Interview: Gatlopp Director Alberto Belli on Working With Jim Mahoney on Comedy

ComingSoon spoke with Gatlopp director Alberto Belli to discuss the board game comedy, which is out now on digital and on demand.

“A group of old friends reunites for a nostalgic evening of fun and games after a decade apart,” says the synopsis. “After one too many, they decide to play a drinking game, but it’s quickly revealed that this game comes with supernatural stakes. Mischief leads to mayhem, and the group realizes that if they can’t come together to win the game by sunrise, they will be forced to play for eternity – in hell.”

RELATED: Gatlopp Interview: Emmy Raver-Lampman Discusses Jumanji-Inspired Comedy

Tyler Treese: What were your biggest influences growing up. Who really inspired you to become a director?

Alberto Belli: For sure. I mean, Steven Spielberg, like a lot of people in my generation, I saw Jurassic Park on the big screen. I think it was one of my first movies. I was like, “Whoa, I want to be part of that.” Yeah, that was the one that made it for me.

You have a background directing so many shorts. For your feature debut, did anything surprise you, or did that experience kind of make sure you were ready?

I think yeah, like the short experience, and I had done a TV series before in Mexico, so that kind of didn’t feel any different, I guess. What felt different was, we were shooting during COVID, just when it was the worst in 2020. So that was a lot of getting used to it with a mask and directing actors with a mask, and all those protocols. So that was big learning curve more than actually the filmmaking itself

Jim Mahoney wrote the film and he stars in it. Had you known him prior to this or how did you two get involved?

Oh, I did. So, funny story, he co-wrote a short film that I had done before that went viral, called It’s Not Porn, It’s HBO, and that kind of opened our careers, probably like three years before making this movie. Then we always wanted to keep working together and we were having lunch one day, and then he pitched me this idea and I was like, “Oh my god, that’s a brilliant idea,” because I love Jumanji and all those movies. I was like, let’s do this. So we were friends, and we’ve been really good friends since doing that viral video a bunch of years ago.

It’s such a fun idea. Like you said, it’s very much in the vein of a Jumanji with the haunted board game. How much fun did you have working on those cards and working on the physical board game?

Oh, I honestly loved it. We worked with a team who also created the title sequence for us, and I really wanted to get a sense of, kind of like vintage, but modern, right? Like, this game is supposed to have some sort of history. So it feels like it’s been played for a long time, but also trying to keep it modern. And then we went through many, many designs and this one felt right.

I love what they created with all of the little details. A lot of the themes of the movies, like green is supposed to be the ex-wife. So a lot of the boxes, as you keep winning, the game becomes green. And then we had all these thematic ideas that we were able to put in the game, and it was so much fun. Like my dream would be it becomes a real board game.

Can you talk about Jim’s script and what really stood out about it and made you want to fully jump on board here?

I guess because obviously, we did it with a very limited budget, I was always wondering how are we going to pull this off an interesting idea with the limited budget that we have? And I think what he brilliantly did was, instead of trying to focus on the VFX and trying to make it like a spectacle of VFX, it was more a spectacle of acting. A lot of the challenges or the twists of the movie are more about switching the bodies, it’s about actors acting differently, or it was about them getting emotional. It was more about how smart he was creating these challenges that didn’t imply like, a humongous amount of money. And it was more about let’s have faith in the actors, so then they’ll be able to bring it to life.

I loved the use of flashbacks, particularly with the Polaroid pictures. What led to the choice of using that framing device and going in-depth on these characters’ backgrounds.

We felt that it was an interesting way to differentiate the present and the past. And then since the situation was Cliff having all these polaroids in his house, we were working with our DP and we were like, how about if we actually take that idea, and then all of the flashbacks look like those Polaroids? So their memories are part of those photographs. So we were very inspired by that, and then trying to make it stay consistent so it’s very easy to hopefully differentiate the past and the present.

I thought the jazzercise scene in the film was really inspired and fun. What led to the creation of that?

Thanks. I mean, I guess I love musicals and Jim, too. So, again, it is a challenge more about the actors performing rather than this crazy VFX thing. So it was more of, I think we need a break in between the movie that is not so traumatic or too far or whatever, so how about we put a dance scene there so people will laugh? So I’m glad that you responded to that. And then to be honest, I think Emma and I mean, Emmy [Raver-Lampman] and Jon Bass were both on Broadway, so I was very excited, like, “Oh, I hope they’re going to do a crazy dance.” And they were able to pull it off. I think they learned the dance the day before, so it’s kind of insane.

What surprised me about the film was that there’s a lot of heart to it. It’s a lot about coming to grips with your own faults and failures. What do you hope people take away from this?

I think hopefully first of all, good laugh and entertaining. That was one of Jim and I’s goals, to create a movie that is fun and entertaining, that kind of makes you forget about your problems, but at the same time, try to make people think about reconnecting with people that they haven’t talked about in a while. I think it happens to all of us where you are, either you move cities or you change work, or you just forget about your old friends, a lot of the things that you did with them. So hopefully the message of it’s worth probably reconnecting with your old friends to have a fun night and maybe even play a board game that hopefully is not cursed.

You have such a great cast here. I’m sure the shoot was pretty quick, but did you have much time to kind of experiment and improv with the cast?

Not really. No, because kind of like you said, it was a very short amount of time. We just got very lucky that somehow the cast got along amazingly, even when they were off-camera, you would feel that they were best friends forever, and then they literally met like a day before. And we also did a lot of the chemistry read back in the day with Zooms, which was very awkward. But even through Zoom, you could tell that they were going to get along. Like, it was very, I feel very lucky that I didn’t have to work on their friendship because they just came out naturally to them.

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