Filmmaker Garrett Abdo and actor Tuc Watkins talk vulnerability in ‘Exit Interviews’

The poster for Garrett Abdo s film Exit Interviews which is playing at this year s Out on Film Festival Photo provided by Out on Film Credit Out on Film Roughly two and a half years ago Garrett Abdo made a quip about his love life that ended up turning into the idea for his next movie After a string of relationships that didn t go anywhere Abdo was trying to figure out what kept going wrong I gotta do exit interviews and find out why he remembered saying jokingly Wait he thought that doesn t sound like such a bad idea This exact moment of inspiration can be revealed in Exit Interviews Abdo s new film playing at this year s Out on Film Atlanta s LGBTQ film festival The movie stars Tuc Watkins as Robert a documentarian who decides to make his next project a series of interviews with his ex-boyfriends as he tries to figure out where each relationship turned sour While the idea for the film had been percolating since Abdo made that off-handed comment the words started pouring out of him late last year during a limited days alone on a trip to Barcelona Spain Abdo describes himself as an undisciplined writer But once he forces himself to sit down and write the words come fairly easily From the time he finished the script in October to the film s premiere at FilmOut San Diego on Aug less than a year had passed Who writes a script in October and is shooting in January Abdo explained No one Writing Exit Interviews was an emotional process the main character and story based heavily on Abdo s own life He didn t draw one-to-one comparisons between Robert s exes and his own but rather connected each of the cinematic exes to a specific emotion that he experienced in real life What did I see in this person What did I pull out of this person What was my input and output with this person Abdo explained It all just starts fitting together Abdo s background is in stand-up comedy He has managed comedians like Rickey Smiley and opened the Atlanta Comedy Theater in He explained he believes his comedy background shapes his writing in that it helps keep him focused on being vulnerable When he teaches stand-up to aspiring comedians he inevitably tells them one thing you need to gut yourself onstage An audience can smell the truth a mile away and they can smell when you re making it up he reported There s gotta be truth based in what you re saying or they re gonna know it and they re not going to follow you Abdo is more than open to a little collaboration to help him discover that truth That s where Tuc Watkins came in Watkins has had a prolific career appearing in movies like The Mummy and more in recent weeks The Boys in the Band as well as having a stint on the soap opera One Life to Live as David Vickers When solicited what drew him to Watkins as an actor Abdo s answer was simple It s Tuc Freaking Watkins But his ability to be open and collaborate with Watkins was just as major When Watkins came on board the two men went back and forth over the character of Robert building out the character the audience sees on screen from Abdo s original idea But even if he had ideas about how the character should change Watkins demanded to be involved from the beginning It s very rare to read something that you feel like I need to do this Watkins commented When I read Garrett s movie that s how I felt Watkins announced he was initially drawn to the script because he didn t think that Robert was all that great of a guy and he thought it would be a challenge to play him without any judgment I thought it would be a real challenge to play a guy who I thought had real blindspots that I kept wanting to fix in rewrites Watkins disclosed But as Garrett and I worked I realized I can t The mission was not to fix this guy before we started shooting the movie The mission was to explore these flaws and see what happened with them So much of Abdo can be uncovered in the character of Robert but Watkins was able to find strategies to connect to Robert too One of Robert s exes is Christopher Adam Huss someone he was with for more than a decade Watkins mentioned that he once split from someone he was with for years later getting caught up in the horrors of online dating can t we all relate before meeting his current partner It s no one s fault but the person who shows up is consistently different than the person in the pictures on the app Watkins noted Including myself I m sure At first Watkins approached the idea of sitting all of his exes down for interviews like a fun exercise After all who doesn t want to lay into their ex-boyfriends about what exactly is wrong with them But as he got deeper into the character he was able to back down from that knee-jerk reaction It was I want to make myself understood rather than I want to understand It was hard for me to go in and play this character without doing that because that was my natural state Watkins reported It took effort to in fact sit there and listen to what the other actor was saying as opposed to waiting for them to stop talking so I could say my next line The effort paid off Abdo credits Watkins soap opera background with his range of emotion and raved about his and all of the actors ability to react and really listen to their scene partners Watching Adam Huss and Tuc Watkins do takes of the preponderance emotional powerful scene in the movie and quite literally crying for real each take was fascinating for me to watch Abdo mentioned While there was a lot of emotion to go around there were a lot of laughs too In response to a question about if there was anything that didn t end up making the final cut Watkins remembered one thing in particular full frontal male nudity I couldn t believe I was suggesting it but I thought it spoke to the vulnerability of the scene Watkins mentioned Garrett revealed No The other actor reported Hm no Now that we ve done it I think they were right We could have still rehearsed it Tuc Abdo joked Exit Interviews plays at Out on Film on Sept The festival runs from Sept to Oct The post Filmmaker Garrett Abdo and actor Tuc Watkins talk vulnerability in Exit Interviews appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta