This amazing cast brings to life one of the craziest stories of the 20th century in a sincere way. Get to know the men behind the magic.
The story of Brave New Jersey might be a story best found in a category such as “stuff you missed in history class” as only true history buffs will be really familiar with this story. When Orson Welles did his famous War of The Worlds radio broadcast, the United States, already high off of the fear of the tension in Europe of the late 1930s, went over the edge when millions of Americans believed that the nation was under attack by aliens. All over the country people panicked, however, one specific town in New Jersey near the fabled landing ground of the aliens felt that the threat was imminent. That town treated that night as their last on Earth, and that erratic time serves as the setting for this film.
It’s a truly incredible story but the real wonder is the awesome cast that came together to make it. Evan Jonigkeit and Bill Coelius who star in the film were great to see on screen and even better to chat with. They gave their insights on the difficulties of bringing their characters to life, the hard but fun journey of working on such an ambitious indie project, and all of the little funny things that happened on set. Kelly Winrich, who did the score for the film, shared his interesting insight on the difficulties and immense fun associated with writing songs for a movie, rather than for his band. Michael Dowling wrote the script with director Jody Lambert, and he gave us insight as to the process the script and film went through before it got made and got a budget. If you’re a fan a indie films, be sure to check out our candid interviews with these amazing guys below:
Michael, Talk a little about why you and Jody decided to do an indie period piece.
Michael: I don’t know if we thought this was going to be an independent movie, we just read this Orson Welles by David Thomson called Rosebud. There was a passage about the War of The Worlds broadcast and Jody was a dear friend of mine. We started to knock that idea back and forth and we thought maybe this could be a cool movie, not so much talking about the broadcast, but talking about people in a small town who feel it’s their last day on Earth. Living with regrets. People unsure with their previous life. Then we just wrote the script. We weren’t thinking of the budget when we wrote it. We just kind of wrote what we wanted and it turned out to be independent instead of a big studio movie which I think we were kind of blessed with actually. So to answer your question, it wasn’t an independent movie in our heads, we just sort of wrote it and the producers quickly told us all the things we had to cut to make it an independent movie. We just wrote what was in our heads and in our hearts and in our guts.
One thing that’s great about the film is how much time it gives each character to tell their own stories. All the characters sort of feel like they have their own arc. How tough was it to weave all those storylines together?
Michael: Yea, that was tricky. In the first draft there was even more storylines. And that draft was terrible. We thought we were like Robert Altman. I think that writing is a craft, it’s like carpentry, you have tools and you have to figure out how to make it work. Jody and I began to realize when you have an ensemble piece you have to realize where you’re leaving the storyline when you come out of a scene, then you have to pickup that storyline in another scene and make sure those things link together pretty clearly. When you drop out of storyline, you feel like “oh, I want to know what happens next”.
Can you tell us a bit about conceiving Evan and Bill’s characters?
Michael: Yea, they were in the script from the beginning. This is interesting. Sparky [Evan] was always in the script. We had this idea that Sparky was this Chris Klein, kind of football-y guy, dopey. When Evan came i realized this character is so much cooler than was in our head, like this scrappy guy that she’s had her eye on forever. It’s almost like Matt’s character, who plays Chardy, almost became what we pictured Sparky to be like. Bill’s character, what I learned about shooting a movie, is that you may have all these different characters, farmer #1, and so on, and the producers will say you have to combine these, so Bill, who we knew, we got to combine these secondary characters. That’s how Bill’s character kind of came, combining these extra characters into one thing.
Your character is sort of an agitator. Can you elaborate on how you expanded that from the script to on set?
Evan: I honestly just loved the sweetness of the story. I just read the script and thought this guy is so funny. I thought he was so silly and hilariously funny. Well, I’m just going to kind of go for it. Then we got on set and it kind of morphed and changed and became this other thing. I was so pleased with the whole process.
Was there a favorite moment you guys have from the shoot?
Bill: For me, it was just working with everyone from Tennessee. Which is where we filmed the movie. The big final scene was mine. The fight coordinator is bringing out about 50 guns and laid them all out on the table and all the extras are all the locals and they’re grabbing guns and trading guns and the shotgun gets handed to me and I’ve never shot a gun in my life and I go “oh, this is cool”. Then an extra comes up to me and says “that’s not how you hold a shotgun”. He showed me how to hold it and we paused for a second and he said “You learned something?” and I said yea, “Do you own guns?” and he goes “Yea, I got a few” and by a few he meant 20. So I asked “Are you packing now?” And he said “Nah, this is fun. But I do bring a gun with me to work in Memphis.” I asked, “What do you do?” and he goes “I make wine”. And everyday was like that. We were there for three weeks, four weeks.
How much time did you get to work with your partners out of scene? Did you get any time for that? Any issues?
Evan: No, no. Me and Anna [Camp] got on really well from the get go. I was back and forth a lot throughout the entire process.
Michael: Yea, he came into the process a little later. Tony Hale and Heather Burns did a little work before but I think that was really it. Everyone got on the same page pretty quickly.
Kelly, from a composing perspective, did you start early in the process or mostly in shots at the end?
Kelly: It started originally with him sending me the screenshots of the scenes and one of the songs that didn’t end up in the movie is actually one of the songs that the band that I play was one of the songs he was using to visualize the running through the smoke with the guns. It was a very epic scene. But yea he sent screenshots of tonally what we were shooting and the beginning was just sending me songs in this kind of genre. Eventually we got an early cut of the film and got to craft the songs to fit the scenes. It was a learning process.
How in-depth do you get with the songs when it comes to characters?
Kelly: There’s a song he writes in the movie and that was written prior. That was an easy no brainer theme to incorporate in the scenes. That valley comes in different forms in different scenes kind of subtly and kind of literally. But yea, it’s the first time I’ve ever done this. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had making music.
Why should people watch this movie?
Bill: It is sweet, it is funny. Everyone in this production worked their butt off and it is unlike anything you’ve seen. I think for a comedy it’s not sarcastic, it’s not jokey it’s not angry, it’s pure and a delight.
