Based on the original short film, TIME ADDICTS is an audacious and brilliantly innovative new Australian feature. This captivating film stars Freya Tingley (Once Upon a Time) and Charles Grounds (Elvis). STARBURST spoke to writer and director SAM ODLUM about his experience working on this passion project and bringing his ambitious idea to life…
STARBURST: How easy or difficult was it to adapt the original short into a feature-length film? Did you find that having that original source material helped with the writing and directing process?
Sam Odlum: We shot the short around 2017. I had the idea for it a few years before, but I’d previously put off writing a feature-length film about time travel. It’s a lot to bite off and chew! I thought I’d see how it goes with the short. It wasn’t until I made the short and saw the response that I realised people seemed to really like it and gel with it. I was like, “Okay, maybe there’s something more here”. I think having the short really helped us get all the pieces in place to try to make the feature film. It definitely helped with the directing process of figuring things out. Also, because I edited the short film too, it was really handy when we came to make the feature. I could be the last port of call and say, “No, I don’t think this will work,” or “I think that’ll work”. In terms of writing it, the short was a help at first, but then things do start to expand!
What was your inspiration for telling this story?
I guess I wanted to make something unique. Australia can be quite conservative with genres. You either fit into a drama category, a thriller category, or a horror category, whereas I like a real mix of things. There was inspiration from a lot of different places. One big inspiration was A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. I thought it was masterful the way he was able to create these three-dimensional characters – who are hilarious – but at the same time, stick in the sci-fi world. That was when I thought that I could make a film where it’s got these interesting characters who have all these flaws and really unearth their behaviour and why they act the way they do, but then set it out in a world that’s a little bit different, a sci-fi kind of world. I felt that time travel gave us a good opportunity to do that because of how it sort of relates to drug use, in that you’re almost messing with your past self, messing with your future self, and I thought, ‘what could we say about that and getting stuck in loops?’ The thing about time travel stories is they often get bogged down with unpacking how time travel works, whereas we set the rules for time travel early on, and then the characters don’t always dig too deep on that front. I felt that was realistic because Denise seeing herself, for example, is probably not the craziest thing that she’s seen – she’s probably seen a lot worse! Then the pillars of screenwriting in general, goal, stakes and urgency, felt really inbuilt into that idea. They wouldn’t be asking a lot of questions because they’re just constantly dealing in the moment. That’s when I knew it was working when I felt like, yeah, the stakes are kind of inbuilt.
What was the research process when you were creating the film?
We didn’t go over the top with drug research because I felt like that’s such a rabbit hole. I wanted the story to be about these specific people, so I wouldn’t say this is cut and paste for anyone who has drug issues. I’ve had friends who’ve had problems, and it’s not really about research. It’s just being around it, or you just speak to people and find out what makes them tick. That’s something I spoke about with the actors, too; we didn’t want to play this over the top and make it really on edge and jittery. Everyone reacts differently to drugs. Like with Johnny, it’s almost like smoking just kicks in his OCD, and he’s tinkering with the plates and adjusting everything. It was more down to ‘What are we trying to say about the journey of the characters?’ and, ‘What are the other little elements that we’re going to pick up on to make them feel real, but not make them feel overly dramatised?’ There are many drug films that really ram it home, and I don’t know whether we always need to hear that. I feel like we already know it. For me, the drug use was more a symptom of other issues going on with the characters. It was ‘Well, let’s tackle the other issues’ and then use drug use as a vehicle for showing that journey.
Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment presents TIME ADDICTS on Digital from November 27th. You can read our review here and an expanded version of the interview in Issue 484 of STARBURST, which is on sale November 30th.
