Arriving in theaters on Pi Day, March 14th, Paramount Pictures’ Novocaine tells the story of everyman Nate (Jack Quaid), whose rare genetic condition renders him unable to feel pain. His quiet, cautious life as an assistant bank manager is disrupted when the woman of his dreams, bank teller Sherry (Amber Midthunder), is taken hostage during a holiday heist. With love on the line, Nate decides to rescue her, turning his restrictive condition into an unforeseen strength.
Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen have carved a niche into the world of genre filmmaking, blending wicked humor and tension with deeply heartfelt storytelling. Their creative partnership began during their freshman year at NYU as randomly assigned roommates who shared a passion for genre films. Their previous work includes the 2019 darkly comedic thriller Villains starring Bill Skarsgård and scream queen Maika Monroe, and the Paramount+ sci-fi thriller Significant Other, also with Monroe.
As Novocaine readies to pack a punch in cinemas, Boxoffice Pro spoke with the filmmaking duo about their collaboration and inciting a return of the character-driven action comedy.
Nate’s journey is a labor of love, and this project feels like a labor of love as well. Robert, was the production as much of a roller coaster ride as the film is for an audience?
Robert Olsen: The production itself had a lot less drama than the movie has, but it did have all of the heart and humor that the movie has. We had just an incredible cast, between Jack and Amber, Ray [Nicholson], Betty [Gabriel], and Matt [Walsh]. Everyone was so friendly and nice and down-to-earth. There were no bad apples.
Usually on a movie set, it’s either the most fun thing in the world, and it’s like adult summer camp, and every day is incredible, or you might have somebody that’s like a bit of an a-hole that’s high up the food chain, whether that’s your lead actor or a director or a producer. We’ve worked on plenty of sets before we got to direct. We’ve PA-ed and Key PA-ed and Second-Seconded and all these things. So we’ve been on sets where the vibe is not great, and that is anything but fun.
We always just try to foster a really positive working environment. I think a lot of the good vibes come from the fact that we are best friends and have been since we were 18 years old. We try to infuse as much of that energy [as we can] into the projects that we make. This one was the first time where that really got to be amplified by the concept.
Up until this point, we’ve done a lot of horrors and thrillers that we put a lot of humor and heart into, but with this one, we got to really take the restrictor plate off and allow it to be this fun celebration of friendship and romance and all these things [put together]. Even though there’s a lot of grizzly violence, broken bones, and rendered flesh, by the end of the movie, you actually feel pretty good. You don’t leave on some sour note, and we love that.
From big set pieces to the prosthetics and make-up, there was a lot to navigate. Dan, what was the most challenging moment or aspect of the shoot for you?
Dan Berk: For us, none of it was really hard physically for us, but I do think tracking a lot of that continuity was probably the biggest challenge with this movie. We had 109 different wounds, lacerations, and bruises. There were 18 different versions of the suit with the various levels of breakdown for Nate’s costume. All of that had to be tracked with 3D scans of Jack. So we were able to go through and give notes. Our amazing special effects make-up team was led by Clinton Smith.
It was just a lot to wrap one’s head around, but we did our best to shoot the film chronologically as much as one can. We started our first few days in Nate’s apartment, and our final shot was in the climactic fight. We at least attempted, as best we could, to take the pressure off some of those department heads on that. That was definitely the biggest ‘to do’ on this set, making sure that Jack didn’t show up with bruising on his face that he hasn’t actually acquired yet because [shooting] days were swapped. That was a big job.
So essentially you had a few weeks of shooting a rom-com and then went in a completely different direction.
Dan Berk: Yeah, it was two weeks of shooting a rom-com. It’s funny, because Jack and Amber were working together almost the entirety of those first two weeks. Then after the bank heist, there was a four-week gap where Amber didn’t work. Amber and Jack really didn’t get another chance to work together until way later in the shoot, and they really missed each other, which was very sweet.
Take me into your prep, into your collaborative process. As creative partners, how do you approach mapping out the movie, especially with a film like this, where there are so many things to track?
Robert Olsen: We learned early on in our careers that prep is where the movie is won or lost. If you prep a movie properly, the actual shooting of it is just pure fun. Prep is where you’re really hitting the books and making sure that all your i’s are dotted and your t’s are crossed.
Dan Berk: It’s eating your veggies.
Robert Olsen: Yeah, exactly. It is the vegetables, and the shooting is the dessert. Not to say that there aren’t things that happen and acts of God on set; it’s possible for that to be not fun, but on this movie, the shooting was very fun.
