Sean Parker
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! Today, we have a spectacular gift for you in interview form. Warren Skeels, director, producer, and co-writer of The Man in the White Van, sat down with us to discuss the theatrical release of his feature debut. The film is a harrowing slow-burn thriller that pits a fantastic Madison Wolfe (The Conjuring 2) against a faceless stalker. Her parents (Sean Astin and Ali Larter) don’t believe her, and her sister (Brec Bassinger) exacerbates their disbelief by insisting she’s making it all up. While that builds tension within the fictionalized version of the film, the most unbelievable fact is that The Man in the White Van is based on true events brought to life through survivors’ accounts.
Skeels uses many uncommon tactics to build suspense, avoiding certain tropes while using the time period to isolate and discredit the film’s utterly charming central character. But his choice to never reveal or credit the serial killer while the violence happens off-screen is perhaps a master stroke, comparable to Michael Myers showing up in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. The Man in the White Van becomes a hauntingly uncomfortable monstrous character in a time without cell service in rural Florida. The film looks authentically from the 1970s as well, taking viewers on a trip into a teenager’s traumatic nightmare.
After seeing the film and posting a review last week, I had the opportunity to speak to Warren Skeels and have a few of my lingering questions answered. I also ended my review by saying that Skeels is “a director who I think is worth keeping an eye on,” which I believe is truer now after speaking with him and seeing the inner workings of his process. If you’re at the theater this holiday looking for something a bit more on the dark side, The Man in the White Van will absolutely provide the winter chills.
This interview is provided in both a video and a transcription format, so you can enjoy it whichever way you choose.
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An Interview with Warren Skeels Director of THE MAN IN THE WHITE VAN
Warren Skeels opens up about his first feature, The Man in the White Van. The film’s multihyphenate man behind the camera sits down with 25YL’s Sean Parker, addressing COVID challenges, the amorphous nature of a killer whose face you never see, and going up against Christmas blockbusters like Moana 2 and Gladiator II.
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Sean Parker: Hi, Warren.
Warren Skeels: How are you, Sean?
SP: I’m doing great. How are you?
WS: I’m good! I’m good. We’re just kind of going through the whirlwind of press on this small indie film that just… it’s kind of been a fun ride to sort of see it kind of start to get out there.
SP: Yeah, no. I loved the movie first of all. I thought it was an incredible slow burn into the 70s, but there’s a lot I want to talk about and I think we’ve got a very short time to do it in.
WS: Let’s unpack it, friend!
SP: Yeah! Alright, my first question for you is: I first got an update, because I am also part of Legion M, I first got an update about this film back in March of 2021. What were the production challenges like at that time? I mean, we’re just coming out of COVID.
WS: Oh man, yeah. No, it was rough, and I’ll say making a first film I will say that I never anticipated how—it wasn’t how I imagined being on set with a mask and then a shield and feeling like I sound like I’m walking the moon like an astronaut when I’m trying to direct and talk to talent. ‘Cause you just hear yourself echoing back in your ears with the shield.
That was quite unnerving and took—I mean, I remember the first day was a difficult transition. And luckily, I was given time with the actors and prep to rehearse a little bit, which was really pivotal, like, I think in terms of being able to get into the scenes because once—when you’re making an indie film like this, you get your set number of days and it’s and you’re filmmaking so it’s really all about execution. You don’t have a lot of time to play, so the play that you’re going to get into the exploration you’re going to do, you’re not going to have that on the day. You’re just not going to get it. So, you have to find time for it. So, we were able to find—I was able to talk to the producers and get that time of rehearsal beforehand. So, it was helpful going into the first day of production to already sort of have that where I could really just kind of work the scene from the technical standpoint, and it was easier to sort of like start to navigate the world of being an astronaut on set. Because that was definitely—the COVID protocols were definitely a thing. Very challenging.
We also faced the remnants of a hurricane on day three. That kind of shut us down for about a half a day because of lightning. You know, so there were a lot of different challenges that we faced at that point in time in making the film early on. And, you know, every film sort of catches its wind at a certain point. It probably took us, probably, about a week to really kind of really get into the flow of things with covid with the break with the hurricane and stuff like that.
SP: Wow. Yeah, that’s more than I could have even imagined. But you mentioned your cast in there and I want to say you have an incredible cast. Madison Wolfe and Brec Bassinger. Also, Sean Astin and Ali Larter. How did you get blessed with this incredible cast?
