“You’re clever, Caroline Daniels,“ Oliver (Kyle Gallner) says to the convenience store clerk (Samara Weaving) that’s figured him out in the opening minutes of “Carolina Caroline,” having tried to pull a fast one over her boss who was manning the register as she was stocking shelves with boxes of raisins. The old man goes for it, not realizing he’s giving away way too much change for a $20 bill when Oliver asks for some singles and subsequently confuses the issue, and in a dusty town where there’s no other station for 50 miles, she takes notice of the stranger passing through and looks as if being called smart by him is the first time she’s ever heard it, making turning him in a far less likely option than seeing where he’s going.
For those who have been following Adam Carter Rehmeier, “Carolina Caroline” may feel as if it has a greater payoff than its already deeply satisfying conclusion as a conman tale, capping a glorious three-film run of enchanting tales from the midwest, all charming in their own distinct ways as he trailed a pair of punks (Gallner and Emily Skeggs) in “Dinner in America,” who hit the road and find they aren’t outsiders at least in each other’s company, and set up “Snack Shack,” inspired by the director’s youth, in which friends A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle) may have taken on more responsibility than they could handle as teens who buy the concessions stand at the community pool for a summer they won’t forget. He delivers another unforgettable couple in “Carolina Caroline,” one first created by writer Tom Dean (in what is one of two disarming romances he recently penned, along with “Charlie Harper” coming out later this year) and brought to boil by the irresistible Weaving and Gallner, who set off on a string of bank robberies when it turns out both have a taste for danger.
Tiktok made “Dinner of America” a sensation a three years after it had been buried by the pandemic, with audiences finding the film through viral clips of its musical numbers, and to watch “Snack Shack” is to fall in love with it, though it too got a modest theatrical release, so this week’s release of “Carolina Caroline” far and wide is befitting of Rehmeier’s most accomplished film to date, a smoldering and sophisticated romantic thriller where it constantly seems as if it’s less likely the law will catch up to good-natured thieves than their conscience. The director dazzles with a number of exhilarating car chases and sequences of Oliver and Caroline’s sleight-of-hand, all underscored by a bewitching country western soundtrack where it feels like heaven can be found digging deep into familiar terrain rather setting sights strictly on the skies above, and with the marvelous movie now reaching a bigger audience after a celebrated premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, it was a real honor to get to talk to Rehmeier about braving the Kentucky heat to make a sweat-inducing love story, finding the right milieu to create a world within our own to escape into and thankfully avoiding the potential threat of locking away his leading lady in the back of a trunk.
This is the first film of yours that you didn’t originate yourself as a writer, so was this any different for you?
It was totally different for me and the appeal of this script was that it was outside of the wheelhouse of something that I would think of. When I read Tom’s original draft, I really liked the opening and how these characters meet — the macro of it, but it morphed into a crime thriller-type of thing and I thought it would be more interesting as a love story. So I pitched that to Star Thrower to Trevor White when we initially met about the movie and he said that was one of the selling points of why they picked me to direct the movie.
I think that everybody had a fixed [idea of] what they thought about it and saw it a certain way, and I wanted to develop that [romance] a bit more between Oliver and Caroline. That’s what we did — we reshaped it to have a tone that was similar to the beginning throughout the whole movie and as somebody who didn’t write that original draft — I did work on it with Tom — it was very liberating for me to not be married to it like when I’ve written things in the past. I’ve been very married to like “Well, this happens and this happens” and I’ll see it right away and I’m designing it at the same time. With this, I wasn’t quite happy with the design yet, so it’s like “Let’s change things and make those adjustments” and now I’m very happy with it. So it was a collaboration that I had never done before and I found that part very liberating as as a filmmaker because I could just throw things out if I didn’t like them and replace it.
From what I understand, the country western theme wasn’t a part of the original conception. How did that become the right fit?
Because that scene where [Oliver and Caroline] swim in the rock quarry, where they jump in the water in the beginning, that was my favorite part of the first act. I liked how that felt and it reminded me of movies from the ‘70s that could develop a little bit slower and had moments like that. It didn’t involve modern things or cell phones, it’s just two people. So I thought the aesthetic of that, doing a ’70s road movie, that’s what I wanted it to be more of. And I [thought] iconically you’ve got this good looking guy, good looking girl, give them a gun and a muscle car. Now you’ve got something. You’ve got like “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry,” you’ve got a “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” or “Bonnie and Clyde” or “Badlands” or, “Great Texas Dynamite Chase.” You’ve got these reference points now for it. Now let’s shape it into more of a love story and set it with this classic ’70s look to it, but let’s put it in an early aughts backdrop and keep it twenty years prior so we’re not doing a heavy ‘70s thing.
Now we need a lot more money for cars and all of this stuff to cheat production design. We shot this movie in Kentucky and rural Kentucky was still easy to get a look that was more turn-of-this-last-century than anything. So I was able to set it and frame it in a way that felt iconic and stylish and gave you the sensation of a ’70s movie, but split the difference between the two eras.
Did you have any idea for the needle drops pretty early? They’re all so perfect.
