Ypulse Interview: David Brind And Adam Salky, 'Dare'

Today I'm excited to announce that the special screening of the Sundance hit "DARE" after Monday's Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup event in San Francisco will now be available to all Ypulse Mashup attendees and Ypulse readers in the area. The screening is Monday, June 1, at the Sony Metreon Hotel Nikko and both the director Adam Salky and screenwriter David Brind will be in attendance and available for your questions. To RSVP, just email us at mashup@ypulse.com and specify how many tickets you are requesting for the screening.

I had a chance to do a short email interview with the passionate filmmakers Adam Salky and David Brind, and am now even more pumped about the screening. I think you'll see why. Check it out and Register and RSVP today!

Ypulse: Where did the idea for "Dare" come from and how did it evolve into a feature length film?

Adam Salky: David and I met at Columbia University's graduate film program. There's an end of the first year project where everyone directs a script that someone else wrote. David wrote and produced and we shot the 16-minute short in Philadelphia in June 2004.

David Brind: The original idea for the short was inspired by my own memories of the immediacy of desire when I was a teenager. The drama inherent in wondering about someone, especially someone who seems entirely unreachable or untouchable, is intense. Never again is that desire as palpable or as thrilling and scary as it is in high school.

AS: The short ends with this incredible, totally unexpected moment of connection between these two boys. It definitely left us wondering what happened to the characters the next day at school.

DB: And that was the question we got asked after every screening. What happens next? The short "DARE" screened at approximately 50 domestic and international festivals. Strand Releasing bought the film for the “Boys Life” DVD series.

AS: Consequently, we decided to develop "DARE" into a feature. David started writing it in the fall of the second year of school.

DB: Since I also produced the short, I was on set during the entire shoot. One night I was watching the monitor as Adam directed a small scene between Ben ("Light Boy") and Alexa, a peripheral character (in the short). After each take, I kept running over to Adam to talk about how important this moment was — how it was about the connection between a closeted boy and his best female friend, who totally knew and accepted him, even without the words to say so. Rightfully, Adam alerted me that though this was interesting, it wasn't really part of the story (of the short). But it set something off for me that never went away — about who Alexa was, and how she perceived this. What kind of relationship does she have with Ben? How does she see Johnny? Alexa took root in my brain and became the jumping off point for the feature script. And that was kind of the beginning of me seeing it as a larger world.

YP: How do you think teen life today is different than when you were in high school? Who do you see as the film's target audience? What message do you hope they take away?

DB: Although we have seen that DARE appeals to a wide variety of audiences (art house, gay, parents of teens, etc.)–certainly the film's target audience is teenagers and young adults.

I wanted to write a story that reflects the sophistication of teens in the internet age, where knowledge and information are easily accessible. I think this has allowed high schoolers to be more self-aware–they can read about the stresses of adolescence online, get a sense of how they are seen by the "experts" in psychology or education, by the marketing gods, by parents at large. This has created a generation of teens that are more psychologically astute, yet still completely enmeshed in the drama and pathos of everyday high school life. I wanted to treat the teen characters with a lot of respect, as three dimensional, conflicted and complex individuals.

AS: "DARE" is a story about the need to take chances when you're young in order to find out who you are, or who you're not. I wanted to tell a story where an audience could feel the intensity of adolescent desire – especially when directed at people who aren’t really attainable. I think everyone has that experience. It felt to me like a universal story.

DB: The story is fraught with a lot of emotions that I like writing about – desire, tension, conflict, shame, joy. Although it’s not exactly autobiographical, the characters are very real and personal to me. Certainly you can’t write about a period of life that you experienced without some of it seeping through.

AS: David's writing is incredibly visual and full of personal details. Of course, it was a fictional story, but it came from something very real.

DB: High school is an intense period of life in America, when we're all obsessed with how others perceive us, how we are treated, where we stand. Part of the rites of passage are the moments in which we realize that our actions have effects, even indelible ones, on others. This is something that Alexa, Ben and Johnny all come to find out in "DARE."

