Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 18, 2012, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
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Living in Los Angeles can be scary, but especially so for Suziey (Suziey Block), the heroine of Entrance. This quiet chiller was directed, co-scripted and co-produced by Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath, who discussed its creation with Fango.
Entrance is just as much a character study as a fright film, the first half following Suziey through a daily routine that has led her to feel alienated from the city and people around her. Slowly but surely, though, the filmmakers build a sense of menace that eventually erupts into full-blown horror. It’s quite a change of pace from Horvath’s previous genre entry, the comic zombie opus Die-ner (Get It?), and as the filmmakers reveal, Entrance rose from the ashes of another extravagant, but ill-fated, project…
How did Entrance first come about?
DALLAS HALLAM: It was kind of a long process, and then it ramped up really quick to get made. Pat and I had been working together for years, and I was the AD on Die-ner, and then I was trying to set up a project right after that I would direct; it was something I’d been trying to get off the ground for years. I finally thought it was gonna happen, I had all the balls in the air, and then, as so many things do, it just kind of fell apart. It was called Land of Dust and Water; I wanted to make a very sincere love story that was at the same time the goriest movie ever made. It would have been body horror—a lot of people fusing together and bodies coming apart and all that kind of stuff. But it fell apart, and out of its ashes came Entrance, because we just needed to make something; we had all these creative juices flowing, and I had $6,000 in the bank from a job I’d just finished. So I approached Pat with the basic idea, which he liked, and within a month, the film was made.
You mean actually completed as far as the shooting?
HALLAM: Yeah. We had all this energy built up from gearing up for the other movie, and a real desire to work. And fate really worked on our side, because a lot of things fell into place—the locations, the actors, who turned out to be awesome—really quickly and easily. So within a month we’d gone from no script, just the basic idea, to having shot the movie.
Entrance has five credited writers/producers, including yourselves and Block. Did everyone pitch in with ideas and come up with the screenplay as a collective?
There are different credits for different things. Michelle [Margolis], my wife, and her friend Karen Gorham really got the conversation started on just making something after everything fell apart. Pat and I structured the whole screenplay, but that said, the character of Suziey was very much based on input from Michelle and Karen, and their perspectives on being women in Los Angeles and whatnot. And then, a lot of the dialogue was semi-improvisational, so the writing credit needed to be spread out more.
The way it worked was that Pat and I had a very detailed script that would say, “INT. SALON – DAY. Suziey sits down to get her hair cut, and she and Karen talk about this and that.” And it would note the things we needed to get across. We worked with the actors and did a ton of rehearsing, and then we would shoot and allow them, through preparing and getting to know their characters and knowing what we needed to get across, to improvise their own dialogue. Only occasionally we would have to stop and say, “Oh, that’s a great line, let’s reuse that,” or “Let’s do it again, but focus more on this other thing you guys were talking about.”
How did you divide the directing chores on Entrance?
PATRICK HORVATH: Well, Dallas shot the whole thing. Basically, the tiny crew we had was Dal shooting, I was behind him with a monitor and we had our sound guy. That was, for the most part, our entire crew. So we would both give notes, and as we were going through it, Dallas would help out doing the camera placement and the blocking, and we would both chime in with the emotional and story points that needed to be hit. We kind of share the same brain in a lot of ways. It wasn’t stepping on toes or anything; it was actually pretty easy.
HALLAM: A big rule for us was to never argue or disagree in front of people on set, but we never had to deal with that rule because it just didn’t happen. We knew the script so well, and Pat and I had known each other for over a decade. We went to film school together and were already speaking the same language, so it was very easy to communicate. At the beginning of each day, we’d know what we needed to get done and had already talked about it, so when the actors got there, Pat would tell them what the scene was and what they needed to do for it, I would do the blocking and we just started working. It was very easy.
This is a very different kind of horror film from Die-ner; did it take any kind of adjustment to get into the mindset for this particular project?
HORVATH: Not at all, to be honest. Dallas and I both love all sorts of films. Horror is definitely the big genre we respond to, but we both love Ingmar Bergman films, we both love Charlie Chaplin films; we’re all over the place. So in terms of getting into the mindset for this, it definitely wasn’t a challenge.
How did you wind up casting Block as Entrance’s lead? She’s terrific, and feels very natural in the part.
Yeah, Suziey’s just golden. She’s a wonderful person, and honestly, our movie wouldn’t have had any of the success it has at any point without Suziey. I feel very much indebted to her. She came in to read for that ill-fated project I mentioned earlier, and I thought she was great and really responded to her. She wasn’t right for that movie—which I regretted, because she was my favorite person I met during that whole casting process—but she just wasn’t quite right for the character I needed in that movie. But when it fell apart, and I suggested to Pat that we make this very stripped-down character study/slasher movie, I said, “I know the exact girl, and I promise you she’s perfect.” Pat and I trust each other, so he knew that I was right, and I immediately contacted her. Oh, and when I told Suziey she didn’t have the part in the other movie, she very aggressively tried to change my mind [laughs], and let me know that I was wrong and that she was right for the part. That spunk also stuck with me.
Some of the violent scenes toward the end, done in long takes, seem like they would have been logistically complex to shoot. Did those pose any particular problems?
HALLAM: They were difficult, and this speaks for Suziey about what a trouper she is: Pat and I had to be very careful not to abuse her. What I mean by that is, the last three nights we shot were extraordinarily difficult physically for Suziey, and she was such a go-getter that she would never say, “This is too hard,” or “I’m tired, I can’t do it again.” We had to, together, gauge where she was at, so we didn’t hurt her.
Was the movie shot in sequence?
HALLAM: Yeah, in a sense it was. I mean, no movie is completely shot in sequence, but ours was pretty close.
HORVATH: Yeah, I think there were a couple of pickup shots we did later. But to help keep Suziey in the headspace she needed to be in, in terms of everything that happens and trying to figure out just how lost she is in Los Angeles, we did stick pretty close to a chronological sequence.
HALLAM: Another reason was that the first half of the movie is comprised of a daily routine, and then we corrupt it with the horror element. Part of that routine was feeding the dog, and you can’t feed a dog five times in a row without it getting sick. And Suziey was working, too, so we had to schedule different chunks for her to shoot: “Suziey, you have to be here at 8 a.m. to feed Darryl for a shot.” Then she would go to work and come back later for something else.
The film is very subtle in the way it builds up its horror; there’s practically none for pretty much the first half. Were you concerned about losing the genre audience through that approach?
HORVATH: Yeah, to a certain degree, though the movie was first of all an experiment. We had this idea—wouldn’t it be interesting to do a horror film this way? And then once we started pulling it off… I think you start catering to the audience when you start second-guessing everything you’re doing, and it was sort of the same way with Die-ner, just in terms of not knowing if it was horrific enough for everybody or not horrific enough for people.
HALLAM: We certainly have gotten some reviews for Entrance from horror people who think it’s boring; they don’t like it because it’s so slow. I just feel like there’s no way around that. I don’t think we can solve that.
Are you working on any other horror projects right now?
HALLAM: Yeah, Pat and I are developing a Christmastime horror movie called MIDWINTER right now, a dysfunctional-family-gathering/Christmastime horror movie. We were kind of like, “Hey, we need [more Christmas horror movies]—we’ve got GREMLINS…”
HORVATH: BLACK CHRISTMAS… There are a bunch more, but none that take it reaallly seriously. We’re actually doing something that’s more like HELLRAISER at Christmastime.
So there’s a supernatural element to this one?
HALLAM: There is, but that’s all I can say, because it’s part of the construction of the suspense. But we’re going to go all the way with it!
