Inside The Climb Press Tour: Fun Bike Rides Spiked by Pandemic

Dallas (February 29)

Flat landscapes welcomed the pair to the first Texas town on the list. The visit included a screening at the Angelika Film Center, where Covino and Marvin were allowed to hang out upstairs in the projector rooms. At this point they were aware of the coronavirus news, but the reality of Italy and major closures had not hit yet. On a chilly day with lots of people still on the road, they rode around White Rock Lake and met Neil Tomba, a fixture in the cycling community in Dallas, who told them about a documentary being made about him.

On Doing Interviews

Over the last year engaging with the press, they discovered most people are curious about how close the rocky bond between their on-screen personas reflects their real-life dynamic. “It’s not that close,” said Covino. “But we have a real understanding of these type of characters and their relationship with one another.”

There were also lots of questions about craft, mostly regarding their long, single takes.

Despite the repetition in the questions, they know there’s a different person sitting across from them each time, which means the conversation might go a different direction. Just because the same question has been asked, it doesn’t mean the answer will be identical.

“We go into each of those interviews trying to dig for something new. A lot of the people we were talking to come from their own sort of background or their own particular niche. Some are very technical film people and some review the bigger popcorn movies. Each person brings something unique. We tried to engage with what’s unique to their perspective on film. That’s the way we tried to keep it as fresh as possible,” said Marvin.

Speaking with people who hadn’t seen the movie and were only looking for a quick sound bite presented a more difficult task for the filmmakers, because superficial interactions forced them to synthesize and market their work in a couple sentences, not speaking at any depth.

“We really had to get ourselves into a certain rhythm and a mindset, because most of our time we spend in a room writing together, trying to crack the story, in pre-production scheduling a movie, or in post in editing rooms. The majority of our year is spent figuring out how to make a film. This was just a very different process where you’re out there and you’re speaking about the thing that you made. We got into a rhythm, and then, almost overnight, at the snap of a finger, that was gone and now we’re getting back into writing,” added Covino.

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