Striving to uncover the seemingly upstanding but equally mysterious motives of not only your own actions and mission, but also the intentions of people who claim they want to help you succeed, can initially be a daunting task. But finally discovering the true plans that both you and those who claim to want to assist you can be a liberating experience, especially when you originally had no recollection of your actions. That intriguing exploration into discovering who has the purest goals is grippingly presented in co-writer-director Peter Winther’s new sci-fi thriller, ‘Painkillers.’ The filmmaker and one of the independent action movie’s actors, Colm Feore, generously took the time recently to discuss making the film during separate exclusive phone interviews.
‘Painkillers,’ which RLJ Entertainment will release tomorrow on DVD and Digital Video, follows a squad of marines sent on a classified mission deep in the war-torn mountains of Afghanistan finds the mysterious item they were sent for…but it’s not what they were expecting. The next thing they know, Major Cafferty (Tahmoh Penikett) and the surviving squad members wake-up in a military medical facility with no memory of what happened or even who they are. Using an experimental drug, Dr. Troutman (Feore) and his team try to reboot the soldiers’ memories, but one by one they fall prey to bizarre hallucinations and homicidal fits of rage. Only through snatches of resurfacing memories does Cafferty begin to question the true motives of the hospital staff and discover the shocking, deadly reality behind the otherworldly artifact they found.
Winther first revealed that he was interested in writing and directing a military-driven action thriller like ‘Painkillers’ because “it’s been a story that has been percolating in my head for over a decade. I finally got the discipline to sit down and write the script.” The filmmaker added that he doesn’t think he would have been able to pen the screenplay when he first came up with the idea, as he believes “you write things when you’re supposed to write them.”
The filmmaker added that “science-fiction is my favorite genre.” While Winther has written, directed and produced films in other genres, including comedy and drama, he “always come back to science-fiction. You can explore a lot of different ideas and concepts that you can’t do in a regular drama.”
After the writer-director discussed his idea for ‘Painkillers’ with his brother, Lars P. Winther, who served as one of the executive producers on the drama, they “presented it to some of our Canadian producers, Peter Horn and Julie Mitchell. We got the money together, and then went out and made the film.”
Further discussing how he co-penned the drama’s script with Jason Groce and Kirk Roos, Winther admitted that “writing is probably the most difficult part of filmmaking, because you’re alone in a room. You always have to find your motivation, because you don’t know if anyone’s going to even read the script…It’s about finding the discipline to write it.”
Winther added that he knew as he was writing the script for ‘Painkillers’ that he was going to have a limited budget once he began directing it. “Normally, I tend to write bigger, grandiose scenes. So it was a challenge because I’d think, I just wrote a great scene, but I’ll never be able to film it,” the filmmaker admitted.
“So I knew I had to scale down what I wrote, and instead focus on the characters and their emotions. I knew that we wouldn’t have the bigger special effects to carry us through the scenes,” the writer-director added. “We do have some visual effects, but the story is really more about the characters and their struggle to survive in the crazy situation they’re in.”
Further speaking about the sci-fi film’s characters, Winther explained his casting process for lead actors. “I either called the actors themselves or their agents, and said, ‘I really want this person for this part,'” the director revealed. “In the case of Tahmoh, we’re at the same agency. So I asked them if he was available, and a couple of hours later, we got on the phone together, and I told him about the story.”
The director also noted that Lesley-Ann Brandt “is someone who I had previously worked with on another film, for which I served as a producer. In that movie, she played much more of an elegant personality.” Winther then revealed that he specifically wrote the role of Guts for her in ‘Painkillers,’ “because I wanted to see her play a part that showed more of her tougher personality.”
The helmer added that Julia Voth is also someone whose acting work he has long admired. Since the actress is normally cast as characters who are mainly known for their looks, the filmmaker revealed that “I wanted to give her an opportunity to play someone who’s known more for her brains than her beauty.”
Winther also noted that Feore “is the one we got really lucky in casting. He’s constantly working, because he’s somewhat of a legendary actor. But we just got him at the right time.”
