Hey all, I’m back with another episode of The Filmcraziest Show! I was able to join in on the press day for a new science fiction anthology film called Doors where I was able to chat with writer/director Saman Kesh, writer/director Jeff Desom, as well as writer/director Dugan O’Neal about their project.
The film is about mysterious Doors that appear all over the world and humans rush to figure out the purpose of them. In one segment, we see how the doors got there; in another we see what happens when characters go inside the doors; and in another we learn a bit more about their purpose here. Doors stars Wilson Bethel, Julianne Collins, Lina Esco, Kyp Malone and Josh Peck.
In the interview, we discuss how the plan to make it an anthology film came about, what interested each director about their respective shorts and giving answers about the Doors, what it was like working with Josh Peck and a fun one about what they’d do if they saw these Doors in a real-life scenario. There’s some more, too.
If you want to listen to this interview as a podcast, download/listen to it here (I’m hoping to get my podcast on a service starting in April).
I’ve included one a sample from the conversation, too, edited for clarity:
Daniel Prinn, Filmcraziest: I’d love to start by asking if this was always envisioned as an anthology structure or if that came later in production?
Saman Kesh: I think when it was presented to me by Chris, one of the producers and creator of the concept, he always saw it as an anthology. I think the type of anthology and how it connected was for a long time in flux and then eventually when I started reaching out to directors that I felt would complete the package, I think that is when we knew what we wanted as far as the type of anthology. But yes, from the beginning it was an anthology. We felt like there were more pros to an anthology than one filmmaker creating different stories.
Dugan O’Neal: One of those pros being the amount of favours one person can get. [laughs]
Saman Kesh: Yeah, one of them, and the other pro being the fact that it’s just multiple brains and it’s also just a challenge. I really don’t like a lot of anthologies mostly because they try really hard to flow and they don’t and so I was like, “Okay, how do we take the best of both worlds having them be their own thing but then like really, on a limited level, creating that through line?” It was a challenge but I think the way we did this was over time. I was 2016, Dugan shot his in 2017, Jeff shot in 2018. They were brought in also in those times. There was a lot of time to cook and figure things out and rearticulate the story and stuff like that. We had the luxury to be able to do that. It’s a tough challenge.
Doors was released in theatres on March 19 and starts streaming today On Demand today, March 23. It will be released on DVD/Blu-Ray on April 6.
Filmcraziest 