How a Sundance Veteran Was Forced to Drive Uber and Found the Inspiration For His Next Feature Film

This article was written by Mark Stolaroff and originally appeared on IndieWire November 26, 2018.

We often read on this site about successful films, and how they lead to successful careers. But most careers don’t follow that path. Most first failures stop careers in their tracks, and many early successes lead to…nothing—careers that stalled waiting for financing. But there are inspiring filmmaking success stories of another kind that we rarely hear about. Journeys that went down back alleys and across long bumpy roads, on their way to a career.  I once heard legendary UCLA filmmaking instructor Howard Suber say that the #1 quality his most successful students shared was “Perseverance.” You start off your career with an idea of what success looks like. What happens when it doesn’t turn out like you planned?

Writer/Director Henry Barrial

I am a producer specializing in micro-budget production. I first met writer/director Henry Barrial in 2000 when I was an executive at Next Wave Films. We were giving finishing funds to exceptional low-budget features, which included Chris Nolan’s Following and Joe Carnahan’s Blood Guts Bullets & Octane. Henry had submitted his feature film debut, Some Body, a $3,000 drama shot on Canon XL-1’s with a two-man crew and no script. We invested in the film and when it was accepted into Dramatic Competition at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, we repped its sale to Lot 47 Films, which ultimately released it theatrically in over 15 cities. Quite a feat for an improvised no-budgeter made out of necessity, several years before anyone had coined the term “Mumblecore.”

That story usually goes:  director comes out of nowhere, beats the odds and is one of 16 films in Competition at Sundance, and then becomes a household name. Only, it didn’t quite work out that way for Henry. Lot 47 went belly up before they released the film on home video and all the original deliverables vanished like the company’s principals. Then the producers of Henry’s follow-up film, True Love, a Sundance Screenwriters Lab project, walked away in pre-production when they couldn’t raise the $2 million dollars to shoot it. That’s when I jumped in, now an independent producer, and pulled Henry back into micro-budget filmmaking, a place he never really wanted to return to, and certainly didn’t want to stay.

We shot True Love for $50,000 and it just missed getting into Sundance. Our next film, a sci-fi thriller that Henry wrote called Pig, was also meant for a seven-figure budget, but I convinced (coerced?) Henry into making it the only way I knew how, on a micro-budget with money we put up ourselves and also raised on this new thing called Kickstarter. Pig ultimately played over 35 festivals and won 10 awards before getting a domestic deal with Kino Lorber. Henry had been attached to a script for many years written by the deceased filmmaker Joe Vasquez, and with the success of Pig, those producers decided they too could make The House That Jack Built on a micro-budget, and I was asked to join as a producer when they got into post with absolutely no money. We again raised funds on Kickstarter and the film went on to premiere at the LA Film Festival, win 8 awards, and get a small theatrical distribution and a streaming deal with Netflix.

With four reasonably successful features under his belt, Henry again tried to get his next project, a clever horror film called Final Girl, made on a “real” budget. For the better part of 2014, we waited for financing to come through, but watched it collapse time and time again. Neither of us could take on other film work, and with two kids at home and a wife working during the day, Henry was forced to do what a lot of middle-aged men were doing at the time—he started driving for Uber at night…

When Henry had Some Body at Sundance, one of his champions was a woman named Lynn Auerbach, who was Associate Director of the Feature Film Program at the Sundance Institute. Some Body was based on the actual life experiences of lead actress Stephanie Bennett, who co-wrote and co-produced the film with Henry. I’m certain that what drew Lynn to Some Body was its groundbreaking naturalism and authenticity. This was not a film that felt designed or constructed; it felt lived in and experienced. And that’s because Henry was adamant that no moments could feel false. Actual people in Stephanie’s life were cast to play themselves. Not a single line of dialogue was written. Stephanie was persuaded to leave nothing hidden or unsaid—everything that happened in her real life was up for analysis and laid bare (often literally) in the film.

Lynn once told Henry that for his follow up to Some Body, he should quit his job and become a bus driver for 6 months, and then write a film about a bus driver. She believed that the majesty of everyday life, the small details, were worth portraying on screen. Without realizing it, Henry did just that with his most recent feature, DriverX. He didn’t drive a bus, though; he drove a Prius. Lynn wouldn’t live to see Henry’s “bus-driving film,” (she died in 2004), but I’m sure she would have been pleased with the direction Henry took in early 2015 when we decided to turn Henry’s late-night Uber experiences into our next movie, and yes, make it on a micro-budget. Henry, once again, being pulled back into the mud of no-budget filmmaking.

We literally willed this new film into being, helped by 0% credit card offers, 400 Kickstarter backers, a few overly-supportive friends and family members, and an incredibly talented and selfless lead actor named Patrick Fabian, (Better Call Saul’s Howard Hamlin), who played the role of our driver, Leonard.

More about the regret for lost opportunities and unmet life expectations than Rideshare driving, DriverX deals with a 50-something man’s existential crisis, after changing technologies have ended his livelihood and he is forced to reckon with not only getting back into a new employment environment, but also confronting his mortality. This crisis comes into clearer focus when he must drive around Millennials, the generation superseding him, who now expect people like Leonard to take a figurative back seat (while ironically, he sits in the literal front seat, driving them around).

The heart of DriverX comes from the same inspiration as Henry’s first feature—real life—though the two films are very different. Henry has developed his craft over the last two decades, and with new cameras and equipment, and a few new tricks I’ve also developed over the years, we were able to make an ambitious film (night driving scenes, numerous locations, over 50 speaking parts), on a paltry budget. But at its core, DriverX is Henry returning to what moved him in the late ‘90s, going back to that advice from Lynn Auerbach, confronting the reality of your life and putting it on screen. Henry wanted to make that horror film, but he was compelled to make DriverX.

Fortunately for us, festival audiences have connected with the film, seeing themselves in Leonard’s struggle and his will to persevere, despite the challenges of life confronting him at every overpass. And IFC Films’ Sundance Selects took notice, too. They are releasing the film in theaters and On Demand beginning November 30^th, almost exactly 18 years to the day Henry found out his no-budget feature debut Some Body was accepted into Sundance. The lesson in DriverX becomes the of DriverX— never give up, it’s never too late, and learn to accept the road you’ve found yourself on, no matter how bumpy or twisty it may be. And if truth and authenticity are your guides, you’ll always find your way back home. These are lessons that many of us filmmakers can apply, when success proves to be more elusive than what we usually read about.

“DriverX” opens theatrically and On Demand beginning November 30, 2018. For information, visit www.DriverXMovie.com. “Pig” and “The House That Jack Built” are currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Sadly, “Some Body” remains unavailable to the general public. 

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NO-BUDGET REPORT

© 2018 Mark Stolaroff