ways.

Last week, Daily Dead spoke with Baruchel about Random Acts of Violence, and while chatting, he discussed the long journey of getting the film made, his thoughts on trying to reconcile real-life violence and those who have been affected by it, working with his cast and the movie’s brilliantly bloody special effects created by the legendary Paul Jones.

So, first of all, congratulations on the film. I have been familiar with the source material for a while now, but when I heard you were taking it on, I was like, "Wow, that is really cool." Sometimes with independent comics and properties, they tend to get glossed over a lot. So it was really cool to see somebody taking this property and turning it into a film.

Jay Baruchel: Yeah, we're certainly big fans and we fought for the better part of a decade to finally get it going. Jimmy Palmiotti is a very kind man. He could have been humoring me this whole time, but I hope he feels that we honored his work.

What was the process of taking this story and then translating it for the screen? You just mentioned it was quite a journey for you guys that took nearly a decade, which I didn’t realize.

Jay Baruchel: So, any movie that isn't Harry Potter or Star Wars or Marvel is like really difficult to make. Especially small Canadian films, and horror films, they're real difficult, too, so it takes some doing. So yeah, it started out very humble for us. With Jesse [Cabot, co-screenwriter] and I, nobody knew us from Adam as writers and the good people at Kickstarter were kind enough to take a meeting with us and see something in us. And they said, "Can you come up with a pitch for this comic? You have the rights to call it Random Acts of Violence." We just came up with the best pitch we could and then proceeded to try to write the best treatment and script we could.

In just trying our best, something happened and we started really giving a shit about it. It stopped being a gig and became our baby, a passion project, and potentially to the displeasure of our producers, but we're the rights holders. We became super protective of the thing, and we just kept pouring liters and liters of our blood into it. So the process was that we started off with really good source material that asked some interesting questions and started to think about what is a compelling dialectic from that. We saw our jobs as doing our best to continue the conversation that they started, and so that means that any places where it veers to a different place than the comic book did are still born of the same conversation and questions. We were just basically trying to add on and hopefully increase the conversation that they started.

There's a lot of great stuff in there for those of us who sort of eat, sleep, and breathe horror, because it really is a lot of fun to watch, but it also tackles the creator's obligation towards not sensationalizing things, especially in this case when you have real-life victims. How was it exploring that duality here, because there are these gut punch moments of reality, but then there’s also this heightened sense of violence to the narrative as well? You have to balance those two things against each other and conventional wisdom would dictate that that is a huge thing to try and take on.

Jay Baruchel: There was definitely some pushback, but it was truthful and real. This was a conversation that we had amongst ourselves about stuff we were watching and about the script that we were writing. It was a very honest process and the script reflects us unpacking stuff within ourselves. I think that it speaks to people's preconceived notions that a lot of people have, where they think our movie condemns stuff, when really it tries to ask questions I think more than anything.

I grew up a lifelong true crime fan and lifelong horror fan, and I am a fan of both still to this day. But also, I'm now 38 and a member of society, and I have to look at myself and I asked myself questions that had answers I wasn't really thrilled about, which was like, how come I can name all these serial killers like they're rock stars? I can even name some of their stats as if they were like hockey players or something. So, how come I can name all that, but I can't name any of the people they killed? Surely, that's far more important. And then I realized, I can name Jason and Freddy and Michael Myers, but again, I can't name most of the people that they've offed in their movies.

There seems to be a correlation there and it didn't sit well with me. I was trying to figure out why that is and what does that mean when I pay attention to the scale and largesse of what a man did, as opposed to the horrid experiences that these people, mostly women, suffered? What is that and why do we pay homage to that? I was hard-pressed to find a different answer than male gaze shit.

It's these feats that are something that average people can’t see themselves ever doing, and I seem to think that the cult of personality around the killer, as opposed to the victim, is an extension of that. That's paying attention to a superhuman deed, as opposed to an awful fucking experience suffered by the victims. Certainly, in addition to it being the script in the movie reflecting conversations we have ourselves, it also from a utilitarian standpoint, provides a really, really strong and uncomfortable bed to build a horror movie on.

It wasn't just for the sake of making people uncomfortable, either. We want people to question their habits a bit. Not to condemn them, and not to tell people, “Don't do this.” You can like whatever you like. You just owe it to yourself and to society to unpack why you like it.