Feore explained that he was cast as Dr. Troutman in ‘Painkillers’ because Winther “asked if I’d be interested in the film. I was then sent the script, and I liked the story and the part.” The actor added that he thought the doctor “was interesting. There was a lot going on with him, and in the story overall. I also liked the themes of the story, which I thought were pretty exciting and contemporary.”
Once Feore officially signed on to play Dr. Troutman in the sci-fi thriller, he found working with Winter to be “delightful. He knows exactly what he wants. But at the same time, he’s very open and flexible to what the actors were going to bring. So it was a real collaboration. He allowed the actors to develop ideas.”
The actor also praised the writer-director for “never wasting a minute. Whether we were eating lunch on set, or going out to dinner, together, we were always talking about how we can improve the film…and add more depth to the characters.”
The performer added that “When you’re working for someone like that, who is vastly experienced, you know you can trust them.” Feore explained that the trust they built together happened quickly, as he met Winther when he first arrived to the drama’s set, and they then “hit the ground running.” With the helmer closely working with his cast, Feore felt as though the actors and filmmaker were able to create things “that we wouldn’t have thought of on our own in our hotel rooms.”
Winther also divulged that he was also lucky to be able to cast Erica Durance, “because she’s also constantly working in Canada. She’s on a big show (‘Saving Hope’),” but the director pursued casting her in ‘Painkillers’ because he’s a fan of her overall work. “We were looking for actors who have sci-fi street cred, and she absolutely has it. She was able to film her scenes for us in a few days, and we were lucky to have her.”
Once the actors were cast in their respective roles, Winther “hardly had anytime to rehearse with them. There was a lot of physical production that had to be dealt with as we were prepping the film. So out of necessity, the actors were left to their own devices, but we would talk on the phone a lot.”
Feore echoed his director’s sentiment that the cast didn’t have much time to rehearse together while they were filming ‘Painkillers.’ “Occasionally, we would go out for a meal together. But we mostly worked long hours, for as many days in a row as we could, so that we could take advantage of the locations and weather,” the actor revealed.
“So we started working together immediately, and everyone was delightful to work with. That was the most important thing,” Feore also noted. “If everyone gets along, they’ll push their energy and time, just so that they can get everything they can out of the shoot.”
Feore added that the ‘Painkillers’ cast and crew got along, and was “really fun to collaborate with…That was an enormously powerful thing. If an actor feels as though their scene partner is going to be better than they are, they’re going to up their game.”
Winther also revealed that many of the actors were able to travel to Calgary, where the sci-fi movie was being filmed, “a day or two before they had to start filming their scenes. That’s when we did some team building. Since the characters are on a military team together, they have been through a lot of battles together before. So we had to find a way to get the actors into that mode.”
Winther noted that he took the cast for gun and fight training, and they also choreographed all of the fights. “During those moments of training, I would step aside with the actors and talk to them,” the director revealed. He added that “Since it’s an independent film, we didn’t have a ton of time to shoot, so we did have to do a lot of work ahead of time…so we spent those two or three days making sure everyone knew had to work together as a military team. That time together really helped.”
Since ‘Painkillers’ is such a military-driven film, Winther added that he thought about how he was going to create the stunts for the film with the actors during his writing process. “I have also worked on a lot of big-budget films, for which you can write whatever your heart desires, because you know you can accomplish it. But with this film, we had to pick and choose the moments we wanted to include.”
The filmmaker added that he would write scenes “that would imply a lot of action. Like there’s a sequence in which they’re fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, but you hardly see their enemies.” Winther also explained that “We implied that the team was surrounded, and tried to tell the story strictly from their point of view, and what they would see. But they wouldn’t really see the insurgents, because they’re surrounding the team in the hills…That limited what we had to show the audience.”
The director noted that he felt that limited point-of-view was helpful for this film, as the main characters were struggling to regain their memories. “So that worked story-wise and budget-wise, which was a good thing…We had to find that perfect blend between business and story,” Winther noted.
