IN CONVERSATION WITH JOEY PALMROOS

DELIVERY RUN details the fraught chain of events that down on his luck food delivery driver Lee (Alexander Arnold) finds himself caught up in after getting on the wrong side of a murderous snow plow driver. Directed and co-written by Joey Palmroos, the film entertainingly riffs on Spielberg’s DUEL while maintaining its own offbeat style.

Gore In The Store chatted with Joey to discuss the film and its genesis, Finland doubling for the US and the difficulties involved in casting and directing a goldfish among other things.

GORE IN THE STORE - The film started showing at festivals about a year ago. So how does it feel now to release it out into the wild fully?

JOEY PALMROOS - That’s correct, it is almost exactly a year ago when we flew over to Manchester. It was my first time there as well funnily enough, after living in London for about four years, and never really leaving that area. So it was really cool to finally experience it elsewhere.  And ever since Grimmfest, in a fully packed cinema, it felt really welcoming there as well. I think that the audience also welcomed it very warmly with really nice feedback, and the talk afterwards was just great. Since then we've been traveling with the film from Cannes Frontières to Utah and Nevada, and then a few other places here and there. And in a couple of weeks we'll get to experience Sitges Film Festival, which is great, and something that I've always wanted to do as a filmmaker, to enter that festival with a movie of mine. So it's cool that I got to do it with this one.

How did you come up with the idea for the film?

JP - It was pretty straightforward. I was driving in Finland behind a snowplow, of all things. And the winters in Finland can get quite dark, and I'm the type of person whose imagination just wanders constantly. I really wanted to honk at this guy, like, why won't he just let me pass? Because, in Finland a lot of snow gets quite dangerous, and snowplows drive really slow. And that was like, “Oh, light bulb moment!” Then later, I can't remember if it was draft three or draft four, me and my writing team thought of DUEL, and pulling references from DUEL to this, using that as a template. Obviously I wanted to do a little bit on my own and just sort of explore the possibilities. What they did with that in the 70s was just great. I think that movie still holds up, even today. I think it's great and that's basically everything in a nutshell. And then shooting the movie in Finland, and what I have access to here, and how could I make that a spectacle along the way? After all, DELIVERY RUN tells a story about a food delivery guy who's getting harassed by this menacing snowplow. So it's very much cat and mouse. What is going to be our A to B journey, and what fun obstacles could we throw at them on the way?  In coming up with the movie, especially in today's world, with a lot of superhero movies out there, I wanted to create a picture where I could explore your everyday man, and what happens when we throw him in a situation that is just whack, and how he would react? And what would he do when it's not a superhero trying to save the world, but it's just your everyday man trying to figure out how to survive the day. That's what I wanted to explore with this.

What made you want to set the film in the US, Minnesota, and not Finland itself?

JP - Finnish people, keep calling me out and asking me that! I shot my first feature (THE OUTLAWS) in Northern California as a period piece, a Western, and US cinema has always been really close to my heart. I love American movies, and I grew up watching them. It's very different to Finnish cinema and making a movie like this in Finnish could work, but it would be very different to what the industry here is used to, and it's very different from what I'm used to when consuming films myself. Minnesota as a location, is a place where lots of Finns used to migrate to between World War One and Two, just leave Finland and go to the New Land. Even today, there's a lot of Finnish named families and towns in Minnesota. I thought immediately I could use this and set the film there. They have a lot of dark winters, and so do we, and we’ve got a lot of snow, and so do they. So it just made sense. 

I would not have known myself if I hadn't read about it before watching the film.

JP - Thank you. That's great that you say that. It was actually one of the funniest things that I've heard throughout the festival circuit. There were quite a few Minnesotans in the audience, and at the Q and A's afterwards, they asked “So where in Minnesota did you shoot the movie?” “We actually shot it in Lapland, Finland.” “Oh, really!” I think at the end of the day, with filmmaking I want to look at making things practical and shooting everything right there, trying to avoid the studio, I think it's how to make that magic trick work. So it's great that we managed to sell Minnesota to the audience. 

Did you have any problems at all with Finland, doubling for the US during filming?

JP - It was very time consuming when trying to make the roads and the street signs and just the smallest little details which you would have in America. I think the biggest, if I can even call it that, issue, is just that every day over here during the winter is cold. That was the biggest obstacle we had to struggle with every day. And having actors fly in from America or from the UK, like Alexander Arnold (who plays Lee), not necessarily being used to the minus 25, 30 degree weather and the wind going up during the night shoots. It wasn't an obstacle, but it was definitely challenging. A new challenge that Alex thankfully also wanted to conquer.

This is your first horror suspense film. You had previously directed a Western. So how did you find directing and editing in this genre?

JP -  It was very different to OUTLAWS, where I had multiple characters throughout the film. In this one, we go through the journey from A to B throughout the movie, for the majority of the time with the lead, Lee, unless we stop at these different places and obstacles on the way. It was a challenge I've been wanting to overcome and tackle for quite some time. But I think I got really lucky when we managed to cast Alex. He's such a huge, huge piece to the puzzle and working together with him solving it out, and what he then brings to the screen to keep that momentum there throughout.

