Sundance 2016 Interview: Mickey Keating, Pat Healy and Ashley Bell Take Us to CARNAGE PARK

Last week, during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, writer/director Mickey Keating enjoyed the premiere of his latest genre effort, Carnage Park, as part of the fest’s Midnight movies lineup. The gritty, crime-inspired film co-stars Pat Healy and Ashley Bell and follows their characters on a dangerous journey through the mountainous California desert one fateful day.

Daily Dead had the chance to chat with Keating, Bell, and Healy about their collaboration together on Carnage Park, respective approaches to the project, thoughts on their characters, and more.

Mickey, what was your approach to Carnage Park in terms of making it feel like an authentic film from the 1970s?

Mickey Keating: What was really important for us was to make something that wasn’t a spoof or wasn’t like a caricature of the 1970s. We wanted to make it as authentic as possible. That’s my favorite era of American filmmaking, and so down to even the way we utilized the fade-ins, it was all akin to that time period. That was pretty important. You look at movies like Zodiac that are very authentic to that era and that was the jumping-off point that we were going for.

Pat Healy: So often, you’ll see movies that take place in the 1970s with people wearing bell-bottoms and there are lava lamps and stuff that doesn’t really fit. This movie is very sparse, so you’re able to do that with this budget, which some of those movies from that era did—some of the things that Mickey is referring to are low-budget movies from that era, whether it’s The Hills Have Eyes or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or whatever.

Mickey’s taste is very diverse. He doesn’t just like horror movies. He’s a real cinephile; he loves all movies. We talked about all kinds of different films. That is what makes it original, is that it’s not just your average run-of-the-mill sort of horror movie. It’s a real cinematic experience.

Ashley Bell: What Mickey does is so incredible. He also gave us a month to a month and a half of rehearsal and what he does throughout the process is that he gives and shares films to watch, very specific films that have influenced him or are there to influence. His knowledge of film is so extensive. For instance, Mickey had given me everything to watch from 3 Women to High Tension. It’s in that aesthetic that he breaks the mold of “the genre” and really takes it to a new level, but also brings in that wonderful ’70s vibe that you mentioned. All of those films were running through our heads when we were reliving it in some ways while filming. It was that way for me, at least.

Mickey Keating: We should call the book we write From Three Women to High Tension. That’s an amazing title.

Pat and Ashley, you’re no strangers to the indie world of filmmaking and have played a lot of great characters over the years. What was it that you recognized in terms of what these characters in Carnage Park could do differently than what we’ve been seeing in the genre lately? I really did feel like Wyatt and Vivian were very unique in their own ways. 

Pat Healy: I mentioned last night that I was reading it on the plane, because I get offered a lot of really bad horror scripts, but I always have to read them all because I don’t want to miss out on something good. The first three pages of the script were this guy running and this monologue that was straight out of something you’d read about in American crime fiction. Like Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford and Elmore Leonard and all that stuff, this script felt like it was straight out of that style, which is like Mickey wrote this just for me. You don’t see stuff that literate or articulate in a lot of these scripts.

Sometimes people can’t even spell, so to get that I was like, “Oh, this is a real character I could wrap my head around”, and went along knowing that I could have some fun with Wyatt. I have no reason to do something that isn’t going to be rewarding to me in some way or that I cant bring something new to that hasn’t been done before. That begins with the script and that was all there. All that stuff I wanted to do was in that script, in fact in the first five pages of the script.

Ashley Bell: Absolutely. For Vivian, she embodies tenacity and determination. I give all that credit to Mickey for writing a true female hero. In reading it, I expected there to be that moment where you expect a character like that to fade or to fall apart or to wilt. She fights. For me, it was a story about the will to survive and the determination to survive and to refuse to be a victim. I absolutely love that.

These strong roles come along so few and far between, or I guess they are becoming more and more prevalent, which is fantastic, but the whole script felt completely different. I flew through it in 45 minutes. I loved it. It spoke to me, and these constant surprises while reading the script—it transcends a pulpy slasher or horror film. It challenges audiences. It definitely challenged me when I was reading it. It was terrifying to see the situations Vivian goes through, but when you have that feeling you’re like, “Yes, I have to do this because it scares the hell out of me”, in that good way.

Definitely. Mickey, I love the aesthetic in this movie. I have seen your other films, which were all really great in terms of capturing that claustrophobic feeling. This to me just felt like such a 180, since you have this wide-open canvas to work on, and the sun-infused color palette added so much too. 

Mickey Keating: Thank you so much. Me and [cinematographer] Mac Fisken have worked on every movie together and so we really have this relationship at this point where every single time it’s this effort to push in a different way. We never want to repeat ourselves. That’s quite important to us. This one, we figured if it’s going to be so much of a vast landscape, it’s important to really go at it with the camera movement in the way that we can really convey the size of the film.

