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Making a comeback album after your rock band breaks up out of fear of selling out? Pretty tough! But, hey, as filmmakers, we stop at nothing in the face of tough. In the case of Gaelan Draper and Charlie Saxton’s spooky rock dramedy Art of the Hit? Tough don’t mean nothin’.
Art of the Hit follows the band Excelcis rekindling after an early ’90s breakup in the wake of one of their key members bailing on them for a better gig. After a decade or so of floundering, their lead man Ryan brings them back to record their comeback album in a haunted French chateau. With an eccentric, ego-driven guru producer, no real direction, and fear of ghosts spooking around, what could go wrong?
As we learned speaking with Draper and Saxton about the making of their groovy, introspective movie, plenty can go wrong in pursuit of great art. Luckily, with Art of the Hit, a lot can also go right. The production of Art of the Hit is an indie filmmaker’s dreamscape of serendipity and friendship—an inspiration to indie filmmakers everywhere, if I don’t so say myself.
Read on for the hidden secrets of acquiring a fancy castle for your shooting location, pushing through adversity in the face of budgetary restrictions, and, at the end of the day, following your dreams, man.
P.S. siren call to all you Chacolat heads out there: read to the end.
NFS Interviews Gaelen Draper and Charlie Saxton
Charlie Saxton as “Charlie” in Art of the Hit
Courtesy of Giant Pictures
Editor’s note: the following interview is edited for length and clarity
No Film School: I was.getting the vibe Art of the Hit kind of felt like The Shining meets Almost Famous. Any influences in particular?
Gaelan Draper: When we were writing [Art of the Hit our main influence] was this documentary called Dig, which is a crazy music documentary about The Danny Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre, and then also The Machinist. which is psychological, you know.
And also I mean, that movie is so much body horror because he’s lost so much weight. But that’s awesome that you took that away.
Charlie Saxton: We made ass watch Dig before we went to the castle.
NFS: Since we brought up the castle, I was really curious how you guys got that location. It’s one of the coolest locations ever.
Saxton: It’s a crazy, serendipitous story.
So we watch Dig. We watch The Machinist. And then we were watching as many band documentaries as we could, and one of them was this Sting documentary called Bring on the Night. It was his first solo album and tour right after he broke away from The Police. His manager, Miles Copeland, is a prominent character, and I was so taken by this guy. I was like, man. He’s just like such an eccentric personality in the music scene without being a musician himself.
Draper: In the documentary he went to France.
Saxton: Oh, my God, excuse me. Yeah, the documentary is is about staying [at the castle]. They’re rehearsing and recording in a French chateau.
So Miles Copeland is in it, and Gaelan lives in Franc,e and was scouting castles for us. I got a call from him one day, and he was like, “Hey, man. I found our castle, and you’re never gonna believe who owns it.” Just jokingly said, “what, Miles Copeland?”
I had been talking about the guy as an inspiration for the last two weeks, and Gaelen was like, “yea, Miles Copeland owns this castle.”
Draper: It was so fucking crazy that we had watched this doc, and he’s also so famous.
He has his brother, Stuart Copeland, one of the greatest drummers of all time. And I’m just sitting there next to him, at his castle, and he’s like, “What’s your movie about.” And I tell him it’s about a band that comes from the US To try to record a comeback album in France in a haunted castle.
He’s like, “that’s cool. You can use my castle.”
I mean, I’ve always been a huge fan of No Film School. I’m here just spill all the deets of production stuff. We had no budget, and he cut us this great deal. He basically gave us the castle for two weeks. He has a groundskeeper who also helps cook stuff—two of them, Chris and Sam, and and they cooked for everybody. This our ticket, and we tried to convince every person we knew from Hollywood or the commercial industry that we can pay you next to nothing. But we will give you a plain ticket to France some good duck and you can live in a haunted castle for two weeks.
NFS: Off topic. But I think you guys might have just like unlocked like a lifelong mystery of mine. I have a “Sting for America’s Libraries poster where he’s in front of a castle, and I was always thought it was hilarious, but I never knew why he is in front of a castle wearing a crazy outfit.
Saxton: Dude. I think that might be our castle.
The theme of this whole production was serendipity. Worlds colliding, full-circle moments happening for us. It was just every step of the way. It just made it feel like, okay, we were meant to make this movie. This is this is something that we should be doing with our lives.
Draper: You’ve asked a lot of what is the hard part about filmmaking. I think in general a lot of it is: It’s fucking impossible to make a movie. Nobody believes in you, even if they have good intentions. They tell you all the reasons why it’s not going to go right, why you’re not going to raise money, why, you’re never going to get the cast.
Then moments like this happen where you just happened to be introduced to Miles Copeland, or the frontman of Jets to Brazil—which was my absolute favorite band growing up. And he just wrote back in an email and said, yeah, you can use my songs when those moments happen.
The band and castle in Art of the Hit
Courtesy of Giant Pictures
NFS: That’s awesome. I wanted to ask about the music. So you knew the artists? And then I assume you guys wrote some of the original stuff, like the characters songs within the movie.
