Premature: Dan Beers on Time Charts & Clean Toilets

When I saw Premature at SXSW this year, I singled it out for a full review. I introduced myself to director Dan Beers and the cast after the screening, anticipating that we’d be doing interviews down the line. Premature premieres on VOD July 2, so the time came to speak with Beers at length about his Groundhog Day style teen sex comedy. Rob (John Karna) wakes up the day of his big college interview from a messy wet dream, and ends the day by finishing early with Angela (Carlson Young). The thing is, every time he finishes, he wakes up the same morning again. Rob spends the next several attempts trying to succeed with Angela, bombing his interview and realizing his best friend (Katie Findlay) was his dream girl all along. That’s only a spoiler for every ‘80s teen movie ever.

Related: Watch an Exclusive Clip from Premature

CraveOnline: Hi Dan. We met briefly at SXSW after your premiere.

Dan Beers: I remember that. I also remember you had one of the best quotes for the movie in my opinion. “The dangerous sexuality of John Hughes movies from the ‘80s,” that was your quote?

That sounds like me.

Yes, yes. Thank you, I appreciate that. I was like, “Oh my God, he gets it.”

You’re welcome. Did they use that?

I used it. [Laughs] I think they may have. I know that was one of the quotes that was pulled at one point, so I was a fan.

How did you write and play the same scenes slightly differently to distinguish each day?

It was a challenge, both for our character of Rob played by John Karna, and also physically as well. One of the things we did just early on was to have a chart. We were under a pretty heavy, tight time constraint. I don’t think we had the luxury of a movie that was bigger. We were on a tight 24 day shoot so we knew that we had to figure out some little factors that would help us. One was that chart we created which was a big help for John to know: Here, we’re going to shoot in this direction and we’re going to go from Day 1 to Day 3 to Day 8 back to Day 2 to Day 4, which is a lot for anyone to keep their head straight with.

Having a chart, we could always go back and see Day 1, he looks like this and he is at this place in his head. He is confused about the interview. He’s nervous. Day 4, he now knows that there is something wrong and he has to talk to his friend and he’s confused and he’s not wearing his jacket or tie. He’s just wearing jeans and his T-shirt and his hair is like this. It was tough. I went into it thinking, part of the idea by coming up with the concept of the day and the loop was partly thinking this would be a very smart move for a movie that has a tight budget because you’re going back to the same places every time. I didn’t take into thought about all the other challenges that came with it until later.

Continuity-wise, did you have to make sure his cum stain was the same shape every morning?

Yes. I think if you look really closely, some of them might have a certain little curve that’s a little different. For the most part, we had to keep our gel a similar shape.

You must’ve done all the wakeup scenes the same day, right?

We did, yeah, we did those all in one day but it was a very hot day. We were not shooting on a stage. We were shooting in an actual house, in a practical place and it was extremely hot. We needed to change underwear a few times and we needed to change the sheet a few times just due to heat.

Did you shoot all of Alan Tudyk’s scenes in one day too?

Not all of them. I think we had Alan for 4-5 days. We shot all the interview scenes in one day, but then we also had the hotel bar. We had the exterior of the house and then we had one other hallway scene, so we had Alan for four days but the interview stuff we all did in one day. He was great. We did a lot of improvising about how his wife actually did pass away. There were various different runners about “Oh, she didn’t really die. She was just unhappy in life. She just got out of the car one day and walked off.” Or a mountain lion got her. We ultimately just settled on Lupus, which isn’t funny but anything coming out of Alan’s mouth does manage to make you laugh.

Rob never tries to last all day, does he?

Well, it’s by no fault of his own. The only day that he actually really chooses to actually end it himself, a couple times he chooses to end it himself. Once he can’t, but the other times there’s always an end to the day that’s out of his hands, for lack of a better way to explain it.

Why do you think it took 20 years for the Groundhog Day formula to be explored in other contexts? You’d think that there’d be a lot more after the success of that movie.

Probably because it’s such a great movie. It’s a classic and you don’t really want to touch a classic, do you? That was part of it and we were, I think, nervous about it. Bill Murray is a hero. Harold Ramis is a hero of mine. So to take this thing for us going into this, I’m personally a big fan of ‘80s teen films and ‘90s teen movies, so there was a real love of those movies and then kind of went into the idea of thinking of Groundhog Day. If you wanted to take that concept and play something out, what’s the most embarrassing moment that you have to go back to? That you can’t escape this one embarrassing moment or this one moment that you really wish you didn’t have to go back to. The comedy of it, we were thinking about how about your failed first time having sex? So that’s where we came from but my instinct would be you don’t want to touch a classic. Fortunately for us, we touched it with our hands only, right?

