'Bellflower' Writer-Director Evan Glodell On The Secrets Of The Most Dangerous Film Ever Made

JESSIE: The whole thing was really intense, probably more so for you guys, with all the illegal stuff you had to do. TYLER: First of all, every day was a challenge, just because we didn’t have money. Oftentimes, we’d have to borrow money from people on the crew to drive to set or sell equipment so we could keep shooting.

EVAN: There was one scene that we had one take. JESSIE: Yep. We only had one chance to get this scene. EVAN: And that’s the scene when my character and Jessie’s character first meet. Literally, the sun was coming up. We broke one of our cameras and then we had one take to do it, but it ended up in the movie. TYLER: I think that’s another big thing to touch on. It’s just that oftentimes, we would get into a position where, because of whatever, we had time constraints with light or the sun was going to come up, or you’d get to the point where you would set up, or you’ve been working all night to get this one scene or one shot and then you just barely have enough time to shoot it a couple of times and then that was it. EVAN: I was gonna say actually that the most stressful ones weren’t actually the sun. It was when someone was about to call the police if we didn’t get the f**k out.

TYLER: I was. I had a bench warrant out for my arrest the whole time we were filming. We both did. EVAN: Mine wasn’t for anything too exciting. TYLER: Mine was for a DUI I never went to court for. EVAN: Mine was literally from being broke. I had gotten a ticket for having a tail light out in my car that escalated till I couldn’t pay it because I was putting all of my money into the movie, and then that escalated into losing my registration, and then I got pulled over for not having a registration, which is a real ticket that if you don’t pay your license goes away. And because for three years we were really, for the main part, working for the movie, anytime a single penny came in my hand, it was going into the movie, it wasn’t gonna go to pay off some ticket.

TYLER: Even when we weren’t doing anything that crazy like blowing things up or shooting fire, even when we were just trespassing, I was always thinking in the back of my mind, 'If the cops come, they’re going to look at my ID and just take me away.' JESSIE: 'Take me away,' end of movie. TYLER: That was a constant stress. But then also, we had a system set up, so if we were doing anything crazy, different people would assume responsibility. If Evan went to jail then we couldn’t shoot. So, the plan was that somebody else would say they were the director. But, luckily that never happened.

EVAN: It was just me and my friend Jon Keevel, who did the test run on the propane tank, and it almost killed him. The bullets sort of bounced off and whizzed past his head. Like, it went, 'Bzzzzz.' You don’t realize propane tanks are very well designed, because it could not blow up. We shot it with a .45 handgun and it just bounced off twice, so we had to get a more powerful gun to get through it. We managed to do it with a slug… not 'managed to,' I mean, a 12-inch slug is pretty hardcore. But the one I used in the test to go through, I didn’t have a slug, so I kind of fashioned one. The day we were shooting, I was really worried that it might ricochet or something bad would happen. I think that was stressful for me, because that was near the end of the whole shoot. JESSIE: Like, what if you just killed Tyler at that point?

EVAN: We’d done so much dumb stuff that I think everybody was starting to have too much faith in me. They were like, “Ah, nothing’s gonna happen.” Everybody was supposed to be hiding behind walls, but I was in the scene, and I said, “Everybody has to be either right next to me, in the middle or you have to be hidden behind a wall." Later I found out that behind my back everyone was coming out and kind of watching, right where the bullet would go if it bounced off, but nothing happened. TYLER: Yeah, we’re lucky... JESSIE: We’re alive.

EVAN: When I was a kid, I definitely did a lot of dumb stuff like that — just blowing up anything I could, playing with things and building with stuff. I think, as an adult, I am still like that, but not as much as the characters in the movie, I’m not full-time… TYLER: Delinquent. EVAN: …full-time obsessing over how I’m going to make a good explosion.

EVAN: We’d done so much dumb stuff that I think everybody was starting to have too much faith in me. They were like, 'Ah, nothing’s gonna happen.' Everybody was supposed to be hiding behind walls, but I was in the scene, and I said, 'Everybody has to be either right next to me, in the middle or you have to be hidden behind a wall. Later I found out that behind my back everyone was coming out and kind of watching, right where the bullet would go if it bounced off, but nothing happened. TYLER: Yeah, we’re lucky... JESSIE: We’re alive.

EVAN: When I was a kid, I definitely did a lot of dumb stuff like that — just blowing up anything I could, playing with things and building with stuff. I think, as an adult, I am still like that, but not as much as the characters in the movie, I’m not full-time… TYLER: Delinquent. EVAN: …full-time obsessing over how I’m going to make a good explosion.

EVAN: Well, we didn’t ever have any money, so we finished our main shoot in 2008. We tried to get everything, but there was a bunch of stuff we just couldn’t afford to get, like things we had to drive. We wanted to drive out to the desert and bring the car to certain locations and stuff. And also, the Medusa car, the engine blew during the main production thing and we could not afford to get a new one in it. So, there was all this stuff that we had to shoot and over the course of the next two and a half years, every time we got any extra money, we get whoever together and shoot another shot or scene. So, it was 90 days in 2008, and then, sporadically shooting over the next 2 and a half years while I was editing.

EVAN: Literally, we were trying to show it to people and had no luck getting any interest, just because everyone was like, 'Well, I don’t care about your movie that I never heard of.' JESSIE: '…and who are you?' EVAN: …and, apparently, no one thought it was worth even funding. So, I don’t think anyone even wanted to watch it, and one of my friends talked me into submitting it to Sundance online, which I thought was a waste of money, because we hadn’t been able to get any interest in it with regular people, much less a prestigious film festival. But they talked me into it, and I did it, and literally nothing happened until Sundance called us and let us in. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed.

EVAN: Yeah. [laughs]