Bury Me When I’m Dead – Interview with Film Writer / Director Seabold Krebs

Listen here. The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity:

Hi, I'm Connor Winterton of Borrowing Tape, and I'm here today with Seabold Krebs, the writer-director of the new mystery thriller Bury Me When I'm Dead. Thank you for joining us today, Seabold. 

Connor, nice to see you or hear you.

 

So, before we get into the questions about the production process, the inspirations for the films, or the questions that I've got, could you please tell our listeners or readers about the film? Tell us a spoiler-free overview of Bury Me When I'm Dead.

Yeah, Bury Me When I'm Dead is a movie about a young man who owns a flower shop with his wife, and she gets a terminal diagnosis and wants a natural burial in the woods near her childhood home, and asks him to bury her there in the woods when she's dead. As the film goes on, we peel back the layers of a very complicated life of Henry and his side piece, her pregnancy, and his wife Catherine's death and her family. So the film's a little bit of a snowball rolling down the hill drama with a lot of psychological elements, and it's a film that I'm extremely proud of and would love to talk to you about.

 

Great, thank you for that overview. So what was the inspiration? What initially inspired the idea for Bury Me When I'm Dead?

When I start to write and I have an idea for a film that I want to make, I usually start with the main character. I'm very interested in subjective filmmaking, where we're going to see a story from one person's point of view. The majority of my short films at Columbia University, where I got my MFA, are subjective films, so I start to think about a person and putting that person in a situation. I had written a short story in my undergrad called Cold Rooms which was a story about a man trapped in a house with the body of his dead wife and the psychological journey of what that would mean of a person being stuck with the body of a loved one over the winter and that developed into two different versions of a screenplay and the last one was Bury Me When I'm Dead.  I'm very interested in death and grief, and I really, really like Man versus Self as just an overview of story structure.

 

Okay, thank you for that. So, were there any particular filmmakers that inspired you, or any other kind of styles, or anything that was an inspiration whilst making Bury Me When I'm Dead?

Yeah, Connor, I have a sort of unusual taste. I mean, everybody has their favorites, right? So we have filmmakers that we really like. There's a movie that I really love that a lot of people hate called Woodshock with Kirsten Dunst, which is sort of a tone poem about death, drugs, and love, which I really like.  One of my favorite contemporary filmmakers is Panos Cosmatos, from whom some people might know him from Mandy. I remember seeing his first film, Beyond the Black Rainbow, in the movie theater, and it literally blew my mind. I loved Possession. I watched Possession with our DP, and we talked a lot about the way that film looks. I'm a huge Tarkovsky fan. Watching The Sacrifice, the way that movie unfolds, and the way that movie looks was a huge inspiration. Jacob's Ladder, which I think is a masterpiece. So those are the films that I think we're swirling around as we were preparing to shoot the film, especially as I was writing the film.

That's an interesting mix there, actually. Don't get many people mentioning Woodshock. I've not watched that in a while, but that was a nice mention there. I also agree with you that Jacob's Ladder is a masterpiece. I think it's fantastic. Possession is an interesting one.  I love alternative indie; strange cinemas my bag, I love it. Possession was on my list for ages, and it didn't quite meet my expectations, actually, but Jacob's Ladder did. I thought Jacob's Ladder was excellent.

 

Let's move on to talk a bit more about the production process. I know some of our listeners and readers like to know about behind-the-scenes how things are made, so could you tell us a bit about how it started, what the production process was, what it's like working with the cast, etc.?

Yeah, the film was developed after I graduated from Columbia. I had written a screenplay called Study in Blue, which was a version of Bury Me When I'm Dead, and it had won a top screenwriting award at Columbia University. Part of the reward you get is doing speed dating with a group of producers. I had met my producer, Amanda Freedman, through that process, and over the next two years, we developed the script and changed it from that version, including casting. The first big step was our casting director. We hired Betsy Fippinger, who was absolutely terrific and hung onto the film through what ended up being three years of trying to get the film made and putting our cast together. Obviously, Henry is a person that we looked at a lot of people for, and he was obviously the most important role, so we built the cast around that.

We cast Devon. I really liked Devon's work, but I felt like there was something he could do that was different from what he had done before. I found him to be an especially strong actor who could play the emotions under the surface. A lot of the movie is really about people hiding their emotions and not expressing them, so that was really important to me. And then we cast Charlotte [Hope] and Makenzie [Leigh]. Charlotte’s character is meant to be really the light of the film. She’s quite a pure character, and we got the cast together with the financing that came through.

We shot for 19 days in New Jersey. We were one of the first productions to take advantage of their new production benefits, which at some point were upwards of 40%, I believe, when we shot in rural New Jersey. After shooting, it was an almost three-year journey to get the film finished and sold. That was quite an arduous time. The last three years have been, for me, very taxing. I’m excited about the film and wanted people to see it. It just came out on the 18th, and it’s available in the UK today. I think today is the release date, the 27th of July.

