Tribeca 2016: Director Gary Michael Schultz Talks ‘Vincent-N-Roxxy’Posted by Wilson Morales
April 19, 2016
Recently played at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival was the crime action thriller, Vincent-N-Roxxy, starring Emile Hirsch, Zoë Kravitz, Emory Cohen, Zoey Deutch, Jason Mitchell, Beau Knapp, and Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi.
Written and directed by Gary Michael Schultz from a story by producer Keith Kjarval, among the executive producers is musician Ahmir Thompson aka Questlove. Questlove also did the music for the film.
When Vincent (Hirsch) saves Roxxy (Kravitz) from a violent assailant, their lives are suddenly transformed. Strangers thrown together by circumstance, this small town loner and rebellious punk rocker find themselves on the run, hiding from the aftermath of Vincent’s intervention at his family farm. Their brief solace is shattered when they discover a common history and realize that violence and rage is, for them, inescapable.
For Schultz, his second feature is quite a departure from his film, 2013’s Devil In My Ride. Having produced a number of shorts and other projects including William H. Macy’s Rudderless, the Chicago native is certainly raising his game with interesting stories and a cast of rising stars.
In speaking exclusively with Blackfilm.com, Schultz talks about the making of ‘Vincent-N-Roxxy.’
What was the attraction to doing this story?
Gary Michael Schultz: Well, to be honest, it’s probably the most personal thing I ever wrote. I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a very diverse neighborhood. I had a single mom. She would, during summers, want to get rid of me and my brother, obviously, for some personal time. She would send me to go stay with my great-grandparents out of southern Illinois. Seeing that contrast of those two environments, it’s just something that I wanted to explore. There are similarities between city life and small-town America. That was part of it, but really what wooed me was I wanted to write a love story, and I wanted to see what America looked like today. Systematically, I’ve really done films like Badlands and Taxi Driver. I just wanted to see what that felt like today. Just pulled a lot of stuff out of my own life and tried to put it into a story I felt that really mattered, that needed to be told.
Although the lead actors are black and white, I didn’t see it as an interracial story, at least with the characters. Also, there was another black actress scheduled to play Roxxy. Was that character always going to be black?
Gary Michael Schultz: Yeah. Roxxy was always written to be a black girl. Three years ago, when I was putting this together with my producers, there were just not enough really great roles for women. Let’s say women of color. I just wanted to write one. I’m tired of seeing the same people on screen. I thought it was really important to write a story that felt very real, about a real relationship, about people fall in love. It’s not a perfect date, by the way, if you don’t fall in love. You don’t fall in love on page 25. You don’t always unfold it perfectly. I wanted to show what everything looked like today and not comment on it, in that respect. To be like, “Oh, he’s a white dude. She’s a black girl. Let’s talk about it.” That’s lame, man. That’s not what life looks like now for me.
The premise of the film is that it is a crime action thriller, but yet it’s paced out. How did you want to sort to themes out without being obvious?
Gary Michael Schultz: For me, it was trying to present the information differently. You have this story, almost a reluctant love story. I have this character who seems to be the antihero. The idea of making you feel like it’s going to be Vincent’s story, but really it’s Roxxy’s story all along. She’s the protagonist. She makes all the decisions. She chooses to go. She chooses to come back. She chooses to stay. She chooses to do the things she’s going to do throughout the film. In order to hopefully allow you to forget what happened in the beginning and allow you to think that the story is now about the second act, about Vincent and his brother, about what family is.
Family isn’t always who you’re related to. A lot of times it’s who you surround yourself with. We’re just allowing it to be about life. It’s always reminding you, in a subtle way, of there’s this secret that Vincent’s carrying.
For me, without revealing too much, the script was this really big onion with layers. Trying to present that in a way that a lot has kind of come apart, teeth by teeth. Also, it’s as simple as saying paintings of love and family that is infected with violence throughout the second act with the V story line of JC and his beef in town. With Vincent, that was always interesting. He was always kind of like a house of cards. Everything intertwined, affecting everything else. I don’t know mentally how do you justify what Roxxy does at the end. Violence is not pretty. It’s scary as hell. In order for the audience to justify that third act where Roxxy goes on a rampage. I think they want to root for her, but what she’s doing is questionable. I like asking those questions. I like the audience to be hopefully talking about that, hopefully discussing what’s right and wrong.
How did you come about putting together this cast? Did you know Jason Mitchell would blow up within a year or so after Straight Outta Compton?
