For most, the idea of going into work on a Monday morning already sounds like a horror film, so Cam Banfield didn’t need to embellish too much to make it actually look like one in “How Was Your Weekend?.” There’s the office coffee machine that can’t spit out caffeine quickly enough to give Steven (James Morosini) the boost he needs to face the throng of co-workers who try to make small talk before getting on with their day, and even that sputters back in his face. The innocent question of how his off-hours went isn’t anything he’d want to talk about anyway, but Banfield imagines it touching a particular nerve when this particular weekend did not go well as Steven’s girlfriend Devon left a voicemail, asking for some space in their relationship.
When any answer of serious depth might throw everyone off-kilter for the rest of the work day, Steven is loathe to tell the truth, but both the constant prodding and internal self-loathing make him sick to his stomach, only exacerbated by the demands of his boss (Rachael Harris) to be part of the team, and that nausea gives the film its propulsive energy as Steven tries to power through until clocking out. However, the sickness Banfield ends up really picking up on a diseased office culture where any human interaction outside of professional concerns inevitably is geared towards goosing productivity. Filmed with ferocity by “Save Yourselves” cinematographer Matt Clegg and armed with a great lead turn from Morosini, who strikes the same perfectly queasy, dark comic tone as he did in his own directorial debut “I Love You Dad,” the short film takes a completely banal greeting and leaves quite an impression.
Shortly before “How Was Your Weekend?” premieres this week in Austin as part of SXSW, Banfield generously took the time to talk about how he ended up making movies after growing up acting in them, appreciating the group effort involved in bringing a film to life and how a day at the office ended up being so much fun at least for its cast and crew.
I know you started out in front of the camera, so how’d you gravitate behind it?
That feels like such a distant memory, but when I was growing up, my mom had this fixation on me like becoming an actor because I wasn’t succeeding in sports. I was much smaller than all my friends and I was growing up in Texas, so she put me into acting. I was doing local commercials in Houston and then booking a couple of movies and taking time off and then booking some more and that’s what actually brought me to L.A. but I’m not good at auditioning and through the meat grinder of auditioning for roles and not booking them, I [thought], “I kinda want to still do this and I don’t want to move back home, but maybe I should maybe write some things. And after I wrote some things, [I thought] “But no one’s given me the chance to direct anything. Maybe I should just go for it with something that seems such an obvious concept.” That led us to where we are right now.
You’re right to think this is a great premise, particularly for a short. How did you think a Monday morning could be a literal horror film?
I was working an office job in a very corporate setting with a lot of people and it honestly all began with a text message to my close collaborator who’s a producer on the project. I was sitting in the center of this office, and all these people are saying these same performative lines to each other, and they don’t actually care what the answer is. No one actually gives a fuck about how your weekend was. It’s like a defense mechanism or coded language to show that I care about you as my colleague, and I’m really just asking you how was your weekend, so then I can ask you for that report that we need to present in an hour. It’s an icebreaker. And I thought It’s bigger than just office culture, the kitchen scene [in the film] is like being in an uncomfortable family reunion for Thanksgiving. These are the performative roles that we have to turn on for different interactions as the setting asks for them.
But the office is a perfect setting for it and the execution of our short is all about turning on work mode, because I’m just fascinated by the fact we’re all unpredictable beings that are forced into very predictable situations and rooms and we’re asked to perform every single day these roles from 9 a.m.to 5 p.m., if you’re lucky. It could be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. My partner was like, “Wait, this is serious?” And it just started to explode from there. [We realized this] is totally a horror movie. This is the most terrifying thing ever and the coffee is like our horror movie’s blood.
We’ll get to James Morosini in a moment, but the real MVP of the film is the lady who actually stands near the coffee machine, who delivers a particularly great version of the line “How was your weekend?” and ends up having a seizure at one point later in the film. What was it like to direct that performance?
She is wonderful and there was a lot of me off-camera telling her to lower your jaw and look at James, be confused by him, but also sad and [simultaneously] happy. It just unraveled from there and she’s such a delight to have in that little office ecosystem that we built over two days. And other than James Morosini and Rachael Harris, those were all people that submitted themselves on tape through casting websites, and we gave people a prompt — no lines or a script. We just said, “Ask about how someone’s weekend went.” And people were putting together these beautiful, deeply thought out improvisational little scenes on tape. That casting process took everything to the next step because we were watching these tapes [with] these people doing these improvisational scenes that are very much acting for the camera, but it matches and mirrors the exact thing I’m seeing in this world because everybody is performing an office role.
