Inspired by the dark comedy of Lorenço Mutarelli’s book O Cheiro do Ralo, Heitor Dhalia’s first feature Drained brings the story of a man’s obsession with an unpleasant drain odor, old prosthetics and woman’s beautiful backside. After showing at Sao Paulo Int’l Film Festival, the Rio Int’l Film Festival, Sundance 2007 and the Guadalajara Int’l Film Festival, we were lucky to catch Drained at the Starz Denver Film Festival. After experiencing Drained’s gritty look, stylish editing, eclectic soundtrack and Selton Mello’s fiendishly entertaining performance, we knew immediately we had to speak with Heitor about the film. Over the phone, Heitor tells us about a decade with no new films in Brazil, making the most with a limited budget and casting for “the ass”.

How did you get into filmmaking?

Since I was very young, I was very connected with storytelling. My grandfather was a guy who always wanted to tell us stories. Since I was a boy, I’ve had that tradition in my family, people liked to tell stories so it was a kind of oral tradition that connected us. That grew my desire to follow to learn that process of dramaturgy and to try to share some experience through stories.

You have a background in advertising right?

Yes. There was president here in Brazil that cancelled all kinds of means of making films. So we had I think, five years with no film production here in Brazil. At that time I was studying in school and cinema was basically over for almost a decade here. It was very difficult time. Then when things started up again I made a choice, I tried to make short films but I realized that I would be too far from making films. I wanted to make films, not write about them. So I changed to be closer to the process of producing. Now I’m always trying to spend my time making movies. I think I lost a lot of time doing a lot of other things but I guess that’s just part of the process.

So Drained is based on a book by Lorenço Mutarelli?

Yes. It was his first novel. Lorenço is a kind of like the Robert Crumb of Brazil. He’s a genius. A very crazy one! He makes very dark comic books, and very crazy, popular books. His first novel is called Drained (O Cheiro do Ralo) and it’s a strange book. It’s not a really serious book but it’s not just a comedy book either. It's a strange book with very funny stories – the same stories that you saw in the film. I fell in love with the book and decided to make a movie about it.

His illustrations are really interesting because they are dark and kind of crazy, but really cool.

He’s a very particular guy. He’s very talented. A real genius. He’s also one of the actors in the film. Do you remember the security guy? That’s the author of the book.

Selton was also amazing as Lorenço. He played that quirky crazy thing really well!

He’s an incredible actor, I love him. He is absolutely amazing. He was also very important because we couldn’t get any money to make the movie – the budget was 300 réis, so maybe $150,000 dollars (USD) to shoot the film. $300,000 dollars for the whole film – and Selton worked for free. He’s a very well known actor in Brazil and he was very helpful in the process of finding other actors and crew…

How did you work with Selton to help develop his character? Did you do some improv, or what kind of things did you do to actually develop that character?

Yes indeed. I was challenged in working with Selton because Selton is used to making a lot of comments about the editing of the film, but he has a different tone of acting. We did a lot of research because the script is very funny, but I think in playing it, to get that fun is to play it in a serious way and not make the takes too funny. So we tried that approach… to be as serious as possible and not try to make it a comedy. The book has a kind of dark humor and you can approach that a dozen of different ways. So it was kind of a process to get less and less… Here we have a lot of television and the actors have a completely different mindset than in films. So to an actor who’s used to working on television and who has played in a lot of soap operas, it was a challenge to create a really convincing performance for the film. Of course Selton is wonderful and one of the best actors here in Brazil, but he was trying to clean up the dialogue, make it funny and the change the pacing. At first he was embarrassed by the dark tone of the language but he’s a great actor and got it together very quickly. The process nice, very easy and very happy. In the beginning Selton called me so many times about the film even when I didn’t have any money. He would say, “I want to play that character, please let me do it!” He’s famous here in Brazil and he was calling me constantly to get the role! Both of us really wanted to do the film, so the process of working with him was very easy.

That’s great. So he was really excited about the role. He was really interested. Did you know him before from another project?

Yes I knew him, but in the beginning I had a few doubts about making him the main character. But ultimately it was the right decision…

Paula was really great too.

Yeah, guess what’s the question that everyone asks me...

What?

How was it casting the ass? (Laughs)

Yeah, exactly… Well, since you brought it up, how was it?

Of course I was looking for a big ass but I was looking for actors with a nice face as well because she’s the only point of light in the film. So it was important that they had both things: a very big and nice ass and a beautiful face with a naive smile… When we started looking for the cast, someone said, “Nice, she has a big ass!” Because that was a normal thing to say during the audition. Just like how you would talk about someone’s eyes, the ass was a common thing to talk about at that time. It was funny! But since the beginning I had the intuition that she was perfect for the role and she was. She’s an amazing actress.

Was Paula embarrassed when she saw her butt on the big screen for the first time?

