Paul F. Ryan on the set of Home Room.

Paul F. Ryan may not be a household name-at least not yet. But this September, he'll be living the dream of every independent moviemaker when his debut feature, Home Room, begins its nationwide theatrical run through DEJ Productions, the distribution arm of Blockbuster.

Started before-but later inspired by-the events at Columbine High School in 1999, Home Room tells the story of what happens after the news cameras go away and a town-and its people-are left reeling from the events of a school shooting. Here, Ryan speak with MM about the challenges of working with an extremely sensitive subject line, why it's okay to play the smaller film festivals and what it's like to wear the simultaneous hats of writer, director, producer and editor.

Jennifer Wood (MM): When did you begin writing the script for Home Room, and how long did it take to complete?

Paul F. Ryan (PR): Home Room was a screenplay I began working on in late 1998. There had been a number of school shootings in a relatively short period of time, and the issues that were being raised intrigued me. I stopped working on Home Room in early 1999, and picked it up again several months later. In all, it was probably three months of writing and rewriting.

MM: What sort of considerations (if any) did you have to make in writing a story that deals with such a sensitive issue?

PR: I was very concerned about dealing with this subject matter, which is why I took that long break when I was writing it. On the morning of April 20, 1999 a friend called to tell me that a high school shooting was happening and that I should put on CNN. He knew I had been working on Home Room, which at that time was a story that centered on a student who brings a gun to school.

Watching what happened at Columbine High School had an enormously emotional impact on me. As I watched kids running from the school, and others being carried off on stretchers, I couldn't help but think about how offensive the screenplay I was writing would be if it ever got made. I decided Home Room would remain uncompleted forever.

What changed my mind was watching what happened in Littleton afterwards. CNN reported the story for about two weeks, then left. The rest of America moved on, but the people in Littleton didn't. How do you start living your life again after such a terrible thing? The exploration of this question became the new focus of Home Room: a film set entirely in the aftermath of a school shooting.

MM: Were you concerned ahead of time about the commercial aspects of the film, considering the nature of the topic?

PR: I think that everyone involved with project knew from the get-go that a teen drama about a school shooting wouldn't exactly be a box office goldmine. At the same time, I think we also felt that the right script with the right cast would still be economically viable. But most importantly, this is a film we felt needed to make.

MM: You took a very "auteuristic" approach to the film, serving as writer, director, producer and editor. How did these roles affect one another?

PR: While I'm a big believer in the auteur theory, the truth is that I crewed many of these positions out of budgetary necessity as much as being a control freak. My producing side affected the screenplay from the very beginning: I knew this would be a very low-budget film, so I focused the screenplay on just a handful of people in a handful of locations. The writing challenge became how to keep the story interesting and dynamic under those limitations.

MM: How did the script change once the cast was in place? Did you find yourself rewriting on the set to fit a particular actor's strengths or ideas?

PR: I like to think of the screenplay as a fluid blueprint for making the film. Busy Philipps and Erika Christensen are both remarkable performers, and they knew their characters intimately. One comment I seem to get consistently from viewers of Home Room is that the performances seem very natural and real. I think a big part of that comes from allowing the actors to alter dialogue, for example, in way that they're more comfortable speaking with.

When I write, I hear the characters speaking in my head. But when I direct, those voices literally become the voices of the actors themselves. It's a very interesting process, really, because we had zero rehearsal time on this movie. We found the tone as we went along. There would be days that I would be driving to the set and I would hear Erika's voice say something that would clarify a point in the script. As soon as I arrived on set, I would start rewriting. One significant exchange between Busy and Erika was added to the climactic scene of the film that originated in just this way.

MM: One of the most difficult dual roles to play is that of director-editor. Where on the one hand you're trying to assemble as much good footage as possible, as an editor your job is to cut all that footage down to a 90 - 120 minute feature. What was the biggest challenge you faced as an editor, in determining what would go into the film and what would end up on the "cutting room floor."

PR: I'm very comfortable in the cutting room. I see editing very much as a natural extension of directing. Editing, for me, is directing the film for the final time.

The biggest dividend of being editor is that when I'm directing, if we fall behind (which happens a lot) it's very easy for me to know which shots I absolutely have to get in order to build the scene, and which shots I can live without.

When the first cut of the movie clocks in at close to three hours, it's clear that some stuff will need to go. My philosophy is to cut entire scenes whenever possible, instead of short-changing every scene in the movie. From that standpoint, yes, there were many moments that I had to part with that I wish I didn't have to. But there weren't too many agonizing moments. Maybe there should have been!

We reached a point where I wasn't cutting fat anymore; I was cutting meat. And the question became how much was the movie gaining by making it 10 minutes shorter? So we went looking for feedback. And time and again, people were telling us they liked the movie just the way it was: long. On the festival circuit, the movie continued to play extremely well.

MM: Can you talk a bit about the specifics of the film: the budget, how long of a shooting schedule you had?