Gary Michael Schultz: The answer is you never know, but I am so in love with my cast. It’s one of the biggest joys I’ve ever had working as a filmmaker, is working with this cast.
It started with Zoe Kravitz, obviously, and Emile Hirsch. Getting those two was a huge win for the time, but they were just who I wanted. I felt like they were right. Emory Cohen is JC. We auditioned a lot of JCs. As soon as I met Emory, I’m like “This is JC.” He just understood that character and that world so well. Having Zoey Deutch as my fourth pave the way, if you will, and completed that family.
From there, it was getting other great actors into it. We weren’t finding anybody we really loved for Cordell down in New Orleans. My casting director said what about Jason Mitchell? I knew that they had just finished filming Straight Out of Compton. Of course, I was interested. I met with Jason and I’m like yeah, a hundred times over. Since then, we’ve become really great friends. He’s one of my favorite people that I met doing Vincent-N-Roxxy and who I know I’ll do a lot more stuff with. Then, of course we rounded it out with Scott. Getting Mescudi to come do something that he’s completely has never done before, I think the audience is going to be pretty excited about that, I hope. I hope they’re going to see something just fresh. I’m really blessed on this film, man. I try to surround myself with artists I really respect. I was really excited and grateful to have them. Even Questlove is doing music for the movie. We need a legend.
To talk to people of that caliber. I hope that that shows in the film. I hope people understand how careful I’ve been with these characters and this story and the way I presented it. Because I would not have gotten the talent that I had around me to make this possible if it didn’t come from a real place. All these people call out bullshit. Everything that I do in this film came from a really personal place and I told all my actors a lot of really personal stories. They got that and they bought into it. They bought into it.
I read somewhere that said this was based on Keith’s story. Was their any difference that you put together besides having his story?
Gary Michael Schultz: No. The story is something that Keith and I developed together. I moved out to Los Angeles from Chicago about three and a half years ago. Keith is also from Chicago. We had met a decade and a half ago back when I was in film school and he was getting ready to come out and start producing in LA. There was just this energy between us. He’s my boy and I just felt like we understood each other. When I moved out, it was to write and direct for Keith and to produce films with him. So I moved out to LA and produced a couple movies together.
We started developing the story that became Vincent-N-Roxxy off of it. This movie, it’s initial idea was something that I wanted to do and that was what you commented on in the beginning, was tell a love story that was about two characters that were different, but not really comment on the differences. Let’s talk about how actually they’re the same.
That’s what we did. Keith just backed it up. He even wanted to do something that was going to be really challenging. That’s what he’s about. Not being the same. Let’s go and make something that’s unique. Keith and I developed this story. I turned it into a script. Went away just writing like crazy. Then after that it was casting it. We agreed people like Mary Vernieu and I have great producers. The cast came together really because of them. I think ultimately it comes down to the material no matter what. You can do the cool, feeding the world. If the material’s not special, people aren’t going to want to do it. Again, it just comes back to the attention to the details. The attention to trying to make something that is really unique, really realistic, a very organic love story that’s not genre clothing.
Having produced a bunch of shorts and you already directed one film, how much did you learn after you completed your second film?
Gary Michael Schultz: I learned a lot on my first film. It was a B movie I did on no money. I traveled across the country filming with a couple of my buddies. That was it. It didn’t show people like what to do or nothing. That, I off lead to be a professor at Columbia College. You can’t really teach people film unless you have a really strong understanding. I had to go back to school myself, to make sure that I was ready for this film. To be honest, I’d never been more prepared for something in my life. It felt like a decade plus of getting prepared for this story. Hopefully, this is a coming out party because this is the most special thing I’ve every tried to put into the world from a film perspective. Again, it’s about having a team around you. I got to produce a couple of films with Unified Pictures and Keith Kjarval. Getting to work them really intimately. They get you a really great shorthand so when you’re on set you’re not dealing with the bullshit. You have a team that supports you to make a really challenging film.
Do you have your next project in mind?
Gary Michael Schultz: I’m developing another project with Unified Pictures that I hope to roll into this fall. That’s our plan. I’m going to keep that on a secret until after the festival. That will be the next thing I do. People are always sending stuff. No matter what I do next, it’s got to be something personal. I just don’t know that I’m the kind of director that can do something I’m not emotionally invested in. I can do it, but you spend so much of your life with your project, with you film, and so it has to be something that you just believe in every frame of it. I know with Vincent-N-Roxxy, I believe in every frame that’s on screen.
