Pascal Plante is a Montreal-based filmmaker whose third narrative feature, the psychological cyber-thriller Red Rooms, is out now in theaters through Utopia. His previous film, Nadia, Butterfly, premiered in the official selection of the 73rd edition of Cannes Film Festival in 2020. After his graduation from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Pascal co-founded the production company Nemesis Films, with which he directed numerous short films including Blast Beat (Slamdance 2019), Blue-Eyed Blonde (Best Canadian Short Film, VIFF 2015), and Nonna (Slamdance 2017). His first narrative feature, a punk romance entitled Fake Tattoos, competed at the Berlinale, in Generation 14plus, in 2018. Pascal considers himself like a cinephile that became a narrative filmmaker with documentarian tendencies.
I’m an avid music lover (mélomane, as we say in French – I love that word), and I’ve looked closely at the trends in the music industry because – my rule of thumb – it usually predicts where the film industry is heading. Aesthetically, thematically, all the way down to its consumption. Beyoncé surprise-releases an album? Two years later: entire TV shows are released in this fashion. Pop-punk is trendy again, so we’re now entering an early 2000s revival … and, surprise, there’s a sequel for Freaky Friday just around the corner. So, when a 2019 study revealed that 73 percent of independent musicians experience anxiety and depression in relation to their work, I kinda knew that independent filmmakers were heading towards turbulent waters. This gloomy prophecy not only proved terribly true, it was exacerbated to alarming degrees by three years of friggin’ COVID…
It’s in this context that I wrote the darkest, most abysmal screenplay of my career. And yes, I was going through depression.
I frankly don’t think artists should suffer through their work for it to be valuable, though it’s an ironic coincidence that my favorite singers are Nick Drake and Elliott Smith. I had a phase, during my film school years, where I would secretly blame my parents for being so loving and caring. Bergman had a shitty childhood, and see how deep and meaningful his art was? My lived experiences mean nada compared to that. My life is so boring. I want trauma! Immature rubbish that I fortunately grew out of – for my mental health’s sake. Actually, these days, when I hear stories of other filmmakers who bled themselves dry making their films, I’m tempted to respond: “Wait? And you want to do it again?” If your goal is to have a sustainable, long-term career, you have to love what you do. It has to be fun and easy-going as much as possible, right?
I’ll make a few sports analogies in this essay (I can’t help myself – I used to be a national-level competitive swimmer during my teens and it shaped me to a profound degree), but the best athletes make it seem effortless. Michael Phelps swimming … Usain Bolt running … Simone Biles performing gymnastics … looks so easy. And when I was giving swimming lessons to children, I always wanted them to love swimming before putting any kind of pressure on them to perform well. If they love it, they’ll keep on doing it. Simple as that. Years later, some of these kids ended up having swimming careers. I felt proud, because maybe I contributed to their success, in my own humble way. But did my film school teachers teach us to love our craft? That’s debatable … but there’s one corner of the trade where I most definitely did not learn to love my craft: writing.
From the start, I beat my head against a wall. Crushing self-imposed pressure. Performance anxiety. It had to be good right out of the gate. Problem is, as a 20-year-old aspiring filmmaker, I had never even read a screenplay. How could I come fully formed and be able to write a good one myself? Flash forward to 2021: I now have … (quick IMDb search) … seven self-penned shorts and two narrative features under my belt. I learned the trade while doing it. And I now love the act of writing more than ever. Screw the psychoanalyses of my own demons, the trick is to write about what obsesses me. Research something to the point of saturation. Get sick of it. Exorcise it in a screenplay. And then move on to something else completely. A new obsession. So when people who’ve seen my new movie, Red Rooms, ask me if I want to do another serial-killer-themed cyber-thriller, the answer is a blatant NO. Not only have I said everything I wanted to say about the topic, but because I underestimated how empathetic I am as an artist … writing about the darkest corners of the human soul fucked me up pretty bad. Here’s the scene:
INT. APARTMENT – DAY (OR IS IT NIGHT?)
A SCREENWRITER in his thirties with bloodshot eyes is lying in the dark on his bed, LAPTOP on his knees. Noisy black metal music leaks from his headphones at a deafeningly loud volume as he WRITES in a Word document in Courier 12-point font. (Doesn’t even use Final Draft…)
He finishes writing a sentence. And then he stops …
And thinks for a moment …
He opens his web browser, where the LIVE-STREAMED TRIAL OF DEREK CHAUVIN plays continuously on one of the dozens of tabs already opened. We get a glimpse of their content: research about HUMAN TRAFFICKING, the DARK WEB, CRYPTOCURRENCIES, KIDNAPPING, MURDER, etc.
The screenwriter Googles “Real Red Rooms.” (Doesn’t even use Duck Duck Go…).
We see purple links that have previously been opened. He digs deeper in other pages and finds the ARTICLE he was looking for. CLICKS —
We see images of a METAL CONTAINER, covered in polyolefin sheets, that was discovered in the Chicago harbor. A lone DENTIST CHAIR with STRAPS lies in the middle of the empty container …
The screenwriter’s eyes light up – Eureka!
He goes back to his Word Doc and writes: “A bloodied DENTIST CHAIR with STRAPS is visible in the middle of the red-painted garage …”
The song in the screenwriter’s headphone changes – an industrial neo-classical funeral march can now be heard, as he keeps writing in gruesome details how the scene unfolds …
So yeah, you get the picture. I fell victim to some kind of “method writing,” where I got immersed to an unhealthy degree in extremely dark, depressing topics. Obsession is a prime driving force, but it can also make you lose contact with the bigger picture – and with your humanity. I had a strange feeling of being disconnected in an overly connected world. My friends, my family, my partner … could I even sustain a normal conversation when I was in this state? The “pandemic excuse” to avoid people proved oddly salutary. A single planned Zoom call would fuck up a whole day, and I’d make up excuses to escape ASAP – back to my monomania. Was I slowly shapeshifting into Kelly-Anne, the sociopathic protagonist of my film? Was I becoming what I was trying to denounce in Red Rooms? Now that would be meta …
Then I’d look at the clock and realize it was 1 p.m. and I’d stop writing. I know my biorhythms (remember, I used to be an athlete?) and I know my hyper-focused writing hours are from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. So then I’d get out of the dark, exercise a bit, and the afternoon would be devoted to “active procrastination” (online research that doesn’t look like work). Then I’d have dinner with my girlfriend. And we’d decide what to watch that night.
There’s a new true crime show on Netflix. A six-hour Ted Bundy thing. Sure … let’s binge it.
Next morning, I’d be back to work. In isolation. Lying in bed. In the dark. Digging deeper into human depravity. With black metal blasting in my ears. Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseam.
And just like that, 2021 came to a close.
That was my pandemic, in a nutshell.
No shit, I got depressed …
I had a screenplay, alright. But I’m never going to write about such a dark topic ever again.
Life’s too short – staying healthy is more valuable. Ask Nick and Elliott …
But wait, the reviews are in, and the critics seem to love the film. People online are also mostly positive about it. Phew! It’s doing pretty good so far. Oh well, maybe I’ll go back there one day? I don’t know …
Featured image, showing Pascal Plante on the set of Red Rooms, is by Danny Taillon; all images courtesy Pascal Plante.