PR: My keepers don't want me to say how much the movie cost to make, although I get asked that question all the time. I am allowed to say that we made it for less than $500,000, but I can't be more specific than that. The budget obviously affects everything that follows. That's why the shooting schedule was so short: 18 days, which consisted of three six-day weeks.

MM: How did you shoot the film?

PR: One area where I was not willing to compromise was the shooting format. I'm a film guy-period. We shot the entire movie on Kodak 35mm stock, but I would have used Fuji, short-ends or whatever it would have taken to stay on film. Maybe even Super 16. The reality is that once you go through the entire post-production chain, shooting a movie on DV or other stocks is not really that big of a cost savings, especially once you blow up to 35mm for projection.

I know it's an unpopular sentiment in the indie world, but I'm not a fan of DV and would never have considered making Home Room that way. Finding a distributor is hard enough; being on DV makes it even harder. Most DV movies I see look quite poor, especially once they get blown up to 35mm. Sometimes a film's subject matter melds nicely with the DV look, but most times I find it infuriating. Tadpole is a perfect example of a film that should never have been made on DV. It was a wonderful story with great performances, but it looked cheap and very few people went to see it. I'll be interested in seeing how Pieces of April performs, because it also seems like a movie that should have been shot on film.

MM: Home Room has had a very long and impressive festival run. Where did the film start out on the festival circuit, and at what point was it picked up for distribution?

PR: We've been very blessed in this process, particularly because indie film acquisitions have been in such a slump. We aimed for Sundance and, like most everybody else, we were rejected. Afterwards, my partners and I went looking for advice from many sources, most of which responded with: "premiere at a high-profile festival or you don't stand a chance." This was a problem for us because Home Room was finished in January 2002, yet the next "big" festivals (Seattle, Cannes, etc). were many months away. We were contacted by the Taos Talking Pictures Festival shortly thereafter, and decided to premiere there even if it wasn't considered a "high-profile" festival. Thank God we did.

The distributor who eventually bought Home Room saw it first at Taos Talking Pictures, and contacted us soon afterward. In the meantime, we were shot down by Cannes and Seattle, but won the Audience Award in Santa Cruz. By mid 2002, most of the major indie distributors had seen the film, and our producer's rep recommended we end our festival run. By the end of the summer, the film was sold.

Our distributor accepted a subsequent invitation to the Denver Film Festival, as Home Room was selected to be part of a showcase of films dealing with gun violence in America. Our final festival appearance, again at invitation, was just this August at the Chamizal Independent Film Festival, where Home Room won the Jury Prize for Best U.S. Feature Film. That's our entire festival history with Home Room.

MM: Film festivals are really a great open forum for feedback for directors. Did you make additional cuts based on the questions, comments and conversations you had throughout your film festival experience?

PR: Actually, the final cut of Home Room is unchanged from the version we premiered at Taos Talking Pictures. I'm very proud of that.

MM: What do you see as the biggest benefit of going on the festival circuit before having a theatrical release?

PR: What I like most about the film festival experience are the people that you meet. I've met some extremely talented filmmakers like Lucy Walker and Michael Moore, and I've also met many extraordinary people from the audience.

After a screening of Home Room at the Denver Film Festival I was approached by an audience member who was an English teacher at Columbine High School. As someone who lived through those tragic events, I was anxious to hear her reaction. To my great relief, her response was very positive. Based upon that meeting, I have twice since been a guest of Columbine High School. Just this past April, we arranged a special screening of Home Room for hundreds of Columbine students, faculty and parents, which was attended by actress Erika Christensen and myself. It was an unforgettable experience that grew entirely out of our festival appearance in Denver.

MM: Home Room is one of the first acquisitions of DEJ Productions, the independent distribution arm of Blockbuster, to be released theatrically. What were the greatest selling points to you for going with DEJ? What sort of rollout is the company planning for the film? When all is said and done, what do you hope that audiences will take away from the film?

PR: Because there was interest in Home Room from multiple distributors, we had the luxury of not having to make our decision based on panic or desperation. DEJ buys a lot of movies every year for direct-to-video distribution, but they demonstrated a unique passion for Home Room itself, which went a long way with us. Part of that passion was their commitment to release the film theatrically, a "first" for DEJ that we are very proud to be part of.

MM: What sort of rollout is the company planning for the film?

PR: Home Room opens on September 5th in New York and Los Angeles, and will expand to other cities in following weeks (first up is Denver on September 12th). I think when you consider how many indie distributors are closing up shop or are getting out of theatrical releasing, the fact that DEJ is getting into it is a positive development for independent filmmakers everywhere.

MM: When all is said and done, what do you hope that audiences will take away from the film?

PR: More than anything, I want Home Room to be the basis for dialogue about an issue that plagues this country. We tend to only discuss school violence when it happens, then try to forget about it as quickly as possible. Hopefully Home Room is an opportunity to provoke that discussion again-without anyone in the real world getting hurt in the process.