Winther also discussed the experience of filming ‘Painkillers’ on location in Calgary and Drumheller in Alberta, Canada. “We had a fantastic production designer, Paul Healy, who’s based in Calgary. He did the first season of ‘Fargo,’ and he had just finished the show before he began working for us,” the helmer praised of Healy.
“We discussed what we were really going to see on screen. So we just built the areas that were going to be shown, and not entire rooms. We realized that we could just move the actors around the pieces we built,” Winther explained. “As a director, you have to know what you’re going to shoot ahead of time, so you don’t force anyone to build unnecessary things.”
Feore also discussed the process of filming ‘Painkillers’ on a set, as he noted that “Dr. Troutman is mainly stuck in his clinic. So I worked on a set that was built in a studio warehouse. Pieces of that were assembled and moved around to suit what we needed for my (character’s) clinic.”
The actor added that many of his castmates also filmed scenes “in the hills and snow, which looked very much like Afghanistan. I was spared of all of that activity, and only stepped outside for the end of one shot, and thought, this is really cold, so I’m going to go back inside,” which he laughed about as he continued discussing shooting his scenes on the set.
Feore added that “we were particularly lucky, because our set design was particularly good. It was really credible, in terms of the laboratories and the dullness that goes along with these types of clinics. So there was no acting required; everything felt absolutely correct. There wasn’t anything too glamorous, which was perfect for what we needed.”
Another crew member Winther praised was the sci-fi film’s first assistant director, Pierre Tremblay, who he has worked with on previous projects, and who has worked on such acclaimed movies as ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ Winther also enjoyed collaborating with ‘Painkillers’ Director of Photography, Kamal Derkaoui. “We had a world-class, fantastic crew out of Calgary,” the helmer noted. “The crew in Calgary is great.”
Feore also shared his thoughts on the way he approaches acting in independent films like ‘Painkillers’ versus bigger studio movies. “The acting essentially has to be the same, no matter what the budget is,” the actor explained.
“But on the other hand, you’re constantly aware that you don’t have a lot of time to rethink things. So you have to have done most of your real thinking before the production starts spending real money, and the cameras are rolling.” He said he finds that process to be exciting, but also admitted that it can be challenging “to make an independent film look like a million bucks every time you film a scene.” But he feels the cast and crew can try to do that every day if they bring their past experiences with them, and allow them to inform their current choices.
Winther noted that he thinks releasing an indie like ‘Painkillers’ on Digital Video is beneficial. “It’s not like back in the day, when films used to receive a bad reputation if they were released straight-to-video,” the director explained. “I love watching movies, and I used to go to a theater at least three times a week. But now I go maybe two times a month. I still watch the same amount of movies, but now I watch more at home.”
The director added that releasing films on VOD is beneficial because it not only allows viewers to watch movies at home at their convenience, but it also eliminates the competition they would receive from bigger studio projects if they were only released in theaters. “You also give a lot of your profits to the theater owners; they take 30 percent of your profits. Since you want your investors to make their money back, and then some, it doesn’t make sense to go theatrical anymore, unless you’re a bigger movie,” Winther explained.
“As a storyteller, I just want people to see my film, and you can get just as many viewers if you release your movie On Demand,” the director also said. “Of course, I want them to see it on the biggest screen, with the best sound, as possible. But at the end of the day, I just want them to see it…So VOD is the way to go. You’re not only seeing genre films being released this way, but also high-end art movies.” While the type of release a movie receives is determined on its individual needs, Winther noted that ‘Painkillers’ was always intended to be distributed On Demand, which he supported.
Feore also chimed in on ‘Painkiller’s VOD release, saying “I think we have to take advantage of new platforms that easily deliver content…We know that people are buying and watching things online that they never imagined doing before,” the actor said. So he thinks that allowing audiences to buy the thriller, as well as many other films, On Demand is a smart move, as it’s an inexpensive way for people to watch movies they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see. “The best thing for a filmmaker to do is to put their money on the screen, so that audiences have an option of how they can watch the movie,” Foeore added.
Written by: Karen Benardello