The Neighbour, released on DVD in the UK on November 5th, is a controlled and deliberate psychological drama telling the story of Mike, a quiet, awkward middle-aged man who works from home, and whose world is rocked when the young and beautiful Jenna (Jessica McNamee) and her new husband move in next door. It’s the second feature from independent writer and director Aaron Harvey, and stars William Fichtner (Crash, Prison Break) as Mike. We caught up with star Fichtner and co-writer/director Harvey to talk about the film.

WILLIAM FICHTNER

STARBURST: How did you first see the script, and what did you think when you read it?

William Fichtner: You know, to be honest with you, I don’t quite remember how the script came to me. It might have been through my agent at the time, I don’t know; I don’t have an agent now. Or maybe Aaron [Harvey, director and co-writer] was friends with somebody. But however it got to me, Aaron wanted to sit down and have a cup of coffee. I read the film, and I have to tell you, when I first read it, I said ‘No’. I was just not sure, if there was enough of a journey, if there was enough of a pivotal moment, if [Mike’s] life and what he’s going through, his intimate journey, is enough of a story for a film. I just didn’t know if really the interior journey of one person, if the elements were there in a storytelling way that would be strong enough to literally carry a film, to make a movie about. So I ultimately said, ‘It’s not for me.’ But I did meet Aaron, and we had a cup of coffee, and I said, ‘It’s not for me.’ Actually, at the time, I was living in Prague in the Czech Republic for about three years, and I met Aaron while I was home in LA, but I had to go back to help pack up my wife and son because after three years we were moving back to LA. And so I went back to Prague, and when I came back, I thought that Aaron had gone on and just hired someone else and made the film. But he called me like six, eight weeks after that and said, ‘Listen, I didn’t want to make the film. It didn’t come together,’ for whatever reason, and he said ‘But I want to do it in September now.’ Because this was spring, when I first met him. And he said, ‘I would like to do it in September? Can you do it now?’ And I don’t know whatever shifted inside, but I said, ‘Sure.’ And that’s when we shot the film, so it didn’t happen originally but then it happened maybe three or four months later.

Your performance as a technical writer, who works from home and rarely leaves the house is spot on.

There are times when as an actor there are things that I want to explore. What I didn’t feel it was necessary to explore, was what it means to be ‘a technical writer’. To me, that’s someone who spends time and works with a computer. To me that wasn’t the important thing. But the important thing about the guy, was that he works from home, and that his life was built around living alone with his wife, and being inside this place. His whole world operated within the grounds of his house. So he knew everything around there; the vegetables in the back yard, what he saw out the window every single day; I mean, he would recognise different birds, whatever. That’s the stuff that I started to think about, and I wondered, ‘What is that? How does that show up in somebody’s life? What are you like when, you know, you don’t have that much contact with people? What are the things you think about?’ My brain goes that way. So that’s the stuff that I truly wondered about, the specific-ness of his existence, and how things had a certain order. And what would shake that order. But mostly because, you know, he really did spend a tremendous amount of time alone, and then when he does have contact, it just happens to be with a neighbour, and it’s a very unique circumstance and it doesn’t come into his life that often, if ever. I mean, I could go on and on but I tended to gravitate towards that, about these physical things in his life and what he did for a living, how it would manifest in somebody emotionally. What I cared about was, where that would take me. To me that was more important in the journey of what he does.

The ending manages to be both expected and unpredictable…

I knew that eventually, emotionally the character of Mike had lost himself – or his balance, let’s say, about his life; he was holding on as best he could, to reassemble it. And at that point, he had put himself in a position, emotionally, that was a train that couldn’t stop. And it was real, for him, and what he felt for Jenna. When the danger came to her through her husband, there wasn’t going to be anything that could stop him. I still think, in the end, that what happens was really never meant to be that way, it was really more of a self-defence thing. Everything that had gone wrong…

I remember when I read that the first time, that I thought, ‘You know, I oddly kind of believe this.’ Because when you make choices that are really not meant to be, you can set off a series of events in life, that are going to take turns that are almost ‘meant’ to go that way, because everything is so off-track. And I personally always wondered about the end of the film, and when Mike walks back to his own back yard, and I found that to be oddly true. And just to hear sirens at the end… I don’t know, I just thought it was so raw and just, flat-out sad that I bought it.