AS: It is my hope that audiences will also get some laughs in DARE. I treated these first big, life choices that the characters make seriously. But it was also important to remember that they’re 17 years old. These are the first choices, not the last. With that in mind, I tried to create some levity throughout the film. Since "DARE" deals with a lot of the awkwardness of adolescent sexuality, I wanted humor and comedy to come from that. Most of the laughs in the film are from tension and release, and the audience re-living the anxiety of those first, fumbling steps toward experiencing sexuality.

DB: And having young stars like Emmy Rossum ("The Phantom of the Opera," "The Day After Tomorrow") and Zach Gilford (NBC’s "Friday Night Lights") acting out these emotions and vulnerabilities on screen is exciting—they go full out in their performances, revealing facets of their teen characters that you’ve never seen from them before. And of course throwing in some brilliant and iconic adult actors like Alan Cumming, Sandra Bernhard, and Ana Gasteyer definitely makes sure there is something for everyone.

YP: The film features a gay character on the verge of accepting his identity. What advice would you give to high school students going through a similar experience?

DB: Be yourself. The rest will follow, I promise. Putting on too many masks or faking it will not serve you in the end. Connection is possible—not easy and sometimes painful to get to, but don’t lose hope. There are a lot of people out there dying to have you in their lives—so even if they're not around right now, know that they're there and you will find them.

Ask for help when you need it—whether it's a friend, or parent, or organization like GLSEN (Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network) or someone older whom you respect and admire. And seek out stories that you can relate to—like "DARE"!—it helps to identify with characters who you see on screen. Not everyone is a "Gossip Girl" or a "Hannah Montana."

And if you're at a screening of "DARE" that we are at, come up and say hi and talk to us. We didn’t make this film in a vacuum—we made it for you, whether you're struggling with your sexuality or just adolescence in general. We want to know what you have to say.

YP: What were some of the challenges you faced developing the project?

DB: One of the more interesting challenges has been a recent development—that is indirectly linked to Ypulse.

There aren't tons of independent films that were created with a youth audience in mind. The Hollywood system has more or less cornered the market on creating content for teens, tweens and young adults. And in their traditional model, the way to reach the youth audience is through an inundation of expensive broadcast TV ads and mainstream marketing. For a smaller film like DARE, the expense of marketing in this old-fashioned mode is a risky proposition.

And yet our target audience—teens and young adults—were some of our most fervent fans at Sundance. They were passionate about "DARE," calling it "the most realistic" high school movie they’d seen. And here we are screening at Ypulse—surrounded by experts whose job it is to reach our intended market. So the DARE team is thrilled to be screening and coming out to meet the Ypulse crowd, who are not only representative of our target audience, but also potential partners in marketing, premiere events, and branding.

More on David

David premiered the feature film "Dare" at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. David also is the writer-director of three short films, including "Twenty Dollar Drinks," which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, and wrote and produced the award-winning short version of "Dare," now available on DVD as part of the Boys' Life series. Recent credits include the off-Broadway productions “Sandra Bernhard: Everything Bad and Beautiful,” “Cady Huffman: Live” and the 2006-08 editions of “The A-Train Plays.” Upcoming film projects include the adaptation of non-fiction book Harvard’s Secret Court. David holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program.

More on Adam

DARE, an official selection into the prestigious U.S. dramatic competition category of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, marks Adam's feature film directorial debut. Hailing from New York City, Adam has directed several award-winning shorts, which have screened in dozens of film festivals around the world. He graduated from Emory University as a creative writing major and completed his MFA at Columbia University's Graduate Film Division. In his second year, Adam was the recipient of a grant from Kodak and Panasonic, the latter for his work as director of "Panasonic Kids Witness News," a program that teaches filmmaking to under-privileged inner-city kids.

Categorized under: 2009 Mashup

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