By Juan Markos
The film stars Alexander Flores, Katie Adler, Travis Hammer, Lisa Goodman, Elester Latham, and Richard Clarke Larson.
Written by Corey Slater and directed by Daniel Carsenty
I got to do a Q&A with the writer and director of One for the Road. One for the Road is a short horror film, that will premiere this, July 21 at the LA Shorts Film Festival in Los Angeles. The film is based on a short story by Steven King.
How did you two meet?
Daniel: We attended the AFI institute in Los Angeles together, but we met when we watched The Joker, we recall many others were afraid to see the film over threats of a shooter.
I had almost forgotten about that, there have been so many shootings and threats of shootings since then.
How were you able to get the rights to this story?
Daniel: While at AFI, I contacted Steven King, and told him about my background in journalism and how he planned on transitioning from covering real-life horror to the horror genre, he accepted to support my filmmaking efforts.
Are you fans of Steven King?
Corey: I was named Daniel after Daniel Anthony Torrance from The Shinning so, I come from Steven King fans.
Can you see yourselves making this story into a full-length feature?
Corey: Yes, ideas are being kicked around.
Would you say the Film is a Vampire movie?
Yes, scary vampire-like humans.
In the diner scene in the movie, did the waitress know the two truckers?
Daniel: Yes, they’ve stopped thousands of times.
Corey: It’s like that one diner they always stop at, like for me, House of Pies in Los Feliz.
They are truckers, right?
Corey: They are a shipping service, I thought about the movers who moved my stuff across the country, we left at the same time but somehow, they got there before me, I thought of the moving service having more fun.
Are there any other projects in the works together?
Daniel: We’re working on a folklore film, Sabah, it’s like a native American myth
Corey: What if all cultures have similar stories about the same monsters.
Daniel: Going back to the possibility of making One for the Road a full length, the characters would all have more developed stories, the diner waitress would then get to encounter an old friend and customer, how would she react to this, would she treat him the same way she treated a stranger?
I had great conversations with these two about, myths, urban legends, more modern horror urban legends, pasta stories, and possible vampires in Hollywood. I look forward to them continuing to work together and redefine old Hollywood horror monsters.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/913171300/02a5364fe8
ABOUT DIRECTOR:
Berlinale Talents alumni Daniel Carsenty wrote and directed the thriller After Spring Comes Fall in 2015. It won the award for Best Feature at the Zsigmond Vilmos Festival. His second film, The Devil’s Drivers, a documentary about a Bedouin smuggler, premiered at TIFF in 2021, won the Special Jury Award at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, and was nominated by the Cinema for Peace Foundation for Best Documentary. A graduate of AFI, Daniel came to filmmaking after working as a TV journalist for ARTE and BBC in zones of conflict.
“As a director, what I love most about horror movies is that they are about getting as close as possible to what makes me afraid. In my opinion, a good horror story carries as much hope as it creates fear. If these two emotions play out against each other, we start to care,” says Carsenty. He reached out to King during his time at AFI, hoping to use horror narrative to tell the same stories about the darkness of humanity that he did in his documentaries.
ABOUT LA SHORTS: LA Shorts International Film Festival is an Oscar and BAFTA qualifying festival, and is the longest-running short film festival in Los Angeles.
WORLD PREMIERE
Sunday, July 21, 2024, 10:00 P.M., Program 26
Regal LA Live – DTLA
