[Nancy Guppy] Filmmaker Jesse Harris got his start as a video
production student at Ballard High School. At age 17,
he directed his first feature film, "Living Life," which got national
and international distribution. After graduating in 2004,
Jesse founded NFFTY, the National Film Festival
for Talented Youth, and in 2014 he moved to Hollywood.
Well, I caught up with Jesse recently on Zoom to talk about his new film
"BORREGO." Jesse Harris, so great
to see you and congratulations on feature number two.
[Jesse Harris] Hey, thanks so much and thank you for having me on here.
[Nancy Guppy] So "BORREGO" was about Elly,
a haunted young research botanist who encounters danger
when a drug smuggling plane crashes nearby in the California desert.
[Elly] Are you OK?
[Man] Stop. [Nancy Guppy]
Why did you want to make this film?
[Jesse Harris] The idea really first started with a true story from my dad,
who he's a volunteer botanist,
and he was working out in the California desert
like during his breaks from the Seattle gloomy weather.
And he had some other people
discovered this plant that was growing out in the desert.
It was like an invasive species, and it wasn't supposed to be there.
And he told me that idea.
I instantly got this whole kind of concept.
It was such a great setup for why someone would move to
this tiny little town of the middle of nowhere.
I did some research and I found the story
of a small, ultralight plane that had crashed
trying to bring drugs over the border like that was a real thing.
And I kind of put them together and, you know, I didn't want to make a drug
or a cartel movie, but it was like just a
a cool way to kind of start the action
and kind of tell more of a story of survival
and kind of the choices that people have to make
both on both sides of the border.
[Nancy Guppy] There are a lot of thrillers
based on drug smuggling, and often the bad guys are stereotypes.
In contrast, the two "BORREGO"
characters involved in the drug trade are complex with back stories.
So how important was it to you to show their humanity?
[Jesse Harris] Yeah.
Again, you usually see these these total stereotypes.
I mean, I have friends that whose family are from that world,
like it's just it's just
you just know that just kind of a way of life sometimes.
It's not everyone is just some bad evil person, you know?
And so, yeah, I thought it was really important that they kind of had these
kind of conflicted sides of them.
Where it wasn't they were just doing this because they were bad,
because they were forced to.
[Nancy Guppy] Lucy Hale plays the lead character, and she
is an executive producer on "BORREGO," she's a name actor, for sure.
I know she kind of broke through
in the TV series "Pretty Little Liars." How did Lucy Hale
get the script and what happened once she committed to the project?
[Jesse Harris] ICM reps Lucy, they read it and they put her name up
as someone who was looking, I think, for a more serious role
and who might actually be interested in doing this.
And so she read the scripts.
And then I met with her
and she was so excited and passionate and ready to kind of dive into it.
This movie would have never gotten made without Lucy,
and she really put her her weight and championed it.
And yeah, it was,
it was amazing to have her, and she did an incredible job.
[Nancy Guppy] Well, the setting for "BORREGO"
is the desert, it's a beautiful and foreboding place.
Can you talk about the importance of that landscape
to the telling of this story?
[Jesse Harris] I really wanted
the desert to basically be a character in the movie, you know?
And I think it became that and I shot purposefully, you know,
to kind of keep the focus very deep.
So, you know, a lot of times in movies,
it's very shallow depth of field. You don't really see the background.
And so I wanted the opposite of this and I wanted to really feel the desert
and feel that landscape.
So we kind of were with the with the characters out there.
[Nancy Guppy] What was
the most difficult moment, if you can choose one of the shoot?
So much of it was the limited time we had.
So many scenes, for example, where,
you know, you see it in like one long shot.
Sometimes it was an artistic
choice, a creative choice, but a lot of times it was like, OK,
this is the only way we could pull this scene off is with this one long
take with them walking through finding the bodies, for example,
like the sheriff and leaving, you know?
And in the end, it probably added to the intensity
felt like you're with them. But like, that was a case of like, we have like
an hour to film the scene.
We can't do the 20 shots and different angles I was planning for, you know?
[Nancy Guppy] Are more doors opening for you as a result of "BORREGO"?
[Jesse Harris] I mean, hopefully,
I mean, it's just been a few weeks now
since it's come out, but it's it's doing really well.
It's it's in the top ten on iTunes indie
charts, you know, it's consistently been since it came out.
So hopefully at the very least,
it'll make "it a lot easier to make the next movie.
It won't take another 20 years between movies.
[Nancy Guppy] "BORREGO" is available now on digital and on demand.
Keep up with all things Jesse at JesseHarris.tv.
And catch Art Zone
Friday nights at 8 and anytime online at SeattleChannel.org/artzone.