Interview: Steakout Director Max Neace On Romance, Paul Schrader, & More

Steakout! is a 8-minute-long short film that follows Patrick and Sean as they are partaking in a stakeout. Why? Because the target owes Patrick some money and he intends to intimidate and get them to pay him what he is owed. Sean is a non-violent person, but he is ready to support Patrick in this endeavor in the name of friendship. However, when Sean learns the identity of Patrick’s target, things take a sharp left turn, thereby forcing him to reassess his relationship with Patrick. I sat down with director Max Neace for a virtual chat about his short film, romance, puns, Paul Schrader, and more.

Film Fugitives: How did you come up with the idea for Steakout!  and how did it evolve into this short film? 

Max Neace: I had worked with both Sean and Patrick before on directing projects, but independently of me they had joined an acting class together. I thought that was pretty funny and serendipitous, so I wrote Steakout! over the next couple of days. The kernel came from them, rather than a previously gestating idea. After that I just leaned into things I think are funny, which are primarily puns.

FF: What was one of the key things that you had to keep in mind while establishing Patrick and Sean’s dynamic, and making sure that the “twist” wasn’t revealed prematurely?

Max: I mostly just wanted to focus on two guys suffering from a goofy misunderstanding, which the title leans into, and the wordplay that follows. So the twist came about in a similar vein: I wanted to set it up, but not give it away until the titular out of focus binocular shot, which was tricky, but adding Sean’s off-handed, “I’m not very close with my kid,” did the trick without revealing what was to come.

FF: How did you come up with the idea of using the binoculars and then the specs on the binoculars to reveal the twist?

Max: Really a matter of leaning into the stakeout trope; they always have binoculars, so by necessity Patrick brings them along and since I knew Sean wears glasses, I leaned into that as part of the joke; out of focus until he uses his glasses on the binoculars. Is that real? I don’t know, but I think it’s pretty funny.

FF: Patrick’s admission of love has to be one of the most unique and verbose proposals I’ve seen. What was the process of writing it and then executing it on the day of the shoot?

Max: I wanted to give Patrick some kind of emotional arc that is half believable, so I approached the monologue as something he had rehearsed 100 times in his head and aloud; probably in the acting class he and Sean take together in the short and in the review mirror of his Camaro. The second half of that sequence is lifted from Casablanca, when we dolly into their closeups. It’s pretty much shot for shot, which gives it that grand, old school vibe with a little comedic twist.

FF: Is the short film subtly commenting on the rise of manosphere-esque ideas which prevent men from seeing that they are the cause of a woman’s troubles, hence they can’t be the savior?

Max: There’s definitely some of that in there. I wanted the characters to be over the top, a little ridiculous, which of course a lot of those ideas are, but I also wanted to focus on humor, primarily, without it being preachy. I don’t like shorts or features that assume I think the same way they do. So it wasn’t my intention to comment or preach as much as allow the audience safety to laugh at Patrick’s misguided attempt at love.

FF: Despite the creepiness of the premise, you do end the short on a positive note with the father-daughter union, and Patrick probably finding his match in the Grubhub driver. Was that always the intention or did early drafts have a darker twist to the story?

Max: Yeah, I hope it’s uplifting, or at least light hearted at the end. The core of the short is an estranged father and daughter coming back together by way of a wacky stakeout. The Grubhub driver is really there to pay off Sean ordering food in the beginning haha, so I love the interpretation that he may take another shot at love with the driver. Patrick is hard pressed for a sequel, so this could be inspiration needed!

FF: The poster for your movie has a very early ‘70s vibe to it, with the creases on it. What’s the story behind that? Was that done digitally? Or did you print a physical poster, fold it up to create the creases, and then digitize it? 

Max: It’s the same poster from Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, but our own dialogue on top of it [laughs] so we basically took the frame digitally, removed everything, and then added our information onto it. I have a proclivity to steal from my favorite classics.

FF: What are your favorite stakeout scenes from a movie or a TV show? And why? 

Max: Rear Window is the Godfather of stakeout films, which I loosely  based my debut feature, Shift, on (out on Tubi! & Amazon!), so that whole film. Another great stakeout movie is Dragged Across Concrete, which is an almost real time stakeout for the whole second act. Some great, tense storytelling throughout that sequence.

FF: What are the movies that have inspired your style of visual storytelling?

Max: I’m a big Hitchcock and Schrader fan, and love their somewhat slow meditation on macguffins and violence, so Rear Window, The Birds, First Reformed, and Hardcore are all movies that I tonally love (people forget how funny that are) and are visually compelling in unique, macabre circumstances. I like the term darkly colorful, which might be an oxymoron, but what can you do?

FF: Do you intend to turn Steakout!  into a feature film?

Max: No major plans. It was designed to be its contained self. If someone comes along and asks for it, I would definitely dive further into the off-beat little world, but if/until then, I think it works nicely as a short film.