I wasn’t for this movie at all outside of “Carolina Caroline” the Jonathan Edwards song itself. I had a few other artists commission versions of it and they were placed in the movie in a different way than they are now. But outside of that, Justin [my editor] curated the totality of the soundtrack, front to back pretty much. He’s well-versed in country music and just made fantastic choices, so I felt like I was discovering it. There’s stuff like “Tennessee Birdwalk” that I’d never heard before and I just love that song. And even newer things, I wasn’t really well versed on Chris Stapleton and I know he’s a big artist, but I love “Parachute.” The song fits really well in the montage and and there were classics like Kitty Wells and other artists that I really like, but they were just placed in the right spot. Justin 100% curated all of the soundtrack in this and I’m blown away with it. It deserves a double album release.
I would love that. And like everything, it splits the difference with that classic and modern feel you achieved. The second time I saw it, I also realized the colors pop a little more than you’d expect and the camera movements are a little bit more sophisticated than they might have been in the ’70s. What was it like to give people what they want in terms of some nostalgia but also something fresh?
I think [we were trying to] inject enough of those things, like for instance, one reference point for me early on, when [Caroline] comes out and chases after Oliver when he’s pulled the quick change scam on her boss, there’s a low-angle shot that cruises along behind her that very vaguely reminded me of the shot in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” that’s like the lower-angle shot when she’s walking to the farmhouse after she sits on the swing. So there’s these subtle things that we were able to do design-wise to reference other movies and obviously that’s outside of the road love story genre, but we were consciously thinking about pulling from classic ‘70s movies we loved.
One thing that was interesting on this shoot is that Jean-Philippe Bernier, my DP, and I strayed from Panavision Glass and we went to a very inexpensive Chinese glass called DZO and very fast compact anamorphics. We’re always shooting anamorphic for all of our projects and this glass allowed us to move really fast and change glass fast and also the minimum focal length was like 12 to 15 inches versus like three, three-and-a-half feet, so we’re able to be very close to the actors a lot of the time too, which feels feels quite different in this movie.
That helps explain both the intimate feel and how you pulled this off with limited time and plenty of set-ups, as I remember.
Yeah, this was a 25-day schedule, and we had about 100 scenes to shoot in the movie, so it was stressful and chaotic as that can be. And also the banks were backing out left and right. A lot of the people were afraid of copycat bank robbing in their small banks, so I think it’s a little silly, but for them it was valid concern and we looked and looked and looked, and it was a very stressful, not pleasant shoot with regards to locations. Between our locations and how many things we actually had in the movie, it was that was very difficult.
From what I understand, you didn’t always make it easier on yourself when it was so ambitious. Is it true you shot on a moving train?
I feel like trains, buses, kids, and animals — maybe in that order — are the worst things to shoot. Maybe boats are up there high too. It’s just hard. And it was one of those things where everything took way longer than it should and you’re not getting on the train until way later in the day than you should be on it and the light starts to drop. We were shooting on a real train. It’s not some set on a interior volume stage or some type of green screen thing. No, we’re we’re on an actual moving train that moves away from a depot and we found this dinner train that goes on these rails I guess no one really runs anymore. They go up an hour and then they come back an hour, so we were bound to this thing and it was super stressful and hot on the train. We’re shooting in Kentucky in the middle of the summer. It couldn’t be any more grueling, oppressive conditions.
You’d never know it from the finished product. And obviously, you knew what you were getting in Kyle Gallner, but what was it like to bring in Samara Weaving and sees the sparks between them?
I was so excited. They were both fans of each other’s work. Samara had seen Kyle in “Dinner in America” and really loved him and that film and I think they had reached out and they had corresponded a little bit. And when we were casting it, once I’d cast Samara, I just thought that Kyle would play off of her really, really well. Just aesthetically, the two of them together looked really good to me and I just thought there’s 50 great configurations that you could have for it, but it felt really good and and I was super excited to work with both of them.
Was there anything that may have happened during filming that you weren’t expecting that made it into the film and you really like about it now?
I was prepared to go with something horrible that happened when Samara was getting into the trunk of the car, the part where [Oliver has to hide] her, and I had checked before we even did anything, I was like, “Somebody has a key to this car. I want to see the key.” And the PA showed me the key. And I was like, cool. And then we shot the scene and the PA l had lost the key. So she’s stuck in the back of the the the car and it’s a hundred and some degrees outside and she’s [saying], “I’m okay, I’m fine” and it’s like, “No, this is not okay, this is not fine. You’re in this car and we’re going to bust you out of here if we have to.” And it’s like if your sole job is to make sure that the number one on the call sheet isn’t going to die of heat exhaustion in the back of a trunk, I’d wear that sucker around your neck, but luckily, the PA found the key.
But happy accidents that made it into the film, there’s there’s an Easter egg, there’s a “Dinner in America” Easter egg, a scene where there’s a costume from “Dinner in America” and the actual actor that played said character is hidden in the frame like a “Where’s Waldo” type of thing in one of the scenes in the movie. I won’t say who it is, but that is in the movie and that’s a very cool Easter egg that you can look for in there.
That film and “Shake Shack” are both so beloved and the success wasn’t immediate. Has it changed your ideas of how these films reach an audience or what you can consider an accomplishment?
The reality is that I make movies for the audience. That’s my number one — the group of people who have love and passion for cinema is what I’m interested in. That’s who I’m interested in catering for, so I try to keep the audience in mind when I’m designing and want them to always be satisfied with the experience, and I want to entertain said audience. I just like the idea of of movies as being fun and you go and you get entertained and you move on with life. I try not to take it too serious but I’m focused on making movies for an audience.
“Carolina Caroline” opens in theaters on June 5th. You can find one near you here.