Interview with Durden Godfrey about his new feature ‘Never Go Back’ — A Film That Inspires

Hi Durden, so yeah, for starters, can you tell us your story as a filmmaker so far?

Durden: Sure, I’m 32 years-old and I started making movies when I was around 13–14, but I really got dedicated to itwhen I was around 18. Never Go Back is my tenth feature film and I made about one film every other year, but Never Go Back is my first film to which I got completely dedicated outside just making a film as a way to tell a story. This doesn’t mean I don’t love my previous work as much, but this one is simply the point where I decided to go all the way with it.

The story of Never Go Back goes back to 2015 and me sitting in my office. So there I was, in my office and at one point my wife came to me saying she’s expecting a baby. I personally never planned on being a father so I had a lot of reorganizing to do with how I’m going to lead the rest of my life. I had to decide if I’ll continue making movies as my initial thought was that it won’t be possible to do both — be a filmmaker and a father. After giving it a good thought I realized not everybody has the ability to do movies and thus it shouldn’t be taken for granted from my side — actually, it would’ve have been irresponsible from me. So I decided to take the hard road and be both — a filmmaker and a father.

So that’s where the story of Never Go Back started as it inspired me to do a film on making big decisions and going with it. It might not sound relatable, but me realizing I’ll be father really pushed me to dedicate myself completely to the movie, with no corners being cut. One of the main story elements of Never Go Back is the parental aspect and the way it inspires and balances your life.

This actually leads to my next question. Movies that are on the topic of escaping from society (Into the Wild, Hunt for Wilderpeople) are connected by this main story element, but it would seem every director has his/her unique reasons for making it. Would you say your inspiration came from a general source of simply escaping the system or was it more internal in the sense of personal experience?

Durden: I’d say it was a perfect hybrid, because right at the time when I graduated and I was thrown into the world of paying bills and taking care of yourself and your family, Into the Wild came out and it had a huge impact on me. Until that time I didn’t even consider the idea of escaping. Ever since then I had this fantasy of wanting to just leave this hamster wheel of life. What’s was so appealing about it is the only thing you need to actually do it is a bit of willpower — no planning necessary. Realistically, at any point you can do that, you just have to make the decision.

So enter me becoming a father. At that point, I realized I won’t be able to do that as I’ll be having the responsibility to take care of this wonderful child and escaping into the woods wasn’t my possible future any longer. So to compensate it, I decided to make a movie on the topic instead, where I’d combine my dreams and my personal experience into one big story.

What was interesting to me, as the movie progressed so did American society with the elections and everything around it. So without me ever intending to prove this specific point with the film, the idea of escaping this crazy society became all the more relevant.

But I really wanted my movie to end up on the positive note. We already have a lot of movies that are criticizing our society, so I wanted for this movie to be on the topic, but at the same time to be focused more on the individual and how there is a positive solution for each one of us in the end. There’s always a place for you to go to and make it into your little haven — it doesn’t have to be a literal forest (it’s just a direct metaphor), it can be your home and the people you care for. The important thing is to move from the zone where you feel bad to the zone where you feel happy and good. Also, I wanted to make a point of a cool dad/son relationship (laugh).

Earlier you mentioned how you came to the point where you decided to be both a filmmaker and a father. I believe most of the times people don’t realize how challenging it can be to balance being a filmmaker and I guess we could call it, “a normal human being”. So, how did you do it? What was the point where you told yourself: “Ok, I’m here making it, I can’t go back”?

Durden: Well, in my career I’ve only not finished one movie, as I never really understood the concept of starting something and not finishing it. But I will say this is the first movie where I got the feeling of urgency, that I don’t have the actual freedom of deciding if I’ll do it or not. You see, this is the first movie I crowdfunded and when I started seeing bigger donations coming in, for the first time I got kind of scared, you know. Here are these people that want to see this movie happen and for the first time in a certain way, I have this responsibility to make a movie or I’ll disappoint all of these people that believed in me and my project. I always knew I’ll finish this movie, but at that point, I realized I have to finish this movie.

So as much as it might have been stressful, it was also very inspiring. I remember the first big donation happened right when I was with my main actors preparing to go out and shoot the first couple of scenes. So picture yourself getting ready to go out to have your first shoot, and right before you go out that door an email comes saying somebody likes what you’re doing and is helping you do it. It wasn’t about the money as much as it was about the confirmation that somebody believes in you. It literary came as a huge wind in our back to actually make this happen.

For me, another interesting aspect of the movie was the soundtrack, which was made by Doctor Jones. As far as I understood it, you gave him the complete freedom to make the music and it turned out perfectly. Can you tell us about the collaboration with Doctor Jones?

Durden: He’s been a friend of mine for more than 10 years and we worked on several movies together. The point I’m trying to make is because of that, I had complete faith in Jones’ skills. Composers usually get underrated considering the impact they have, as music can literary break a scene. I mean, Doctor Jones did a complete original soundtrack without any of my directions and he did it perfectly, that’s not something anybody can do.

Before I always did everything myself when it comes to production as I don’t really feel comfortable letting others do these stuff. So, it was really strange to me to hand something as important as the soundtrack to somebody else and say: “Do what you will and I can’t wait to check it out”. But with Doctor Jones it was different as I know his influences in music, he completely understood the story, the goal I’m aiming at, so when all of these pieces came together, it was basically perfect.

What was crazy to me was he did all of this in less than two months. He created almost two hours of original music that fit perfectly. I’d get testing tracks from him as he was working, I’d listen to them and the only thing I could think to myself: “This is exactly what I need for a specific scene.”

I knew he’d complete his part of work, but honestly, he blew my mind with how well he was able to do it.

There was a funny random story that came out. The faith would have it just at the time Never Go Back came out, another movie of the same name appeared and that’s Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise. The result was a confusion where many sites listed you as the director of that movie. What was your initial reaction to this?

Durden: I was wondering where the check was, to be honest (laugh). But honestly, I ended up liking it as we kind of benefited a bit from all of these Google search engine algorithms. I’m guessing there are a lot of sites that generate automatic content by collecting information. On some sites, you can literary see the routine kind of work that was put in a specific article. So what you get in the end is a title saying “Never Go Back, a movie by Durden Godfrey starring Tom Cruise”.

So yeah, it was really funny and actually really helpful in the end.

We’re nearing the end of our interview. Can you quickly tell us in what phase is the film currently?

Durden: It’s really significant point really as I’ve never been here before as a filmmaker, the phase of constant and deep promotion of a film. So yeah, this is all new to me, going so far with the movie. I’m confident enough to say we’ll have the movie in a certain distributive form by the end of the year. Also, we’ve submitted the film to a lot of festivals and a decent number of them gave us a positive response.

I guess the main goal at this moment is to find somebody who has the possibility to share the movie with potential distributors so we can get the film out there and I’m certain we’ll do it by the end of the year.

I wish you all the luck and thank you so much for this conversation.

Durden: Thank you as well.

Interview done by: Antonio, Try Cinema