You remember Knate, right? The skinny little blond-haired kid who kept getting in Rick Kosick's shots while Johnny Knoxville hobbled around in his "Squid Suit" for the first season of jackass on MTV in 2000? Well, that kid Kosick grumpily decried as an "amateur" went on to make it big time in Hollywood. First came Cardboard Boxer, then came Kidnap, and currently he just wrapped up production as a co-writer on the forthcoming New Mutants movie. Fuck yeah, Knate! So in a funny twist of fortune and fate, here's Kosick interviewing Knate about the making of Kidnap with a little known actress named Halle Berry.
Kosick: First off, congratulations on Kidnap. What did it take to bring this movie to life?
Knate: Yeah, thank you, man. It actually took a long time to make it to the screen and it’s amazing how much it stayed to the original idea. I made this one up over ten years ago, when I was moving out from Virginia to LA, driving across the country. I wanted to do something like Duel and I was coming up with highway car chase gags. It was sort of my first big idea, like movie-wise, and I initially wrote it thinking I could use my folks’ minivan if I had to, like shooting this on the highway and driving all crazy, just to get it off the ground myself. It’s a tricky thing to get going because it’s so expensive being a car chase movie and it’s also one character throughout the whole movie, so you need a big-name actress… but that character is also sitting behind the wheel of a car, freaking out for a lot of the movie, so it’s not like an Oscar role. I tried to get it made with this one company and I did a bunch of storyboard videos with little animations using Hot Wheels to help explain everything, but it wasn’t until I directed my first movie, Cardboard Boxer, that they blew the cobwebs off this one and got it moving.
What were some of the challenges you faced during the production?
A lot of it we had to shoot on highways doing full car chases, so there were a couple of times we closed down a long stretch of a US interstate highway and would be driving to work on the wrong side and you’re just like ready for a car to get on the onramp and smash us head on. Then we would all be parked in middle of the highway with a bunch of stunt cars and the whole crew standing around in a circle staring at these Hot Wheels cars on the pavement while the stunt coordinator is like, “Okay, you guys will do this… you’re going here… you’re going to go there…,” and all of the stunt drivers are like, “Yup, yup.” Then everyone went to their cars and would do all of those moves we just mapped out. That part was fascinating: to see all of these people at the top of their game, doing dangerous stunts and risking their lives, but a lot of planning it all out was done with Hot Wheels, like the way you would if you were a little kid on the floor. It was cool, you know, this is how our asses would have done it on jackass or something. It was funny.
Is Kidnap the type of movie you’ve always dreamed of writing?
What excited me about it—I’m into VR and stuff like that, even before it started to come about—but it’s sort of like a first-person experience where you’re with this character from start to finish. You never cut away to like “meanwhile, the police…” or “meanwhile, what’s happening in the kidnapper’s car….” You’re stuck with her and the story is told in real time, like if you had to go through 90-minute experience in real life. That part always excited me was to try and keep it realistic enough that you would always relate to the character and what’s happening—you know, like nobody drives off a ramp and does a huge car jump or anything like that.
Knate plays salami in a Kidnap sandwich with producers Greg Chou and Erik Howsam.
How was it working with Halle Berry?
She was rad. The only way to do that role is to be 100% committed and she was that. The whole movie is basically one continuous scene in real time, so if you’re the actress, you really need to map out all of your highs and lows. There’s not many performances like it, so I was really impressed.
I think it’s something you have to nurture along the way. I’m sure at times she would be like, “I can do this part better.” Would they allow that to happen?
Yeah, there’s a shot in the movie that wasn’t supposed to happen where her driver side door opened on the highway and this big truck goes by. She just played along with it and didn’t break character, didn’t break the scene. Everyone watching it was like “Holy shit!” and because she was so hyped it ended up being in the movie.
Who does she think she is, Johnny Knoxville?
I know, right? That shit was awesome. I was in the follow vehicle with monitors, driving behind all the stunt cars, and we’re all packed in there freaking out. The stunt coordinator was like, “That was great. Don’t hurt yourself, but can you do it again and get a little closer?”
Child abductions can happen anywhere, but do you think having this movie take place in the South lends to a more believable kidnapper-type?
I think so. Most movies in that genre are always like male model Ukrainian gangsters in black suits riding motorcycles, so I wanted it to be like some older redneck in the South. The female kidnapper I always wrote as “Large Marge” from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, because she used to scare the shit out of me when I was a little kid, like that part when her eyes pop out. That was the real key in the script: they shouldn’t look like characters you would normally see in a movie, they should look like people who shop at Wal-Mart. I think that makes it feel more relatable, like, “Oh shit, these are the people you see at Cracker Barrel,” as opposed to like the most handsome kidnapper ever with his hair slicked back into a ponytail and he’s got a machine gun.
So that’s why you made the movie in the South and not Los Angeles, to get that flare?
I came up with most of the idea for the movie while driving across the country back to North Carolina where it’s just long stretches of trees. If you’re chasing somebody in the desert, even if they get miles away from you, you can still see them. So in the South it’s like you’re driving through woods and it’s easier to lose the person.
Did all your years of being a producer help you make the crossover to do Kidnap?
Yeah, like when something falls through and you’ve got to find a quick replacement. Initially the abduction took place in a JCPenny-type store, but when we got down there it turned out none of those department stores want to associate themselves with a place where your child gets kidnapped at. So we had to change it to something else and came up with a county fair situation with a bunch of kids around playing. It was a better solution because having that sort of outdoor open with big pageantry in the beginning is a nice breather before you jump into an 80-minute car chase and spend so much time in a claustrophobic car.
Do you see a growing tread in movies where the female sticks up for herself?
Yeah, I think so. I think it’s a trend, or if it’s not, like I’m trying to contribute to it. My buddy and I are involved with this X-Men movie right now and it’s all female-driven.
At any point during production did anyone from the camera department ever step into one of the shots and make you want to call them an amateur?
Fuck, I don’t know… and if they did I hope they were dealt with as harshly as I was. Haha…
Was this the first film where you could relax, let down your guard, and not worry about getting hit in the nuts?
Yeah. And hopefully the last. I brought that move to the X-Men movie and people were starting to cover, you know? It was just beautiful that anything can migrate from our way of doing things and move into the more traditional world and keep people on their toes.
Do you have any closing thoughts?
There were times I was convinced it was just going to sit on my computer forever and nothing was going to happen. So it’s good to know, especially like in the middle of the process when you might think something is completely dead, that it might just be the thing that took forever but can still happen.
It just goes to show whoever might be reading this and working on something to never give up—be persistent.
That’s basically it. The message of the movie is to never give up and that’s sort of how the movie got made. As long as you don’t quit and go home, eventually people will give in and say, “Fine. Let’s make Kidnap.”
