INTERVIEW WITH KAI BARRY

KAI BARRY first made an impact on Genre film-making when he wrote the taut, claustrophobic horror movie, SPLINTER. Now he's co-wrote and directed the excellent spy thriller ROGUE AGENT, starring James Floyd as a rookie spy in over his head after a mission goes wrong in Serbia. I was lucky enough to spend fifteen minutes talking with Kai about the film...

Rogue Agent was filmed on location in Serbia, where the film is set. Given that country's very turbulent recent past, what was it like shooting there?

Yeah - you know, coming from the US, from a Western country you have certain assumptions as to what its going to be like. Serbia was in the news for things...that were not positive. It had that kind of worn down, old European visual feel to it, which is what I wanted for the film. But actually working there was totally surprising. Like, totally fantastic people. We ended up with a crew and a production company that made it feel like the independent films I'd worked on in the US where it feels like a family and everyone is rooting for everyone, and go and have a drink together after shooting... I was surprised how collegian and friendly it was, given....you know...the past...

You've mentioned before one of the inspirations for the story was an article you'd read about how much of the CIA's budget was paid out to contractors, which relates to the characters in the story - how much factual detail were you able to put into the story?

Well its not the kind of area you can get a lot of factual information from! I had read a lot of books about and by former CIA agents, that sort of thing. We had a guy in London who worked with James (Foley), who had a background in the British Secret Service - not sure what you call it over there! So there was a lot of background, but as far as the events that happen in the film, that was more me trying to get a sense of how that world would work, how people would express emotion in that world, how things are revealed in that world...and see what i could come up with!

The recruitment scene is very nuanced and gives a great sense of the kind of person Alex is and the kind of organisation he's joining - they're not necessarily looking for the smartest guy in the room, they want the ones who will see a job through to the end...

Yeah I'd read about a few things about the CIA and how they recruit young agents and how they are tested. And a lot of those tests, you don't know what they're actually testing for. The specifics of the test in the film are made up, but the essence of it I think is right.

The puzzle challenge is a great visual start. You can imagine the early stages are reasonably easy to put together but as the recruits progress it gets deliberately harder with pieces almost-but-not-quite fitting...

Yeah. I wanted to start the film with something which was a visual metaphor for the whole film, for Alex's experience in the film - so, yeah if it communicates to you then that's fantastic.

The most controversial moment in the film is going to be the torture scene...

Yeah people always want to talk about that one! Yeah that was a fun day of shooting. We actually filmed a different version of that scene when we were raising financing for the film, so it was fun getting to go back and do it again, see what we could take out and...you known it's really not that much...you don't see much but you can feel it in your gut, which is fun!

The film has very little exposition, you definitely don't try to spoon-feed your audience...

Yeah that was very much on purpose. I wanted to put you in (Alex's) shoes, essentially, to experience it the way he was. And so if he doesn't know much about what was going on... I felt like, thedifference in this world, where 70% of CIA funding goes to contractors, things are going to get confusing - who's working for who, what exactly is going on. When you watch a James Bond film and there's a big wide establishing shot saying "Now you're in Tangiers" or wherever it may be - things are played a lot clearer. You might still not know who's the badguy in a Bond movie but its not as murky as the world in our film.

The crux of the film is Alex's understanding of what happened on the mission, and it plays out in different ways as Alex gains more information...

Yeah I wanted it so that you're developing with the style of the film - the audience is developing as they work out what means what. You watch it the first time and...some of the feedback i've gotten is that people assume "oh that's what must have happened", but then you watch it a second time and realise "Oh wait, I need to participate in this"

Did the shoot throw up any particular challenges?

Well any film shoot is difficult! The one thing that comes to mind is...originally the entire end of the film was written to be set in the snow.  When we location scouted for the ending there was snow all over the mountains, and then it turned out that was the only time is snowed, all winter! So it was interesting having to re-write things and change things around while shooting to make sense of things - like we had someone tracking footprints through the snow - whoops, can't do that any more!  But in any production there are always things, little problems coming at you and its all about how you deal with those and keep what's important to the story.

MANY THANKS TO KAI FOR SPARING US THE TIME, AND TO SISI AT FETCH.FM FOR FACILITATING THE INTERVIEW.

ROGUE AGENT IS AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM I-TUNES HERE, AND YOU CAN READ OUR REVIEW OF THE FILM HERE.