WS: We went through a traditional casting process. And Arlie Day and Mike Page are incredible to work with as casting directors. We really just sort of centered the idea. We started with the game plan of finding our Annie Williams and then kind of building around her. So, Madison Wolfe was the first to sort of board in terms of cast, and then we when we found her sister because, to me, the sister storyline is a huge component of the film. To me, on many levels, you could say that it’s a story of two sisters couched in a thriller, in a way. That’s one way to look at it.
And then, of course, Madison is just, I mean, she’s a powerhouse in the film. And Brec—I think Brec does such a great job with the character of Margaret that an audience loves to hate her, which means she did her job well, right? And I think for her, it was really fun to play a very different character than what she had been playing in Stargirl. And then Skai Jackson, you know, comes from a Disney background, I thought, brought a really nice level of comic relief and levity to the film, which is nice to sort of undercut the thriller and the suspense with some humor here and there, just to sort of lighten things up a minute before we dig back into the suspense and the thriller of it all.
And then, even though Sean and Ali are sort of secondary characters of the parents– kind of disbelieving parents—they both brought so much to the set for me. I mean, look, Sean’s a cinematic legend and carries just a lovely professional weight with him when he’s on set. And [he] was always there for me as a first-time filmmaker because he’s a credible director in his own right, just as sort of, you know, I could kind of bounce ideas off of him and things. And [he] was a good mentor in that capacity, and since he and Ali both came on board as executive producers, that was also humbling because it meant that they wanted to make sure this film got made and, you know, probably got a theatrical release and that was a big moment.
SP: Yeah. No, I was happy to see that it was going into theaters. I was really excited for this one, like, for a long time. So, so this…
WS: I mean, look, like, we’re going into theaters up against these huge studio holiday films. So, it’s going to be, from a box office standpoint, it’s going to be tough to make a dent, you know? But it’s really not about that. I think for Relativity and Legion M, it’s about getting it out there, starting to build momentum for the film, build the socials, build the word of mouth. You know? It’s been getting really great audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and the like. And then all of that sort of carries over into all the different other platforms and streaming and the VOD, and I think that’s kind of the new life cycle for a smaller indie like ours.
SP: No, I love seeing indie films be at my local Cineplex. It’s unbelievable to me that we’ve gotten to this point that—you know, basically, everything is like a Transformers movie out there.
WS: It’s all studio stuff that’s there. And look like Moana is a great film. Wicked, incredible. I haven’t seen Gladiator II yet. But you know, the Mufasa and the Sonic, those are the film—even Kraven, which we don’t have to talk about.
SP: [laughs]
WS: You know, all those films in they’re forty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred million dollar P&A budgets, you know that we’re going up against. So even just knowing that we’re getting out there in any capacity and have a 500-theatre release is just, for myself as a filmmaker, is just incredible and humbling. And I just have a lot of gratitude toward Legion M and Relativity for making that happen.
SP: One of the things I did want to ask about is the ‘70s look and feel of this film. Absolutely amazing. Who are your production people—what was going into that?
WS: Yes! Where to start? So, the design team on it I adore. Tiger Curran was our costume designer. Lauren Spalding was our production designer. On the additional photography, John Rusnack kinda started as a production designer there. And then Garreth Paul Cox was the cinematographer. And to a T, each one of them—what I loved about their approach, I would kind of come to the table as a director with a vision, with a concept, and then I always treat it like “take this and go for it.” You know, like here’s the idea; this is what I’m trying to achieve in the film conceptually. Now, you guys run with it and push yourselves. You know I won’t push you, but I think you can push yourself on this and dream up something that’s better than anything I could ever imagine. And I think that’s what’s wonderful about the filmmaking process is that you, I mean as a director, you can bring something to the table. And then you have other artists that you’re working with who are all adding their paint strokes to the tapestry of the film itself and you end up making something that’s far more compelling and dynamic and interesting than any one person’s single idea.
SP: I want to get into some of the deeper aspects of the movie, especially the believability portions of the film. You have Annie [who] isn’t taken very seriously, and I know that you have talked to several victims who that you based the film around—that you based Annie’s character around. What was it like for them to be, you know, sort of telling people that this is happening and just not getting any clearance or is it like— Where did this part of story come from, is really what I’m getting at?