I'd love to talk about this cast, because admittedly, as soon as I saw Jordana [Brewster] was in this, I got really excited because I just adore her. And I think Jesse [Williams] is just phenomenal here, too, as he carries this weight of his creation with him. And of course, you and Niamh [Wilson] add some levity here, and I just thought the camaraderie that your characters shared on the road, before it all goes south, was a lot of fun.

Jay Baruchel: Thank you. That means a lot, because that was the goal. So, when we all got in that car together, I think we'd hung out once. Because it's a small Canadian movie, we couldn't afford to get them in any earlier than right before we started shooting. Niamh, who plays Aurora, she lives in Toronto, so she was a bit different. But what we did once Jesse and Jordana were in town, is my wife and I cooked everyone a big breakfast, and had the three of them over to our house. I was like, “I don't want to talk movie shit at all. I just want us all to hang out.” To me, this movie will live or die on our relationships feeling lived in. I have watched plenty of movies where I'm meant to believe people are friends, when it's apparent they just met a few days before it started, so I wanted to play defense against all of that. I wanted everyone to feel lived in.

Because my thought was, if I can trick the audience into being comfortable with these people, and around these people, then everything that happens will actually land. The worst thing is when you're rooting for someone to get it in a movie. What the fuck is the point of that? There's no merit in that to me. Everything is always an effort to recreate The Deer Hunter effect or the Psycho effect of lulling my audience into a false sense of security. And then once it's too late, once they're in and they give a shit, I want to rob them of all that security.

So I was very, very lucky that I had actors who were up for it, and dug it, and were psyched to get the chance to paint with their colors, too. One of the scenes I love the most is an argument between Kathy and Todd in their hotel room. Jesse and I came up with a roadmap for them, but then Jesse Williams and Jordana Brewster basically came in and found their own thing. We told them what their POVs were, and where, ideally, it needs to end. And we were able to [have] two cameras on two really strong actors, who were able to have a really truthful argument in that moment.

Before we go, I wanted to talk about Paul Jones’ work. I've been working for a few years on some books about special effects artists, and Paul was one of the people I had a chance to talk to a few years ago, and he was such a great interview. His work in this film is phenomenal.

Jay Baruchel: He's one of our country's greatest artists. His connection to it all is so pure and so real. I have a great deal of affection for the man, and what's super cool is that my  story with him starts when I'm 18 on this movie called Nemesis Game, which is not a particularly great flick. But I get killed in it, where I am almost all but decapitated. So they had to build this prosthetic rig for my throat that looked like a bunch of severed tendrils and shit, and then it'd be strung up on this post in this abandoned bar. But anyway, so I had to go and hang out with Paul to get the mold, and we just clicked.

Same thing happened with Karim [Hussain, cinematographer] and me the first time, where it’s like two nerds find each other, they just start speaking Linux to each other. And Paul, to his credit, back when I was 18, when a lot of other people couldn't see it in me, he was like, “When you make a movie, I'm doing the effects. I'm doing the makeup, and I know that one day you're going to make a movie.” And now I've made two, and Paul's done both of them. So, getting to do a horror flick with him, that's his fucking thing, man.

I’ve been in this business since I was 12, and one of the coolest things is finally getting able to work with people that I worked with as an actor, but now in a different capacity, like Paul. I had some ideas for what I want it to be, off the same kind of metric as to the rest of the violence in the film. I wanted it to be real and dirty, but I also wanted someone to see that you could see intention behind it. So it should be brutal and horrendous, but it should also have a sense of beauty to it.

Like, for example, the Triptych reveal. That thing is a fucking masterpiece. Paul and his team created something that has this real art and a design to it, but it also looks like what it would look like. I just told him what the movie needed, and then I just stayed out of the way and let him and his team paint and create, because their ideas are always spectacular. I love the colors he paints with, and I love the fucked-up ideas he has, and he's a wonderful, wonderful collaborator. I'm also proud to say that I did three seasons of a show called Man Seeking Woman, and every weird creature, or monster, or penis monster, was a Paul Jones creation as well. He’s absolutely the best. I can't say enough good things about working with him.

Red band trailer: