HollyShorts Filmmaker Interview: COWBOY DREAMS

An interview with Paul DeNigris, director of the short film, “Cowboy Dreams.”

What is your short film about?

“Cowboy Dreams” tells the story of Wild Bill Crum, a retired gunfighter plagued by recurring nightmares of his former life. Every night in his dreams he finds himself facing down the Specter of Death himself - only to realize that he has come to the gunfight barely prepared. As the haunted gunfighter recounts his nightly ordeal to his compadres one night around the campfire, their analysis of his predicament brings to light a humorous - if mentally challenging - conclusion.



What was it about this particular project that made you want to make it?

This is a script we had been sitting on for a while. My producing partner Steve Briscoe is a prolific comedy writer and he writes short film scripts faster than we can possibly produce them. So for us it usually comes down to the question of which one of his brilliant scripts do we have the resources to make at any given moment. For “Cowboy Dreams,” so much of the production value of the film was dependent on finding the right location, the right costumes, and the right period weapons to make something true the Old West, and then the most important element was finding the right actor to take on the role of Wild Bill. And the reason we moved ahead with “Cowboy Dreams” as opposed to one of Briscoe’s other scripts was that this one happened to click with a “name” actor with whom we really wanted to work.

You have two strong leads. How did you cast your film?

This is a business of relationships, and I’m lucky that my writer-producer Steve Briscoe spent a decade or so on the professional standup comedy circuit and he is good friends with a number of the most successful comedians working today. So when we decided that “Cowboy Dreams” would be our next short film and that we wanted to land some name actors for the cast, we reached out to one of his old buddies who we thought would be wonderful to work with and would also nail the part of Wild Bill Crum - none other than the world’s most popular blue collar comedian Bill Engvall. When Bill agreed to do the film, everything was set into motion and we built the rest of the cast around him. Having secured one name actor, we figured we’d be greedy and go for two - and our ideal foil for Bill was Danny Trejo as the enigmatic tough guy named “Lobo.” Danny and I had crossed paths a number of times through mutual friends and at events like the Phoenix Film Festival, and we had talked repeatedly about working together when the right project came along. We sent the script over to Danny and his manager and they both loved the role because it’s actually quite unlike any character that Danny has played before. And luckily the stars aligned and both Bill and Danny were available on the same day.



Although characterized as a comedy, the film has a lot of dramatic tension. How did you balance the competing elements during the writing and making of the film?

The whole film is an exercise in playing with the audience’s expectations. We cast comedian Bill Engvall, but then he doesn’t have anything funny to say. We cast the scary tough guy Danny Trejo, but we gave him the punch lines. And the whole thing plays like a serious Western up until practically the last minute. The key to our whole approach to the film - from the performances to the visuals to the music - was to play it straight from the get-go, lead the audience down the road that this is a dramatic period-accurate Western and then give them a one-two punch of laughs at the end. For me, the worst thing in the world that a film can do is go exactly where you expected it go. That’s just terribly boring and uncreative in my opinion. So all of our films strive to have a twist, a surprise, a final punch that lets the viewer know they went on the ride with us for good reason. We like to call it “cracking the whip” - that last little thing at the end of film that sticks with you. And so far every audience that has seen “Cowboy Dreams” loves the ride and the unexpected destination at the end of it.



How did you go about raising the funding for the film?

Again it goes back to relationships. I am a full-time college professor - I teach Digital Video at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona. I was hired a little over six years ago and was given the task of creating the Digital Video major essentially from scratch. In that time, my students have been nominated for Emmy awards, won local film challenges, had films in film festivals all over the world, and some of my grads have gone on to work for Digital Domain, MTV, Paramount, and on productions like “Battlestar Galactica” and Flightplan. I myself won Arizona Filmmaker of the Year in 2007, and all of that adds up to the Digital Video major being one of UAT’s prestige programs. So when Bill Engvall and Danny Trejo signed on to “Cowboy Dreams” I went to the President of the University Dominic Pistillo and asked him for some of the funds we needed. He saw this as another prestige project for the University and knew that the opportunity to work with name actors would be a wonderful experience for my students who would be on our crew.

Then our good friends Brian and Dean Ronalds of Ronalds Brothers Productions came in with the rest of the funds we needed. Brian and Dean are Arizona filmmakers like ourselves, who have now taken a big step up into the industry after making their feature film NetherBeast Incorporated with Dave Foley, Darrell Hammond, and Judd Nelson to name a few. I created their animated title sequence and did a bunch of visual effects work on NetherBeast, and a number of my students had been interns on their crew. They in turn have been really helpful to us on our productions the last few years. So when they realized they could help out with some of the budget for “Cowboy Dreams” they jumped at the chance and came on board as Co-Executive Producers.



What were some of the challenges you faced in making the film?

The biggest challenge was time. We had literally ONE DAY to shoot the entire film due to the constraints of Bill’s and Danny’s schedules. Which at first glance might not seem to be all that difficult - one day to shoot five pages. But when you consider that Bill narrates all of the dream sequence - which is 75 percent of the film - while sitting at the campfire with the other cowboys, then the day’s page count is practically DOUBLED. So four pages of Bill’s dream had to be shot before sundown and then five pages of sitting around the campfire were shot after dark. Combined with the Arizona heat (we shot in May, which is not as bad as August but is still pretty hot), the dirt, bugs, and snakes on location, wrangling the horses, AND racing the sun as it sank behind the mountains - it all made for a very long, very crazy day from beginning to end. But in the end I got all my shots in the can and spent the day surrounded by a great crew and cast and we all enjoyed the experience. I still call it the single best day I’ve ever spent directing a film.



What do you hope your short film achieves?

We hope it brings to light the suffering of the poor gunfighters out there who are haunted by the lives of violence they’ve lead, who only want to get a decent night’s sleep. If just one of these men feels like their story has been told, then we know we have done our job.

All joking aside, we’re ready to make another feature film and we hope this short opens some doors to make that happen. We made a feature a few years back with no name actors and no budget, and it did really well for us in terms of festival screenings and a DVD deal - but it didn’t crack open the door to Hollywood like we had hoped. So now we’ve proven that we can work with name actors, and not only that, we have one of the most successful comedians of our time ready, willing, and eager to work with us again. So we’ve already written a feature specifically for Bill Engvall, and we have several other feature scripts ready to be made. Plus we’re writing a feature version of Cowboy Dreams which will be ready soon.



What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?

Learn the basics of film grammar, stay on top of emerging technologies in production and postproduction, and keep making movies. You’ll get better and better with each film you make. And network! It’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know - or more importantly, who knows YOU.



Which filmmakers inspire you?

Christopher Nolan, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, and of course the one who first got me interested in making films, Steven Spielberg.

What are your future projects

We are working on some new short films - a sci-fi action piece filled with visual effects, and I am in negotiations right now to do a short film follow-up to a classic film noir as my Master’s thesis. Then there are the feature films we are working on raising money for:

The Redhead - coming-of-age roadtrip movie from Buffalo, NY to Scottsdale, AZ in a classic Ferrari

Borderline - action-adventure on the Arizona-Mexico border

Joining The Race - NASCAR comedy written for Bill Engvall

Creep - black comedy about a people-loving agoraphobe in a small-town plagued by a serial killer

Click here to view the trailer or visit the official site

“Cowboy Dreams” will be screening during Program 23 on Thursday, August 13th at 4:30 PM. Click here to order tickets. Film Radar readers can receive $10.00 of the All-Access Festival Pass (regular price $50.00) or $5.00 off a daily pass (regular price: $25.00) by mentioning “FilmRadar” at the HollyShorts will call table.