Jim Cum­mings: ​‘I spent three months try­ing to get in touch with Bruce Springsteen’

Thun­der Road opens with a long take of a uni­formed police offi­cer per­form­ing a humil­i­at­ing eulo­gy for his dead moth­er. His emo­tions con­tin­u­al­ly get the bet­ter of him as he grins, breaks down and rages. It all leads up to a jaw-drop­ping dance sequence that some­one records and uploads to the inter­net. Based on a short film of the same name, this scene sets the tone for the extend­ed break­down and redemp­tion of a man strug­gling to hold his life togeth­er. Writ­ten, direct­ed, pro­duced by and star­ring Jim Cum­mings, the film exam­ines the life of a man who just can’t fit in.

It feels like a con­ver­gence of inter­net meme cul­ture and a chang­ing com­pass in Amer­i­can val­ues. As it explores issues relat­ed to police bru­tal­i­ty, the opi­oid cri­sis and the patri­archy, it exam­ines the per­son­al dam­age of viral humil­i­a­tion and cycli­cal vio­lence. With­out being overt­ly about inter­net cul­ture, Cummings’s back­ground and under­stand­ing of how online com­mu­ni­ties oper­ate and prop­a­gate ideas make Thun­der Road one of the most cul­tur­al­ly and polit­i­cal­ly reflec­tive films of the year.

Cum­mings sat down with us ear­li­er this month at the Fes­ti­val du Nou­veau Cin­e­ma in Mon­tréal, where Thun­der Road won The Inno­va­tion Award for ​“its dar­ing aes­thet­ics, cre­ative use of new tech­nolo­gies and/​or ground­break­ing treat­ment of a sen­si­tive sub­ject matter.”

LWLies: In your short film you use Bruce Springsteen’s ​‘Thun­der Road’, but in the fea­ture, you don’t. What moti­vat­ed this change?

Cum­mings: We shot the short film with­out per­mis­sion. I didn’t think that it would be any­thing more than like a viral video of a danc­ing cop. At best, this could get a Vimeo Staff Pick. Then we sub­mit­ted to Sun­dance and we got in. I thought, ​‘We might nev­er be able to put this online.’ Then we won Sun­dance and I realised, ​‘We’re nev­er going to be able to do this online because we don’t have the rights.’ I spent about three months try­ing to get in touch with The Boss, going through all of these organ­ised path­ways that were just telling me no. At that point, we wrote an open let­ter. What’s the worst that can happen?

In two days we got a call from Bruce’s lawyer say­ing he had seen the short film. They asked us for a thou­sand dol­lars to put it online and the promise to not write anoth­er open let­ter. With the fea­ture, we shot it both ways. First, we shot the funer­al with the song and then with­out it. If you front­load a lot of the ful­fil­ment you end up los­ing the audi­ence. If we had the song in the fea­ture, it would just be this like real­ly ful­fill­ing short film that opens the movie. With­out the song, it is so deeply humil­i­at­ing. It makes sense his daugh­ter doesn’t real­ly like him that much and you have him regain that dig­ni­ty through­out the feature.

You have a back­ground at Col­lege Humor cre­at­ing videos. When mak­ing this film are you think­ing about the Inter­net audi­ence dif­fer­ent­ly than a film audience?

I grew up doing viral videos as a pro­duc­er of music videos for a rap­per named Lil Dicky and made three or four of his music videos and had thou­sands of con­ver­sa­tions about how do we win over an audi­ence in each moment. I’ve been on Red­dit for about eight years and that helps me under­stand what peo­ple actu­al­ly find fun­ny and mov­ing. A lot of like my sib­lings make fun of Red­dit because they see it as like the rea­son why we lost the elec­tion. But it’s the third most vis­it­ed web­site in the Unit­ed States. It’s unbe­liev­able, and it’s just an exten­sion of the human brain. It fills the pre­frontal cor­tex with cute rab­bit images and then, like, Pub­lic Melt­downs. Then, watch­ing stuff by Mike Judge or Arman­do Ian­nuc­ci – or any of my heroes – I saw there’s a way to do com­e­dy and humanity.

You have the char­ac­ter Nate, Jim’s part­ner, who is the real anchor of the film. How did you kind of craft his character?

In Austin, at SXSW, a bunch of tough guys were com­ing out of the movie and they’re like, ​‘Oh man, the movie made me cry.’ I ask where, think­ing it’s the bal­let scene at the end, and they say when he walks back to hug his friend. I’m like, ​‘Why?’ It’s not the most mov­ing moment, but tough guys love it.

The guy who plays Nate [Nican Robin­son], he’s actu­al­ly a friend. We have this gen­uine rela­tion­ship of car­ing for one anoth­er. We talked about what it’s like to have a real­ly good friend or a broth­er; just a group of peo­ple you can have fun or get drunk with. It was main­ly like bull­shit­ting and jok­ing until some­body goes through a divorce and then they’re sleep­ing on your couch and you’re help­ing them go through hell. When some­body is going through some­thing, you end up break­ing that sur­face lev­el of social friend­ship and you find out who some­body is and love them as a human. It’s beau­ti­ful that these guys who are rel­a­tive­ly inept at talk­ing about emo­tions are able to find and care for each other.

When you’re writ­ing the script and then you’re per­form­ing it after, how close­ly is it?

It’s almost iden­ti­cal. The only words of improv in the funer­al scene are me say­ing, ​‘We got peo­ple here.’ It’s extreme­ly rehearsed. With the oth­er actors. I’ll record the whole screen­play as a pod­cast and then put in sound design and music so that we can hear the movie and I’ll act out every char­ac­ter and send it to the cast and crew. By the time they get to set or rehearsal, they already know what I’m think­ing for the scenes. Then it’s their job to elevate.

Thun­der Road is among the first films to win Sundance’s cre­ative dis­tri­b­u­tion lab. Can you explain how that works?

We applied for the grant imme­di­ate­ly after win­ning SXSW and hav­ing no offers from dis­trib­u­tors. If nobody helps us out, we were going to do this our­selves. We applied and they gave us $32,000. They have put out five movies before and they have all this data of what works and what doesn’t.

Some of it was lit­er­al­ly us call­ing dif­fer­ent the­atres and being like, ​‘Hey, we made this movie, it won SXSW, can give us a screen for a cou­ple of weeks?’ By our­selves, we booked about 40 the­atres in the Unit­ed States. Then we want to Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val in France. We won the Grand Prize and opened in French the­atres. Just there we recouped twice the bud­get of the movie. We just had this per­fect for­mu­la to acci­den­tal­ly engage French audi­ences. It’s crazy to think that if I want­ed to I could move my com­pa­ny to France and make movies exclu­sive­ly for them for the next 80 years.

Thun­der Road is released in US cin­e­mas 30 October.