Interview: Brant Sersen Brings His Carnival of Splinterheads Back to Austin

First off, welcome back to Austin. We hope that you have as successful a run this time as you did during SXSW.

We noticed that this is your second feature film where you acted as both screenwriter and director. Could you tell us a little bit about how you come up with the characters and storylines for your films, specifically what led you to want to make a movie about Splinterheads?

The inspiration for both Splinterheads and Blackballed came from a specific happening in an interesting setting. For Splinterheads I stumbled upon a carnival just outside of New York City with a friend visiting from England. It was late and he never had been to an American carnival and desperately wanted to check it out. So, we walked around and it was dead - nobody was around. The carnival workers were just relaxing, smoking, pretty much done for the night. Until this one guy asked if we wanted to play his ‘pop the balloons with a dart game’ for a cuddly bear. We initially declined, but when he offered $50 to pop 4 in row we took the bait. The key word here is BAIT. My confident friend paid the man, was given the rules and took his shots at the balloons. 2 foggy minutes later my friend was paying the guy $50! What I witnessed (and was entertained by) was the most incredibly play of words. It was pure genius. Up was down, left was right, nothing made sense, but it was fun! We both stood there in shock - like, wtf just happened?! We were laughing, confused and utterly impressed with the scam. It left such an impression I went back the next night and started my research on learning everything I could about carnivals and the people that work for them.

Part of the charm of the film is that Thomas Middleditch's character, Justin, is completely goofy and tenderhearted. Was his quirkiness something that was baked in to the screenplay or did Thomas bring a lot of that to life?

Tenderhearted was always in there and I knew the Justin character was going to be slightly quirky, but Thomas really brought it to a different level. It’s why I cast him. Thomas is a great stand-up and most of his acts are in character, much like Andy Kaufman. Thomas Middleditch never shows up to a show. He’s always replaced last minute by one of the characters he does i.e. Larry Dynamite, the juggling Native American or Kevin Evans, the 10 year wannbe stand up. He’s so versatile and most importantly great at filling in the blanks.

Your last film, Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, which won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at SXSW 04, was a story about the cutthroat world of paintballing. Splinterheads involves carnivals and geocaching. We love it, but why the fascination with fringe cultures?

I’ve always had an admiration for subcultures. And that may have come from growing up skateboarding and going to punk shows (which is totally the norm now, but 15 years ago - hell no). I love the idea of a world that coexists within the mainstream and moves to it’s own beat. I’m interested in snooping around and showing a culture that people think they know, but really don’t. As for characters, I’m attracted to the ones that are out of sync with the world. Not like a serial killer, but characters with good intentions. They’re just walking a little bit out of pace with everybody else.

Are you a geocacher? If so, what's your favorite cache?

Yeah, I geocache. I’m an avid hiker so I like to pick caches that are along the route I pick - to spice things up. My last trip was in a state park in NY that is littered with abandoned ore and copper mines. We hiked to 5 different mines and found 5 caches hidden at each one. These mines were beautiful huge caves in the middle of the woods that you can walk in and explore. It was incredible that they were only 1 hour outside of New York City too. If it wasn’t for geocaching I might have never seen them.

A splinterhead is a name giving to the guys/girls that work the game joints. What I was told was “back in the day” the game joints used to be made with wooden planks and these guys would bang their heads every so often and get splinters in their head - thus splinterheads. If I was working at the carnival I don’t think I’d want to be a splinterhead - it’s too challenging. I might be cool sitting in a food joint frying up Oreos.

What was the deal with the Montauk Monster?

That was the most bizarre thing that happened to us during production. We shot the film in Patchogue, NY which is on Long Island. It’s about 1 1/2 hours from Montauk. So, the local Long Island paper came out to do a news story about us filming in town. It just happened that the Montauk monster thing happened at the same time and the stories were printed on the same day. Some creative person, and I swear it was nobody from our production, seriously, it really wasn’t us, honest to God, anyway, someone took those stories and came up with the brilliant idea that the Montauk monster was a movie prop, a publicity stunt from my film. I only wish we thought of the idea. The story went national. CNN, FOX news, etc were talking about it. People would drive by yelling, “You have the Montauk monster!” One guy, and this is not a joke, came to the set and said he was a biologist from the local university and could he take a tissue sample. It was a lot of fun and gave us a lot of free press. I only wish it happened now for our theatrical release.

Some of our favorite character actors are in your film, including Frankie Faison and Christopher McDonald, right alongside blasts from the past like Lea Thompson and the up-and-coming Rachael Taylor and Thomas Middleditch. How did you get all of these actors to sign on to Splinterheads?

It was really because of the script. It got some good coverage with the agencies and a lot of doors opened because of it. Rachael was the first in, then everyone sort fell into place after that. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with all of them. They each have such diverse and rich backgrounds. I mean Chris McDonald was in Breakin’ and Lea was in one of my favorite movies of all time - Red Dawn.

It seems that you have a penchant for off-beat comedy. Were there any films that inspired you while writing Splinterheads?

Well, a few writer/directors that inspire me are Edgar Wright, Christopher Guest, Wes Anderson, Adam McKay, the Cohen Brothers, Terrence Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ricky Gervais, Larry David. Everything these guys do inspire me. Austin local, Malick in particular - I can watch his movies on repeat.

Did you always envision having a Wang Chung song as your closer? (We laughed out loud when it started playing!)

Oh yeah. I always wanted that song, but we found out that we couldn’t afford it. I was so bummed, then Jim Black, our music supervisor (The Wrestler, The Wackness) got the idea of getting a cover of the song. He found this great band and saved the day.

Since we know that you've been to Austin before multiple times, besides your screening Q&As, what are you most excited about doing/seeing/eating?

Well, I heard Las Manitas closed and that sucks. I loved that place. BBQ at the Salt Lick is great, Reds is fun for shooting off a few rounds and some improv shows at The New Movement theater is cool.

Finally, and we're sure you've been asked this before, but what is your favorite carnival ride and carnival food?

My favorite carnival food hands down are fried oreo’s. They melt in your mouth. My favorite ride....um....I don’t think I have one. I lost all tolerance to anything spinning around and I just get sick on everything now so I avoid all that. :(

Thanks for taking the time to talk to Austinist!