Yes, so 19 days for an independent film, I was going to say it's quite a short amount of time, I suppose, but then again, it's not totally uncommon to film in that amount of time.

 

Were there any challenges in that period?  Any particular highlights, or on the other hand, any particular challenges that you faced in those 19 days?

I'm going to be a little bit introspective here, Connor, so bear with me. I get a little philosophical, but every production has challenges. We were shot during COVID, which was a big challenge — that’s why all of our behind-the-scenes photos are people in masks. I personally added some challenges to the production because I had worked in TV and film production for five years before I decided to go to school; I wanted to be a writer and a director. I had seen what very long days do to a production. I asked my producing team why we even did that number of days — 19 days — which we could have done if we had pushed ourselves to extremes. The reason was to keep the hours low. I didn’t want to do more than 12 a day. We did 12 to 13 hours a day, maximum. I wanted everybody to be well rested, and that was it.

One of the biggest challenges that we all knew from development was that this is a very different kind of story that requires a unique approach to the writing process. By the time I cast my actors and we had our locations — and all the normal film production challenges were present — we were all aware that it was really about making sure that as I slowly steered the ship, I didn’t get too scared about what I had written, if that makes sense. You start to see dailies, and I think you can feel very insecure about your own writing, especially as a writer-director. Essentially, I was resetting the film on day one and trying to make the best film we could while we were there, balancing the three versions of the story that ultimately existed in the writing process, the directing process, and the editing process.

I think now, having done it on a larger scale, I understand the unique challenges of being that person — balancing confidence, open-mindedness, and a good amount of delusion. You have to be mentally ill enough to think, “Oh, this is going to work,” and at the end of it, after I’d edited the film, I felt relieved thinking, “Oh, good, that seemed to work.”

Sometimes I feel like it's something you need a critical distance. So when you're doing it — I speak subjectively, and then you can say whether you agree/ disagree — you become more self critical in the moment as you're doing it, and then when you get a bit of separation from it, I find that actually it's better than I thought, or things that are in the moment, I thought, well actually, that didn't work better. So did that happen or?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's certainly part of it. I think for me, the strength is surrounding myself with people that I will genuinely trust. That's a huge plus.  Being a director, you're standing in a circle and you're surrounding yourself with people. So if you fall one way or the other, someone's there to catch you. So I can't be objective. It's impossible. When I was editing the film, I brought in somebody that I knew not only from school, Brucey from Iceland; I loved his philosophy as a human being, and I loved his work as a creative. Those kinds of relationships are what I think prevent somebody from faltering because I can, at any moment that I feel insecure, look over to that person and give them a look and be like, is this a thing, or is this not a thing? That can be a pitfall if you surround yourself with people who will just tell you what you want to hear instead of being surrounded by people who will tell you the truth, and I think that was important to me.

Oh, definitely. That's really important, isn't it, to have people who are constructively critical, who have your back, and who you can trust in that process.

Yeah, and people who believe in the project and are also very, very critical about it. That's key because you also have to just be careful about having somebody who's critical because maybe they don't believe in the project.  You want somebody who really believes in what you're doing and can be a creative partner. I think that's super important.

Yeah, that shares that passion about it with you, and therefore, they want it to be the best possible film. So their criticism is shaped by that, basically.

Because it comes from the right place.

 

I was wondering if you could talk to us a bit more about the visual language of the film and any influences or motivations for the cinematography. Not just the visual, but like the audiovisual design of it?

Yeah, I mean, I'm a little bit older, so I come from the age of VHS tapes and physical media and noise and grain and imperfection. I think it's just inescapable for my eyes and my brain to feel more at home in a place where things are messy and noisy. I think that's the starting point. Stuff is too clear and crisp now. I don't want to watch television when I'm watching a movie, you know what I mean? Sometimes I see a movie on television in a television show; I watch Severance. To me, that feels like a movie.

I'm so glad it's not just me that doesn't like, cause I also don't like this really clear crisp aesthetic. A bit grainy, you like to see that. I remember when I first watched, which I think is outstanding, but Twin Peaks: The Return, that had that very clear, crisp aesthetic, and I was like, oh, no, I wanted it to have the 1990s aesthetic, actually. So I just thought of that as you were speaking.

Yeah, exactly. I think a certain generation just feels more at home with a certain aesthetic. So I'll start there again, being an old man and having things that I like. It will be different—newer, younger generations may not have the same love for that aesthetic because they’re growing up seeing things differently than we do. But having said that, I also think for me as a filmmaker and a storyteller, first you want to look at the story and ask, what does the story require? This type of story required a very specific visual language. Personal relationships, which the film is largely about, are internal emotions and the relationships between the characters—not just how unclear they can be, but also how distant they can be. Every character in this movie has an internal life that's separate from their external life. They are all in orbit with each other, but it doesn't really feel like anybody is purposely connected to one another. This isn't a movie filled with characters who are intimately connected to one another. In fact, the opposite. Noise, abstraction, and things being in the way—not necessarily things being crystal clear—are not only a personal interest of mine but also fit the story specifically.

