‘The Endless’ Directors Justin Benson And Aaron Moorhead Talk DIY Filmmaking, Shared Universes, And Their Love Of ‘Almost Famous’

When did you realize you were going to cast yourselves as the leads?

AM: Like Justin said about coming to the point where we just needed to go out and make a movie, part of that was just being super self-reliant and doing as many things as we can so along with what we usually did which was wrote, produced, directed and edited and did the cinematography and special effects and all that, along with our collaborators, we didn’t do this whole thing alone, adding on to that idea before we’d even conceptualized what the movie was, we decided we should be in it as something that will absolutely make the movie one degree easier to make. We’d gotten caught in the casting trap before where we’re just waiting for famous people to read your script and that was just one of the reasons we made “The Endless,” so we could get away from that trap.

You mention that casting yourselves made it easier but were there any new obstacles that you didn’t think of when you added actor to the list of job titles?

JM: I think there was the occasional moment where say Aaron was acting as cinematographer while also acting within a scene that were difficult. The technical moments can be overwhelming but for the most part, the bigger surprise in acting in something that we’re also directing – and everything on a film set is hard – but there’s this realization that when you’re acting and directing it does make the directing a little bit easier.

You’re in the scene with the performers, you’re using the same parts of your brain and when it’s time to say cut and give some notes, direction and adjustment, it comes so much faster then it would have if you’d been standing at a monitor.

So do you see yourselves continuing this trend?

AM: Absolutely, we love it. We’d love to do it in other’s films too. We didn’t know if we’d want to do it again until the first rehearsal and then we were like, “Oh, this is wonderful.” It felt great. If it were extraordinarily difficult to make then maybe we’d be having some second thoughts. Although films are exhausting to make it was a remarkably smooth shoot in thanks to our producer, David Lawson. We’ll definitely be doing it again, maybe not for every movie but we’ve thrown some eyes on some recent scripts and wondered, “Oh, maybe they could be two brothers.”

I didn’t expect how much humor would be in this film but I found myself laughing a lot at some of the visual gags. Is that a tough line in terms of mixing those genres together and not losing the audience?

JB: When we’re doing it we’re never consciously meshing genres, but trying to create characters feel like real human beings and not archetypes. They feel like real people that you could possibly know and hopefully, if they feel real, when the danger hits it will be more thrilling because you’ll care about them. One of the ways we think you make characters feel real is you bring levity in stressful situations.

It is hard sometimes because something will make everyone laugh on set but then you’ll see it in the edit and realize that while understated humor works on our stuff, when it goes over into more broad comedy like “Anchorman” it just doesn’t work. When you’re shooting some things seem so funny but after we realize when it went to big. Hopefully, everything has levity.

Almost always, really dramatic scenes work better with a well placed quiet joke. They rhythm of every dramatic scene ever should be that of the one between Penny Lane and William in “Almost Famous” when at the end she asks, “What kind of beer?” after they’d just had this huge dramatic moment. You still feel the emotions and it just works.

I’m just really happy “Almost Famous” was so organically brought up in this talk because that’s a perfect scene.

JB: “Almost Famous” is the only movie Aaron and I have watched together four times and we’re planning on doing it again.