But I have to tell you, as I’ve said from the beginning, there were a lot of elements in this movie that I was unsure of. And we shot the entire film and I still wondered about some of those elements. But I ultimately felt that there was a journey that, if I could find it, if I could find this real emotional thread – of an event like this happening to someone like this – that ultimately if I could find that little road that he went down, that I believed it. I believed it, and that kept me as interested in doing this as anything. That alone right there. And for lack of a better word, it was a leap of faith – that I felt that I believed Mike’s journey. Now, to whatever degree that I realised that as an actor or Aaron did as a director, that’s for others to wonder about. But it was a bit of a jump off the springboard, let’s say.

There’s an ambiguity about whether you’re supposed to feel sympathetic to Mike or not, was that deliberate?

Absolutely, like one thousand per cent. And I’ll tell you what it was. I went to see a rough cut of the film. I remember when we shot the film, that I had said to Aaron many times, ‘It has to be crystal clear for Mike, what it is about this neighbour, this beautiful woman who’s moved in next door, what it is about not just her but about him, and about all of it. When does he look out the window? When does he see her? You know, when does he not want to look out the window?’ These were specific sort of things that I literally tracked, because I said, ‘Let me tell you something, this film could be dangerously close to being about a creep, a voyeur.’ And I didn’t want that, it was not that. It’s not that, or we’re not finding a real story here. I worried about that very much.

So I remember the first time that I saw a rough cut of the film, and I asked Aaron to come in and sit down and take a look at it, and several times I said to him, ‘Listen, I hope that you’re hearing me right now. I’m going to point them out to you, there are several places in here, where he’s looking at her, and it could be a matter of a beat or two – but if it goes on too long it’s something else. The scene where they sit on the couch and they kiss, how does he look at her when she walks away? Is that moment really about watching the shape of her body when she walks away? Or is it really the breath that he takes when he sits back and wonders, what is he doing there? Because it’s a fine line, and you have to find it. And if you don’t find it the right way, it’s going to say something else.’ I did worry about how that would be perceived and as I say, there were a lot of conversations, with our director Aaron and his co-writer and editor Richard [Byard], about those very things. Because I took a very deep interest in the needle and that piece of thread and which direction they were going to take, because if they went left or right just a little bit, your message is wrong, and it’s something else – and I didn’t want it to be something else. I wanted it to be a real journey of somebody that truly got lost.

It’s thirty years now since you first appeared on-screen, and you’ve appeared in some amazing films and TV shows. Is there a particular project that stands out as something special for you?

You know, I have to tell you, my two managers tease me sometimes, they say to me, ‘Your impulse is always to say no. And then you get around to yes.’ The reason I share that with you is because, I rarely don’t have a great time. There were a few in my life that were difficult, but when I want to do something – and believe me, everything I want to do I don’t get to do – but when I go to work on something it’s for no other reason than I really want to be there. Sure I want to get paid, but I don’t take jobs for money. There has to be more, or I have a deep fear that I’m really going to suck if it’s for any other reason than really wanting to be there.

So, you know, when you take that into account, I’ve had a great time on just about everything, and I really mean that. I mean, I look back on The Lone Ranger; that was not received well critically but was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I did a little film with Jeff Bridges called The Amateurs, I think it was called The Moguls over in the UK, and I look back at that as just one of the most fun experiences. And you know, I’ve worked on a couple of things in the last few months that I’m excited to see.

But most of all, a project that I’ve been working on for about ten or twelve years, a film that I co-wrote and I produced and directed and played the lead in, I shot it last summer. It’s called Cold Brook and we just took it to our first festival, the Woodstock Film Festival in upstate New York, and then we’re going to be at the Napa Film Festival in California in a couple of weeks. Out of everything I’ve ever done, I could roll everything up together and I don’t care about anything as much as I care about that movie that I finally got to the point of doing, and hopefully someday it’ll see the light of day and you’ll be able to see it. Loved it. We won an award at the Woodstock Festival, and now we’re going to go to the Napa Valley Festival and we’ll see what happens. But there’s an awful lot of things I’ve worked on when I look back, and a lot of people that I’ve got great memories from, and very, very few, less than the fingers on my hand, that I could say, ‘That wasn’t a great time.’ I usually have a pretty great time, but that’s kind of who I am anyways, you know. I’m not a drama guy, I like to collaborate. Life’s too short man. I can’t have drama.

