I find it so interesting that We Are What We Are centered on these complex female characters, whereas Cold In July is all about men and, particularly with Shepard and Johnson on board, touches on old-fashioned standards of masculinity. Did that difference between the two films play into your decision to take it on at this point in time?
Jim Mickle: Cold in July has been in our lives for so much longer [than We Are What We Are]. I mean, we adapted it seven years ago. We’ve always been trying to get it made. We were trying to shoot it after our first movie, and that didn’t happen. And then Stake Land came along, and we ended up doing that. Then we were in this break time, but we just sat around and let it pass by, and then We What We Are came up, and we ended up doing that. And after that, the timing was kind of perfect.
There were a lot of things that we did in Stake Land that I had wanted to do, and then, in the same way, there were a lot of quiet, contemplative, more downcast moments originally in Cold in July that we were able to get out of our system on We Are What We Are. And I think also doing something where you spend a year and a half of your life doing something so feminine and so much about spooky little girls, it’s really cool to be able to finish that and just be like, “Great!”
We Are What We Are was also a movie where we wanted it to have a deliberate pace, wanted it to be something that just slowly crept up on you and got under your skin. It was so fun to being able to say, you know what, with Cold in July, let’s turn everything up to eleven. Let’s just go completely crazy with this, let’s take this thing and let’s go, start it off with a bang and keep trekking forward. Let’s make it trashy, we’re going to have neon lights, it’s sweaty and it’s dudes, and let’s really embrace that concept idea. Whereas if we hadn’t just come off We Are What We Are, we may not have gone that far in that direction. And I’m glad that we did.
One aspect of Cold In July that I really loved was that it has some very thrilling action sequences, but there’s also a clear sense of humor to it. Was that a difficult balance for you and co-writer Nick Damici to strike in adapting Joe Lansdale’s novel?
Jim Mickle: It was very tough. And it changed all along the way. There were things that worked on the page of the book that didn’t work for the script, and things that were there didn’t all transfer too well visually, and we were also adding things all along the way. It was cool, a big give-and-take, a lot of trial and error.
And that was one fun part of being on set, because I think the actors were able to bridge all that. I kept saying to Michael that I’m relying on you to be the glue that hold these elements together, because we’re essentially going to bring on two more characters who are also going to become major, and introduce their journeys. We’re going to have to have a movie where the first half of this movie sets up the second half of this movie, a movie where someone like Don can come in halfway through and clown up the place and isn’t going to feel out of place. So, I need you to glue all those things together, and as long as we see the movie through your point of view, hopefully all these elements will work. If it’s just us going crazy and saying, “Look at this, look at this,” it’d be kind of a scattershot movie. But he got it and understood right away that he was the guy experiencing all this craziness, and not just being all this craziness. [laughs]