Draper: Exactly. Yeah. We so Jets to Brazil was one of our favorite bands growing up. And we read this amazing book called SELLOUT about late ’90s bands in that era selling out how difficult it was. They also talk about Jawbreaker in that book. Long story short, Jawbreaker was a success until they sold out. Then he made this band called Jets of Brazil. I listened to them growing up my whole life.
When Charlie and I were working on the script, we said this would be a great band to use to really capture the feeling, and then we said, “Okay, how the hell are we going to get their music?” And we know an amazing music supervisor named Linda Cohen who’s worked on amazing movies. And she reached out to the publisher, and they wrote back and he said, “Yeah, man, you can use my songs. Hope you make some magic.”
Saxton: Then the the other songs in the movie that the band actually play were written by Gaelan, and we composed and recorded the Jets to Brazil songs with our buddy Adam Lasses, who’s an Indie Rock pioneer. He’s a legend in his own right.
Gaelan and I met him when we worked on this movie when met like 15 years ago called Bandslam. We knew that we needed to make the music good and make it believable—that this band, at some point in their lives, were actual rock stars and would produce incredible music.
So we recorded with Adam for… gosh? I don’t even know, at least a week. Laying down all the tracks. Timmy, who plays “Timmy” in the movie, he recorded most of the guitar and most of the bass tracks. I recorded a couple of the bass tracks in the credits.
NFS: I was going to compliment—the musicality of the cast clearly shows everyone plays. You really feel a really strong stage performance in the movie performance.
Draper: This is the beauty of being a low budget film. Once you have a location that’s creepy, and you have a cast that’s super talented. When you turn the camera on, and when you turn the camera off, it’s not really different. Everybody was wearing their own clothes because we didn’t have any wardrobe, and everybody was just staging rock concerts in the castle at night and jamming on shit.
Saxton: Allie—who plays Chris the drummer—she plays guitar in real life and sings in a punk band called Mermaid Island. They’re great. And she was just in in the rehearsal room in the film. She wrote and recorded an EP in the castle. Gaelan and I would be absolutely exhausted, just like eating dinner, and then you would hear off in the distance of the cast playing music.
It ripped man. It was awesome.
NFS: Super cool. Did you guys source the crew from France? Or did you fly people out that you work with regularly?
Draper: We had two [french crew members] We had no crew. I think there were—
Saxton: There was 17 people total, including the cast.
Draper: Our DP, Joe Simon—He’s a fucking genius.
He’s an Austin-based cinematography. He’s amazing. And he had one gaffer and one grip, who were my friends who came from New York—sorry the Gaffer Adrian was from Bordeaux. And then another gaffer, a friend of mine from New York and didn’t complain about it and put absolute magic on screen.
We had another crew member from France named Shakira, who was the horror effect makeup artist. She’s incredible. She just would be walking around set with like crazy things on that.
But yeah, I think the final crew was like one AC, one grip, one steady cam op. Our Dp and a special effects makeup artist, and that was it. And we made the whole movie with them.
Saxton: Well, let’s not forget we had two PAs.
Draper: Incredible PAs, who did everything else.
Saxton: My friends, Jazz and Leah. They were our saviors for that entire shoot.
Art of the Hit, band
Courtesy of Giant Pictures
NFS: To wrap up, do you guys have any wisdom that you’d like to pass on about the project?
Saxton: In terms of like specific logistical stuff…
We got to our first airbnb before the castle we realized we didn’t have enough rooms for everybody. Or, before we got to the castle and we had Chris and Sam making all of our meals for us, I was going to the local bakery every morning, and buying out all the croissants and pastries that they had. I was making 20 eggs for over a dozen people.
It was a It was like a summer camp. It was like an Indie filmmaking summer camp with your closest friends, and thankfully like no one had an ego, no one had a meltdown. Everybody was there for the purpose of trying to make this movie as best as it could be, because, like, we all believed in it.
NFS: Right on. Making something with you friends can be one of the most satisfying, fulfilling things. I wanted to circle back to Chekovs Taco Bell Commercial—I forgot about that. Was that fun to shoot?
Draper: Yes. We used some elements that we were from stock. But putting it together, we watched so many 2003 Taco Bell commercials.
We wrote so many different commercial scenarios, and in the end we just went with what could be the simplest for the story.
Saxton: The guy that we got to do the voiceover for the Taco bell commercial actually used to be the voice of the Outback Steakhouse commercials.
NFS: Last super important question: Gaelan, I noticed you acted in Chocolat back in the day?
Draper: That was the peak of my career right there.
I was 10 years old and went to a French immersion school, and they were casting for that movie all over the US. To have an American who could speak French to be in a movie shot in French, where the movie is actually in English and serendipitous. And now, 25 years later, I made my own movie here in France, and I live in France. My wife is French. Super crazy. Definitely had a lot more hair back.
There is one call back in Art of the Hit. In Chocolat—at the very end of Chocolat—there’s a scene where the statue in the middle of the town is the old Count, or whatever, and for a second you just see that it smiles. When we have Ryan see the poster of Cher on the wall, and she’s just looking at him. We’re thinking of a similar sort of narrative joke where he’s like, “even you’re looking down at me?”
NFS: Wow, I love that we got some genuine insight from the Choclat question.
Draper: It was one of those little Easter eggs that you just add in. Thank you for asking.
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