You give a great performance in Go, a fantastic film that you totally steal.

Isn’t it funny, though? I was flipping around a couple of months ago, and it was on some late night cable station, and that film is still just as good, it’s not dated. It’s Doug Liman, it’s a really good movie. I loved playing that, I loved everything about that. The only thing that’s disappointing about Go is, you know, it just seemed like at the time they were really shooting for a teen audience, and it’s a Rated-R film, but it felt like they were going for a younger audience. You know it’s not like teens didn’t like it, but if you were in your twenties and thirties and forties and remember what it was like to be eighteen and absolutely fearless, that was your audience. But it’s a wonderful film, and thank you for saying that, it makes me smile, I have a great memory of the whole thing.

AARON HARVEY

Was William Fichtner your first choice for the film?

Aaron Harvey: Yes – absolutely. When trying to think of a solid, long-term, recognisable working character actor who would be down for a smaller film like this, and who’s also over fifty years old, there’s a very finite list… When we put a few names on paper, William was easily our number one choice and we were very lucky to get him, as fortunately for us he loved the material. Once we spoke for the first time about the film and the role, it was apparent that we’d chosen correctly and I think it’s reflected in the film through his performance. He absolutely crushed the part and I was very, very happy with how it turned out. William is an amazing actor who brings a wealth of experience to a role that was a dream to see him play. He brought a real humanity to the character and created something in Mike that we all could identify with and understand, especially considering the challenging nature of who Mike is and the moves that he ends up making. He allows us to understand how things can spiral out of control when you lose the scope of the bigger picture.

It seems like a lot of work went into getting the physicality and temperament of this technical writer just right – even down to the gardening; how much of that was deliberate?

The role was written in the script with Mike being both a technical writer and a gardener. So both of those components of the character were very deliberate, but William brought everything else and amplified what we’d put on the paper. We talked a lot about who Mike was and he really created something wonderful with how he portrayed the character – riding that line between obsessive and inappropriate, and genuine and oblivious. We wanted to make sure he didn’t come across as creepy per se, but rather unaware that he was maybe stepping over the line with his neighbour and it was only when everything started falling apart around him that he’d realised what he’d done – realised the scope of what he’d lost.

The character initially came about from myself and Richard [Byard, co-writer] having a number of conversations when we were editing another film, talking about what would happen if given this particular situation. We both loved the idea of doing a domestic drama and considering both Richard and myself are in long-term relationships and slowly creeping up on middle age/mid-life crises, ha, it seemed like a pretty natural film to write and a fun one to do. We both sort of thought it would be interesting to explore what could happen if given the same sort of set-up that Mike finds himself in – considering he’s in a normal, loving relationship when this shiny new thing appears and he becomes infatuated with it. How it could go bad if given the right circumstance, without creating some overly dramatic, false situation that feels too ‘movie-ish’. We wanted it to feel real and just unfold naturally, as if this could (and does) happen – and in turn see how Mike processes and deals with the situation.

A funny anecdote from making the film is that when we found the house that we ultimately ended up using in the movie, the actual home owner’s name is Mike, he works from home, he actually has that little room that looks down over the pool at his neighbour’s house, and he actually gardens… It was quite trippy to find almost exactly the situation we’d written on the paper in real life. Just a crazy coincidence. But unlike our film, his neighbour is ninety and he didn’t [spoilers] or [spoilers], ha.

Was your approach influenced any particular films? The premise isn’t too dissimilar to that of, say, American Beauty or Manglehorn, but this is very different from either.