WS: That was, one of the themes of disbelief in isolation was, something that immediately struck a chord with me in talking to the woman who Annie’s based on. She was growing up in the ‘70s, she admittedly told white lies and exaggerated about things. Fibbed a lot. And, to her own accord, admittedly said that she probably did it for attention. She doesn’t really know why she did it. And it just sort of set up an environment of which there was a theme of The Boy Who Cried— The Girl in this case—Who Cried Wolf. Because her parents were also—it was an environment where parents were well-to-do in the community. It was a small rural family in Florida, in Brooksville, and it wasn’t an environment where there was any kind of heavy criminal activity or dark things happening there. A town… Somebody from the Sheriff’s Department told me that their biggest worry during that time period was getting the town drunk home on a Friday night. So, it wasn’t an environment that was really prepared for something this nefarious to happen.
And for her parents, when Annie […], real-life Annie, didn’t like the negative attention of the van. So, when she was being followed by it, she didn’t want to talk about it. She just wanted to ignore it and have it go away at first. And, because she did that for so long, when she actually brought it to her parents, she was at a level ten without ever bringing in the previous levels to the parents. So, her coming out at a ten, for them, it just it didn’t make sense with their world at all. And so, while they wanted to care for her and sort of honor the feelings that she was having, there really wasn’t—it really just wasn’t fathomable to them that there was something that dark that was really happening. That there was a serial killer hunting their daughter. It was not something that they believed in.
SP: I see. So, similar to Annie, they were just hoping it would go away?
WS: They knew she was having real emotions, and she was having some kind of fear about something. But they had a long history of family relations in the area; they knew everybody in the area, you know? And there was just a general—it wasn’t even disbelief, more so just it wasn’t going to link in their brain as being something that was possible, right? ‘Cause nothing like that had ever happened in their area, on any level. So, for her to come at it at such a high level just didn’t gel. It didn’t make sense.
And when she did bring it to a very palpable red level alert, there was like no—you know, like the father went and looked and couldn’t find anything. So, when they took action, and there was nothing there, then it’s sort of also kind of went back to like, “Ok, she’s going through something, we don’t know what it is, but this is just how it’s playing itself out.” Not, “There’s actually a real serial killer hunting our daughter down,” you know?
SP: One of the other things I’ve seen, now that the movie is out, I’ve seen a few viewer criticisms online pertaining to books written about the events in The Man in the White Van. And I’ve seen you not wanting to glorify the person that this is all based off of. Can you talk about the difficulties in just towing that line?
WS: Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, this is a story about the survivor and the victims. So, you know, I didn’t feel a need to name the serial killer or give them any positive attention in the film. And it’s also… I mean, it’s a thriller; at the same time, it’s an entertainment piece. So, just taking the POV of the surviving victim and really letting that be our guiding light as far as what she saw, what she didn’t see. And so, if she really didn’t get a good look at the serial killer, then the audience really didn’t get a good look at the serial killer. And in her world, he was not a serial killer. Like, we know after the fact, he is that, but in her world, he was just this weird guy driving this white van stalking her and then became a predator who hunted her. So that’s a kind of different idea and notion than knowing someone is an actual murderer or actual serial killer.
And I think that’s another thing you kind of have to think about from her perspective, but in terms of the glorification of the killer, I also felt like this wasn’t something that needed to be a slasher. Especially in terms of taste in telling a survivor and a victim’s story. So, all of the violence is implied off-camera and really relying on “theater of the mind” to kind of bring in the elevated thriller elements as opposed to relying on gore and slasher elements, which is just a different kind of film. Films I also enjoy separately; just I felt it wasn’t the right style and vibe for this particular story.
SP: I mean—I watched this and I see this amorphous character, right? This—we don’t know what it is. She doesn’t know what it is. And to me, that does resonate a little bit with other films of the ’70s, sort of Texas Chain Saw and Halloween, those were two that I really saw little things in. I mean, do you think that maybe in not showing his face that maybe you’ve created something, too? I mean, it’s terrifying. It’s absolutely terrifying.
WS: Yeah, sure. I mean, you can see the success of like how Jaws is treated by Spielberg in the original or how Carpenter treats The Shape in Halloween. Where sometimes, when you don’t see something as much, it carries more weight because it just builds up, you know, builds up into the psychological fears of how nefarious, how dark and deep does this evil go? You know, to get built up in the audience’s mind, I think that exploration of terror and fear is certainly something that I wanted to explore with an audience as well.