A big reason that prep was so successful on this is our First Assistant Director, Justin Muller. We were one of the first films up and running after the strike, and so we had the opportunity to work with some really talented department heads who, in a more normal environment, might have been on a bigger show. The last movie he had assistant-directed was Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which obviously has a lot more going on and is many, many times the budget of this movie. It has motion capture and all these crazy CGI things.
When he came to this, it’s not like he was just sitting there and coasting. He brought that same level of hyperfocus and detail-oriented leadership to our production office. We were having meeting after meeting every day: sequence meetings, wound meetings, fight meetings, just making sure that everyone was on the same page and that our schedule made sense.
The amount of work that was put into that just made the whole shoot that much better. It allowed us to have shorter days so that we weren’t burning out the crew. I think that everybody had a really fun time making this movie, but again, that is all just because of the hard work that the whole crew and team put in during the early days, before you ever get to set.
This marks a return to character-driven action stories with personal stakes rather than global stakes. What were some of the films that you had in mind when you were putting Novocaine together?
Dan Berk: You hit it right on the head. Action is probably our favorite genre, and we feel like at some point in the last 20 years, it’s kind of lost some of what made us fall in love with it in the first place. Which were, in what we consider the golden age of action, these relatable protagonists in the 80s and 90s, whether it’s John McClane in Die Hard, or Riggs and Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon franchise, or Jack Walsh and the Duke in Midnight Run. Those movies were starring guys that could live on your block. They weren’t gardeners that were secretly assassins or bakers that were in Mossad or something. They’re just regular people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, which makes it more relatable and makes it more satisfying for an audience member to watch that journey. You can map your own experience onto the main character’s experience, and that’s just something you don’t get a lot of anymore in action films these days.
A lot of action movies in the contemporary era have taken on a little bit more of a dour tone; they’re a little more cynical, and that’s probably a response to real-life events. It’s a post-9/11, post-Great Recession reaction that art often has to huge global events like that. Despite the world being a little scary out there, we’re trying to inject a little joy back into that, because action movies used to be that way. You used to go to the movie theater and have so much fun and go on a ride and leave the movie theater feeling better about humanity than when you walked in. That’s always our ethos as filmmakers, no matter what we’re working on. Right now, we feel like there’s a lot of opportunity to move the action genre in that direction.
Robert Olsen: Yeah, and it’s funny what you said about stakes too, because that’s such a good point. Stakes are always relative to your movie; it’s okay to have your stakes be this person trying to save the one person they love. In bigger action movies and superhero movies, the stakes are always going up, up, up. It’s like, ‘The stakes of this are that a nuclear bomb might go off. The stakes of this are that the whole world might end. The stakes of this are that not only our world, but every other world and every other multiverse might end.’ At a certain point, you can’t go any bigger, so you can’t keep trying to outdo the last movie. You have to find: what are the stakes of your movie? Because that’s all that really matters.
Dan Berk: We’ve built it so high that you have to get into a fictional realm to even wrap your head around the stakes of some of these movies. At that point, you just don’t care, because there aren’t 10,000 multiverses. We’re very happy with our nice, modest stakes in this.
There’s also a message about embracing yourself and removing some of the shame or stigma around a disability.
Dan Berk: Yeah, that was a big priority for us. We wanted to try to tell an empowering story about somebody who has a disability and takes this thing that they’re insecure about and turns that into an asset that becomes the engine of their success. While Nate has this very rare disorder that most people don’t have, everyone can relate to being insecure about something or feeling in a rut or being in a gloomy place in your life. There is a real opportunity for wish fulfillment and saying, “Oh yeah, that thing that you’re insecure about? That actually might be an asset for you. You might be able to use that to succeed in whatever endeavor you might be working on.” It seems like people are relating to that idea on a very foundational basis.
It’s something that people can relate to, like we were talking about with stakes. Maybe I can’t relate to global stakes, but I can relate to someone that I care about being in trouble.
Dan Berk: Absolutely, yeah. And what would you do for love? It’s a question that has driven many movies, but it’s always kind of evergreen, because love is the most powerful thing in the universe. It’s as old as our species, and it’ll exist forever. It’s a very, very potent pillar to build your movie around.
Novocaine is being released in multiple premium formats, including 4DX. Have you had a chance to see it in that format?
Robert Olsen: We absolutely have. I wouldn’t call it seeing it as much as feeling it. It is intense, but it’s awesome because it’s so fun. That was our first time in 4DX. We’ve done some similar things like D-BOX and stuff, but that was our first 4DX experience, and it was really cool. The little air bursts that you get when a bullet flies by, the way your seat moves when there’s slow motion. It’s just another way to make the movie even more immersive. I think for this movie, it just really works. As you know, the first 25 minutes of the movie are kind of a rom-com. So when you’re watching it in 4DX, you almost forget it’s 4DX for a little bit, and then all of a sudden, the action starts, and your chairs are going all over the place. You just wind up having such a blast.