Have you had a chance to see Edge of Tomorrow yet?

I have not seen it yet but I want to. I’ve heard it’s fantastic. Both have big explosions, right?

That they do. He has to die to reset the day, and they call orgasms the little death.

[Laughs.]

You do have a best friend in the movie who I think we all know is the girl he should be with. Given your influences, do you want us to feel that right away, that he’ll be with Katie Findlay’s character?

I didn’t have a girl best friend per se in that same way. I did have girls I had a crush on obviously and I was aware that they didn’t know I had a crush on them. I think I was more of the girl character than the boy character in this movie unfortunately. But for me, going into this, I don’t think anyone goes into this movie with the idea, like, who’s Rob really going to end up with? I think you probably know from the start who he’s going to end up with. I think for me what’s fun about it is the path in which Rob has to go in order to get there.

I’m just talking about movies. I had a girl best friend too and nothing ever happened with them, but that’s a movie thing.

Movies too, if you look at any of those teen movies whether you end up with your friends or not, going back, I think one of the things I was hoping we would achieve is that the real heart there, that by the end of the movie you have a rooted interest in both these two characters and really hope for them to end up together. Obviously the real paradigm for that would be Some Kind of Wonderful.

I always wonder when there’s a scene where a character is dunked in the toilet, do you provide a clean toilet for dunking?

We did. We have two things for that. We tossed the old toilet off the bathroom floor and brought in one that was brand new and made sure it was clear. Any of the stains on the toilet were made by the art department. Obviously for the shot where his face is placed face first into the water is shot through a small tank. Although for Adam [Riegler]’s sake, Adam didn’t have to know that. Purely method.

You have quite an IMDB profile. Were you an intern on Meet Wally Sparks?

I was, yes. I thought I had wanted to edit when I was in college and I was a post-production intern on that movie and I realized after that I never wanted to be in an edit room or an editor again. That was when everything was cut on film still, but I actually did get to meet Rodney Dangerfield which was a total treat.

I actually thought I wanted to be an editor too, but I never got an internship in an editing room. I never made it that far before I discovered journalism, but what drove you crazy about post-production?

I think I realized, although I knew writing was a lonely existence as well, but you can get to leave. I think part of the editing process, at that point in time, was I like to be around people more and being on a set is something I really love. Then obviously after the movie wraps you’re in an edit room but then it’s such a great joy to get to put together what’s been shot. I think I realized I didn’t have the personality to be in a room alone for a good part of the day.

That was a good 10 years before you started making your own films and shows, right?

Yeah, I graduated college in ’97. Then I had a bunch of film jobs after that. At Good Machine which is a film production company, I was an intern there out of college and I worked there for about five years, which was amazing. So I got to really dive head first into the indie film world and then I worked for Wes Anderson for close to five years after that. I feel like I really had great people to teach me things, so by the time I was ready to actually make my own movie, I felt very well prepped.

You have a credit on The Life Aquatic but did you work on other films with Wes too?

I was an assistant so I started working for Wes after Royal Tenenbaums came out that winter. So I started working for Wes while he was starting to write Aquatic. Then I was in production with him on that. Once that wrapped, I worked for him for a little bit while he was writing Fantastic Mr. Fox and Darjeeling around the same time, but those were the last things he was working on when I left.

Has Wes seen Premature yet?

Not yet. We crossed paths at SXSW but the film was showing before he was down there. He’ll see it shortly.

What do you want to do next?

I have a couple things. I have a movie I’m currently writing. It’s a comedy as well, which I’m hoping to be done with shortly. I have a TV pilot I’m also working on right now too. I really want to just keep doing stuff. I like working so hopefully this is the first of many.

Are there other subgenres of comedy you want to explore?

Buddy comedy. That’s the thing I’m doing next. It’s a new take on the buddy comedy.

How about the TV pilot?

Actually, that’s also a buddy comedy too but it’s a subverted version of that. Actually, now that I think about that, those two things weren’t done on purpose at the same time. It just happened to be that way.