I had the pleasure of talking with director/writer/actor Evan Glodell about his critically acclaimed indie film “Bellflower.”
Give us some background on “Bellflower.” You wrote and directed it. How did you come up with the concept?
I went through a break-up a long time ago. It was a little more intense than I expected it to be. In the wake of that and trying to figure out what had happened, I was working on the first version of the script. That was in 2003. I’ve been trying to get the movie made ever since.
What was the filming like for “Bellflower?” What was your shooting schedule and such?
The main shoot took place during the summer of 2008. We shot for almost 90 days straight. All my friends and me decided to go in on this project since we weren’t able to get funding. We went at it and decided we were not going to stop shooting until we got everything. We got most of it, but there were some things we didn’t because we exhausted so many of our resources. We couldn’t drive three cars two hours out of town to shoot something in the desert. For the next two and a half years, I was editing and doing pick-ups whenever I could.
What was the biggest challenge you faced with “Bellflower?”
We never felt like we had what we needed to get started. We finally just set a date because we were never going to have what we needed. We would be in the middle of shooting and run out of money. We wouldn’t have gas to drive across town to the house where we were supposed to be shooting at. The other big challenge was within me. We would get a little further along and no one would ever seem to be showing any interest. I started to think I was insane. It was just a challenge not to give up.
You play the character of Woodrow in the film. Is that because you identified with him more than the other characters in the film?
It’s not supposed to be a recreation of the relationship but it’s very heavily based on it. The character was always some twisted version of me in my mind. I didn’t want to play the part because I didn’t particularly like acting or feel very confident about my skills. I was looking for people and I realized I was never going to find anyone at this point and I probably wasn’t experienced enough to get the performance out of an actor that I was going to need.
What did you end up spending on the film when it was all finished?
We went through and looked at the records of anything we actually had to buy. It was around $17,000.00. Most of that went into the car and for gas money.
Where did you film most of “Bellflower?” Did you have to get permits for filming?
The movie was shot in Ventura County. It was shot mostly in the city of Ventura. We should have had permits. It’s calculated risks, I guess. If we were doing something that was going to attract a lot of attention, we set everything up and then everybody would have a job. As soon as the shot was done, someone grabbed the camera, someone else grabbed the cables, another person grabbed the tripod, and another person grabbed the cards. I know we did that a couple of times. We would do the shot and be gone in less than five minutes.
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