Funny you mention Manglehorn, not a lot of people have seen that film, but I love it. Probably more so because I love David Gordon Green, but I thought that film was great even though a lot of people missed it. That film though didn’t have any bearing or influence on this one; to be frank the biggest influence was probably the Truffaut film The Woman Next Door. I was on a big kick of revisiting some of my favourite foreign films and that one and Swimming Pool by François Ozon sort of propelled my brain into the idea of doing that almost voyeuristic, observational drama. It’s like those films meets Rear Window I suppose, ha. But that got the gears moving and then the story came from myself and Richard putting our American point of view on it and trying to keep it as grounded as possible. American Beauty and Little Children I suppose also have that back-of-the-mind reference as well as they both do wonderful jobs of showing the discontent of the families in each of those respective films… Speaking to that, the one thing we didn’t want to do was paint it like Mike was unhappy with his current life. He’s not unhappy per se, he’s just stagnated in his marriage to Lisa and when this new element comes into his life, Jenna, we watch what happens as it unfolds and sort of takes over his mind. But he’s not looking for it and there’s nothing sinister about how it happens. We wanted to make sure it felt almost confusing to Mike that he ends up in the place he ends up – like he starts losing scope of things around him, but totally outside of his own mental control, so that when he hits the bottom it’s like, “What the fuck did I just do?” He accidentally gives up all these great things (loving wife, normal life, son, etc) because he becomes enamoured with this new thing that shows up in his life.  She’s like a shiny ball that appears – and at the same time, she uses him as well to fill an emotional void that perhaps she has in her relationship with Scott, only she’s smart enough to see when it’s gone beyond what’s acceptable as neighbours, whereas Mike just continues down the rabbit hole… So we wanted to make sure and stay away from the convention that he’s in an unhappy place. He isn’t – which I think is more dangerous, because a lot of people in real life are in the same situation and can easily find themselves in a similar spot as Mike is, if they let their mind run away with them. That’s more of a scary thought than the man living in a terrible marriage and looking for a way out.

What was your experience like making it? It seems very different to Catch .44, your feature debut.

In terms of making the film, I couldn’t have had a better time! We had very little money and time, but the experience itself was amazing and creatively very freeing. And as you pointed out, yes, this film is very different than the first one. The first film I made was really, ultimately made for someone else. I didn’t get to make the film I intended when I set out to and I was young and a lot of the creative power was taken away from me once we got into the production of it. So that film was a bit of a bummer because I went into it very idealistically, yet I really got the short end of the stick and it was a constant battle all the way from start to finish. I realised very quickly that a lot of times there’s producers and financiers and people of influence involved in a film that really don’t have your agenda or the best interest of the film at heart. They’re just looking to market the thing and make a buck, so they don’t give a shit about the creative component of the film as much. That was the situation with my first film – and while incredibly fortunate and glad I got to make it – I learned a lot of what not to do and how to really fight for the integrity of what it is you’re making. So The Neighbour was almost a knee-jerk response to that film in terms of approach and execution. The first film was a much larger budget, this one was very small, purposefully. We kept it contained so I’d be able to keep a lot more creative autonomy and actually execute the film the way that I envisioned it, without a lot of compromise. It was very different in terms of story and genre as well, which also helped in terms of making the film we had on paper. We all went into it knowing it was a slower-burn dramatic film, so when we finished it, we were very happy with how it came out because we were able to keep intact what it was we set out to do. I had a great time making the film, had great partners on the film and everyone that was working (both actors and crew) were all there 100% for the film. No one was there for just the pay check and I think it shows in the final film, as we left pretty much everything on the screen. It’s not a film for everyone, but we made the film for the specific audience that’s really going to appreciate it and I think the film represents that.

So what’s up next for you?

I have another film I’m finishing now called Into the Ashes. It’s sort of an homage and throw-back to the lonely man revenge/redemption genre. Films like Rolling Thunder or the original Death Wish or Hardcore… I absolutely love those kinds of films, so it’s my entry to that genre I suppose. It’s a film about two men who share a mutual tragedy and have to rectify their relationship with each other, all while chasing down the guys who committed the act in the first place. It takes place in the south where I grew up, so it’s got a nice regional flavour to it as well which is nice. We’re very close to it being completed and I’m very excited to get it out into the world. Keep an eye out!

The Neighbour is released on DVD in the UK by 101 Films, on Monday November 5th.