The LA premiere took place on Thursday, the 19th, and was held within an intimate setting at The London in West Hollywood. (If you aren’t familiar with The London, it’s swanky enough for most A-listers to frequent their stay. Boyfriend of billionaire, Kylie Jenner and rapper, Travis Scott, even dedicated an entire song to it, saying to ‘meet me at The London.’)
While the premiere’s setting was fancy enough for the bourgeoisie, getting to this point wasn’t exactly easy. With an extremely low budget, McMullin talks about how his film heavily relied on family and friends who were willing to support his creative vision.
“We shot part of the film in my older sister’s house,” McMullin said. “It was that kind of movie. I mean my mom would drop off snacks. It was a little bigger than a student film.”
He went on to say that whenever they’d run into a problem, the community of New Jersey would help out in any way they could.
“If we needed a prop or a boat, there were neighbors that we called,” McMullin said. “…old Teachers, uh, yeah, that community really opened their doors.”
However, he mentions how the low budget was not the only challenge. Just like McMullin’s life as a boy, there’s multiple scenes that take place on the beach, where outdoor elements were a factor.
Alex Neustaedter informed me that the hot sun, sand, wind and general public were nothing in comparison to the flies.
“Did you hear about the flies? They’re just flesh eating flies that will just land on you, ya know, whatever part of exposed skin you have and just eat you,” Neustaedter recalls. “And it hurts. You literally have to hit it off. And they’re so fast you can’t really kill them so…”
While shooting this film may have been smooth sailing if they had the option to shoot on an air-conditioned sound stage back in Hollywood, obstacles like these allowed the cast to get comfortable with one another.
“Adversity tends to bring people closer together,” McMullin said. “Just combating the elements together, trying to hunker down and tell a story really did bond us.”
Daniel Zolghardi joked that they made a home out of a cheap hotel they stayed in while filming.
“We all stayed in this little Holiday Inn off of the freeway… that was like our den,” Zolghardi said.
Despite Low Tide being filmed two years ago, it’s clear that casting directors, Lois J. Drabkin and Susan Shopmaker, knew what they were doing from the start. Each of these adolescent actors have gone onto work on successful projects in the industry since. Jaeden Martell just starred in IT, Alex Neustaedter in AXL and Daniel Zolghadri in Eighth Grade.
As for Keean Johnson, I was especially excited to sneak in a question or two about Euphoria Season 2. HBO announced it’ll be picked it up again due to its massive popularity. Johnson plays ‘Daniel’ who portrays the problematic realities of toxic masculinity when pursuing Sydney Sweeney’s character, ‘Cassie.’ While Johnson says he doesn’t know if scripts have been written yet, he lures me in when describing what he’d like to see from Daniel, if he’s included in the next season.
“I’m sure a lot of people want me to come forward and apologize for what I have done but as an actor that’s not necessarily as fun,” Johnson said. “So I would just like to just go deeper and deeper into the F’d-up-ness because I’ve never played anything like it. So it would be fun to play someone that, I guess, negative and horrible… There was something interesting about playing that person.”
With talks of more upcoming projects on the rise from each of these young actors, Low Tide will always be a landmark in their careers for these promising actors to look back on.
Low Tide will be available for streaming on October 4th.
