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"FacebookPinterest\n\nThere was a story in yesterday's New York Times about John Cooper, the new director of the Sundance Film Festival. In this fresh role, Cooper aims to return a bit of the low-budget, independent spirit to these festivities. (Don't worry, kids. Khloe Kardashian is still somehow hosting a party here on Saturday night, so down isn't quite up yet.)\n\nStill, a new, much-buzzed-about film Lovers of Hate falls directly in line with Cooper's mission. There are no household names here, no A-list actors looking to catch some Sundance cred in a hot tub. Rather, Lovers of Hate is a tightly-wound romantic thriller (is that a genre?) about two grown-up brothers and the woman that comes between them. It's Agatha Christie by way of guerilla filmmaking. The older brother here is a failure and on the brink of divorce; the younger is a wildly successful writer of Harry Potter knock-offs who, through a series of events, winds up romancing his brother's soon-to-be ex-wife in a beautiful Park City, Utah chalet. The problem (or rather, the biggest problem): They don't realize the jilted brother is IN THE HOUSE.\n\nWriter/director Bryan Poyser and star Chris Doubek speak:\n\nBryan, you describe the budget as \"limited means.\" What does that mean?\n\n Bryan Poyser: We have to be cagey. It's a a budget commensurate to a crew of five and three actors.\n\n Chris Doubek: I don't think it gets any smaller.\n\n BP: [beat] It can. My first feature was less.\n\nLovers of Hate is tough to characterize.\n\n BP: People have talked about it like, Sex, Lies and The Shining.\n\nThat's good! It's funny, in parts. But sad funny. There's a scene where the brother\u2014the one going through the divorce\u2014is living in his car, and tries to shower at the car wash.\n\n BP: I wanted to make a movie that was entertaining while also dealing with dark emotions, and rather dark subject matter. I would like people to leave the theater not agreeing on who is the bad guy in this movie. All three do shitty things to each other. No one is clearly the antagonist of the piece. All of them make poor choices. And perhaps hurt other people\u2014but in ways that are human and believable.\n\n CD: There's not a neat little bow on it.\n\nWhere did the idea come from?\n\n BP: The idea came from the house, basically.\n\nBy the way, I think I've been to that house before. It's in Deer Valley, right?\n\n BP: Yeah. I work for the Austin Film Society, and one of our board members owns the house. We throw parties there. It was Sundance 2008, and I spent a night in that house. My co-workers left, they were out watching movies, and I was there alone. I thought, if I was so inclined, I could probably hide in this house and no one would know. That got me thinking. Also, I knew I wanted to write a part for Chris, who is one of the best actors in Austin. I felt he hadn't been given a great role, and he needed one. Those two elements combined to get me started.\n\n CD: It's nice to have a friend.\n\nWhen it came time to shoot, tell me the same house was free.\n\n BP: We shot at the house. In Austin, we used one of the program's office buildings to rehearse. I made use of\u2014some could say exploited\u2014the Austin Film Society.\n\nLovers of Hate is really a three-hander. And the relationships\u2014and the hatred\u2014between these characters seems genuine. Did the cast spend much time together rehearsing?\n\n CD: We did. That's the pretty awesome thing about this particular shoot. We had several five-hour sessions in which we'd say, 'Bryan, can we eat now, I'm hungry.'\n\n BP: The three of them were strangers before we started shooting. Alex and Chris knew each other a bit. Heather we found through an audition. I wanted to get at the sibling rivalry and love triangle. I devised a game: The first thing I had them do was draw portraits of Heather. Alex drew one. And Chris drew one. Then I had her choose which one she liked best, without knowing whose was whose. Then she had to rip up the other in front of them.\n\n CD: She was always ripping my freaking drawing. She always rejected me.\n\nHow much of the film was scripted?\n\n CD: We should both write down numbers.\n\n BP: OK.\n\n CD: My number is 89 percent.\n\n BP: Mine is 80. So, between 80 and 89 percent. We spent so much time with rehearsals, not worrying about getting the lines correct, but getting everyone comfortable with each other. Feeling like they had this rapport that would go back decades. But yeah, some of the good lines in the movie are improv lines. Like, I think, when Chris says, 'Let's crash this asshole colony\u2026'\n\nLast question: If the budget was so small, how'd you convince the cast and crew to sign on?\n\n BP: No one got paid much, if at all. The house was the selling point. I said, Do you wanna spend two weeks in a luxury four-story, six-bedroom house? You'll be working 16 hours a day, but\u2026\n\n CD: You didn't mention the hot tub and the pool table.\n\n BP: The first day, people were shouting, 'This is my room!' I'm like, 'We have a movie to shoot. Calm down.'"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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