Writer/director Francis Galluppi had a handful of shorts under his belt before he found himself with the opportunity to make the jump to feature directing, with The Last Stop in Yuma County becoming that debut. Filmmakers can take a number of approaches to set themselves up for success when it comes to making that jump, and despite the number of challenges that could be presented by developing a neo-noir that unfolds almost entirely within the walls of one diner, Galluppi managed to enlist a talented group of veteran performers to bring his expertly crafted and tense script to life, marking for an impressive first foray into features. The Last Stop in Yuma County hits theaters and Digital on May 10th.
The Last Stop in Yuma County is described, “While awaiting the next fuel truck at a middle-of-nowhere Arizona rest stop, a traveling young knife salesman is thrust into a high-stakes hostage situation by the arrival of two similarly stranded bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty—or cold, hard steel—to protect their bloodstained, ill-begotten fortune.”
The film stars Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Richard Brake, Sierra McCormick, Nicholas Logan, and Michael Abbott Jr.
ComicBook caught up with Galluppi to talk the development of his film, collaborating with his cast, and future projects.
ComicBook: When you have all these shorts in your career, was this project always considered as, “Well, when I do jump to feature directing, this is the movie I want to get made,” or was it that you had a few ideas that were out there and it just so happened that this was the first one to come to fruition?
Francis Galluppi: I did the two short films, High Desert Hell and Gemini Project. I don’t know, man. It seemed like I never really thought I would be able to make a feature this quickly. I got very lucky when I met [producer] James [Claeys] and stuff, so I didn’t have a script for a feature lying around.
It was really about when that opportunity came up, it was like, “Okay, I need to write something really contained.” So this was never … Maybe some ideas that were implemented in the script, I can’t say for sure, but they probably were just there in my brain somewhere. But yeah, it was really when it was, “Okay, I have an opportunity to make a feature,” this is what I wrote.
You’re making the jump to this really interesting genre in that it’s a thriller, it’s a noir, it’s a little bit of a Western, it’s a drama. Were there certain filmmakers or certain films that you looked to for inspiration as touchstones of not only wanting to borrow some things from but also how you wanted to deviate from expectations in this genre?
No, nothing that I specifically kept going back to. It was always a film noir in my head, and the past week I’ve been revisiting a lot of my favorite noirs and I’m like, “Oh, sh-t. Maybe I got that from this movie,” or, “Maybe I got that.” And not knowing at the time, but re-watching The Killing, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, and seeing that ending with all the money flying around, I was like, “Oh, maybe that’s where I got it from.”
I just re-watched Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, and Kirk Douglas gets stabbed in the stomach at the end and just falls on his face. And I was like, “Maybe that’s where I…” I can’t say for sure, but it was always a noir in my head. Aesthetically, I talked to my cinematographer, we watched Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and these Don Siegel, Sam Peckinpah, really grimy looking ’70s films, and that was, aesthetically, maybe what we were going back to. I mean, we shot digitally, so a lot of it was emulating that look, too.
The cast for this is so good. To sell this material where everything is so contained and so limited to this diner, once you got this cast involved who have so many genre credits to their names, what was that collaboration like? Did that collaboration change much from how it was originally scripted or was it still pretty authentic to that original vision?
It was a lot of meticulous planning, so it was very much what was on the page and what was planned for, but this cast obviously elevated this story. You get actors like that in there and you can’t help but just [know] they’re going to make it better. And that’s with the whole process from beginning to end, right? You write, it’s just a complete evolution. You write the script and then you cast, and then things start to change, and then that actor gets in wardrobe and makeup, and then that changes things. And then they get their scene partner and that changes things. And then you get the edit and you start playing with timing and it’s all part of the process.
If you looked at the first draft of this script compared to what the movie is, I would say yeah, it was a huge, huge improvement of what they brought to the table. In my head, it was always a dark comedy, as well, but a lot of people didn’t see that. But then once you get somebody like Jim Cummings and Nick Logan and Connor Paolo, once you get those types of actors in the movie, it really brings out those comedic elements. So it was like, “Ah, this is the thing that was in my head, and now it’s actually happening.”
What do you think was the biggest unexpected challenge of this project? Obviously jumping from shorts to a feature, you anticipate, “Okay, these are going to be some big hurdles that I have to get over,” but what was the thing that you thought, “Oh, nobody told me it was going to be like this,”?
