Throughout the history of cinema, filmmakers have worn many hats for certain feature films — in addition to directing, they’ll sometimes also write and/or star in the project. We’re looking at you, M. Night Shyamalan and George Clooney. That also includes writer-director Scott Friend, whose new film To the Moon also features him in the lead role. From 1091 Pictures, To the Moon premiered at the 2021 Nightstream film festival and had a one-night engagement special screening on Sept. 19 at Nitehawk Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. It is now available to stream on digital platforms.
Both Friend and his co-star Madeleine Morgenweck — a real-life engaged couple — also appeared together in Kevin Tran’s acclaimed film The Dark End of the Street, while Friend can notably be seen in Dan Sallitt’s Gotham Independent Film award-winning feature Fourteen. To the Moon is a fever-dreamed, mixed bag of different themes and perhaps succeeds best through its familiar family woes. We recently sat down with Friend to hear more about the project. Read our exclusive interview below.
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Inspiration Behind The Project
MW: What was the inspiration behind To the Moon? Did you draw on any personal experiences?
Scott Friend: To the Moon is a real amalgamation of so many things. Firstly, a lot of it has to do with my experience with certain loved ones and friends that are afflicted by addiction and my experience of going through that experience with them. That’s the biggest inspiration behind this film, specifically with where I was at in my life, just personal things that I was going through, failures that I was experiencing, certain aspects of my relationship. Everything was kind of coming together at the point when, [the place] where we shot the movie, that’s my great-aunt and uncle’s country home in Massachusetts. And my great-aunt, who’s now in her 90s, basically told me that it’s getting kind of hard to keep up the house, and she’s gonna get rid of it. And I wrote this script to film up at that house.
MW: I understand this was your directorial feature debut. How did you like taking on the role for this project? Was it daunting at all?
Scott Friend: I’ve been acting to a certain extent for the last 10 years in [New York City]. I’ve been on tons of film sets. I had been working on this other script that was kind of like a heavy drama, and I had been working on that for like a year. And I thought that was gonna be my first feature. And then, when my great-aunt told me about the house, that’s when things kind of flipped for me, and it dawned on me that I should take all these elements of this drama that I was writing and put it into this kind of fun genre piece because that’s like the exact type of movie you need to make at this house.
So I wrote it really quickly, and I think, because I wrote it really quickly, I wasn’t as precious about it. So in regard to it feeling daunting as a first-time filmmaker, it was a super small crew. There were only eight of us. We were shooting in my family’s country house, and everything was very comfortable, and I wasn’t super-super precious about making the movie. I was specific, but I wasn’t precious. So I feel like it wasn’t daunting in the sense of, “everything needs to be perfect, and if it doesn’t, then the world’s gonna burn.” So yeah, it was very fun. It was definitely very odd to be in scenes with Will [Brill] and Madeleine and kind of direct them at the same time. That was a very odd experience. I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.
Casting The Film
1091 Pictures
MW: Will Brill seemed like the perfect choice to play the brother. Could you talk about the casting process?
Scott Friend: We made this on a very low budget, so that’s also a large reason why I played my character because I knew we could afford me. My now-fiancée Madeleine plays my wife, and that’s our dog as well. He was actually the hardest to get on board, but eventually, we got him. We really lucked out.
So with Will, I had worked with Will on a short film about two and a half years before we made this movie. So I knew him, not super well, but we got along well on the shoot. So he was always in my mind. And when I was writing the script, I was writing it for Will, but I didn’t tell him. In my head, I was like, “Will would be the perfect person to play this.” And when I got done with the script and started putting things in motion, I sent it over to him. He was in the middle of doing Oklahoma on Broadway. I was like, “There’s no way he’s gonna come do this really small movie in the middle of nowhere.” But thankfully, he responded to the script.
About That Haunting Musical Score And Camera Work
MW: There was a unique musical score as well as unique camera angles. What were your inspirations behind these choices?
Scott Friend: As far as the score goes, I mean, the score for Rosemary’s Baby is so iconic. The juxtaposition of these fairy-tale, gentle, high-pitched strings and woodwind instruments that they used against this horrific stuff you’re seeing on screen, it just works so well, and I’ve always loved it. So I knew, when we made this movie, our film doesn’t specifically take place in a certain time, but it is heavily influenced by films of the late ’60s and early ’70s. So I knew that’s what the score had to feel like.
As far as the camerawork, my cinematographer and I worked a lot beforehand getting the look right. We love how The American Friend by Wim Wenders looks, Robby Müller is the cinematographer, and he’s just incredible. And the colors he brings out was something we really wanted to hone in on. Don’t Look Now by Nicolas Roeg was a really big reference for us as well.
