Interview with Leslie McCleave on the Film Road

Recently, I watched a film on Showtime titled "Road" I really enjoyed it, so I asked the director Leslie McCleave for an interview on the film.
Hello Leslie, nice to talk with you.

Hi Denise I'd like to thank you for your interest in the film!

Share with me on how you came up with the idea for the film "Road?" A couple of things inspired me to write this film. I wanted to raise awareness of the proliferation of environmental contamination. I decided to do this through a narrative instead of documentary hoping maybe I could reach a wider audience through a story.

I was also reading Dante's "The Inferno" at the time, so an ill-fated road trip seemed like a good approach. The first Canto of the Inferno goes like this:

Midway on our life¹s journey, I found myself In a dark woods, the right road lost --

It seems that everything goes wrong on this journey for the both of them, why is that? Jay and Margaret are ex-lovers on a road trip to survey environmental clean-up sites. Ex-lovers in a car is a just a recipe for disaster on its own, add to that the stress of traveling to such bizarre destinations and things start to go badly.

What was the location for the production of the film? The film was mainly shot in upstate New York, though it was only important to me that the audience knows we're starting in some eastern city. I wanted the characters to cross a border and after that everything starts to unravel. The Canadian border is the closer of the two, I also foresaw a future of fluid travel between the U.S. and Canada, and created a fictional "North American Department of Energy and Environment." Toxic contamination through the air, ground and water doesn¹t care what side of the border you¹re on.

The production was out of NYC so staying on this side of the country made sense (we were pretty low-budget). The old rust-belt area of New York State has a lot of cool old industrial locations. We got a lot of help from the nice folks at the Rochester Finger Lakes Film Board.

Which other films have you directed? Prior to " ROAD" I directed three short films: "Avenue X", which won the Sundance Short Film Award; "Blixa Bargeld Stole My Cowboy Boots", which stars "The Soprano's" Michael Imperioli (also premiered at Sundance); & "Meeting Marty" the first short to be produced by Sundance Channel.

"Road" is my first feature-length film. My present production is a feature documentary on the seminal gospel group "The Blind Boys of Alabama."

Did you get a distributor for the Road? If so, will it be available to the public in the near future? Yes, we¹re thrilled that 7th Art Releasing is distributing the film theatrically. We hope to have a DVD of the film soon.

Have there been any screenings? We had a sneak preview run in Chicago November 2007 at Facets Cinematheque. The Chicago Tribune wrote:

"The mood and vision strongly recall one of the great periods of American movies: The '70s socially conscious road picture."

Updates will be posted as to where the film will be screening and the future DVD information on both our sites:

http://www.myspace.com/roadthemovie

and on the film's home page:

http://www.ghostrobot.com/road/

I would also like to add that the lead performers 'Catherine Kellner' and 'Ebon Moss-Bachrach' won the Jury Award for Outstanding Performance at the film¹s premiere screening -- 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival.

Also the film recently won Best Original Score at the 2006 Brooklyn International Film Festival.

Thank you very much for a wonderful interview Leslie. Keep up the fantastic work!