In true ’70s form, it all goes back to the films like Mean Streets and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver, of course. My process is always pretty much the same when I’m writing. We generally don’t have an idea of what we’re going to be shooting before we shoot it, so it was really about what we could put all of our effort into, making Carnage Park seem much bigger and more sprawling than anything else we have done together so far.

What I really appreciated about this as well was the character of Vivian. Throughout horror movies, so many times we see the “final girl” having to compromise things about her character, and what I love is the fact that from the beginning to the end, no matter the situation, Vivian was still a compassionate character. How conscientious of that were you, Ashley, and did you and Pat get to add some personal touches to these characters at all? 

Ashley Bell: Oh my, it was there in the script very much, absolutely. It was there in all of the initial conversations with Mickey too; he was very clear about not making just a screaming girl running through this landscape, so he encouraged me to really bring her out and build a real character. He did give me that freedom. I could say to him, “What about this song that she is singing as she is walking to keep herself company?” Or, “Because she is lonely, can she play with a toe bug?” I brought a box of toe bugs to set to play with and promptly returned them back to my garden.

Pat Healy: I love that moment, too.

Ashley Bell: For me, it felt like a story about humanity and fighting to survive, so anybody that I came across was like a drop of water in that landscape. It was like finding just a speck of life anywhere out there and you can only lean onto another human being in that spark of light. That was always very prevalent in the script.

Pat Healy: I enjoyed all the rehearsing because we got to do a lot of the work that you don’t have the time to do on the day. Also, on a personal note, I wanted Ashley to know I am not actually a maniac because sometimes you work with people and they are genuinely terrified of you. Like when I did Compliance, it was in [director] Craig [Zobel’s] mind at the beginning to not ever introduce me to any of the other people that I was speaking to on the phone, but I think he realized that would be incredibly cruel to me. So I appreciate the opportunity to have that connection here.

Ashley and I even talked about that on the first day. Because when you are doing violence with people, you don’t know who that person is or you just know that character, it could be terrifying if you really feel like you’re going to get hurt. There is nothing worse than watching a play where you see the fight choreography go wrong or somebody is not paying attention or someone goes up on their lines. It makes you anxious and takes you out of the movie. We were able to really prepare in that way.

I would say from my side of the character, the first thing was to come up with the look. Originally, all the dialogue is exactly the way it was, but in the script he was a little bit more like Ted Kaczynski—wild man, long hair, a beard and out there in the wild. I thought of that look with the glasses and the scrap and the short hair and then that came, the idea of just being the guy who is a nice guy; a friendly, chatty, funny guy who went to war and his brain is all twisted around now, but he still behaves and works in the same way and still cut his hair and has his glasses in the same way that it was in 1967 or whenever he went over there.

There is this thing—I don’t know who said it—but the saying is that the body doesn’t know that you’re acting, so if you’re doing something cruel or evil, it feels very cathartic and very rewarding to do and very fun to do. This experience was all of that and more.

How great does it feel, now that your film has premiered at Sundance and is out there now for the world to enjoy? How has this experience been for all of you?

Ashley Bell: It starts at the top. For me, again, it starts with Mickey Keating and also a fantastic production company, Diablo Entertainment. They gave him that creative freedom. He used such a specific concept for what he wanted and took us through this journey so carefully. As Pat said, even before the big violent scenes, we had a day to look into each other’s eyes, so we could go deeper because we did trust each other. There are those few films that just feel special when you’re doing it. They have this “X Factor” around it and it’s due to a great script and really, really strong characters.

When I was reading it, what made it so exciting was that you saw these real characters getting into horrifying situations. That’s when things get messy and out of control. That humanness that Mickey was pushing for made it exciting to get behind and to level the play. There was a lot to work with on the table. It felt very special while doing it. At least for me, it was this wonderful experience out in the desert for several weeks. I came out without sunburn and I had a fantastic time with some great actors and a phenomenal director and then you hope for the best.

It’s my first Sundance. Sundance is the epitome of art and artistic integrity and the work—all those good things. To be invited to participate is such a tremendous honor and I am so proud of this film and so proud to be here.

Pat Healy: This is the fifth time I have been here in over 17 years. I have been coming here since 1999. Every one of these movies that I have come up here with has been special to me just on a personal level. They’ve all got this great life after Sundance because the eyes of the world in the industry are trained on it. It’s free publicity for a movie that might not get the attention otherwise.

I like that Carnage Park is at Sundance because it allows people to see that it’s not just some piece of junk exploitation film, that there is some great artistic merit definitely built on that and you want to have that kind of experience, but at the same time it’s a real piece of art. I am glad that it’s here. I am really proud of Mickey because I know that he worked really hard. He didn’t make the movie to get into Sundance, but I am not surprised that it did either.

Mickey Keating: It was such a tremendous honor for me to be able to work with these actors and have their artwork and amazing performances rewarded in that regard because truly I don’t think that this movie would have been anything without these characters and these particular actors playing these roles. When you find people that it’s great to collaborate with and that you can trust, it makes everything else fall in place and makes all the bullshit worthwhile.