SP: I think it’s absolutely terrifying. Like, let me just reiterate how terrifying I thought that whole thing is, because you just don’t know who that person is. You don’t know what they want. It’s just, for me, it was very Carpenter-esque…
WS: Thanks, by the way. I mean, that’s an enormous compliment. You know, Carpenter. And you know, Kubrick and you know all those are, you know… One of my favorites is Alfred Hitchcock, and like Rear Window. And he’s the master of suspense. And so, making this film was certainly a little bit of a love letter to Hitchcock and then the ‘70s; kind of throwback thriller to the 70s.
SP: Absolutely! So, I’ve got two more questions for you. Do you ever think that you try something in that space at some point? Or is that just right out?
WS: In which space?
SP: The slasher space. I’m sorry.
WS: It’s not out of the realm, I think… Look, I think when you combine theater of the mind with slasher, it can be devastatingly horrific and scary in a very profound way. You know when you get into like Alien, right? That’s a classic. And what Ridley Scott did with that film was—I mean, there was a ton of theater of the mind at play, and then there was also slasher moments in that, right? But it was a very compelling film, and so, I guess it’s kind of a roundabout way to say, “Absolutely, I could play in that realm,” but it’d be more so something in that category, probably. I mean, if I ever got the opportunity, right? Like that would be amazing!
SP: I think that’s a perfect answer. I think you could do it to be honest, I think you’d be really good at it. And secondly, I wanna know what your favorite horror films of the year are.
WS: Ooo. Ok, let’s see. Well, I mean, I don’t think anybody can run away from Longlegs, right? I mean, I loved what Oz Perkins did there, and his timing, and the editorial, and his usage of suspense, and his usage of audio in that was just impeccable. So, Longlegs is up there.
I love all of Ti West’s trilogy from X to Pearl and Maxxxine, though I think I’m gonna have to give—I basically decided to give Maxxxine a pass because I loved X, and I love Pearl even more. And I had such huge expectations for Maxxxine that I think I have to just let it go and go back and watch the second time. Because when I saw it, I just felt like it didn’t have the same impact as the other two had on me and I wondered if I just didn’t have the right expectations going in. [Either] I Had too many, or I just didn’t have the right ones. So, I kind of want to go back and watch it again because I definitely appreciated a lot of the ‘80s horror tropes that he played with in there and loved the soundtrack. And, you know, Mia Goth, of course, is fantastic. But I want to go back and watch it again because when I saw it, I felt like it didn’t hit me the same way that Pearl and X did. So, I’m basically giving it a pass. I’m going to go back and watch it again.
But also, I enjoyed Speak No Evil, I thought that was a lot of fun. Don’t know if you’ve seen that.
SP: Yeah, I actually just watched that recently.
WS: So that was a fun one. Certainly had a couple kind of fun plot twists in it. And of course, Nic Cage in Longlegs is Nick Cage, so.
SP: I’m the same way with Nic Cage.
WS: Maika Monroe is, I mean, obviously from It Follows and… gosh, what’s the one she did?
SP: Watcher?
WS: Watcher, Yes! Love that! So well done. That wasn’t this year, but you know. Some of those are some of the favorites—and Barbarian –over the last couple years. Love that. I’m looking forward to Companion coming out here pretty soon, too, from the producers.
SP: Same. That one’s big on my list for next year as well. All right. That’s all I got for you, Warren. But thank you so much for hanging out and talking to me.
Alright. Everybody go see The Man in the White Van. It’s a ton of fun. You’re absolutely gonna lose your mind over some of the scenes in this. It’s just this slow-paced building thing up until this amazing action sequence at the end. It’s really great, big fan. Big fan. Really love this movie.
WS: Thank you so much for having me, Sean. I appreciate it.
SP: Thank you.
The Man in the White Van (2024) – Official Trailer | Only in Theaters December 13
The Man in the White Van – Only in theaters December 13, 2024 Starring Madison Wolfe, Brec Bassinger, Skai Jackson, with Ali Larter, and Sean Astin. Written by Warren Skeels and Sharon Y. Cobb and directed by Warren Skeels IG: whitevanmovie FB: whitevanmovie X: relativity #themaninthewhitevan Based on true events.