It was the opposite. Everyone was like, “Oh, it’s going to be really hard to direct 15 actors in a room.” And I was like, “It was great.” I had a blast. Honestly, all the hurdles were the same hurdles that I dealt with on all the short films. Old cars f-cking never work, and so anytime you see a car driving in Yuma, it’s somebody pushing it, which happened on High Desert Hell, which happened on Gemini Project. And this time I was like, “I know that’s going to happen, so let’s get a full-time mechanic on set.” It still happened, and we still had to push cars.
And then weather was something that really f-cked things up and slowed us down. It’s like, it’s supposed to be really hot, and it’s pouring rain and windstorms, which is just the typical bullsh-t. It’s just like, cars don’t work. Weather sucks. But yeah, other than that, when you’re working with this caliber of talent, it makes things go a lot smoother.
I think I most appreciated how you get about an hour into this movie, and then it completely shifts gears from what you thought it was going to be. It’s something similar, but an entirely new direction for some of the characters. Were there versions in this script or of this story where that shift happened?
No, this was always the idea, was to have this thing happen an hour in. From the beginning, I always thought of it as a film noir, so it’s like it really is the knife salesman’s story. It was always about getting him to that situation where he has to make that decision: does he take the money and run?
I always knew it was going there. I got a lot of notes saying otherwise, when I was sending the script around, where it was like, “Oh, this should be the end of the movie,” or, “This should happen way earlier on,” and I didn’t listen. It’s weird because I try not to read people’s reviews and comments. I try to stay out of it, but it’s like some people say, “Oh, the movie really falls apart after this part,” or whatever. Then some people say, “Oh, no, it gets better.” You’re not going to ever make everybody happy, and I think, if anything, people do not expect what happens to happen.
Well, lastly here, congratulations on Evil Dead.
Oh, thanks, man. Thank you.
That’s got to be insane, and I’m sure super exciting and super overwhelming.
Yeah, it’s very insane.
It’s funny because I just spoke with Sébastien [Vaniček] two weeks ago and, even though that movie was probably a little bit more further along, he still couldn’t talk about it. I know you can’t talk about it, anything that is written down is not something that you can really get into right now, but I still wanted to at least touch upon what is so exciting for you about the Evil Dead franchise. What is it about your entry into this world that you’re like, “Okay, well, you’ve seen the cabin in the woods, we’ve seen a high-rise,” what is the excitement about how you’re going to be able to put your own stamp on this franchise that has expanded over the years?
Yeah, all I can really say is how much of a fan I am of Evil Dead and how much I really care about this franchise. It truly is one of the movies that made me want to make movies. I’m not just saying that. I grew up watching Back to the Future and Indiana Jones and these huge spectacles and spent most of my life playing music because making movies seems so unattainable, and there’s something about the original Evil Dead that you could just tell that [director] Sam [Raimi] and Bruce [Campbell] were out there having so much fun making the thing they wanted to make. It was so innovative, and that’s really the thing that inspired me to go pick up a camera and get my friends together and go out and make a horror short. My office is covered in Evil Dead stuff … It’s just very exciting. I’m really excited. Everyone at Ghost House is just really, they’re just great to work with.
Without tipping your hand too much, there’s a difference between the original Evil Dead and then Army of Darkness versus Fede Álvarez’s reboot of the property. Do you have a particular favorite entry into the saga?
I like them all. I’m dead serious. I think that it’s a perfect … They have not f-cked up any of the movies. They’re all great, and I love them all for my own reasons. Obviously, Army of Darkness came out at a time, a perfect age for me, so I watched that a lot growing up, and Evil Dead had a huge impact on me when I was 18. And I love Fede’s. I love Lee [Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise]. They’re all great. I really can’t tell you … I feel like I always go back to the original Evil Dead. It’s just a comfort movie for me. But with that said, I watch them all.
You can’t really go wrong with any Evil Dead.
Even the show. The show is great.
The fact that we got three seasons of Bruce Campbell fighting Deadites and people are still like, “Wow, why isn’t Bruce coming back?” You’ve got 15 hours of him fighting these monsters.
Yeah, I know, man. And it’s so good. When that show was on, it was like, that was the one show where we always had a f-cking weekly party at my house. And everyone came over and we got pizza, and we all were watching the new episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead, and I miss it.
The Last Stop in Yuma County hits theaters and Digital on May 10th.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.