I worked with Gemma [Doll-Grossman], our cinematographer, to build that visual language, which involved things always being in the way. There's a lot of stuff in front of the camera to create visuals and unusual artifacts. We used a Panaflare, which is something Panos Cosmatos uses a lot (and I love), a light near the barrel of the lens that pushes a sort of milky color wash. Basically, all the effects that you see in the film were done mostly on set. For any color aberrations, we added a little film grain, but we also had higher ISOs to boost the noise in the picture. We also tried to be very intimate, because we’re spending 90 minutes with characters who are not always outwardly expressive with their emotions. I felt like the camera should be slightly closer than normal to capture any bit of information we could from the performances. All of that shapes the visuals of the film.

 

My penultimate question is then flipping it to your motivations around what kind of response you'd like from the audience, like what emotional or psychological response did you hope to provoke in audiences whilst watching the film?

Yeah, I mean, I didn't do myself a lot of favors, if I'm being 100 percent honest here. The things that interest me in the film definitely build barriers for the audience that they have to overcome in order to fully appreciate the film. So I certainly didn't think, “How can I let as many people into this movie as possible?” Which I think is pretty clear in a lot of the critical reviews. I have a passive protagonist, I have a bad-to-worse story structure that requires a full 90 minutes to understand, and then I have an unusual visual language and unusual performances. So, straight out of the gate, I think I’ve put some distance—and a lot of barriers—between the audience and the film that I made. I’ll fully acknowledge that, and it was purposeful, by the way.

I think that the movies that affect me are movies that I want to pay attention to, that stimulate my brain. I feel like I’m an emotional person because I’m a human being, but the things that I find interesting are puzzles and stuff that makes me think. And I think I’ve constructed a film that, for me, feels very intellectually satisfying. As an intellectual exercise, sometimes I watch a movie to laugh, sometimes I watch a movie to feel an emotion, and sometimes I watch a movie just to have something on in the background. Not every movie is meant for every person in every situation. This movie is not for everybody.

I hope that there are people who will watch it—and I believe there will be people who really connect with the film as a work of art, walk away feeling that the themes in the film may hit them, maybe afterwards, even after they’ve seen it. I think that if you’re watching the movie and you’re expecting the traditional three-act structure, or you’re looking for people to repeat lines twice because you’re on your phone and you miss it the first time—if you’re watching the film because you want things to be super clear and you don’t want to have to try to understand and put the pieces of the emotional puzzle together—then this film may not be for you.

If you enjoy that kind of thing, then I think this film is for some people. I think some people have really left the film feeling like it’s a bummer. It feels like some people are going to walk away from the film feeling not great, because the film has a bad-to-worse structure where there is an inevitable ending, and you’re not going to walk away on cloud nine. But if there are enough people who can walk away from the movie feeling like, “I’ve watched a good movie, it’s made me think, and it’s made me feel some things,” I think that’s a win.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Thank you for your honesty there as well. I appreciate that. 

 

Are you currently working on any other projects? My final question: Anything coming up? Anything to expect from you maybe in the next year or two? Any projects?

I am desperate to make another screenplay that I wrote at Columbia called New Hampshire Boy, which is an autobiographical story about a bisexual, homeless punk rocker in Boston in the early 2000s, that I think is really exciting.  I love the script.  It's a tough sell because, again, it's another very unusual structure with certain characters that we don't see in movies very often. But boy, I'd love to do that, and I have a couple of their screenplays in the genre space that I would love to make. We are very lucky to get to make anything. Ninety-nine percent of films never get made. There are one hundred great ideas, and one of them actually gets made into a movie. So I'm very grateful that I've put something over the finish line. If I'm lucky and I work hard, maybe I'll get to make something else.

What was the title again? Was it New Hampshire?

New Hampshire Boy.

I like the sound of that. I think that sounds very interesting. So fingers crossed for you with that project.  It sounds good.

 

Well, thank you for joining us today. Seabold, we appreciate your time.

Thank you so much for having me. By the way, I love the podcast.  I have listened to the podcast. Yeah, you did an episode with Tomás about Chronicles of the Wandering Saint, not you, but one of your cohorts, and then I listened to that one; somebody had also interviewed Saim Sadiq for his movie  Joyland, who was a classmate of mine at Columbia. So, I'm a big, big fan of the podcast also.

Fantastic, thank you again for joining us today.

Thanks, Connor. Thank you.