Tribeca 2017 Interview: Pat Healy on Transitioning to the Role of Director for TAKE ME

While he’s helmed short films in the past, actor Pat Healy makes his feature film directorial debut with the darkly comedic Take Me, an unconventional heist/crime caper of sorts that features Healy in the role of Ray, professional kidnapper, who gets more than he bargains for with his latest “victim,” Anna (Taylor Schilling).

Take Me recently premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, and Daily Dead chatted with Healy about the project. In our conversation, he discussed taking the reins as director, his approach to the material, collaborating with Schilling and Take Me producers Jay and Mark Duplass, and more.

It’s so great to speak with you today, Pat. Take Me was a lot of fun and as a movie fan, the one thing I want the most out of a film is just something that keeps you guessing and keeps you surprised. So I loved this. I thought it was a lot of fun.

Pat Healy: Well, that's all I want in a movie, too, and I just so rarely get it, so when I got ahold of this script, I just didn't know what was going to happen next. It's so rare to see a movie like that. I just wanted to make that because I know I would enjoy watching that, and I know there are other people that feel the same way I do.

Obviously, this had a lot of appeal for you on an acting level, but I'm curious, what was it beyond that where you were like, "You know what, I definitely want to take the reins and direct this one as well?"

Pat Healy: Well, I always wanted to direct. I'd made shorts fifteen years ago, but as an unproven feature director, it was difficult for me to get financing for me to direct. When this one came into my lap, I responded to it because I could see that this was obviously a great story. Looking back, there's a lot in here about broken people who aren’t actors by name, but they are actors. They role play, they live in this city and they participate in this enterprise where they pretend to be other people, and it's their version of make-believe.

I know from my character's perspective, it's really painful to be himself. He wears these things that he's seen in old movies—the jacket that Al Pacino or [Robert] DeNiro might have worn and the gloves and the turtleneck like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, and the wig and the spray tan and all these things that come from his idea of what masculinity is.

We talk about that culture of toxic masculinity a lot now, and it's for kids who grew up like myself feeling that sensitivity was a defect, or something to be hidden away. It took me a long time to grow up and a lot of personal work and therapy work to get to a place where I could be sensitive and vulnerable as a person. I think that this character's journey, he basically is a man-child pretending to be this uber-masculine person that he's not, and it takes this woman who is like a tornado to come into his life, that breaks everything down and forces him to be real with himself, and figure himself out.

Something else about Take Me that I thought was interesting was the way you explored how some folks are willing to push themselves in these ways that most of us may not or may not understand, through ARGs [alternate reality games] or simulated environments. Was that an interesting spectrum for you to dig into from a storytelling perspective?

Pat Healy: Yeah, because I don't even like haunted houses. I don't like people jumping out at me. Mike Makowsky, who wrote the script, really loves that stuff. He loves interactive theater, like Blackout and escape rooms—all that stuff. This came out of his interest in that. What I thought was really cool was that he took it to the next level and came up with this made-up job—certainly something I had never heard of before—which is someone who you hire to kidnap you. I thought the situation is so ripe for something to go wrong, and that's ripe for both humor and tension. There's no discussion of safe words or anything like that here. It's just sort of like, “We're going to go into it.”

I liken it to being in an ARG, the things you're talking about, but there's a script. In this one, there are two people who have agreed to do something, but it’s like they're in a play together, but they don't realize that they are working from different scripts. They're in different plays. They're in different movies. He's in his movie and his experience is that people go along with his movie, but she doesn't. She's in something totally different. That situation is just so ripe for the confusion and the comedy, and even leading the audience down the rabbit hole, like, as you said, "What is going on?"

You mentioned that it feels like a play where you guys are working from two different scripts, and for me, a lot of this you could actually turn into a two-person play, and it would be just as riveting to watch on a live stage as it would be watching it in the film version. A lot of that is due to the script, but also because of the back and forth between you and Taylor. It’s great.

Pat Healy: Yeah, I think so. It was a struggle for me to make it cinematic, too, because I just didn't want to really feel like it was two people sitting in a room talking to each other all the time. We shot it in anamorphic widescreen to make it have that cinematic feel. When we weren't in those rooms, I really tried to highlight the things that are cinematic and go around that explosive chemistry between the two of us that really works well here.

It's not a bad thing that people think about it like a play. I think it's good, because that means the material is strong and the acting is strong, and that's really important, of course, first and foremost. I want people to have the experience of coming [into this] like they're seeing a movie, even if they are watching it at home, which many people, I'm sure, will be doing. That's how people see most movies, nowadays.

And with Taylor, we only met for the first time about five months before we shot and I just liked her. I knew all her work from Orange is the New Black and from The Overnight, which she had done with the Duplasses. I thought of this movie as a film noir and a screwball comedy mixed together, and she had the qualities of a femme fatale and a Carole Lombard-esque screwball comedy heroine. She's beautiful and glamorous and also funny and not. This character, you just had to constantly be wondering what is going on with her, and Taylor can switch gears within a scene. She does that really well.

You mentioned the Duplass brothers, who obviously have had a lot of success on an independent level and were producers on Take Me. How integral were they to you, in terms of getting this project off the ground and running? Were they hands-on or did they trust you to go out there and direct this?

Pat Healy: Oh, they're entirely responsible for it. I did not know them that well, but I knew them from around, and we'd certainly met and talked, and they were always very complimentary towards me and I hope, I to them. I sent Jay the script and I met with Mel Eslyn, who's their producer, and the next day and they said they wanted to do it. I said, "I could get somebody else to act in it or somebody else to direct it if that would make you more comfortable," and they said, "No, no, we think it's a good idea. Here's a list of actors. Who would you like to be in it with you?" They put up all their own money for it and we sold it. There aren't words to say how thankful and grateful I am to them.

And they were completely hands-off. Mel obviously was on set every day, and while I was cutting, we were getting notes and things like that, but they really let me do what I wanted to do. They didn't micromanage me in that way. They really let me make the kind of thing that I wanted to make. Suggestions that they had always made it better, so my hat's off to them.

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In case you missed it, check out our previous coverage of the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.