"To Hell and Gone" didn't start life as a passion project.
It wasn't a story I was burning to tell.
It was born out of a simple desire to create something based on what I had available - a process I call "reverse-producing". That’s when you know you've got access to a bunch of cool locations so you write the perfect story to use all of them. You see a cool sewer pipe or rusty car in the forest preserve, and the inspirado hits without you even asking for it.
This is how I made all of my early features for no money.
In the fall of 2015 I visited Arizona, where my friend's family owns land.
Land in the middle of nowhere.
As soon as I arrived I felt something I hadn't felt in the seven years since I last made a feature: creative juice. It was the largest playground imaginable upon which to create a story - there were mountains, mines and canyons, cattle and horses, beautifully aged old ranch houses and trailers, and a reflective chrome Cessna 182 plane. The old reverse-producing bug had bitten again, so I set about writing a script to utilize all these wonderful assets.
Naturally it should be a western of some sort, but what kind of western? And most importantly what would the story be?
This was the fun part -
Personal taste and artistic vision were all that mattered and could limit you.
I've long believed a film doesn't need to be "deep" or filled with backstory in order to work... all you need is an engaging story. Right off the bat I knew it was going to be a genre film, something fun and nimble. I’ve always been inspired by the films and filmmakers of the 1970s, so I knew I wanted it to feel throwback and retro - no cell phones in this movie! Real-time films such as “Children of Men” or “Apocalypto” have always intrigued me, so I knew a good starting point was to have it take place in only a few hours. The last ingredient of “To Hell and Gone” DNA actually came from a childhood game I would play - I’d hide in the closet and just LISTEN to my family in the house, pretending I was an interloper who wasn’t supposed to be there. What would they do if they found me? This imaginary game informed the way “To Hell and Gone” would be shot, and what was special about the protagonist of our movie.
-Kyle Moore, writer/director
