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Midday Black Midnight Blue is a highly unique viewing experience. Directed by Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott, the feature centers on Ian (Chris Stack), a person who continues to struggle with memories of his former companion Liv (Soule). Soule and Stack elaborated on why this narrative is not your run of the mill drama. The non-linear structure and insightful storytelling resonated for me, and I hope more cinephiles give Midday Black Midnight Blue a shot.
Midday Black Midnight Blue co-stars Merritt Wever as Liv’s understandably concerned sister Beth. Will Pullen is Ash, a potential love interest of Liv’s who might have negatively impacted her relationship with Ian.
Considering that Ian’s perspective is front and center, the actual truth of what happened may be blurred. The feature’s main goal, however, is not a pinpoint account of events. People are often handcuffed and haunted by their own recollection of events, and oftentimes those memories play a dominant part in one’s day to day existence.
Written by Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott, Midday Black Midnight Blue is now playing in Los Angeles and is available On Demand on via Apple TV, Google Play, Swank, and Amazon**.
Question: This movie does not have a linear, dramatic approach. Instead, it has Ian’s past as an integral element to how he exists in the present. There is also not a clear cut, cure all “solution” behind your drama. Can you speak to that aspect of Midday Black Midnight Blue?
Samantha Soule: Yeah. I think you nailed it.
Chris Stack: That was one of my favorite parts too. There is nothing reflective about the movie or reflective about the performance. It’s here (and) then not here. It’s being tasted and missed at any given moment.
The rug gets pulled out from under you. And then the comfiest cushion gets put underneath you. It’s very experiential. Until a certain point, there’s nothing that’s in the past that needs to be remembered or experienced. It’s happening in real time.
Samantha Soule: I think the fact that Stack and I are theater kids and Daniel, my co-director and writer for the film, is also a theater person. Part of what we love in making art is making something that is an experience. Part of what we’re lacking sometimes in our conversation about loss, trauma, or pain is that liquidity. You’re up and you’re breathing, and then a wave takes you under.
That’s just the course of the day it feels like right now in the world. We wanted to tell a story that championed how brave that is. Just to get through the day is such an epic feat of endurance and strength of the heart.
Instead of building a proper “here we go up the mountain and we learn a lesson and it comes to a close.” We are in the soup of what it is to be a human. That deserves a cheer.
Question: That said, going up the mountain and offering an answer may be the more popular way to go story wise. Midday Black Midnight Blue aims to engage the audience with a more realistic type of truth. Can you talk about that artistic sacrifice and just going for what you really wanted?
Sam Soule: The gorgeousness of a well told story is it guides you by a tow rope. If we’re going with our boat metaphor. It takes you exactly where you need to go so you can fully comprehend. I think grief is so murky that we wanted to drop the audience into what Ian is experiencing.
Can you sit with somebody else’s pain? How long can we stretch that? How long can we ask or enlist an audience to not use art as an escape from what they are feeling, but to sit at a table with it. We’re all holding a lot in our brains and we sometimes go to art as an escapist.
Sort of like, distract me. Make it linear, clean and clear because I am muddy in my own life. I wanted to create an experience where your own life could come in with you to the theater and sit next to you in the dark. You’re watching this other person and their journey and your journey doesn’t stop for that to happen. Can we have both at the same time. Because I act in it at the same time, we were trying to do that collectively on the set too. Can we be both one and the other?
There is no single person on this team that didn’t wear multiple hats. All our producers are in the cast. I am traditionally an actress and I came on to help write and direct. We’re all juggling identities and let that duality of experience be present and onscreen and we wanted it to be truthful for the audience as well.
Question: Chris, you’re carrying a heavy emotional and mental load by playing Ian. Do you carry that home with you, or do you leave it on the set?
Chris Stack: I think the answer is yes to all of the things you said. Thankfully as the producer, my producing partners took that hat away from me right before we started shooting. Also I feel that the way it is written and structured, the grief is active. None of the grief is passive. It’s all kinectic. There is a lot of motion.
For me, trying to move forward is an active way of resisting all of the things that come to bear. I like to experience life through my art. It’s deeply personal and it’s made up of all those elements of my life as a person, as a partner, as a father, as a friend. They all come to bear on the thing you’re making.
Thankfully it’s with people like Sam and Daniel who I just adore on a personal level and professional level; whom I trust implicitly. All of these experiences, while trying, are deeply enjoyable to me.
Sam Soule: I’ll quote Daniel. He has a phrase (that says) no one fits harder than the drowning swimmer. That is what Chris brought to that role so beautifully. As someone who is that locked down, he is really trying to find his way out of that labyrinth. Chris does a beautiful job of that.
This week’s CinemAddicts podcast features reviews of Americonned, Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire, Blue Jean, and Bone Cold:
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Question: Sam, can you talk about the reaction you have received for Midday Black Midnight Blue?
Sam Soule: It’s enormously rewarding. You go down into the hole when you make the thing and you never know how it’s going to be received. It’s been really emotional to give it back to audiences and see the surprise that people have echoed back to us. Just really touched and moved – they’re finding it to be a really unique experience.
To sit with a film and have their own lives to sit in the dark next to them. To be given permission, for these 88 minutes, feel whatever you need to feel.
Chris Stack: I want to express our gratitude that it is being seen by people. Filmmaking and art making is a personal process but there is a level of commerce to it. And that commerce is necessary to get it to people. We are really lucky that Good Deed Entertainment has picked us up and are going to show us to folks. We get to people like you Greg who have seen and experienced the movie and have thoughts and feelings and questions about it.
Question: Thank you so much for your time and helping me process my trauma!
Sam Soule: (laughing) You’re welcome, thank you for joining us!
Chris Stack: Thank you Greg!
Midday Black Midnight Blue is now playing in Los Angeles and is also available On Demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Swank, and Amazon**.
Full interview with Samantha Soule and Chris Stack:
** You can purchase rent/purchase it on Amazon and support our site (I receive a commission as an Associates member).
Interviews with Bone Cold director Billy Hanson and Americonned filmmaker Sean Claffey is featured on our Find Your Film Podcast:
