Taglines: When life hammers you, get smashed.
Richard (Thomas Jane), Ron (Jeremy Piven), Tim (Christian McKay), and Jonathan (Rob Lowe) are friends from college who gather for a weekend each year to celebrate their friendship and catch up with each other. On the surface, they look like other men going through life: they have careers and families and responsibilities. But as with many people, there is more to them than meets the eye. As the weekend progresses, they go down the rabbit hole of excess. Fueled by sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, their bacchanalian reunion drives them to an unexpected place where they are forced to confront themselves and the choices they’ve made.
About the Film
“I was looking to make a raw, visceral, music-driven film that expressed where I was in my life,” said director Mark Pellington. That desire to express unfiltered personal emotion comes up often for Pellington in describing I MELT WITH YOU Pellington’s work in film, television and music video is trademarked by his innate ability to bring an audience deep inside a world—whether that world is inspiring, terrifying or both.
Frustrated by the often long process that comes with getting any movie made in this day and age, Pellington was shooting music videos cheaply and beautifully with new digital technology and looking to, as he says, “take the creative process back to a more intuitive place of directorial freedom, and get out and shoot something down and dirty, yet meaningful— quickly.”
He kept coming back to a script from a lifelong friend, Glenn Porter. It was an explosive screenplay about men who had made an idealistic pact in college in their early twenties, and who are forced to confront the promise they made 25 years later. Pellington viewed his friend’s thriller script as an existential horror film, as well an allegory exploring the darker side of the modern male psyche. He was drawn to Porter’s complex characters— men in their shadow side, holding their greed and addiction and guilt like weapons.
“We are both 48, and found ourselves asking where our generation’s version of Cassavetes’ Husbands is…where is the film about our life experience?” Pellington says.
“The film is potent,” says Porter. “It’s palpable. As an audience member you feel what these characters are experiencing.”
“Rather than provide answers,” offers Pellington, “The film asks a lot of questions about the real life experiences of males.” Questions like: how do we as men come to terms with not becoming what we set out to be; how do we handle the powerlessness and guilt connected to failure; and how do we cope with the fear of losing our identity?
Pellington and Porter enhanced the script by exploring themes of mortality, time and memory. They channeled and reflected on their own lives, wilder times and heartbreak gone by, and relived those cultural and musical touchstones that drum up communal emotional memories.
“The first time I heard the Sex Pistols was a very pivotal moment in my life,” says Pellington. “Music, drugs, sex— these things are cross-generational. They unite us. We see this when the college age kids show up at the house. There it is right there in front of you. It just manifests itself differently with age, in this case, idealism vs. bitterness.”
In Pellington and Porter’s twenty plus year friendship, they have lived through highs as well as heartbreak and disappointment. All of this informs the script for I Melt With You. It’s in essence a dark thriller, bristling and brimming with dark humor and self-discovery.
“Mark and I were very deliberate about marking time, and allowing things to creep in. The genre aspect is meant to drive the story, and help peel back the layers of these men as deeply as possible,” says Porter.
“We kind of embraced the punk rock spirit of fuck it, let’s just do it ourselves,” Pellington recalls of Melt’s 2010 shoot in Big Sur.
Pellington and Porter constructed the story to fit in a mostly contained environment to keep production costs low. Fit inside a tight timetable, Pellington and his crew (including longtime collaborator, DP Eric Schmidt) shot the film in sequence, allowing he, the actors and Glenn to make decisions and see what was working and was needed in real time.
“For me as a writer, it was the first time I watched something I wrote shot in sequence— which gave me quite an education,” recalled Porter. “You learn fast about what you don’t need and what notes you’ve already hit. You also learn what you don’t have. So I wrote things on the set, Mark would review them at night and we’d shoot them the next day. I found that process very exhilarating.”
After he and Porter completed the script, a number of well-known actors and their representatives showed interest in the material. A few of those actors said of the script, “It’s great, but I’m not sure I want to go there.” Most saw it as a rare opportunity to delve into a rich piece of material. In the end, Pellington got a stellar cast: Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe, Jeremy Piven, Christian McKay and Carla Gugino all of whom usually command more in individual salaries that the entire budget of Melt.
“I needed male actors who had the courage to dig pretty deep, and Rob, Tom, Jeremy, Christian— they just went for it,” said Pellington.
There were no trailers, a shared make-up room on the set. These four men not only needed to forgo any vanity to play these heavily wired, self-medicating characters on the brink, but submit to a process that included hundreds of hours of shooting, and extraordinary commitment to character.
Pellington and Porter constructed the story to fit in a mostly contained environment to keep production costs low. Pellington, Porter, producers Norm Reiss and Rob Cowan, DP Eric Schmidt, cast and crew went to work for eighteen days in the visually amazing locations of Big Sur.
Director’s Statement
I MELT WITH YOU was designed and conceived as an allegory about male friendship and failure, set inside the powerful bonds of memory and promise. I was interested in exploring how middle aged men become far different creatures than they imagined they would be, and how they deal with it.
It’s the story of four men searching inside themselves and finding emptiness. The film was super low budget and driven by commitment and passion from all involved, and we shot it in 18 days in Big Sur. I worked on the script with its creator, the writer Glenn Porter, and we received input and support from executive producer Neil Labute.
The movie has aesthetic influences in 80’s new wave/punk rock, and the aggressive cut up poetics of William Burroughs. It was inspired by the likes of Cassavetes’ Husbands and Mike Leigh’s Naked. It is quasi-experimental, intense, and personal film for me, a 180 degree turn from my last work. We were all a team, a small band of actors and crew who took our collective influences and life experience and threw it into a harrowing experimental blender, exploring the vagaries of friendship, regret, shame, failure, greed, and the desperate search for hope.
It is a film that loves music and understands the role it plays in the highs and lows of life. It is a tale, on the surface, of old friends being confronted by their youthful promise, and shifts into an exploration of the dark side, the weakness of the male psyche and men who ultimately hide from themselves and their responsibilities.
At the end of the day I MELT WITH YOU is just a movie. However, it is not for the squeamish. It’s the type of film that is going to generate controversy and garner deeply felt polarized reactions. I very much look forward to yours.
I Melt with You
Directed by: Mark Pellington
Starring: Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, Rob Lowe, Christian McKay, Carla Gugino, Tom Bower, Arielle Kebbel, Sasha Grey. Isabelle Pellington, Melora Hardin
Screenplay by: Glenn Porter
Production Design by: Ian Sebastian Kasnoff
Cinematography by: Eric Schmidt
Film Editing by: Don Broida
Costume Design by: Patia Prouty
MPAA Rating: R for pervasive drug use and language, some violence and sexual content.
Music by: tomandandy
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: December 9, 2011
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