She was very aware about it. But no one was mean to her at the festivals. Everyone was talking about her but it was ok. Of course it was a little shocking, to see your own ass on a big screen, but she always had a lot humor about it. She always made jokes. It was impossible to not take it in a fun way, because a lot of people after the film would look at her and say, “That was you? Oh I didn’t recognize you!” So it was funny.

That’s funny! We were talking before about you putting Lorenço Mutarelli in the film as the security guy. Did you know the whole time you were going to put him into the movie?

No. In the beginning I just wanted to organize the film with him. Originally I made him one of the guys that are selling something. But he was so great because he helped me during the auditions and to choose actors, so I saw his dramatic skills and I realized that he should have a bigger role. So we started to use that character but in the book it’s a very small role. So we created the security guard, did some improvisations and we wrote some things and we made a bigger role for him.

The look of the film was really interesting. Everything felt a little rough and old around the edges. What was your approach to the look of the film?

Yes, that was deliberate because the main character is a collector and he collects and buys old stuff. I think he would have that idea to mix different periods of time, so that’s what I did. Even the sound track is a collection. When I thought about the look for the first time I think it started with a joke, kind of a shit palette, brown and variations of brown. So that was the idea, because it makes the film seem old, brown and used – just like the things he buys. So it doesn’t belong to any specific moment in time. It’s his own personal moment...

What format did you shoot?

Super 16.

Was that because you wanted to add a little bit of texture to the film?

Yeah a little bit. Of course the choice was also primarily because I didn’t have much money. I also didn’t have any kind of movement in the film it’s only a fixed camera or hand held when something changes the world of the main character. That was one of our choices but it was also because of our budget. But we wanted that kind of style, brown with some yellow as well… I liked that look for the film.

Yeah it looked great. What about the locations in the film? Were they all on location or did you use some sets too?

No. It was a warehouse. I rented it and I made the office (store) and the apartment in the same place. It was a factory in an old neighborhood in Sao Paulo where there’s a lot of old factories that people don’t use any more and only a few companies. It was very cheap so we rented it and inside we chose one part to make a store and another for his apartment.

Was it difficult to find all the props?

Yeah. We had to find all of them. We did only one scene that we shot in a real place. The one scene where the camera moves very fast through all of the junk – the kind of dream of he has. But in his office we had to find all the objects. We tried to get a lot of objects in different places. We had a team to find a lot of different things in the different places to make that kind of collection.

Well you mentioned you had a low budget… I was curious what kinds of things you did to make sure you could get the film finished?

Yeah. Well all the people who worked on the film worked for nothing or for very little. I found all the locations myself for example. Like the office and the diner... So I’d take my car and on the weekends and go looking for them. We did a lot of different things. We got a lot of people involved in the story because people really liked it. So it was easy to get that kind of involvement for the film. But forget money from the sponsors, it was completely impossible because no one believed in the project in the beginning. Because the story is really dark and it was hard for them to visualize.

Investors were worried about how dark it might come out?

They were very concerned about it because my first film was a lot darker. So it’s more difficult when you have serious and very dark stuff to work with.
 What do you think was maybe the most difficult of shooting the film for you?

It was difficult because most of the scenes were shot in the same place. So the challenge was how to, in the same place, shoot all the scenes and keep it interesting and not repetitive. We worked hard to get different angles and different perspectives. One of the things that also really helped that was the soundtrack and the editing. But so we tried to choose locations with a lot of variation.

Like some of the shots in the bathroom looked like they could’ve been a set because there was a lot of space. You had a pretty wide shot but all of your horizontal lines were straight, so it didn't look like you were using a wide-angle lens…

Right. That was one of the decisions I made. Because I realized if I had a small place, it would be impossible to shoot in and there wouldn’t be any air for the audience. So I chose a place that’s different from the book. In the book it’s a small shop. I tried to get a location with a lot of space because there are more possibilities for angles and more air for the audience. The main character has a fairly closed mind, so I thought with a big, empty space we could give the audience and idea of the depth of his crazy mind.

What influences you as a filmmaker?

I have a background in a lot of different things. I liked American independent filmmakers for example, like Coppola and Scorsese, and I also really like filmmakers from different parts of the world. But now I’ve changed my focus to the dramaturgy of storytelling. I’m fascinated about the possibilities of working with story and understanding the motivations of characters. More and more as I continue with filmmaking I think about it.

So you’ve been studying the traditional dramas like Shakespeare and the Greeks?

Yeah. I think I now I’ve learned the principles of dramaturgy and it’s pretty complex... but now I’m finally close to understanding how it works. Of course I like stories like Drained, those completely crazy stories and I could shoot another film like that, but I want to get to new territories. I like different kinds of films and I want to make these kinds of movies. So I’ll be faithful to my desire to take risks then to repeat myself by doing things in the same way or in the same form.

Do you have any advice for any new filmmakers out there?

Don’t waste time, just do it. And try to learn dramaturgy because it’s the language of life. So don’t waste time and do it now. Be very focused and take action!