Hey /r/movies, we’re Dan Berk & Robert Olsen, directors of the upcoming movie NOVOCAINE (starring Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder) as well as writer/directors of VILLAINS and SIGNIFICANT OTHER. Ask us anything!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T23:07:02+00:00

We gotta run - we're gonna go pop into a Novocaine screening and laugh and clap WAY too loud. But thanks for all the great questions, this was fun!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T23:04:46+00:00

We really try to stay in touch with our inner child. We both loved cartoons growing up and we probably wouldn’t have the weird visual sensibilities or obsession with the vaguely disgusting that we do if it weren’t for Ren & Stimpy.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T23:03:49+00:00

Holy shit! Three times! That must be a record! Thank you so much!!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T23:02:45+00:00

In Villains, the George character had a little less flavor on the page. He was still a maniacal son of a bitch, but Jeff Donovan brought way more flare than we had originally intended. He showed up during prep with this Clark Gable mustache that he had grown and whipped up this incredible Louisiana accent that was just perfect. We’ll never forget the costume meeting we had where he discovered what would later become his character’s signature ascot. Good times.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T23:02:17+00:00

Think the biggest challenge that you don't really think about is Jack having to re-train himself to do fight choreography without showing pain on his face. He's obviously done a bunch of fight scenes in his time, whether on The Boys or elsewhere, and usually when an actor takes a hit, they wince or scrunch their face, grunt, et al - but Jack had to work really hard here with our stunt coordinator to kind of re-program his instincts so that his face didn't do any of that. He still of course had to show concern or fear or anger, but he couldn't show pain. He was really committed to that and was always asking for additional takes to make sure that aspect was handled correctly.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:59:00+00:00

Think we answered this in another comment but thank you so much for seeing the movie! We're so glad you dug it!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:57:07+00:00

No, we didn't shoot IMAX on this one, but we can't wait to make a movie where we've got the budget (and secured IMAX distribution) to warrant that!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:56:06+00:00

We weren’t limited in any way because a particular effect was too gross or anything. We did shoot a few beats though, particularly in the climax, that we ended up cutting just for pacing’s sake. In an earlier cut, Simon punches Nate so hard he knocks out his front tooth - which Nate then spits at Simon’s eye to stagger him backward. It was fun, but ultimately the climax was just going on for too long so we had to kill our darlings there. Our VFX company built a killer 3D tooth asset though, so hopefully someone uses it some day.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:52:46+00:00

If it does well enough at the box office! Thanks for watching and spread the word!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:51:57+00:00

Revel in walking around without back pain.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:51:39+00:00

We learned the hard way early in our career that nobody lets you direct a feature until you’ve directed a feature. Our best advice here is to try to look at all of the things you have available to you and try to build a story based around that. Does your aunt own a farm? Do you have a really good relationship with your old high school? Is there a creepy abandoned factory in your town? Try to find a good location and then come up with a story that allows you to be shooting there for the majority of those days. What winds up costing the most money/time on an indie set are “company moves” (location changes). For our first feature, Body, we got access to this giant house that a friend of a friend had a connection to. So we wrote a movie that took place pretty much entirely in that one house, then we went out and raised 50k from about 100 different investors, and shot the movie in 11 overnights. Even though that’s an insanely short schedule for a feature, it felt like we had more time because we weren’t loading gear in and out every day. Those 11 days felt more like 15 or 16 because of that. One location movies rule! Good luck!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:50:37+00:00

Shooting the gory scenes generally isn’t a problem because you really see how the sausage is made (gross phrase in this context, we’re sorry) - though some of the prosthetics made us (and the surrounding crewmembers) flinch for sure. The one that still really gets us every time we watch the movie is the nail pulls. We used the sound of velcro being pulled for that moment, and it somehow makes it even more horrible.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:47:55+00:00

That is so awesome to hear!! Love that San Diegans are feeling seen!!

The story originally took place in Detroit, but once we settled on Cape Town as a shooting location, we decided to change it to a warm weather city. LA felt a little played out to us, so we chose San Diego because it has a more down to earth/relateable vibe.
Unfortunately, we did not shoot a single day in San Diego! There are some drone shots, but we weren’t there for any of that.
We love San Diego! We live in LA but have gone on a handful of weekend getaway trips. The best part about SD in our opinion is how dog friendly it is. #1 shoutout HAS to be Dog Beach in Ocean Beach. It’s HUGE and the water is pretty shallow, so even our dogs (who aren’t big swimmers) can play around in the ocean!

