Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on December 12, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
If holiday madness has got you a little stressed, be thankful you’re not in the shoes of Della (Kim Basinger), the heroine of While She Was Out. In the film, crowds, long lines and family unpleasantries are the least of the Yuletide pressures she confronts.
Well, OK, family is one source of the tension, specifically her emotionally and physically abusive husband Kenneth (Craig Sheffer). Partially to escape him for a couple of hours and partially to pick up some last-minute wrapping paper, Della drives out of her home in a gated community to visit a nearby shopping mall on Christmas Eve. In the filled-to-bursting parking lot, she discovers a car taking up two spaces and lets its owner know just how she feels about it via a note on the windshield. Unfortunately, said owner is a deeply disturbed young man named Chuckie (Lukas Haas), and even more unfortunately, he knows Della left the note and confronts her after the mall has closed with three of his thuggish pals. One violent thing leads to another, and Della is soon being pursued through dark, rainy woods by the gang, with murder and who knows what else on their minds.
While She Was Out, which boasts Guillermo del Toro among its executive producers, marks the writing/directing debut of Susan Montford, who had previously served as a producer on the outrageous actioner Shoot ’Em Up. Filmmaking was a childhood dream while growing up in Scotland, she says, “although the reality of that happening seemed like pie in the sky. Then I came across this grant system from the Scottish Film Council while I was at art school, and I applied and got 500 pounds to direct my first short. After that, I was completely hooked. I ended up at the Toronto Film Festival, where I made a bunch of connections and started developing projects with people in LA.”
One of those was a feature involving the Manson family, to star Vincent Gallo, but it fell apart following 9/11 and Montford began to seek out a concept she could bring to the screen without necessarily needing a big budget. She found it in Edward Bryant’s “While She Was Out” short story (published as a chapbook by Wormhole Books), and thus began a four-year quest to turn it into a movie. “The story was really brief and tight,” she says. “I fleshed out the characters and added sequences, such as the pursuit through the housing development.”
Throughout this process, one of Montford’s key goals was to give equal time to the tense and violent thriller elements and the characterizations of the people caught up in them. “It’s a delicate balance,” she notes, “and both are equally important. The film is told in quasi-real time—which translates as about three hellish hours in this woman’s life—so most of it is seen through Della’s eyes and rooted in her perception and, ultimately, transformation.”
That change sees the increasingly frantic Della start to fight back, armed only with items from a toolbox she has grabbed from her crashed SUV. “Our ‘victim’ here turns the tables completely on her aggressors,” Montford says, “following in the tradition of MS. 45 and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.” Assisting in this regard was the MastersFX special-makeup house, which created the gory results, and “my brilliant stunt coordinator Eddie Perez,” with whom the writer/director painstakingly blocked the violent encounters.
With much of the action taking place in the dense forest, lensed “in Vancouver in the deep midwinter,” as Montford tells it, the production could often be a treacherous one. “There were wild storms, and trees were falling down all around us,” she recalls. “The rain was much heavier than it looks in the film, there were mudslides everywhere we worked and we were constantly drenched. The river we shot in was the direct runoff from an iceberg, so it was freezing—we all got hypothermia from standing in it. But it all made for an interesting challenge and terrific atmosphere, which is all that matters in the end.”
Montford praises her cast both for their resilience under those tough conditions and for what they brought to their roles. “Kim was my top choice,” she says, “and much to my delight, she came on fairly quickly. She’s a true pro, and was in character from the get-go and a great sport. She’s so fit that she even did most of her own stunts.”
The actress’ involvement also helped when it came to finding backing for the film, says producer Don Murphy, who was involved with the project “from the beginning, when Susan first started. It was easy once we had Kim on board; she was the crucial piece of the puzzle.”
“It was harder to find Chuckie,” Montford continues. “I read many young actors, and got into a bit of a panic because I couldn’t find the right one to play him. I had tried to find Lukas and couldn’t track him down; then I was talking to Guillermo and he suggested Lukas, so I made a real effort to seek him out this time. When I did, I instantly realized how perfect he was. It was a bit like finding your Price Charming.”
Haas certainly doesn’t come off that way on screen, of course, and Montford reveals that to get into his psychopathic role, “I had him watch a bunch of movies like Made in Britain, Scum and A Clockwork Orange.” As for his followers, played by Jamie Starr, Leonard Wu and Luis Chavez (the gang’s multi-ethnicity, Montford notes, is lifted directly from Bryant’s short story), she says, “I also read a bunch of young actors for the other boys, and chose Jamie, Leonard and Luis because they were able to portray the right amount of vulnerability and yet still be capable of doing really bad things.”
There was one other “character” who needed to put on a different face for While She Was Out, Murphy reveals. “We shot the mall in February, so it had to be dressed for the Christmas season,” he recalls. “Customers were doing a double take!”
But getting back to del Toro…Montford describes the celebrated filmmaker as “a dear friend. He really liked the script, and got involved because of that. He came on board even before Pan’s Labyrinth came out, and has been amazing to work with—watching all the dailies while shooting Hellboy II, helping with the distribution. He refers to this film as the first-ever female giallo movie, which is a big compliment coming from him.” Del Toro is one of nearly a dozen credited executive producers—despite which, she says, she had no problems seeing her vision through—and Murphy adds with a laugh, “I didn’t know it, but the financier was building a big house of cards, giving all these people executive-producer credits. There were only two producers, including me, who were actively involved.”
Montford, Murphy and del Toro (who at one point were reported to be partnered as producers on an adaptation of DC Comics’ Deadman) are now close to wrapping up Vincenzo Natali’s Splice, on which they served as executive producers. Montford, who says she’s “absolutely” a genre fan, is excited about this genetics-oriented sci-fi chiller. “Vincenzo, who’s a very talented visionary, is finalizing the visual effects right now,” she says. “The chimera is looking pretty amazing!”
