My first time-looping film experience, or at least a version there of, happened when I saw the kinetically charged super rock opera JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (1973) about 60 times with friends at a Lisbon marquis theater over a course of about 5 weeks.
A girlfriend and about five other friends took me to see the film to help me take my mind off my woes about a possible career-ending b-ball injury. I ruptured the patella tendon of my left knee on a jump shot on a fast break in a game at a Sangolhos sports auditorium. After we saw the film, we headed to a five-star Lisbon cafè to kibitz and discovered it was as if we all had seen the same film overall but remarkably different in so many other ways as if we had missed so much else.
So, it was back to the theater the next day and then to the cafe to kibitz only to discover that our shared film experience had nudged ahead only on a bit. Back to the theater a few days later – and so on and so on for the next five weeks until that day at the cafè when we all felt that we all had seen the same movie on every emotional film level where it was reverberating! That we netted together our recollections to satisfy a cinematic existential angst to see and experience everything that film had to offer.
Visceral recollections of those Libon days, triggered by Director Craig Center’s bravrua 6:45, started going off sometime in one of the loops of my first 6:45 screening to write the review. 6:45 is much more addictive, more primal than JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. Four times will not satiate this need I feel that I have to see it again and again to be absolutely certain that I see and experience everything 6:45 has to offer.
Sounds loopy? That plus the derring-do to open a film like that in these pandemic times and other items on my mind had me champing at the bit for a Q&A.
Q & A Edited for Style
With thoughts generated by the headline news of national and local scandals, CDC face mask rule-changes, U.S. Congress January 6 Commission, Trump Lite & Heavy, NY Governor Cuomo sexual harassment scandal and a whole lot of other things like movies regarding films, Netflick, Amazon, UFOs, I started off the interview with a quip like this, ‘These are really strange times.’
Craig Singer: Yeah. I hear you brother. I hear you. Strange times we live in.
Gregg Morris: Absolutely. In a sense, your movie’s timely with these strange times and the weird stuff going on.
Craig Singer: It’s so true. It’s so true.
Director Craig Singer
Gregg Morris: Your film opens [opened] Friday (August 6). Are you expecting any problems because of all this stuff that’s gone on with the masks and the new CDC guidelines coming out about people wearing masks and stuff and the vaccine shots?
Craig Singer: It’s a concern. I think folks need to be comfortable and they need to take precautions. I think if you’re at high risk, if you’re younger and (even if) you’re vaccinated, so obviously we’re mindful of that but just hoping for the best, and that people who feel safe and comfortable will have an opportunity to go into the theater and enjoy the film.
Gregg Morris: Okay. So, the film, I had an advantage. I had a screener so I was able to watch it like three or four times. It’s the kind of movie I can imagine seeing it six or seven more times. I believe people are going to want to see this movie over and over again, like THE SIXTH SENSE (1999), because they are going to feel they missed stuff, or there was stuff they should’ve seen, or the ending blows their mind. And the ending, I got hip to it about the third time I screened.
And regarding the publicity and promotion saying that [6:45] is connected to GROUNDHOG DAY (1993) – (Directed by Harold Ramis) – it is, but I was thinking that there was something Hitchcock-ian about 6:45, and that it was closer to PSYCHO, THE SIXTH SENSE and MOMENTO, because by the time [audiences] get to the end of the movies … [they’re] just shocked out of [their] minds by what they saw or thought they saw, like, they never saw this coming.
Craig Singer: We worked really, really hard. As a matter of fact when people read the script and had not expected twists and turns, that was always something we were mindful of, and we tried to do our best to deliver the goods, and also to not fall into the trap of letting the day feel too repetitious, because when you’re dealing with a day that repeats, that’s one of the things you have to be careful of, and I feel like the film has a really nice hallucinogenic dream quality with a sense of ambiguity that for me anyways has always been very satisfying and those were some of my favorite films.
[Note to Audiences: The time-looping restarts of the first day of the beast are transcendent.]
Gregg Morris: Definitely hallucinogenic. It was meticulous. I was watching trying to see if there were any tricks, gimmicks like shortcuts, and not one. This is one of the most upfront honest films, and [audiences] just have to pay attention, and [they] really need to pay attention as soon as the film opens. And they will have to do it more than once.