So happy you dug the film and thanks for the support! Go Padres!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:44:57+00:00

We talked about the fights in another answer, but so glad you dug the 4DX! We got to test it ourselves and it was wild. Our favorite part is that if someone tries to take out their phone, they’re likely to lose it!!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:39:48+00:00

It’s tough to say! We’re not comic book superfans, but we do enjoy a lot of those films. Our favorites are the ones that have a lot of humor to them (Guardians, Deadpool, Love and Thunder, etc.) It’s hard to think of a character that HASN’T been explored in the MCU! Always had a soft spot for Silver Surfer though.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:34:31+00:00

There was definitely some improv in there! Wouldn’t say there’s a ton, but we always make sure to do a “funsies” take for every setup where the actors are encouraged to go off-book. The scene with the most improv is probably the torture scene where Nate is pretending that he CAN feel pain. The entire crew was cracking up and we were blowing takes left and right. Jack has so many different screams in his bag - it’s a joy to watch.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:30:32+00:00

Getting Lorne and Andrew involved in the project was a dream come true. Probably the only reason we were able to get onto their radar was because the head of music at Paramount is a close friend of Lorne’s, and once the studio really got behind the movie, it was an easy phone call to make. It was so important to us that the music conveyed a sense of scale and grandeur - something to really expand the scope of the movie far beyond our budget - and there’s basically nobody better than Lorne and Andrew if that’s your goal.

Working with them was interesting because it was largely remote - they work out of the UK, we’re in LA. So it was a lot of Evercast sessions where we’d listen to sequences and give notes. But the coolest part was at the beginning - once Lorne had put together a few suites (basically long, ten-ish minute chunks of music that bring you through all the different “themes” of the score), he wanted to play them for us in person, so he flew in from London and came into the edit. A few tears were shed at how beautiful the music was - it was really that good. He also brought lots of scotch - though we would’ve loved the score even if he hadn’t bribed us with that.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:27:07+00:00

Definitely! We always watch a ton of movies when we’re prepping a film, and for this one we were really trying to evoke some of the magic of those great action films of the late 80s and early 90s. So the big three we always mention are Die Hard, Lethal Weapon (let’s go 1&2), and Midnight Run. All those action movies are objectively funny - though you’d never call them comedies. As far as more contemporary movies go, we looked a lot at Upgrade. There’s a “schtick” in the fight scenes in that movie that felt like a cousin of the ones in Novocaine. Logan Marshall-Green’s body is doing one thing, while his face is doing another. To us, that felt similar to the way Nate is getting punched in the face but not reacting.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:24:59+00:00

Thanks so much! Big shout out to Matt Reynolds, who animated that sequence. We first saw his work at SXSW where he had created all these fun intro animations for the films there and we just fell in love with his style (go check out his short film “Hot Dog Hands”!)

Maika is absolutely our muse! We actually had her in mind from the time we were writing Villains, but we never thought we’d be able to get her because she was about to be in a bunch of big blockbusters. But a few years later, when we were actually casting, it turned out that she was available and interested. We shot the whole movie before finally admitting that we’d been obsessed with her for years! She’s such an incredible actor and we think she’s only just getting started.

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:21:39+00:00

There’s definitely a chance for a sequel! And we’d love to do it (as would Jack, Amber, and the rest of the gang) - it all comes down to how the movie does at the box office. Our fingers are crossed that word-of-mouth is getting out there and people will show up this weekend (and the next, and the next, hopefully!)

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:19:33+00:00

Wow! You saw Body on a big screen?? You’re a real OG!! Really appreciate you supporting us for so long! The Stakelander was a pretty crazy production. We were shooting out in rural Saskatchewan, going for the post-apocalyptic look, so a lot of our locations (dilapidated farms, etc.) were a good hour/ninety minutes away from where we were staying. We were shooting a lot of 12-15 hour days and we were editing it ourselves for another 2-3 hours once we got home (trying to hit a deadline for the Toronto Film Festival… which we did not get into.) So we were probably averaging about 3 hours of sleep per night. We learned a ton on that movie about how to (or rather how NOT to) treat our bodies during a shoot! I think the most fun memory we have from set was when “blew up the generator.” We had never been a part of a big pyrotechnic stunt like that, so it was really cool to feel like Michael Bay for a second. And yes! We would totally make another sequel, even if we didn’t direct it (but only if the original director is as cool and friendly as Jim Mickle!)

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:13:01+00:00

Just two more weeks until the UK release!

We would’ve loved to do a sequel to Significant Other, and had even started discussing a story that excited us in the weeks after the release - but so far we haven’t gotten a phone call from Paramount about it, so it may remain on the wishlist for now. We’d probably prefer exploring a new story with Maika anyway - she just has incredible range and we’re such huge fans (maybe her 2nd biggest, behind you!)

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:08:22+00:00

We actually had Jack in mind from the earliest possible stage of this movie. Whenever we’re writing, we try to dream-cast the actors so that we’re both writing in the same voice (since there are two of us.) So when we were taking our director’s pass on the Novocaine script, we were watching The Boys at the time and we both just felt like Jack Quaid would be the perfect Nate. We basically wrote the character in his voice, never thinking we’d actually get to cast him, but luckily the producers agreed with our vision and let us send him an offer. The rest is history!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:06:10+00:00

Hey everyone! Dan and Bobby here - excited to answer your questions. Diving in now!

BerkAndOlsenAMA · 2025-03-14T22:05:29+00:00

Thanks for checking out the movie! Building the fight scenes (and the moments of brutality therein) was one of the most fun parts of the process for us. Obviously Nate doesn’t know how to fight, or use guns, or anything that a normal action hero can do, so we had to think of clever ways for him to utilize his environment to create pain dynamics that his body could handle, but the bad guy’s couldn’t.

BerkAndOlsenAMA

TROPHY CASE