In the light of morning, the night before doesn’t seem like it was such a good idea to a young exec (Victoria Ratermanis) who is set to speak at a conference in Tucson in “Disc,” though blowing off some steam by heading back to a subordinate’s (Jim Cummings) room for some fun ideally was going to relieve some stress. The opposite proves true in Blake Winston Rice’s deliciously dark comedy where the exec’s sense of responsibility extends to putting in a diaphragm to prevent any longterm consequences for the evening, but makes the morning after especially awkward when she can’t get it out, potentially adding injury to insult when she needs the help of her one night stand to remove it after doing her best to tip toe out of his room without notice.
Although the story eventually all unfolds over a toilet, Rice and Ratermanis, who co-wrote the short in addition to starring in it, transcend the premise’s potential beyond bathroom humor as the vulnerability that the two conference attendees share in getting out of a deeply embarrassing situation before the exec has to deliver a speech can’t help but lead to a far more intimate connection than they had when both had with their clothes completely off, and the push and pull required to dislodge the birth control appears to also test how much they are able to let each other go when it comes to being there for someone else. Rice has been interested in overcoming limitations of all types as he’s steadily built an impressive filmography of shorts, last having Michael Gandolfini play a lonelyhearts who may achieve the real connection he set out for as disaster strikes while attempting to pours his heart out for a dating video in the memorable “Tea,” and despite bringing a camera into the cramped space of a hotel bathroom, he emerges with a film quite dynamic aesthetically and emotionally as the camera playfully caroms around the fraught situation to show something both ridiculous and profound going on at the same time.
After stops abroad at Clermont-Ferrand and the Toronto Film Festival, “Disc” arrived in New York this week for Tribeca and Rice graciously took the time to talk about how the collaboration with Ratermanis and “Thunder Road” auteur Cummings grew out of bonds he made over his previous work, making the awkward incident at the center of his latest film feel as comfortable as possible for his cast and crew and sweating out a shoot in such close quarters.
How did this come about?
A dear friend of mine and super talented actor, Victoria Ratermanis, had the initial premise in her head. We linked up on some other shorts that she was auditioning for and she came to me with this idea and [said], “What do you think? We jammed on a draft together and finally put out what you’re seeing now.
Who thought of bringing Jim into this?
That came from my side. Jim and I connected after “Tea” took off, and just when we were crafting these characters, we just started casting and [thought] there’s some really fun stuff and good meat on the bone of this character for Jim to play with, so putting him on board, it was a blast. And he’s a brilliant filmmaker and actor in his own right, so he brought so much to that character too.
Once you saw Victoria and Jim together, was there anything in their dynamic that changed the ideas about this?
Once it moves off the page and it gets into their hands, I love them finding their own versions of these characters, so they brought a lot of their own and what they were great at was really grounding these moments. Their command and their prep really brought so much to that, and as a director, you try to set set up the actors to be able to create so much of their own character in between those moments that aren’t written, and they did a great job with that.
This may be a silly question, but I love the detail on Jim’s character of where the first thing he puts on is the conference badge and it then becomes the only thing he wears once crisis strikes. How did that come about?
I just thought it said a lot about this character, wearing the badge before everything else and you’re so psyched to be at this conference where she is not psyched to be there, so it was a great symbol of this person’s on a different end of loving this event and this [other] person’s not and there was obvious comedic value there where you’re not thinking about putting any other clothes on except the badge, so we let Jim do that the whole time.
What was it like to find the right location for this?
It was great and that was Tori [Ratermanis], who actually found that location for us. We were looking at a bunch of hotels. This one was out in Pasadena and they were great with letting us shoot there. It actually worked for such a self-contained story where we had everything in one hotel room we were literally able to stay in the night before and book some surrounding rooms for other departments. Then instead of getting this gear [there] tomorrow morning, [we thought] let’s get it here the night before and any time you can spend more time in the space before shooting, you know, I feel like is an advantage. The space was tight, so there are a lot of complications with the camera blocking, but also you could rehearse it off site just because I knew the layout. There’s a bed here, there’s a bathroom here. You could block this thing and prep it a lot, so there were some strengths to have restraints.
It seemed like the spaces may have determined some of the tight framing. What was it like to figure out the visual language of this?
It gave us some guides, like you have to look this way at this point and that was really good to know. A lot of that was led by our great cinematographer Nick Allen, who really helped steer the imagery. There are definitely some corners of the room where you had multiple mirrors and that made it harder to work around. But then being trapped in the bathroom, because our characters are are basically naked and have to get into this really intimate moment, and it only fits an operator, a sound guy, and two people and we’re sweating… it was really intense on top of each other, we felt what the viewer did. In the bathroom, literally while we were shooting the more crazier scenes, it was really hot, so the actors were like sweating a ton and literally the floor was gross and slippery. That worked for the environment, and a lot of the stuff where you look at it and [think], these are tougher production-wise, we ended up just leaning into them production-wise and hopefully it translated to the screen.
You find one mirror in the bathroom to use as a really cool reflection shot…
Yeah, and looking at it now, the framing is great. The wide shot when there’s a knock on the door and it’s housekeeping and they turn and they’re on top of it and you see this wide [shot] of the two of them, we were looking at a reflection, so playing with some of that was was really fun. I wish I had more time to do that more. You always want more time. I wanted to do some longer sequences and not overcut, especially the beginning and the ending and some of those sequences we really had to troubleshoot, working around a bunch of mirrors. That was a little bit more unexpected.
I loved how sparse the story is. Did you end up pulling back as you were in the edit or was it always that way on the page?
It was more so us cleaning up the script beforehand and [thinking] this moment is really important, so let’s have a clean line of scene description here to make sure we capture it. There are definitely moments in the edit we let breathe because it gets so chaotic at times. We knew “Okay, we really need to sit on her for this moment. We just asked the audience and everyone to go through all this craziness and then maybe laugh a couple times and then maybe feel something. Now we just need to sit and exhale for a moment.” I liked elongating a lot of the world building and the tension building off the top before we really find out what the major plot point is and making us worry what’s to come.
What was it like putting music on this?
Kevin Garrett’s the best. He’s an incredibly talented singer/songwriter, separate from scoring film. And I always like to score [films] after and and I’ll have some mood inspo tracks I’m working with, but I thought this in all a capella his and her vocals that are totally unmatched at the beginning but then harmonize at the end and align with our character arc. So I pitched it to Kevin and he [said], I totally see what we’re doing here and then cut to us zooming late at night and him humming into his microphone and finding the right places to piece that together. It was a blast and we’ve been lucky enough to screen a bunch of great festivals like Tribeca and part of the success of “Disc” is how Kevin developed this score and original soundtrack to put a bow on everything that we shot.
What’s it been like to take the film out to different festivals so far?
It’s a blast, and I feel so lucky. One of the best parts being able to hit these incredible festivals like Tribeca or Clermont-Ferrand or Toronto are that you get to celebrate it with your cast and crew and that they’re all going out and not only celebrating this film but they’re networking with new people to work on other projects. Specifically “Disc” is one to make you uncomfortable by design at times and hopefully makes you laugh and feel something, so to see audiences engage with that, what more could I ask? I hope it cuts the tension in the room after some heavy shorts and it makes people laugh. My favorite thing is people talking about it after, like they just feud over drinks after the festival screening block.
“Disc” will screen again at Tribeca at the AMC 19th St. East 6 on June 14th at 2 pm.