A lot of the film is set within the front seat of a car. Was that a challenge when it came to directing and editing?

The challenge is definitely there that there's this one minor location. But structurally speaking, when going through the film, those incidents that we have along the way, that break that timeline, and how they break what he's experiencing, and where we are with the momentum rising. I think that that's definitely something that I wanted to add to the film to make it even more interesting. And when it comes to the editing of the picture, I mean, I gotta be honest, I was kind of worried how could we just sit there with Alex for so long? But then in the edit with my editor, Tony, who's just great, I was like, can we just stick with him just a little bit longer? Because it was those tiny little moments that Alex was then bringing out before I yelled cut, just to see what he would do. Honestly by the end of filming he was exhausted, he was really breaking into a million pieces and really being Lee more and more towards the end of the production. And it was just me living in the camera roll and seeing what's there and doing the same thing with my editor. Just let it roll just a little bit longer, because I think that's where the greatest performance comes about.

You employ some practical effects towards the end, which is always a pleasure to see in place of digital effects. Is that an approach that you fully embrace and pursue?

JP - One hundred percent. I mentioned superhero movies earlier and films that are just full of CG. I've got nothing against those. I consume those movies. I love those movies. But for myself, going about my own movies? As a commercial film director before, I loved the challenge of a good magic trick. How could we make it happen, practically? How could we get there so that somebody would want to watch it and would feel that, oh, this is real? And I think getting that feeling of realism only comes from doing it for real. I actually considered the idea of asking the guy who owns the truck how much it would be if I could just drive it down the hill? But unfortunately, I couldn't go for that. I think CGI is there to help us to polish the picture. But I think if the magic trick is done practically, there's actually effort and thought and therefore more heart behind it. I wanted to show that and I'm happy to hear that you can appreciate that as well.

Earlier on, you also mentioned DUEL as an influence. Were there any other films that influenced you in the writing and directing of this?

JP - Maybe not so much films, but filmmakers. Spielberg, for me, is a director, a filmmaker who I really look up to, like millions of other filmmakers out there. There's just something that is very magical when looking at his pictures, and I've told myself that if there's a way to bring at least a little bit of that spark and magic, whether it's one scene or just one moment, that gives me that feeling that you remember when you watch something like E.T. It's like Christmas morning when you watch those films, or Indiana Jones. There's actually a little bit of Indiana Jones when it comes to Lee crossing the icy road, and then the ice starts cracking. That's really the mood and feelings I was after. I love Tarantino. There's a little bit of Tarantino there in Rebecca (Nadine Higgin) or Jasper (Arthur Sylense). And putting references, Easter Eggs from other movies, that I love to sprinkle in here and there. 

What are you looking to explore next with your filmmaking?

JP - I have got a project. I haven't really spoken about it in public anywhere yet, but there is a project that we're in pre-production for and prepping for next spring, set to be filmed in Finland. It's still an international picture. But now I'm embracing the location for sure, and it's definitely a unique location. With DELIVERY RUN and also with OUTLAWS, what really draws my interest in where to start, when coming together with the script and just the picture in general, is just knowing the location and understanding the location. Being excited about the location and what the location could then bring into the picture, what possibilities and what would be interesting. So with the next one as well, it's the location. That's what drove me. And it’s the same thing that was with DELIVERY RUN, using what I have out here in my backyard, it's a great place.

Can you say what genre it is at all? 

JP - Sorry, no, not yet. It's a bit of a mixture of both my previous ones. I mean, there's elements of them, and it's not going to be a drama. Let's put it that way. There's going to be action, there's going to be some thriller elements, hopefully keeping people on their toes till the very end.

And for my final question, I wanted to ask about one of your stars, and how you navigated the audition process for choosing Reggie the goldfish.

JP - It was actually a really funny story. I went to a pet store here in Helsinki, and I was like, “I'm trying to cast one of my leads in my movie, looking for a goldfish.” There's obviously different types of fish, it was a process that took a couple of weeks. I remember us having pictures of different fish on the wall, and there were actually, there were actually 10 Reggies up in Lapland, Finland with us. And that's not because we could just go through a lot of them. Actually, no fish were harmed on this production, and that was something that was very important to me as well. But I didn't want to exhaust one fish, so I would then use Reggie number two or Reggie number three for the next day. Like Reggie was also having their own stunt doubles, so the other Reggie could then take a rest the next day. But, yeah, it was a process. Funny enough, it was the last thing I was actually thinking about when coming up with the script. Like it's gonna be a process of finding the fish home. There needs to be a person and people looking after the fish. It's minus 25 degrees Celsius. Can we bring a goldfish out here? We definitely had to be careful with everything.

So no goldfish in the next film?

JP - The first film had horses, and this one fishes. There is a key animal in the next one. But I'm not gonna talk about it now, but funnily enough, there is an animal in there.

Iain MacLeod

Delivery Run is On Digital 6 October from Plaion Pictures