There are a plethora of movies about the horrors of being a young girl, but movies about boys tend to fall more into the nostalgia zone. Charlie Polinger’s “The Plague” is bucking that trend.
This psychological thriller follows Ben (Everett Blunck), an awkward 12-year-old boy thrust into the social blood bath of a water polo-centric sleep away camp. The other boys, led by ringleader Jake (Kayo Martin), warn Ben to keep away from Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) because he has “the plague.” Whether the plague is real or just an invention of a group of mean preteens becomes somewhat of a preoccupation for our protagonist.
This is Polinger’s feature debut, and I recently spoke with him about the challenges that come with being a first time filmmaker, working with child actors, and the movies that inspired him. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Obviously, this is a fictional story, but it came from some journals that you kept while you were at summer camp. Was that a water polo or sports focused summer camp that you were staying at, or was it just more generalized?
Charlie Polinger: It wasn’t water polo. I went to a few different kinds of sports camps, different sleep away camps, and other sports and stuff. Water polo came a lot later. I learned about it, and I just felt like something about it captured the vibe and the tone of the experience of being 12 or 13 for me — just like the visuals around it. But I definitely have never played water polo. It’s a really challenging sport.
I do agree — your body is so exposed, and that really sort of captures the idea of puberty. Along that same line, the whole time I was watching this movie, I was thinking — obviously, historically stories about men have dominated cinema. But I do think I’ve probably seen more movies about the darker side of puberty when engaged with young women. “Carrie” comes to mind, and I know you’ve talked about that movie in press, or even something like “Eighth Grade,” which is a little sweeter, but still incredibly distressing. Is that something you were thinking about, the lack of these movies from that young boy’s perspective? Why do you think that dearth exists?
Polinger: It’s true, almost every movie is about men, or boys if it’s about kids. But I think that there’s a certain macho element, or a tougher element … more like hangout-y, slightly more bro-y, or more looking back on the summer with nostalgia, biking around, you know? But still a bit of, those were the bittersweet days of growing up. I think what you see in movies about girls is something that’s very honest about the vulnerability of feeling very socially ostracized and uncomfortable in your body, feeling like you’re the object of terror. I think there’s a kind of implicit vulnerability in that that people didn’t want to maybe show with boys or stories around that.
It didn’t come as much from noticing that pattern, being like, “I have to fill the gap,” as much as I wanted to tell a story that felt personal, and I felt like this was my honest lens on it. That’s something I could bring to the table that I felt like I hadn’t seen as much before.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about working with kids in general, and then tough on a couple of the performances specifically. It’s a lot of kids, and I know a lot of them hadn’t acted before. I was curious, what sort of challenges did that present? Were there times you had to adapt style? How did that challenge you as a first time director?
Polinger: I think that they all were coming in very prepared and very professional about it, and were doing things that were really exciting, that you wouldn’t even get from adult actors a lot of the time. I mean, it was my first time, and it was many of their first times. So it’s that less technical experiences of hitting a mark, hitting an eye line, and hitting whatever. I think it was about trying to not force those types of things, but to create a space where they could just act — be in the scene with each other and focus on that. And I could try to figure out how to move the camera in a way that I could capture those performances, but get out of their way.
The challenge, I guess, was that, on the other hand, I didn’t want to shoot it in a way that is maybe the more traditional, vérité, handheld style you often associate with movies with first time actors. I wanted it to have a more composed, psychological design. Every shot was progressing a psychological journey. And so just trying to balance those two things and make sure that I could give them space, but also make sure I’m telling the story in terms of the visual progression.
In terms of that visual progression, how do you approach that prep? Are you a big storyboarder, or what does that look like for you?
Polinger: I’ll pull lots of photos and images and paintings and things like that, and I’ll look at them with Steven [Breckon], who’s the [director of photography], and we just talk about the feeling … build a language together, build a canvas of paint. And then try to talk about, what do we want this scene to feel like? What is the core experience of this scene emotionally? Try to find something that feels personal to us, that we can relate to — that feeling of seeing everyone at the cafeteria laughing, and it seems like they’re already friends, and you don’t want to have to go sit there, or something like that. Then it’s just, okay — what do you think will make it feel that way for us? We always start with the first thing, which is usually kind of the cliche, and then be like, what else could we do? What’s a different approach? How can we capture this feeling visually?
