In honour of Jay Baruchel’s latest film, Random Acts of Violence, I recently had the privilege to join a roundtable along with various other publications where I had the chance to ask Baruchel some questions about the film and the inspirations behind it.
Note: This Q&A has been edited down from the original transcript.
Q: Hi Jay, first off I would like to say I’ve been a big fan of yours for a long time. How to Train Your Dragon was a big thing for me as a kid so your voice was in my household a lot growing up so it’s awesome to speak to you today. I was also a really big fan of comic books as a kid but I never heard of the comic book this film is based off before watching it. I thought those ideas were interesting and I was wondering if there was any other source material that inspired you the story because I could tell from certain sequences that there were other comics that may have served as inspirations?
A: Yeah so I think that’s an awesome question. From Hell by Alan Moore is a very important book for me now. There’s no deliberate ode or homage to it but anything that connects to me in a meaningful way finds its way into what I’m doing in one way or another without me even realizing it. When I kinda zoom out and there’s a passage of time I then realize oh yeah, that’s what I was doing. So shit like From Hell or shit like the Heat will be in everything I ever do. So there’s a lot of Heat in this movie whether or not it’s obvious to people. I was definitely trying to capture a sense of helplessness and dread in From Hell that I found impactful so I sense some of that is in this movie as well.
The only really direct bit of inspiration is two books that aren’t comics were Ann Rule’s book about the Green River Killer which is the best book about true crime that there is and a terribly responsible one which helps it stand out. Another one that my cinematographer and I were reading during post production was called The Black Dahlia Avenger by Steven Hodel, an LAPD homicide detective that was convinced that his father killed the Black Dahlia before going on to become the Zodiac Killer. Whether or not any of that is true, he paints a really interesting picture and makes a compelling argument about those specific killings from the 30’s, the argument that those acts of violence could be the result of someone’s creative process which is a horrifying thing and very much in our movie.
Q: I thought one of the most impressive aspects of the film was the gory scenes themselves which were really well done and I was wondering how much of those effects were practical and if there was any CGI used?
A: Thank you. Awesome. Yes, it was very important to us that we could do as much as we can on camera so the movie is almost entirely practical. I think in the whole thing there’s only seven VFX shots that we used for sweetening or cleaning, so if we needed more rain or fire or to add a blade to a hilt, little stuff like that. It was important for us to have as much of it on camera as we could. There’s a bunch of reasons why and one is the fact that the first movie I directed had over seven hundred effect shots in it and that was a degree of control I never ever ever wish to sacrifice ever again and yeah and all of our favorite shit was practical.
Random Acts of Violence is now available in select theatres and on VOD.
image courtesy of Postmedia
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