1428 Elm
Fansided

Interview with Kevin Sluder — writer, director, producer of Heartless

By Wade Wainio

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Stacy Snyder as Shelby, doing her best to out-perform her associates. (Heartless) — Sunshine Boys Productions

We ask Kevin Sluder about “Heartless,” a business-savvy horror short inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Don’t be afraid to axe for a promotion!

Heartless offers a new, corporate spin on Edgar Allan Poe’s immortal “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a tale of murderous madness, 1428 Elm has a heart-to-heart with its writer, director and producer, Kevin Sluder.

1428 Elm: What’s it like working on an Edgar Allen Poe-inspired project? It must be different than most other projects one could work on.

Kevin Sluder: On the plus side, it’s AMAZING source material. So rich and deep and complex. It was such fun diving into the mind of Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart narrator. It’s a minefield of awesomeness for any writer, director or actor. On the down side, it’s been done SO many times. Luckily, I felt like I had a new take on it so I was pretty confident going in. I think it’s different from other projects because of the reverence his fans (and I) have for the original story. It’s arguably one of the greatest horror stories ever told and, if you get down to it, one of the first stories to throw you right into the mind of a killer.

Think of all the movies/TV shows that followed in its footsteps – Silence of the Lambs, Dexter, Maniac, the list goes on and on. So the difference would be the enormous shoes I was attempting to fill. I wanted to do it justice. So when it came to the gore and the overall look of it, my philosophy was “go big or go home.” So I guess there was a sense of historical responsibility with this project that wouldn’t be as prevalent in a story I just made up. Hopefully, audiences feel I didn’t step on Poe’s toes too badly. Haha.

1428 Elm: What would you say is the overall message of Heartless, or do you wish to keep it open to interpretation?

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KS: I think I was definitely taking shots at corporate ambition and how it makes monsters out of people sometimes, but audiences are free to interpret the film as they like. That’s the beauty of the art form. It’s been received differently in different venues, which is rather interesting and kind of cool. I had one theater where at least 6 people walked out. In several other ones, I got rousing cheers. When speaking with audience members afterward, I’ve heard comments from many different angles and that always makes me feel like we did a good job. I think a cool example of this is people asking me if the #metoo movement had anything to do with the tone or content of the film.

Truth is, I wrote the script in March/April of 2017, then shot it in June, so the Weinstein story hadn’t broken yet. I will say I added the misogynistic co-workers in there as a response to the vitriol on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign and the stories that people started to share. But it wasn’t written as a #metoo movie. It was more of a reflection of how the philosophy of “You have to rip the heart out of your opponent to get ahead” can make you do some really awful things. Or maybe the message is – don’t be mean to people on the job, because you really, REALLY have no idea what they were up to the night before. So I guess that decides it… it’s completely open to interpretation.

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