Interview with Kevin Sluder -- writer, director, producer of 'Heartless'

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— Sunshine Boys Productions

1428 Elm: Stacy Snyder does a great job as Shelby. What would you say Shelby’s main problem is?

KS: Yeah, Stacy’s phenomenal, right? I was really fortunate that she came in to audition for the lead role in a short film I produced called Feeding Time. She blew me away with her talent and professionalism on set. After that shoot was done, I wanted to work with her again. And when I thought up Heartless, it was Stacy that I envisioned looking at her reflection in the mirror in that first scene. I knew she would nail the performance, but I will admit she surprised me a bit on set with just how deep she went with this character. It was a true pleasure working with her on this.

As for Shelby, I think her flaw would her unbridled, unrecognized ambition. Yes, she’s demeaned by her co-workers, which crushes her confidence, but she wasn’t a confident individual to start with. At least not in the way I imagined her. To me, she was kind of a reflection of the modern society that says, “Give me what I want and give it to me now”. And, once you give it to me, I will have earned it. So, I figured that if I added that kind of a character into a situation like the one in that office, some fireworks might happen.

1428 Elm: The original Tell-Tale Heart deals with madness and violence, but much of the story remains ambiguous. Are there any hidden ambiguities or assorted “Easter eggs” in Heartless?

KS: Actually, there’s a small Easter egg for fans of Stacy’s work in Feeding Time. The heart-shaped necklace that she’s wearing in the scenes in her house is the same one the babysitter was wearing in that film. Outside of that, and I don’t know that it’s that ambiguous, but the 3 execs in the office wear suits modeled after the ones worn by Christian Bale and Jared Leto in American Psycho and Michael Douglas in Wall Street. Oh, and I almost forgot – the pen used in one of the more violent, over-the-top moments is our company pen (Sunshine Boy Productions) and we actually hand them out at screenings.

1428 Elm: Being a short film, are there any story elements you wish had been included?

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KS: Oh, definitely. The biggest element would be something that’s sort of hinted at in the short, but not fully explored because of time constraints. If you notice, for the presentation, Shelby is wearing the exact same outfit as Clare was wearing the night before. I really wanted to explore an obsession component with Shelby, where she wanted to be Clare. She hasn’t really developed an identity of her own on the job so she does what a lot of people do. They copy the successful person around them and hope that helps them pass the test. I imagined she has Clare’s entire wardrobe in her closet, but never wore it until the presentation day. That’s when her obsession paid off and she can finally claim what’s rightfully hers – Clare’s job.

1428 Elm: Was there any difficulty in getting the blood and gore scenes just right?

KS: Luckily, I got to work with Josh and Sierra Russell of Russell FX on the film, so they took care of all the blood and gore. They’re such pros, so there wasn’t much worry about how we were going to get things to work. It was more about scheduling and filming everything in an expedient manner, so we could get all those great blood scenes in there. We actually ended up cutting one blood moment and it’s a good thing we did. It was kind of a throw-away scene (a funny one, but a throw-away one) so we just dropped it. But the blood scenes turned out way better than I even imagined they would be. It was everything I could’ve hoped for.

1428 Elm: Heartless has humorous elements. Would it be fair to call it a horror-comedy?

KS: Truth be known, it didn’t start out that way. The humor came along as a reaction to the extreme gore I planned on including in the piece. I felt like, with the modern-day update, it would be too bleak if we did a beat by beat re-telling. So, I added three over-the-top execs to counter-act the darkness of what she did the night before. I do love it when audiences laugh in the last couple sections of the film, so I think you could call it a horror-comedy, albeit pretty dark comedy.

1428 Elm: Do you have any new projects in the works?

KS: I do. Thanks for asking. I optioned a sci-fi feature that I just love. We have a director signed on and the producers are packaging it at the moment. Hopefully, they can find funding to get it off the ground. I just finished a horror feature script and I’m getting ready to shop that to prospective buyers. I also have a neo-noir script that I’m writing with the goal of me directing it late next year so, hopefully, you’ll be hearing more from me in the future.

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

By Wade Wainio | Sep 29, 2018