Ever had the feeling you have been somewhere or done something before even when you know you haven’t? That niggling feeling, known as deja vu, is puzzling to say the least. But how would you feel if you not only had a feeling, but experienced the event and woke up surrounded by people you had met in that experience.
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That is the mind-bending pretext of new independent thriller Reaching Distance written and directed by David Fairhurst, who will join cinemagoers for a Q&A after the Port Macquarie screening. He chose our town as one of the launch destinations for his psychological drama because he has family here. “I spent my summers as a kid in Port,” Fairhurst says. His grandparents were a big part of his life. “It is kind of a nostalgic thing and I was adamant I wanted to have it screen here. My grandmother has always been incredibly supportive in my life.”
Fairhurst wrote the script for Reaching Distance four years ago. “It’s been a long journey from then to raise the money; go into pre-production; the shoot took about a month; then post production; touring it to festivals, and finally to cinema screenings.”
He says the Ground Hog Day-like concept came to him after he was working some 36-hour shifts as a best boy on a film for no wage at night, and in retail by day to make ends meet. “I get intense bouts of deja vu when I get exhausted. It got to the point that I doubted the world is real, and started to ask: ‘what if something is really wrong?’.”
The feature had a relatively low budget compared to other independent films. It was filmed in an empty warehouse on a bus, saving a huge amount of money. “Even all the flashback scenes are on the bus. Wade [Briggs], the main character, was beginning to go stir crazy by the end of the film,” Fairhurst says.
Not surprising when you see the trailer which has Briggs’ character Logan coming to on a bus, many times, after experiencing different circumstances involving the exact same people who are all passengers on board. Logan has a photographic memory and, after witnessing his twin sister’s death, he vows to make the killer pay. When he sees her killer board a bus, he follows, but his memory of the past begins to literally break into the present, and the line between his memories and reality fractures.
Fairhurst says he “bootstrapped the first bunch of money”, but once the lead actors Matt Day (Rake, Muriel’s Wedding, Shackelton), Morgan Griffin (San Andreas, Spin Out) Eddie Baroo (Wolf Creek, Spin Out) and Meyne Wyatt (The Sapphires, Redfern Now) put their names to the film, other people come on board. “We started as outsiders, but the industry has now welcomed us.”
Reaching Distance screens at 7pm, Monday, December 17, at Majestic Cinemas, followed by the Q&A. Tickets are $15 and can be pre-ordered online.