I’ve heard you mention “Carrie” before, and I feel like that’s a clear touch point when watching the film. But were there any other movies that you watched before making this film that you took inspiration from?
Polinger: Yeah, a ton. We were watching everything from war films like “Come and See,” and “Beau travail,” and “Full Metal Jacket,” and then also watching hanging out movies like “Mean Girls,” and “Superbad.” “Fat Girl” was a big inspiration, it’s a great film,” and “Water Lilies.” All kinds of different things that were exploring different assets of the world that we were trying to make.
I read a story that you told, going back to creating an environment for child actors. It was something I had never considered, and it happens during the scene where Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) gets made fun of for having an erection. You had an intimacy coordinator there, and took turns playing Eli in the scene, if I’m remembering the story correctly. I would love to hear you talk more about that, and making those considerations about embarrassing or difficult subject matter when you’re working with kid actors.
Polinger: I thought that was an amazing idea, our intimacy coordinator had, but it’s a typical kind of acting game where as soon as everyone kind of takes a turn doing something embarrassing, there’s a kind of [feeling of], okay, we’re all in this together. There’s no judgment, and it becomes a safer space both to feel vulnerable if you’re being laughed at, but also to feel vulnerable if you want to be the one making fun of someone and being cruel. I think all the boys in this were really sensitive, and didn’t want to hurt each other’s feelings. So to know that there is a real boundary between — we’re acting now — and then it cuts, and we’re all [ourselves] … We’re all the kid who’s being bullied. In real life, we’re all taking turns. We’re all just acting. It’s goofy. We did that in this hotel conference room. It was really silly. We all had to stand there and just get pointed at and laughed at for a minute, and it reminds you how terrible that feels.
Yeah, and also, like you said, takes a little bit of the loneliness out of it. Talking about casting, I hadn’t seen so many of these kids before. I’d seen Elliot Heffernan before in “Blitz,” and the kid who plays Jake — and it’s a little off color to say this, so forgive me — but you did a perfect job finding a kid who you sort of immediately want to punch in the nose. He really has that bully sensibility. Could you talk about finding these kids and slotting them into these different roles?
Polinger: I guess I had a very particular thing in my head, and then I had to let go of that, because it was so specific. But then, trying to find the actors who captured the essence of what I knew the role had to be — for each of them, I had a different set of requirements. For each of them, it was a little bit surprising in some way, in that they were able to show different shades than just the two dimensional kind of what each character seems on the surface. Because, I think when you’re 13, even by then, you’re aware of the different personas you can choose. There’s not that many, and you try one on, like an outfit, and you kind of lean into the tropes of that yourself. But then it starts to become who you are, and you might not want to be inside of that box. So, I think that even for them, I was sort of trying to think about who I could put in what boxes, and then give them ways to try to break out of that a little bit.
With Kayo [Martin], who plays Jake, I found him on Instagram doing these skate videos, and going around New York and kind of being a troll. He’s really funny, and he really makes fun of people and adults. I mean, he made fun of Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. He went to a show and called them out onstage, and went viral for that — definitely worth checking out that video after [this]. So I was like, this guy — he’s terrifying and hilarious. But he also came in, and he’s really a nice and a very sweet person. So I was like, okay, already I’m seeing so many dimensions to who he is. With each of them in their own way, I think it was about, what is the tension between the actor and the role? And how can we try to bring that out and make something that feels exciting?
I believe you shot this on 35 mm, is that correct?
Polinger: Yes.
Why did you want to shoot on film?
Polinger: I just think it looks beautiful. It’s magical. Not only do I think it looks amazing, but there’s a certain leap of faith into, you don’t know exactly what you’re gonna get. You’re not over analyzing the monitor. You look through the eyepiece, and then you kind of say, okay, this is what we’re doing. You look at the real actors next to the camera, and you get what you get, and it’s not always exactly perfect, or what you ever had imagined. I don’t know — there’s something just really exciting about that.
I know you’ve directed shorts and worked in the industry, but I was just curious if there was anything particularly challenging or surprising about working on this first feature film that maybe you didn’t expect.
Polinger: I guess just to spend so long on one project, was a very different experience. There were times where I felt like I knew it inside out, and then suddenly, one day, it’s like, it feels like a whole new thing. There’s many lives to a longer form piece, and that was exciting. I could keep finding new ways to bring myself into it in a new personal way as my life was changing. It had been years since I’d written the first draft to when I finished the edit. There’s something about the long term nature of that, that was very different.