You can’t look at your phone when you’re watching a 4DX movie. I hate looking around a theater and seeing people looking at their phones or checking their Apple watches. When you’re in that 4DX seat, you better hold on, or you’re going to lose your drink and your popcorn. I love that it really forces you to engage. We were there for a Q&A after a 4DX screening, and the audience that we spoke with after—everybody loved it. They had such a fun time. I’m really excited to see how many people end up seeing this in 4DX.
Robert, you mentioned dessert earlier. We have to talk about pie. I think this is going to go down in the pantheon of great pie movies.
Dan Berk: Yeah, what else do we have? There’s the chocolate pie in A Ghost Story.
Waitress, Labor Day, Stand by Me…
Robert Olsen: “Twin Peaks” is another one. There’s so much pie in that. The pie that they talk about in the diner is just so delicious-sounding. We were watching “Reacher” when we were in prep, and there’s a great pie scene in that show too. People love pie. It’s a great thing. In fact, we wound up getting tattoos at the end of this shoot of the pie…
Dan Berk: The exact pie illustration that Sherry puts on the paper for Nate.
Robert Olsen: We had a tattoo consultant there who was there to make sure that anytime Nate was using a tattoo gun, he looked like a professional. At the end of the shoot, we were just like, “Hey, man. You want to give us some actual tattoos?” He was cool and just came over to our house, and we got these two simple tattoos. Next time you see us, we might just be tatted up head to toe. We’re hooked.
Dan Berk: That’s right. The whole cast and all the producers said they were going to do it too. So Bobby and I did, and then no one else did it.
Robert Olsen: Liars.
Dan Berk: We were like, “We’re going streaking, who’s coming?” And then nobody joined us. That’s okay; we’re happy we have them.
From being randomly assigned as roommates to shooting your first film for 50k—have you had a moment to reflect back on your journey so far as filmmakers and creative partners?
Dan Berk: Definitely, we do that all the time. We’re very sensitive boys; we’re very cerebral about this stuff, and we’re constantly taking inventory and realizing how fortunate we are that we’ve been able to navigate up to this level. In Hollywood, the old adage that you can be up one minute and down the next definitely is true. We’ve pitched hundreds of things that have gotten rejected. We’re always collecting no’s. We’ve certainly never been in danger of losing perspective and just feeling like it’s being handed to us. You claw for every inch in this business, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re cherishing this moment right now. We have a movie that we’re so proud of that’s coming out around the world and on 3,200 screens in the US alone. That is really special. We realize that we’re just so lucky to be in that position.
Robert Olsen: The first time that I saw a billboard for our movie near my apartment was so surreal. That was something that you dream about when you’re a kid shooting dumb little Lord of the Rings spoofs with your friends and stuff like that. To finally be in this place where we have a movie that’s coming out wide, it really is like a dream come true. I just remember being really emotional the first time I saw a big outdoor advertisement for something that we poured so much of ourselves into. There’s something I’m validating about that. It’s a scary thing sometimes working in an artistic field and being a creative professional, because when your work doesn’t work, it feels personal. You feel bad about yourself when somebody doesn’t like something that you make. When you pull it off and you make something that you know is at least pretty darn good, it’s a really validating feeling.
Do you have any foundational moviegoing moments at the theater that shaped you as filmmakers?
Robert Olsen: I remember after I saw Titanic, I was so taken by it. I had a whole pack of Twinkies that was left unopened, that I hadn’t eaten, and I just kind of placed it on the ground for the victims of that tragedy and left. I remember doing that, yeah.
Dan Berk: That’s a normal thing for a fifth grader to do.
Robert Olsen: I’m sure that made it better for all of them.
Dan Berk: Yeah, I think it probably did. The first theatrical experience I remember having—and I probably went to the movie theater many times before this, but I smoked so much weed freshman year of college that I think I deleted a bunch of early life memories. My dad took me to see Scream in theaters when I was nine. That movie has some really great, subtle genre blending going on. There’s these really horrifying moments, indelible scare moments that certainly stuck with me and I’m sure gave me lots of nightmares in the subsequent days and months. But it’s also so funny.
Bobby and I both have a sort of natural tendency to genre blend. Everything we work on tends to exist somewhere in the margins between genres. That was probably a pretty foundational theatrical experience. I remember walking out in the parking lot and thinking that was so cool. I didn’t realize you could do that. So maybe you can draw a line from Scream to Novocaine. I guess Jack actually is a part of the Scream franchise.
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