After premiering at the SXSW Film Festival, Saban Films will release Tone-Deaf, the newest film from Richard Bates Jr. (interview), director of Excision, Suburban Gothic and Trash Fire, in limited theaters on August 23, 2019.
The film follows millennial Olive (Amanda Crew) who, after losing her job and imploding her latest dysfunctional relationship, leaves the city for a weekend of peace in the country, only to discover the shockingly dark underbelly of rural America.
She rents an eccentric, ornate country house from Harvey (Robert Patrick), an old-fashioned widower who’s struggling to hide his psychopathic tendencies — and the two collide.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Patrick who explains how he prepared for such a taxing role and how he created the film’s menacing antagonist.
“I came at it from a guy my age – 60 years old – thinking about the things that upset me about the younger generation,” he explains, “[things] I see that would make Harvey the way he is. I think it just came down to noticing the disrespect of some institutions that we have in our lives and that builds up the contempt I have for these people. I think pressure, I think having lived your life, and having less to live and just wondering was it all worth it – just really asking myself some deep introspective type questions. You know, the life I’ve led, the people I’ve met and talked to over the years, just tried to build it up and put it all in Harvey.”
He continues: “I’ve never really met anybody that would go this crazy and kill anybody, but I tried to understand what would take somebody and make them snap, you know? I think it’s just hostility and anger, and I think our culture sort of breaths that right now. There’s a real lack of stability and appreciation for human beings on some level. Of course, this is not everybody, but you know, I do think it’s out there. There are a lot of good people in the world. We can’t give up on humanity. There are a lot of good people. Harvey’s not one of them.”
Speaking of killing, the film does get pretty violent:
“It’s pretty bloody, it gets pretty violent, and it is pretty heightened,” Patrick tells me.
“There were a couple things that we shot that I was not really happy with and disturbed me. I had to do what I had to do because it was what we were doing. Hopefully, the audience is disturbed by that. I feel that the violence we are doing is so over the top that that’s where the humor element comes in. People should be very disturbed about what Harvey does, very disturbed. If they are not, then there’s something wrong with them.”
With that said, Patrick thinks we’ll be surprised by some of the humorous aspects in the film.
“Well, hopefully, they find the humor,” he explained when asked about any surprises we can expect from the film. “The violence is pretty heightened and it should be terrifying. It’s being used as a way to hit the audience in the head, literally. There were some things that we filmed that I was disturbed by, that Ricky was disturbed by, just because we have such an appreciation for humanity and human life. [As I previously explained], there were some things that we shot that disturbed me, which is a good thing. It should disturb the audience that way as well. I think if the audience listens…[hopefully] it gets them thinking that we should have more of an appreciation of people who are older than us. We should really just respect each other as human beings; we should all just respect and love each other.”
Lastly, Patrick further touched upon the film’s heavy social commentary.
“There’s so much in this film that I think people can get. There’s a part of Ricky that is just trying to say that we are all full of shit. That is a part of it, but we have to hang on to certain things that we know and we have to hang on to the values that we know. We have to have rules that we live by. The Bible gave us the Ten Commandments and those are the rules that our society and government and everything are based on. This is what Western civilization is based on – these Judeo-Christian values. If we start to not appreciate and respect them and we keep sliding, sliding, sliding further away from that – we start to think that we know better.
“We are in charge of our destiny and our ego gets out of wack, it’s kind of where we are in this current state. I think that’s really what the contempt is between the two generations. We have to have respect for the institutions that we have, the certain things we have, we have to hold those up and protect those values. If we don’t then we’ve got anarchy, and do we want to live in a world where anything goes. I think that’s what Harvey is looking at. I think that from a generational point of view, he does not believe that millennials have the same respect for the things.
“I think there’s so much in there, I really do. I think there’s much that people can get from it if they really let the film take over and they immerse themselves in the film. Let the film wash over you.”
You can let it wash over you when Tone-Deaf arrives in limited theaters this Friday.