Interview With Carter Smith, Director Of ‘THE PASSENGER’

Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SGA-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, The Passenger being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Last summer I watched a little indie gem called Swallowed for the Overlook Film Festival. Written and directed by Carter Smith (read our other interview with him HERE), Swallowed is a fun and goopy body horror oozing with some very grotesque things, and features Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s Mark Patton in the role of the lifetime. When I was sent the trailer for Carter’s new directorial project, The Passenger, I was sold. Starring Kyle Gallner (read our interview with him HERE) in a role that fits him like a glove, and Johnny Berchtold (Tiny Beautiful Things – 2023) as the tender loner Randy, The Passenger, written by Jack Stanley, expertly blends violence and dealing with unresolved trauma into a heartbreaking story that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.

To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with Carter about what intrigued him about the script, what he hopes people walk away with after watching his film, what’s up next, and more!

PopHorror: I was really excited for The Passenger, and wow. It blew my mind. I’m super excited to talk to you about it.

Carter Smith: Oh good! I’m so happy to hear that.

PopHorror: This film is very different from Swallowed. What intrigued you about the script and made you want to be a part of the project?

Carter Smith: You know a little bit about Swallowed so you know the scope and the size of that project and so it was kind of exciting to immediately jump onto something that was different in scope. To be honest, it all starts with a script. Jack Stanley’s script was just one of those scripts that you just read it, and it’s fully formed, and I fell in love with Benson and Randy, and their weird fucked up relationship that develops as the film moves along. Even after Swallowed, which was also kind of a two-hander, I was like, “Do I want to do another two-hander?” But there was something so fascinating about Benson and the conflicted feelings I had about liking him as much as I did when I sort of felt like I shouldn’t. It was really that relationship and Jack’s amazing script that got me most excited.

PopHorror: They were really great characters, and I didn’t want to like Benson as much as I did either.

Carter Smith: Yeah!

PopHorror: It really tugged at my heartstrings a lot. The whole entire movie did. The cast is perfect. The performance by Kyle Gallner blew my mind. 

Carter Smith: So good, right?

PopHorror: Him and his yellow sweater. I had a very in-depth conversation with someone about whether it was yellow or green.

Carter Smith: And what did you come up with?

PopHorror: I said yellow, they said green.

Carter Smith: Okay, I say greenish yellow. But I will say that I had a very specific color in mind that I could not describe very well, and so our costume designer, Eulyn (Colette Hufkie), we went through like three or four batches to get that exact custom dyed color.

PopHorror: Oh, wow. I was like, “I really like his Kurt Cobain sweater.”

Carter Smith: Yes, exactly! That was one of my inspirations for it, for sure.

PopHorror: That’s awesome! Johnny Berchtold, he really broke my heart. He was just fabulous. What was your casting process like?

Carter Smith: It was like a normal casting process. People put themselves on tape. Johnny put himself on tape reading a scene, and that’s the starting point. You watch a ton of tapes and I’m not going to lie. The very first time that I saw Johnny’s tape – and I saw it early on. When you see something you fall in love with early on, it’s always like, is it just because I’m really desperate and I really want to find something that I love? But he was… I was like, “That’s Randy. That’s kind of the kid that I saw when I read the script.” So I fell in love with him and then once Kyle’s name came up, it was like, oh man. He’s a dream. I’ve been a fan of Kyle’s for a long time and knew that he, a) would be great with Johnny, and b) could handle the sort of… He has the sort of unhinged quality down pat that he can pull out. But he also has such a sort of tender charisma. He’s charming and he had all of those qualities, which I felt was really important in Benson. Once we found those two, both of them went to the top of the list and luckily, we ended up with both of my first choices, so it was kind of great.

PopHorror: Oh, that is great! I feel like characters like Benson are made for Kyle.

Carter Smith: Yeah!

PopHorror: He just embraces these types of characters in a way that other actors don’t, and I love seeing him do more of this.

Carter Smith: Yeah, because he sort of straddles the line between character actor and leading man. There’s a lot of leading men that are afraid of that material and that sort of character, and then there’s a lot of character actors that don’t have some of that leading man quality. He’s got both, in a way that is rare and magical.

PopHorror: Yes! I agree. How did you convey your vision to your cast and crew?

Carter Smith: I think that it’s always just about having lots of conversations. Just spending time talking about the story and talking about the characters and talking about the world that they’re living in. I alway put together a little lookbook with some pictures that I share, just to give an idea of the visual stuff. But really it’s just conversations and hearing what they have to say, telling them my thoughts. I live for it to be as collaborative and open and easy as possible.

PopHorror: This film deals with a lot of unresolved trauma.

Carter Smith: Yeah

PopHorror: What do you hope people walk away with after watching your film?

Carter Smith: I think it would be great if people walked away and if there was someone in their life like Benson, who has struggled with unresolved trauma and hasn’t had the opportunity, or hasn’t had the mental health and those resources available to them, that they might recognize a kernel of something in Benson in someone else and try to get them the help that could prevent something as horrible as what Benson does from happening. That’s one thing. And also I think what I found so fascinating about Benson is he does a really horrible thing and I liked that in this script. That isn’t the one thing that defines him, like period. Done. He’s more than the bad thing he does and I think that’s true of everyone. We all have our traumas and we all have our ways of dealing with them and that’s one part of what makes us up, and what informs our actions. I think it’s important to remember that he is more than the horrible thing that he did.

PopHorror: One thing I liked about it is that when it becomes obvious that Benson is going through his own trauma, that something obviously happened to him, he uses his time to help Randy deal with his past traumas. And he does this all while he’s dealing with these issues himself. He never comes out and says that there’s anything going on. Obviously, there’s something because he’s unhinged and doing all this crazy stuff. But while he’s doing that, he’s helping Randy come to terms with some of his past issues and helping him get through that. I found that really fascinating.

Carter Smith: Because often it’s easier to help someone else than to help yourself and I think that he maybe sees a bit of himself in what Randy is going through, and not in the fact that Benson thinks of himself as passive or any of those things, but he sees someone who is obviously stuck. It’s a lot easier for him to latch onto Randy’s problems than it is for him to deal with his own.

PopHorror: What is up next for you?

Carter Smith: Spreading the word about this and I’m working on some stuff on my own like little personal projects. Everything is sort of on pause at the moment because of all of the various strikes. Some downtime perhaps? 

PopHorror: I’m excited to see what you have coming up because I loved Swallowed, and I love this. The Ruins is also a fabulous movie. So I’m excited for what’s next.

Carter Smith: Oh, thank you. Probably whatever’s next won’t be a two-hander about two guys. I kind of want to make a movie about a middle aged woman.

PopHorror: That’s me!

Carter Smith: I want to do something a little different for the next one. It sort of happened this way, that they both ended up having that in common, and it’s great but at the same time, I kind of want to make a movie with all women.

PopHorror: I’m here for it! Just one last question for you today. What is your weapon of choice in a zombie apocalypse?

Carter Smith: Oh, man. I’m not so comfortable with guns. I might be better with some sort of war hammer ax. I’m also not bulky and wouldn’t be that good with an ax either, but at least I would feel like I could maybe control it more than a gun. I would take a shovel or a pickaxe. I would take anything with a handle that’s swingable, other than a rake. I don’t think a rake would do me that much good.

Thank you so much to Carter for taking the time to speak with us. The Passenger arrives on Digital and On Deman August 4, 2023. It will be released on MGM+ later in 2023.