An Interview with ‘Mainline’ Director, Eric Kleifield

Whenever someone can deliver a well-made horror story in 12 minutes or less, I’m always impressed. It takes a lot of talent and creativity to do, and that’s something that director Eric Kleifeld surely has an abundance of! We had the opportunity to talk with him about his career, his inspiration for Mainline (read our review for the film here), his love for the horror genre, and more. Enjoy!

PopHorror: It’s great to talk with you, Eric! What inspired you to get involved in the film industry?

Eric Kleifield: Having grown up in LA, I’ve always been immersed in a film-loving culture. I had a very early obsession with movies, and horror movies in particular. I started making films on my own and researching everything I could about the filmmaking process.

PopHorror: How long have you been doing it?

Eric Kleifield: As far back as I can remember. When I was in elementary school, my brother gave me an old camera of his, and I started filming everything I could. It wasn’t long before I started scripting stories, recruiting friends to act, and making no-budget short films. Every project, I focused on increasing the scale and using what I learned in previous shoots to improve them.

PopHorror: That’s awesome to love something for so long. What was your first project?

Eric Kleifield: I made many, many terrible shorts when I was younger and experimenting with cameras, editing software, etc. But I consider my first real short to be a psychological horror film called Descension that I shot during my spare time in college. It was my first time working with professional actors and going through the full filmmaking process, from scripting to VFX to sound mixing. When it came to post-production, I handled everything myself… I edited, mixed, and colored it. While the final film was certainly of debatable quality, it was a great learning experience!

PopHorror: Sounds like it! Do you enjoy the horror genre?

Eric Kleifield: Horror is my absolute favorite genre, both to watch and to make. I don’t think I can ever make a film that doesn’t have at least a horror influence to it. While Mainline is first and foremost a science fiction story, it does have elements of horror to it. I love the horror community, the devotion horror fans have to the films and how it’s grown to be so much more than just a label.

PopHorror: It’s in our blood! Where did you get the idea for Mainline?

Eric Kleifield: I’ve been fascinated with time travel for a long time. I’ve known that I wanted to do a short about it for a while, and I was always thinking about how to put a unique spin on this well-worn sci-fi trope. I thought it’d be a fun writing challenge to do a time travel story that only involved one character and was set entirely in one room, in which a time travel experiment goes wrong despite the main character approaching it from a very scientific perspective. I started doing some research into theoretical physics related to time travel: causal loops, multiverse theories, stuff like that.

All of that milled around in my head for a while as I started scripting out drafts of what eventually became Mainline. It took awhile for me to nail down the balance of emotional narrative and time-travel craziness – and also bring it down to 10 pages! – but I’m happy with how it turned out.

PopHorror: I love when artists go over and beyond the call of duty, researching and taking time to build a story versus just throwing it together. The main actor is amazing. How did the casting come about?

Eric Kleifield: We actually found Blaine through an open casting call (and are very lucky!). We got a lot of submissions for the role and called in about 40 people to audition. Blaine immediately fell very naturally into the role. We had him read Jake’s opening monologue, where he talks about his time-travel procedure. Blaine clearly got the character’s mindset, and punctuated the exposition with moments of quiet introspection and subtle delivery. He picked up on the little touches, too, that showed he knew how to analyze a screenplay, such as constantly moving around the room, keeping his hands busy, and continuously adjusting his webcam. We then had him read Jake’s duplicate’s scene as well, and he brought a subtle creepiness to his initial performance that would clearly juxtapose nicely when they finally interact.

PopHorror: That’s awesome – he was perfect! Was any scene in particular hard to shoot?

Eric Kleifield: Surprisingly, the shoot went relatively smoothly. There was one squib effect that took us a while to nail. At first, it was a little too soft, but we spent some time refining and got a good blast. I think there are still blood stains on the ceiling of that set. The most difficult thing was keeping the LED clock in the background of Jake’s lab set to the right time during each shot. It wasn’t a screen replacement, it was done practically! To shoot a non-chronological time travel movie out of order gave us plenty of headaches.

PopHorror: I can imagine! Do you think fans will be able to relate at all to the story? The desire to want to change the past and/or future?

Eric Kleifield: Funnily enough, most people I show the film to start bringing up their own time travel desires and fantasies. I think one of the reasons time travel is such a prevalent feature in sci-fi is that we’re fascinated by the level of control it brings us. Most time travel stories end up having an Icarus slant to them… with such heightened levels of power and control comes unachievable levels of responsibility. That’s exactly what happens to Jake in Mainline. He learns, through a rather torturous process, that the universe can only bend so far to one’s personal interests before pushing back.

PopHorror: Yes! It’s a constant and repetitive battle that he learns time and time again. Who are some directors that inspire you?

Eric Kleifield: There are many filmmakers that I admired growing up, and who I think have all had a stylistic or narrative influence on me, like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Sam Raimi, Edgar Wright, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, David Fincher, Francis Ford Coppola… the list goes on and on.

For this project in particular I owe a lot to Shane Carruth and his film Primer. I watched it early on during the development phase for this movie and was completely shocked by his vision of time travel. I’ve never seen a sci-fi premise presented so uniquely on screen. I was almost ready to give up on my project, as I thought he’d nailed it! But I knew my take would be different and that I had a different story to tell.

PopHorror: All such wonderful artists! Do you have any upcoming projects beyond this?

Eric Kleifield: Yes! Currently writing a pure horror short that I’m very excited about. Nearly done with script rewrites and hoping to get into fundraising in the next few months.

Thanks again to Eric Kleifield for taking the time to chat with us and give us some insight on his time travel short, Mainline. Stay tuned to PopHorror for updates on Eric’s upcoming horror short!