Last Breath Director on Turning Documentary into a Deep-Sea Thriller: "It's a Very Rare Thing"
Last Breath is now playing exclusively in theaters everywhere.
If a documentary becomes a narrative feature film, it is highly unlikely that the director of the non-fiction source material will be the one to helm the adaptation. One notable exception to that rule is writer-director Alex Parkinson, who was able to convince Hollywood to hire him for the dramatized translation of his and Richard da Costa's acclaimed 2019 documentary, Last Breath.
In a recent conversation with TheWrap, Parkinson recalled how the new film, also titled Last Breath (now playing in theaters courtesy of Oscar-winning studio Focus Features; tickets are on sale here) became a reality through the Metrodome Films banner run by father-son producing team Paul and David Brooks.
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Why Alex Parkinson almost didn't direct Last Breath
"They loved the documentary, and they wanted to turn it into a feature," Parkinson said. "And obviously when that came up, I thought, 'Well, it’d be great if I could direct that.' And I was told, 'There’s absolutely no way on Earth you can do that because you’re a documentarian.' ... It’s a very rare thing to do."
He had resigned himself to serving in the role of an executive producer when the original director (no name was given) dropped out to pursue another project, paving the way for Parkinson's unlikely ascension.
"Paul Brooks was speaking to people in L.A. about looking for a new director," the filmmaker continued. "And somebody said to him, 'Why don’t you actually speak to the person who did the documentary? Because the documentary is so cinematic and how it feels and how it looks.' So I got this call from my U.K. producers going, 'Would you like to pitch to direct the feature?'"
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Based on a true story, Last Breath recounts the harrowing tale of three saturation divers — Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu), and Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) — who showed incredible fortitude in the face of unthinkable danger while working deep below the North Sea in 2012. It's the kind of inspiring tale that renews your hope in the selfless potential of the human spirit (à la Apollo 13).
"In the documentary, you have a standard set of tools of talking heads and dramatic reconstruction and archive to tell the story," Parkinson said. "And because this was such a complicated story, because it’s a whole world that not many people really know at all, part of the whole process of having my pass of the fictional script was about how do you get that information across in an organic way? I wanted to make the audience feel smart. I wanted them to feel part of this world and understand it, so they felt they were positioned within it. So when people were talking slightly jargonistically, if it’s set up correctly, people will feel part of that world."
Last Breath is now playing exclusively in theaters everywhere. Click here for tickets!
