"For us it was really the teen comedy first being at the heart of it, and then just being like... what if we took all these characters from a team comedy and just start killing them?"
"Exactly."
Actors-turned-filmmakers Billy Bryk (Saturday Night, Friendship) ed us in Studio 9 to discuss teaming up to write and direct their feature debut, the coming-of-age thriller-comedy Hell of a Summer, which had its World Premiere at TIFF '23.
"Recent monster movies are full of images of big cities being destroyed. In the old monster movies, it was much scarier to have them land in ordinary fishing villages. It's much more frightening to have your house destroyed than a big city."
"Everything that was relevant when I was starting to become a filmmaker has completely changed, the landscape is completely different. We independent filmmakers get together and we say 'Have you been able to finance your next project? No, I haven't either.' That's where we're at. So there are new ways to get into filmmaking, even if it's not mainstream."