Exclusive: Writer/Director J.D. Dillard Talks ‘Sleight’

I recently sat down with J. D. Dillard, writer and director of ‘Sleight,’ which hits theaters April 28th. We talked about the film, its comic book prequel, and geeked out over ‘Star Wars.’

What inspired you to tell this story?

JD: I’ve grown up doing magic—it’s just something that I’ve loved for a very long time. I think in coming back to L. A.—I left the country for a little bit, and in coming back I just wanted to find something that sort of played with the sensibilities my co-writer, Alex, and I have—like loving genre and science fiction and all of that—but then finding something that we could, you know, shoot in our backyard, something we could shoot in L. A., and something we could do inexpensively. Very naturally, there seemed this cool overlap between the skill set of magic and the skill set of working in crime—like deceit sort of requiring a love of savviness and intuition and all of that. We kind of landed on the story of ‘Sleight,’ and just realized that that’s something that we could self-produce. Being really aggressive and excited about trying to make our own movie, this seemed like the perfect way to test it out.

Did any films particularly influence ‘Sleight’?

JD: We looked mostly at British crime dramas. I’m obsessed with ‘Luther’ and ‘Broadchurch’ and ‘Happy Valley’ aesthetically and texturally. There were weirdly so many points of intersection that we found in these crime dramas even down to the framing; they utilize negative space a lot, the composition is always kind of cool, and they crunch people into pieces of the frame. That’s definitely something that we took into account when we were putting the look book together for ‘Sleight.’

What was the process of getting the movie funded?

JD: Kinda unlike anything I’ve ever done. I met this kid, Eric Fleischman, who eventually became our good friend and producer—but I met him at a Halloween party. I think I may have been dressed as DCI John Luther that year, and he was telling me that he shoots four to five movies a year for under four-hundred grand. It just seemed kinda sketchy, but he seemed really nice. I took a meeting with him a few weeks later in a much more sober, quiet environment, and we hit it off. He became the first person we talked to about ‘Sleight,’ and shortly after, he financed it. I can’t really complain about getting ‘Sleight’ off the ground as far as its finances are related.

It seems like ‘Sleight’ could be an origin story of sorts; are you thinking about a sequel?

JD: There’s plenty of territory to tell more story. Even in the way the movie ends, we very intentionally set it up that way. It’s certainly a world and a cast of characters that we do love, and we’d love to continue that story. In terms of where that makes the most sense—whether that’s series or feature or some other medium, we’re not a thousand percent sure. But in the opposite direction we do have the comic book coming out, which is actually sort of a brief prequel to the movie. It explains some of the key elements that are already at play once the movie starts, and it kinda shows how Bo arrived there.

Is the comic book part of a series?

JD: It’s just a one-off prequel to the movie.

How did you try to strike balance between the realistic and more science-fictiony elements of the film?

JD: It’s kind of two fold. One, it’s Alex’s and my default to tell science fiction in that way—we’re just naturally less attracted to the more supernatural, fantastical element of it. Part of it was pragmatic in terms of its budget as well. We had to think about like, if we are shooting this ourselves using very limited resources, what do we actually have access to. And what we have in the movie is pretty much the most we thought we could do.

Did you use practical effects?

JD: As much as we could—a lot of what’s in the movie was happening onset. It became more about wire removal and things like that—more so than completely fabricating CG elements because we just knew, again, even going into it that that was going to be more cost effective since we weren’t working with a giant VFX house to get it done.

You mentioned your co-writer; can you tell me a little bit about your writing process?

JD: I write with a good friend of mine, Alex Theurer, and we’ve been writing together for like, six or seven years. ‘Sleight’ was actually different than how our process normally works because of the amount of time we wanted to get the draft done in. Normally, we kind of do this leapfrogging thing where he’ll write pages one through five, send them to me, and I’ll revise one through five and then write five through ten and send it to him, and he’ll revise one through ten and then write to fifteen—we’ll kind of do that until there’s a script. But in this case, over the course of four or five days we sat down together in front of a television and wrote the whole thing, both looking at it at the same time. That was a fresh approach to our process. We outline and notecard quite meticulously, so once we’re in Final Draft, the movie can come together pretty quickly. But yea, most of the work was done in preparation of actually opening a script.

You mentioned that you loved magic when you were a kid; did you draw on anything else personal when you were writing ‘Sleight’?

JD: It is sort of this weird aggregate of my childhood. Bo is very science forward, and I grew up taking apart computers and building electronics and learning how to code and all of these sort of weird, unrelated hobbies—magic included. Beyond that, just even loosely, the story of Bo losing his mother—while my mother is very much alive and healthy, the year before we made the movie my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s doing great and continues to do great, but I think in even asking yourself that question for the first time, like, “What would happen and will things be alright?”—it was enough to explore that feeling a little bit.

Are you at liberty to tell me anything about ‘The Fly’?

JD: We’re leaving in two weeks to go shoot ‘Sweetheart,’ this movie with Kiersey Clemons, which I’m so obsessed with; but you know, as we continue to look for new territory and new stories to tell—the fly is one that we’re really really excited about, and we’ve been having some really fun conversations with Fox about how to get back into this world and get back into this franchise. We’re still in negotiations on that, so know on wood that it becomes real. We’re excited about that one.

What’s your dream movie to helm?

JD: With no doubt, ‘Star Wars.’ I mean, I have a Boba Fett tattoo on my arm—I like ‘Star Wars’ a little bit.

That’s actually the answer I was fishing for. Do you have any idea what direction you’d take something like that in?

JD: My dream ‘Star Wars’ movie would I think go—I mean, first, I love the character Boba Fett; I think you run the risk with that character of how do you make him a sort of likeable hero based on the work that he does. But that challenge is something I find very interesting. One thing that I’ll continue to want from the ‘Star Wars’ universe is getting into the subcultures of that world. With a character like Boba Fett—or pretty much any of the unsavory characters—you get access to slums and ghettos where people are poor—in funny ways, so many things that ‘Sleight’ also touches on. You just get to see a very real-life quality, and you get to explore planets and worlds that the franchise hasn’t taken us to yet.

Do you have any upcoming projects?

JD: ‘Sweetheart’ is the movie we’re doing with Blumhouse in may. We’re shipping off to Fiji. It’s kind of a horror survival film that plays with some of the genre elements we really like, and hopefully we can carve some new territory through it. But Blumhouse has been incredible in helping us with ‘Sleight.’ They acquired us out of Sundance and have been such incredible partners through that, so it really made sense to put our next project over there and keep working with them.

The ‘Sleight’ comic book, which offers an interesting and well-illustrated into the events immediately preceding the film, can be read online for free. (https://www.sleightcomic.com/app/)

Photo courtesy of Facebook.