Very much a regular on DN, director Joel Jay Blacker returns to our pages today for the premiere of Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down, the self-professed “weird sister film” to his previously featured short Shoes Off. Both were filmed in tandem in the same location, with the same crew over two batshit nights which is no mean feat and carries through a wonderfully built-in frantic energy. Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down is a fantastic example of a film which makes you want to scream at its characters as their toe-curlingly awkward, and very much self-inflicted encounter with a charred shirtless stranger shifts from avoidable to inexorable. With notes of horror, Western melodies and the introduction of a character who you crave to know more about but are equally terrified of, Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down will certainly give you pause should a bearded stranger pop his head over your garden gate. It was our pleasure to catch up with Blacker for the film’s premiere to learn how back to back night shoots made the crew feel almost as crazy as Kyle but precise storyboarding kept things on track and his techniques for immersing audiences in the awkward comedic tension which pulsates from the screen.
Who is Kyle and why don’t we want him to sit down?
Kyle is a manifestation of that palpable feeling of dread you might experience when stuck in a situation you’d rather not be a part of. It’s that feeling, just before panic sets in, that you get when the possibility of something terrible happening starts to become real. Or, nothing happens, and you’re left with bizarre discomfort and a weird story to tell. Before Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down was titled Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down, it was called Weird Night as that’s exactly what we were after. It was more a thematic draft-one title. Nick Logsdon shared the script with me when it was just half a script. It was the inkling of an idea, and the possibilities of Kyle seemed endless with an insane amount of directions we could take. Now that I think of it, Kyle could have been a choose-your-own-adventure in which Kyle never does the option you pick.
Kyle is a hero, a menace and also someone who I would want at a party to entertain the crowds but then equally be keen to get rid of.
We were more so interested in the lore we were creating for Kyle and playing with the archetype of a character who we’re never really sure of. One who forever contradicts the audience’s expectations at any given moment making him both elusive and frightening. The possibility of Kyle is endless and so our mind wanders, but never enough to figure out Kyle’s next move. As the hero, we can’t decide if he’s the protagonist or an antagonist and creating someone with that lore just felt special.
I wanted to live in the stillness, giving the camera very little movement throughout, so that even the smallest action or movement from Kyle felt alarming.
You called this the weird sister film to Shoes Off, how do they work together but also stand alone?
We shot Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down in tandem with Shoes Off. Both films were shot back to back, each in a single night at the same location, with the same crew. It just seemed to make sense to both Nick and I to do it that way as we were keen to accomplish both. A night shoot is hard…two in a row had us feeling as crazy as Kyle. Shoes Off and Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down both attempted to explore discomfort, but in different ways.
Where Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down differed was in our camera approach. We shot on an Alexa Mini LF. The sensor allowed us the ability to shoot with very little light, using minimal accent lighting to keep Kyle dark and mysterious. I wanted to live in the stillness, giving the camera very little movement throughout so that even the smallest action or movement from Kyle felt alarming. Then we drastically shift the energy of the film going handheld to create the feel of a chase scene. The hope was that the stark shift would feel like the rush you’d get when circumstances change and you get closer to that potentially terrible thing happening.
When you’re exhausted and your creative energy is depleted, it felt so refreshing to have done that creative thinking already, I could stay focused on the performances.
What can you attribute to successfully pulling off filming Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down and Shoes Off on consecutive nights?
Storyboarding was wildly helpful. Despite it being a minimal shot list, Our DP Jared Freeman and I were extremely specific with the framing, and so having a shot list with designated boards that we could look at on the night meant zero downtime. We knew every set up. When you’re exhausted and your creative energy is depleted, it felt so refreshing to have done that creative thinking already, I could stay focused on the performances. When you’re tired, and your brain’s resorted to a child’s, it’s nice to have a picture book.
What about the tone and style of comedy we see across your films speaks to and inspires you as a filmmaker?
I really love living in the comedic tension of spaces between conversations. Needing someone to say something, and then to have them not say anything at all is almost always funny to me. Figuring out that line and for how long I can create that space is always so hard. It also makes room for the inverse effect. I like to cut away fast from something that might have been really important because it becomes irreverent and that’s always funny to me.
He was perfect to play this wild take on a classical Western hero/alien hybrid.
How did you cast for this impressive tonal mashup of characters who I wish I could hang with?
I was most excited about working with an ensemble cast for this film. Casting is my favorite part of the process and I approached it far differently than I had on other projects. With the film taking place primarily around a fire with very little action, the cast has to captivate and communicate a lot with just a few looks. Patrick Arter was the only actor I’d worked with prior. I knew he had such a wide range and could play the many swings of George’s character with ease. Prance and Dana Donnelly are both comedians I had been following on TikTok. They’re both so inherently funny, and they bring such a sense of established character to the table, we knew they were exactly what we were looking for. I just reached out with the script and they were both game.
When casting for Kyle, Nick and I had a variety of ideas for actors we thought could play him, but we realized that was a disservice to the character. It was the only role we put out a casting call for to find the actors that would surprise us. We needed Kyle to look unmistakably different from the others, a look that’s truly his own. Then we saw Matthew Ferretti’s headshot (and all that hair.) He delivered this really subtle and understated read that was so nuanced and stoic, he was perfect to play this wild take on a classical Western hero/alien hybrid. All the while he did it shirtless for an entire night, in the freezing cold, in pants covered in motor oil. Matthew Ferretti is my hero.
What set-ups did you need around the fire to capture all the delicate looks and exchanges and still create that quiet tense energy which Kyle then joyfully wrecks?
We framed the group in a way that you could feel the proximity of the others close by. It’s comforting and feels normal. But when Kyle arrives and sits down, we intentionally centered his coverage, but not the others. We gave them a more obscure and off-putting frame so the audience can feel the unease with them.
With the film taking place primarily around a fire with very little action, the cast has to captivate and communicate a lot with just a few looks.
Did you face any issues in the edit with the grade as you had so little light and it is dark but still very much intelligible.
I love that I get to speak about our friend Claire Iannelli at FotoKem who did the color grade. She did impeccable work understanding the look DP Jared Freeman and I were going for and created a real character in the color from the get-go. We looked at a lot of western campfire scenes and planned to use the fire as the primary light source. Leaning into that meant our key light on all performers was inconsistent and we’d lose a lot of looks and expressions to the dark. Especially in the eyes. So pulling that out in the grade was tricky when keeping contrast, but made for some dark and mysterious looks from Kyle. The difficulty was less with the dark and more with the sunlight. We shot all the way to the next morning. When the sun started to rise, we still had our street set up to shoot. It made the inconsistent lighting hard to match. But thanks to Claire, you would never know that the sun was peeking through those trees when we filmed Kyle with the TV on the street.
When we spoke last time for the release of Shoes Off you had a lot of different projects on the go, is there anything further into production and has anything else taken your fancy?
To be honest, the strikes really slowed things down. I’m just grateful to be back to work at the moment. I’ve definitely taken more interest in directing horror though. It’s been fun to dabble and create works that feel genre-adjacent, but I’m excited to go further with it and take some leaps without the safety net of a punchline. However, should my boy Nick Logsdon give me another brilliantly irreverent comedy script, I’m always too stupid to refuse.