Craig Singer: I came up with the idea when I was still with Disney and I’d always thought the GROUNDHOG DAY motif, or THE SIXTH SENSE, they’re great fodder, great backdrops and landscapes for a horror him.
Innkeeper Gene Pratt, played by Armen Garo.
And at the time, the time-loop films really hadn’t been done that much, so with 6:45 I wanted to get back into traditional filmmaking because I’d taken a hiatus when I was over at Disney. I knew 6:45 was the first script I wanted to tackle, and then we just have to put it together on a lower budget, so really casting the film ourselves, and finding the locations, and just doing a lot of the heavy lifting that we had to, through necessity. And then, as the cast started to come together, I worked the visual strategy with my DP Patasi and then my editor Sam Adelman, and my composer Kostas just did a tremendous job I was really fortunate and blessed to be surrounded with such talented artists.
[Reviewer’s Note: I erred by not including in the 6:45 film review that the sound score was boss.]
Gregg Morris: It’s an amazing movie. I don’t want to say anything about a sequel [duh] so are you going to do something like this again [duh]
Craig Singer: I’m starting a film this fall call TAT, T-A-T, which revolves around the world of memorial tattoos and it’s very dark. It’s probably the darkest script I’ve ever been involved with, so we’re going to start that in New Jersey this fall, and then there’s a drama that I’ve been asked to direct. We’ll see what happens. It’s always a tricky business and things always take longer than anticipated. But I really feel blessed to have the opportunity to make 6:45 because it’s a cozy film. It’s almost like a romantic film where things go terribly wrong, and so in that regard I feel like we accomplished something. [Reviewer’s Note: For me 6:45 was almost like a new genre, or a new subgenre, that, however, his muse moves him, other moviemakers will feel that intense buzz that if he can do it, they have to try.
Gregg Morris: It’s almost like a new genre, or a new sub-genre. It stands alone by itself. I’m sure filmmakers out there are going to try and come up with some clonings, like some of the stuff that happened with THE SIXTH SENSE but you’re like the apex of this. I don’t want to say anything about a sequel [duh] so are you going to do something like this again [duh]? [Reviewer’s Note: Too many duh-s but I do think that happens a lot, that moviegoers {and self-anointed afficionados, cognoscenti, connoisseurs} see a great film and succumb to a sequel state of mind. In this case, it’s more like the creative and cosmic forces that resulted in 6:45 may be manifested in something extraordinarily new just like 6:45.]
Craig Singer: I’m starting a film this fall call TAT, T-A-T, which revolves around the world of memorial tattoos and it’s very dark. It’s probably the darkest script I’ve ever been involved with, so we’re going to start that in New Jersey this fall, and then there’s a drama that I’ve been asked to direct. We’ll see what happens. It’s always a tricky business and things always take longer than anticipated. But I really feel blessed to have the opportunity to make 6:45 because it’s a cozy film. It’s almost like a romantic film where things go terribly wrong, and so in that regard I feel like we accomplished something.
Important Background Information
Regal Cinemas released 6:45 exclusively in theaters in the U.S. and Canada on August 6; Craig Singer, director and former Disney creative executive (ANIMAL ROOM), DARK RIDE, A GOOD NIGHT TO DIE). That derring-do release in these COVID-19 times marked the first time since the pandemic that the nation’s second largest chain has supported an independent horror release. The North American box office is slowly reviving. Key markets Los Angeles and New York lifted capacity restraints on theaters last week.
Film: Directed and produced by Singer, written by Robert Dean Klein (Little Fish, Strange Pond, A Good Night To Die) and executive produced by Ray Mancini, Paul Cene, Donald Basile, PhD, Gurpreet Chandhoke, Roy DiMaggio, Maria Jorjezian, Elisabeth Costa De Beauregard and Philip Kim.
Singer founded Fanlib and My2Centences, companies focused on the intersection of film, the internet and social media. He eventually sold the business to Walt Disney and stayed on as a creative VP before returning to filmmaking. He received an Emmy nod in the interactive fiction category for The L Word Interactive.The film is produced by Cascrator Film & Media. Storyboard Media has the foreign sales rights, Well Go USA has domestic home video distribution rights.
Gregg W. Morris can be reached at gregghc@comcast.net, profgreggwmorris@gmail.com