Directed by LAURA MOSS
WRITTEN BY NICK KOCHER
A lazy, uninspired woman (Karen Gillan) is visited by an otherworldly being responsible for giving humanity all its great ideas.
eureka! premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival as part of an anthology called Neurotica, and recently premiered online on Dust.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Laura started out in the film industry doing prosthetic and effects makeup. They wound their way through the industry as an art director and production designer. Laura just premiered their debut feature Birth/Rebirth at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Nick went to school for acting and his early career included making youtube sketches under the name “BriTANicK” with his friend Brian McElhaney. Nick has written for Saturday Night Live, performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, continued to act in films and television, and has various writing projects in development.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH LAURA & NICK
Tell us about the genesis of eureka!. What inspired the film and how did the project come about?
Nick: The idea came from me wondering about the very nature of ideas themselves. Where they come from, and where they go if you don’t bring them from your brain into the real world. I wondered how many times throughout history the cure for cancer has popped into somebody’s head and then they just, like, forgot it or they didn’t want to put in the work to really flesh it out. I struggle constantly with procrastination and not seeing things through, so in some ways I was writing this script to therapeutically encourage myself to finish more of my dumb ideas (this short film included).
I had met Laura a few months before and had really enjoyed both of their shorts (Fry Day and Allen Anders: Live at the Comedy Castle). In the past, I’ve co directed everything I’ve written with my writing partner, but for this I wanted to take more of a backseat and see what a director from outside the comedy world could do with my material, and I was thrilled with the life Laura breathed into everything.
Laura: I knew Nick for a little bit and was honored when he asked me to join the eureka! team. I was really struck by how fast and funny the script was, while still having actual depth to it. I was instantly hooked.
Can you talk about casting eureka! At what stage did Jon Bass and Karen Gillan come on board the project? Were the roles written for them or, if not, what attracted them to the material?
Nick: I very much had Jon Bass in mind when I was writing the part (I mean the character is fully called “Jon’). He’s an old friend of mine and I’ve always been a fan of his work. Karen and I met when I was about halfway through the script, and I thought she would be great as Chloe (largely because she’s great in everything). Luckily both of them loved the script and immediately wanted to be involved.
Laura: We had this dream cast who also happened to be friends. I had the chance to play around and rehearse a bit with Karen and Jon before we shot, but I met Jillian and Karan the morning of, and they were amazing. They all knew each other, knew Nick, and it led to a really fun, relaxed environment on set that it usually takes more time to create.
What obstacles did you overcome while in the making of this film?
Nick: Laura had to deal with all the technical problems that pop up, so for me it was just the standard crippling self doubt.
Laura: For me it was one of the most common obstacles when you’re dealing with indie filmmaking: not enough time. We shot this 25-page script in three days, and at that breakneck pace I really had to rely heavily on Ben Rutkowski, our DP, and the prep work we had put into this to make sure it still had a cinematic quality. Karen, also, is a machine. She’s done so much - I had never had the chance to work with someone so technically proficient before. She would drop in, stay present, hit every mark, and find the humor in every scene without playing the humor. We never could’ve gotten this done if she wasn’t so lighting-fast.
So eureka! was first released at Tribeca as part of an anthology called Neurotica, correct? Can you tell us more about the journey of getting your film to audiences?
Nick: Yeah, so basically we just lied to Tribeca and told them it was a pilot to an anthology series because no one would ever have programmed this long of a short. THAT BEING SAID, it wasn’t a total lie because I would absolutely have loved to write a comedy science fiction anthology series, and this absolutely could be one of the episodes. It also ended up being sorta true, because after the festival a major network put “eureka!” into development as a narrative series featuring the “Jon” character visiting various humans and getting them to implement their assigned “ideas”. It was then in development for so long that everybody at the network who liked the project ended up leaving for other jobs, and so it just kinda petered out.
Laura: The short film universe, especially when it pertains to festivals, is pretty limited. A long short (ours is 20 minutes) is particularly difficult to program - it has to anchor a program and it’s one film potentially taking up the space of two or more pieces. The fact that Tribeca and other major festivals have been opening up their programming to include TV pilots and web content is huge: It allows works of this kind of length to reach an audience.
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
Nick: I think the MAIN challenge for anything is just your own crippling self doubt. I believe if you just keep making good stuff, you’ll eventually break through. In the short world, I think it sucks that there aren’t more places that will pay for short films out there. If there were more established homes for short films, I think filmmakers would have an easier time raising the money necessary to make them.
Laura: I think right now it’s breaking through the noise. It’s easier now than ever to create good-looking content, but there’s just so much out there. A short film can be a calling card that helps you break into the industry, but it’s hard to find a way to make your work stand out.
What advice would you give to short filmmakers looking to use shorts as a way to launch them into a feature film career?
Nick: A lot of people use shorts as a proof of concept for their feature, or as a showcase for their own abilities. Which is fine and great and a totally valid way to approach them. But I would also encourage them to really think about and take advantage of the medium. I think the best short films come from ideas that could ONLY be short films.
Laura: I always suggest to young filmmakers seeing a lot of shorts that have been programmed at major festivals. You can find a lot of them online, or become a screener for a festival if you can. It’s helpful to expose yourself to a lot of work, to identify what you respond to. To really experience what feels new and different, and what kinds of things you see repeated over and over again - what well-trodden territory to avoid.
What are you working on now?
Nick: I’m working on a bunch of stuff with my writing partner that’s all at very different stages. We’re doing a final polish on a feature we sold a year ago, a second draft of a multi-cam sitcom for FOX, and we’re just starting to outline a low budget feature that we plan to direct later in the year.
Laura: I’m just finishing up my first feature, birth/rebirth, which was produced by Mali Elfman, who produced eureka! It’s a modern-day Frankenstein-inspired body horror, starring Marin Ireland and Judy Reyes, and it’ll be premiering at Sundance in January 2023.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
Nick: Laura Moss’s Birth/Re-Birth! And also, this came out in 1991, but I recently watched and loved “A Brighter Summer Day”.
Laura: Thank you Nick ;) Speak No Evil was my favorite movie of last year. It’s so funny and uncomfortable and horrifying, while being strategic and economical in terms of the violence it actually shows.