In Depth with the Director - Vincent D’Alessandro

Tell us a little about yourself and your background in filmmaking.

I graduated from film school at Rutgers University earlier this year (Dogfood was my thesis) and I made three other shorts during my time there, that have played at BFI Future Film Fest, NFFTY and I currently have one short streaming on Film Movement Plus.

How did Dogfood first come together as a project?

Dogfood was written as my senior thesis at Rutgers University. I wrote the first draft in the summer of 2020 and we shot for five days at the end of November. I was struck with this idea of a deteriorating friendship of two lost boys who worked at a construction site and lived as long term residents at a local motel. From the beginning, I wanted their conflict to be grounded in addiction and violence, and the night we're with them to be a fever that almost never breaks. We shot this in the height of COVID, so we scaled back the crew to six people, including myself, and bubbled ourselves into the motel we were shooting at and the AirBnb we were living in.

One of the perks of film school is having your classmates there to crew on your films, and vise versa, which is something you really take for granted during your time there. It's a cool experience to really be friends with and know your crew, because that creates a sort of machine, a shorthand, and since we were working with so few people, that shorthand and efficiency was necessary, as was the ability for people to double dip and adapt into roles that weren't necessarily in their job description. In terms of casting, I wanted to mix actors with non-actors, and people without a ton of acting experience. In doing that, the modes of finding talent ranged from Backstage to making posts in Facebook groups about what we were doing and the types of actors we were looking for. We were fortunate enough to find talent who really resonated with the material and wanted to go to the places these characters needed to go to.

The relationship between Jon and Elias is entrancing to watch on screen. How did you envision the dynamic between the two characters when making the film?

I wanted us to fall into the film as the relationship was already on its way out. A decomposing, deteriorating friendship that was initially made by convenience, hanging by loose threads, and only not ending for Elias' fear of what might happen when it does, to both himself and to Jon. I always looked at Elias as someone who gave himself to Jon. Jon's confidence comforted Elias, and gave him a path, something he didn't have previously. So the violence that Jon perpetuated, that became a norm. Something to look away from, always leaning on what Jon has done for him to validate not looking at what Jon does to others. But that gave Jon an insane amount of control over Elias' life, and this night quickly becomes a break-up, Jon seeing Elias reject him and this world for the first time. I wanted to emphasize how much love there was between the two, Jon giving Elias something paternal that had been missing from his life, and Elias giving Jon something to take care of, which made these final moments and Elias' rejection of Jon to be much more difficult.

The toxicity of their lives is reflected on screen in a very grim way. Was there a point where as a filmmaker, you felt you might be going too dark or too violent?

Not for a second. Elias and Jon's world is dark. Their world is violent. To limit how much of that is seen by the audience limits our full immersion into their lives.

You're one of our younger directors this year and your cast is also quite new, some of them starring in their first feature film. How did that influence the making of Dogfood?

I'm never too concerned about experience when it comes to working with actors, especially when we're working in worlds that are so lived in like we did here. If you're lucky enough to find talent whose own experiences adds to what's already being made, it's a pretty invigorating and wild experience.

What projects are coming for you in the future?

I'm currently gearing up to shoot my first feature at the beginning of the new year! The film is called Bottom Feeders, and I'm super excited to collaborating again with some folks from this film, like Jack Mannion, who DP'd Dogfood, and Will Ehren who played Elias.

Do you have any message for our Melbourne audience?

I want to thank everyone at Pigdon Fest for including us in your festival this year! We're in great company with some really fantastic films, so I want to extend my deepest gratitude for being able to be a small part of it.