The Horror Revolution: Hey, thanks so much for letting me check out your film! I really enjoyed it, and I appreciate you taking the time to chat.
Gaelan Connell: First of all, thank you! We put everything we had into this film and honestly it’s very kind of you to watch it and talk with us about it!
THR: First off, what’s your favorite horror movie? What movie scared you the most?
GC: Growing up, there was one film my older brothers were always like, ‘nah, you can’t watch this, it’s too f’d up.’ So naturally I was intrigued! It’s not a typical horror movie but it has enough crazy to be horror: Akira. On the other side of the spectrum my dad intro’d me to Peter Weir - I Ioved the creepy Picnic at Hanging Rock and then in more classic horror A Nightmare On Elm Street staircase scene for whatever reason always stuck with me (see what I did there?).
THR: Art of the Hit is a really interesting film about the pursuit of fame while seeking to maintain your own creative control. What inspired the film?
GC: Definitely our own experiences of achieving some success 10-15 years ago and then finding ourselves in the proverbial creative wilderness since then. With Ryan’s character, there is something beautiful and psychologically horrific about being the last person on earth to realize his time in the spotlight is long gone. And there’s also a meta-commentary about selling out, what it means and does any of it even matter? We wanted to explore the disconnect between how the bands we grew up listening to (like Jawbreaker) got absolutely pilloried in the 90s for selling out - versus now most everything we see online is immediately benchmarked against commercial metrics: How many views? How many followers? Does it have a label?
THR: Psychological horror is so hard to do right, and I thought your film really walked the fine line and grounded itself in reality while also playing with that feeling of insanity. How were you able to blend the “hallucinations” so well with the rest of the plot?
GC: Charlie has a great answer to this, which is we both sat down to write and said “how can we torture Ryan??" (Donowho, lead actor). We also worked to humanize a lot of the very real fears musicians experience in these nightmares. But so much of this also came from the brilliant mind of Shakira Kibirige, who is an incredible special effects makeup artist, and was coming up with scary bloody gags on the fly. One time she called me on Facetime and just had bloody toothpicks sticking out of her mouth, and I screamed and then said “yes. Absolutely going into the film. 10/10 no notes.”
THR: I’m a big music guy, I may even love music more than horror. What types of music did you listen to while you were making the film, and what kind of inspiration did you receive from what you chose to listen to?
GC: Oh hell yeah. Music is everything! To me, editing a 90 minute film is (at least in my brain) like composing a musical album. The way I pace out edit is based on the sound, the score, the dialogue first and foremost, and then I love to layer the visuals on top. That’s just how my brain works. When we got the chance to use Jets to Brazil as the music the band makes - it was incredible, and then those scenes started to just develop around the music organically. I grew up listening to Jets to Brazil and Ben Kweller, and to be able to use music from both of them in the film was in-freaking-sane. We are a tiny indie film, and our rock idols both said yes - how cool is that??
THR: If you could work with anyone in the industry, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
GC: Oh man, this dude named Fred North. He’s a crazy French helicopter pilot who does the helicopter shots and stunts in basically every famous movie ever. He just seems awesome.
THR: What inspired you to want to become a filmmaker? Were there any films that made you know this is what you wanted to do with your life?
GC: I love these questions! I started making skate films for my buddies with a VX2000 and a longboard, when I was in middle school. And then at the time, folks didn’t have access to video equipment like they do now, so in school I convinced a couple of my teachers that instead of writing essays, I could do my projects as a mini film...and they agreed! I started doing homework assignments as videos on all sorts of crazy things: music videos on cold fusion for science class, lego animations on book reviews, it felt like a cheat code. This is a sidebar, but when I was 10, in a wildly implausible series of events that still to this day seems ludicrous to say out loud - I got picked from my public school to be in the film Chocolat (2000), with Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche. That experience more than anything set me on the path to wanting to make movies with my life.
THR: I appreciated that Art of the Hit was a little bit of a genre blend, with a bit of found footage here, psychological horror there, and an emotionally impactful film right up until the end. Do you have a type of horror that you prefer, and do you think that your film was a good representation of that?
GC: You are so right it’s a total blend! And it’s representative of the type of films that really inspired us to make it: The Machinist (2004), with its heavy psychological horror, Laura Hasn’t Slept! (2020) with its brilliant camera blocking, and even a non-horror masterpiece like Dig! (2004) with its non-stop dialogue and at times hard-to-watch band rivalry. I think that’s in a way what makes Art of a Hit so unique: we have a little bit of everything throughout the film. It’s been wild watching it with different audiences, because folks latch on to different things: one crowd laughed the whole way through, one crowd was on the edge of their seats freaked out, and one crowd was very emotional as the story takes it’s turns. It’s awesome!
THR: You co-wrote and directed the film. Which role do you find more rewarding, or do you think that they go hand-in-hand to creating a good film?
GC: My writing style with Charlie Saxton (co-writer, co-producer, lead actor) and my directing style is that they go hand in hand. Once we hammered out the beats of the script, we then took that to the cast, sunk into the location and just said “fuck it, we’re gonna focus on what is real, here, now.” With Ryan Donowho (lead actor) and the other actors we’d run through the scene beats, and drill down on what was the most important emotion of the scene. It didn’t matter if the lines were on the page or improvised or we got rid of them. We just chased what was real. And that’s how you end up with cool shit like one night the whole crew and cast were having dinner and someone shouted “hot damn epic sunset!!” and everyone just bolted to grab the camera, Ryan grabbed his coat and glasses and we captured some insane Joker-esque shots that made it into the final cut. That stuff happens when you embrace the chaos and just focus on chasing what’s real in front of you.
THR: What’s next for you? Are there any upcoming projects you’re excited to talk about?
GC: Charlie has been an amazing collaborator and we have a couple ideas kicking for our Dewey & Bug production co. Stay tuned!
THR: Finally, what’s your most ridiculous talent that no one knows about?
GC: Hahaha. Well since you asked, (Liam Neeson voice) “I have a very particular set of skills...” this is definitely not a skill but one year back in high school I ate Chipotle like 265 days in a row. I even went on the weekends to keep the streak alive. Why did I do this? Nobody knows.
THR: Thanks again for taking the time!
GC: Thank you!! This was awesome.