And my editor and I were really deep in conversation [about] everything breaking down, and we were thinking that the midpoint [with the coffee lady] felt like the moment [given] the way the rules of the horror genre story break [where the coffee maker] the ancient ritual machine of this office activates and turns on. That’s why she’s confused and seizing up, almost like she’s sucking the air out of the room, but also hoping that she misheard [James Morosini’s character Steven after he’s given an honest answer]. There’s a version in an alternate universe where as she’s looking at him, he could have been like, “Oh, my weekend was good and everything’s fine,” and we’re totally back. But unfortunately Steven is the analog for all of us, the real one lurking underneath everybody who doesn’t actually have a good weekend every week out of 52 weeks of the year and because he can’t do anything but be genuine and honest, everything erupts. She is the vessel for that world to explode and the big turning point of our short.
James Morosini is so great as Steven. How did you end up with him at the center?
It was the most obvious decision ever. My producer had a relationship with him and we sent it to him because I’m crazy about everything that he does. He’s what I wish that I could be if I could act in this role myself, and I didn’t know him until working on this project, but I feel the way that he looks on screen seeing the world, and he brought so much to the table that was incredible. Also being a director in his own right that’s so lauded and award winning, that gave me the confidence to really go for it [in what I would ask of him] and he’s so incredibly talented in all three phases and he gave me [a great performance] and made it the easiest possible way for someone to direct and also rewrite moment to moment and make the best project possible. It was a dream come true to work with him.
That touches on something that he must’ve been uniquely suited for when the camera is always so close to Steven to reflect his paranoia. What was it like working out the dynamic between his performance and the camera?
That’s was part of the day one planning of the project, even in the writing. Everything that I’m trying to do is coming from a relentless first person point of view and we could turn the dials on the thriller, the horror and the darkly comedic elements. We achieved that through our [director of photography] Matt Clegg, all the camera team and James being so perfect to be the vessel for that because it’s all of our collective horrors and fears and social anxieties about performing roles that we’re not meant to. And that was one of the elements that just was so thrilling and exciting to see the morning after the shoot. We wrapped at 2 a.m. on a Sunday and at 9 a.m. I was processing [the experience of] my first-ever directing gig, and I’m looking through all the dailies, and I thought, “We got it. We got the point of view that we needed.” Because of James and the blocking and everything, it’s exactly what we had to do. There’s no other way to do it.
You mentioned rewrites. Was there anything that you may not have planned for going in, but you could get excited about once you started seeing what was going on on set?
Yeah, you go in there with your best laid plans and you’ve got your blueprint, but the exciting part of filmmaking is when there’s magic unfolding. It was not one of those things where we just shot every single line and action description that I had in the script. We had to experiment in the moment, so there were things that [I thought], “Whoa, let’s chase and explore that. Take a pause and recalibrate and go back in.”
What was so beautiful about this office ecosystem that we built over two days in the summer with this awesome cast of characters and this big crew was that at one point we had probably upwards of 50 people in an office, with catering and costumes and grips and electric, and in a strange way, it became kind of a social experiment because we had people that were then organically asking each other how their weekend is actively going while we’re filming it. Suddenly, people that would never have crossed paths in their lives are sharing deeply personal stories with each other and we found out there was a woman that we cast — she’s in one of the kitchen scenes — that just wanted to try acting because she’s been a vet her entire life and wanted to do something for herself for the first time rather than caring for others. There was another woman who had been suffering from some bouts of anxiety and depression at her job and just took a leave of absence, so this was a fun thing to do that was weirdly like a surreal therapy exercise for her. All of those stories are what make this so special and make it so much bigger than just a horror thriller short film. It’s it touches a lot of people, I think.
And is bound to touch a few more once it premieres in Austin. What’s it like getting to this point with it?
I’m at that point where I’m just so excited to celebrate all of the people that put their time and effort and creativity into this. I’ve been trying to be the artistic director for this project and help guide people to do their absolute best work, people that had never met each other before, but bringing their talents to the table and working in tandem through Zoom and [giving each other] notes that affect sound design or score. That’s what makes me the most proud, the way that every single element has come together and that’s what I’m most excited about celebrating because I’ve seen the short film a lot of times, but I’m really excited to get everybody there and seeing it on the big screen and championing all these amazing artists that contributed.
“How Was Your Weekend” will screen at SXSW as part of Narrative Shorts Program 1 at the Rollins Theatre at the Long Center on March 8th at 11 am and March 11th at 2:30 pm.