On the record ... with Neil Daly

Neil Daly didn't begin acting until he was a freshman at Northern Illinois University. Before that, the 1990 graduate of DeKalb High School was a musician and an athlete, playing in the school band between sports seasons.

"I was hooked immediately," Daly said of acting. "I did a handful of plays at NIU before packing up and moving to Los Angeles."

That was about 20 years ago. After two decades of acting in national commercials, a Disney movie and "a couple of good roles on prime-time television pilots that never aired," Daly decided to make his own film. "K-911" is a full-length comedy featuring Daly and his pet Chihuahua, Diego, as a pair of police officers accused of a crime they didn't commit.

After a Los Angeles premiere, Daly will host a public screening of his film in the back room at Fatty's at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 6. Although the showing is free, Daly is hoping a DVD raffle will raise  funds for a sequel, already in development. A question-and-answer session will be held after the showing to discuss how the film was made.

Daly is quick to point out that "K-911" is a low-budget, indie film he financed himself, which he hopes people will enjoy and laugh with.

"I hope people understand that going in and don't expect the next 'Avatar'," he said.

Daly recently went on the record with MidWeek reporter Doug Oleson to discuss his career and his film.

MidWeek: So what have you been doing in Los Angeles?

Neil Daly: I started out doing a handful of national commercials and daytime soaps, then did a few small parts on prime time television, as well as a Disney movie. But after getting a couple of good roles in television pilots that never even aired on TV, compounded by the growing movement towards the cheaper to make, quicker to shoot reality television, I eventually got frustrated with the business of Hollywood. Not the art itself, mind you, just the business end of it and how little control or say in the finished product an actor has. So I walked away completely for a few years.

MW: What did you do?

ND: I spent the next couple of years getting back into the music business, writing a ton of material, playing gigs around town, releasing a couple of self-produced CDs online and at shows and trying to sell myself as a songwriter. I even wrote and published a collection of short stories and satires that is now available on Amazon.com. But something inside me missed acting, and that fire never completely went out. Inevitably, I was bound to return to acting at some point.

MW: Are you mainly a writer, an actor or a director? Or did circumstances more or less dictate you do all three for this project?
 
ND: What's the phrase: jack of all trades, master of none? I never wanted to paint myself into a corner with any specific medium or art. In the past, I would completely commit to my music career for a year at a time until I burned out and got sick of my own songs. Then I would pick up the pen and write a short story or screenplay or blog about something random. Then I would act in a friend's short film or school project, just to continue to push myself creatively. Or I would write and direct a 5-minute YouTube video starring my dog.

I still love to pick up my guitar and write a new song and go crash an open-mic night to test my new music. But no matter what, I will always want to continue to challenge myself as an artist in all aspects. Who knows, maybe when I'm done with this, I'll start painting.

MW: Is "K-911" your first film?

ND: It's the first one I've ever written and directed. Getting behind the camera for the first time is a rush. Now I know why so many actors want to direct. Film is a total director's medium in that you have total creative control of the vision and final product that's put out. I've acted in plenty of things before where what they ended up using was nothing like what I had hoped for or what I was led to believe was the final edit. And an actor really just has no say in the matter unless the director is a former actor himself and really gets it.

Most young directors nowadays coming out of film school are just photographers and shoot from a technical standpoint. They have no idea how to help get the most out of an actor or what buttons to push to make a scene ignite. Luckily, I come from that place, and my actors all seemed to appreciate that. Plus, I starred in it as well, so I cared more about getting the scene right and making an emotional connection, rather than trying to squeeze two full minutes of dialogue into one long uncut tracking shot simply because it looks cool.
 
MW: You like directing, then?

ND: Directing is absolutely addictive, and I've got multiple projects lined up now, both writing and directing. And much of my cast has come to me and pitched whatever projects they have lined up, asking me to shoot it for them.

As we're still fleshing out the storyline for the follow-up to "K-911," I am currently working on a short horror movie parody and have written the first season of an original series which I hope to pitch to the cable networks. I've found a show-runner interested in the project, and he's shopping it around to HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, Encore, FX, AMC and Spike. If it gets bought, I would sign on as an executive producer.
 
MW: How long have you been working on "K-911?" And what gave you the idea for it?

ND: "K-911" came about completely randomly. I had just bought my first camera a few years ago and started shooting short videos of my Chihuahua, Diego, just for fun. And at some point in July 2009, I came up with a concept I thought would be really funny: what if Diego was a cop, but no one seemed to notice that he was a dog or treated him like that. In other words, he's a dog literally playing a cop, not a dog. It's totally the opposite of "Turner & Hooch" or all the other cop/canine duos, and hopefully unexpected.

So without any sort of script in hand, i just started shooting random scenes, like him driving the car or him chasing a bad guy. The more footage I had, the better and funnier the concept seemed. So then I started to sketch out a rough storyline and plot. And little by little, it started to come together and get more and more interesting. And by September 2009, I had a full script for a feature-length film.

MW: Weren't you originally trying to do a web series?

ND: I had no way of showcasing it. So I enlisted the help of my brother, Ryan, (also a writer and English teacher) and we broke it down into a bunch of five-to-six minute segments and I decided to release it as a web series. Filming the entire project lasted until about September 2010. But I began releasing the webisodes every week prior to the finished shooting schedule. Plus, I had to secure locations and actors and props and costumes; all of which became quite an undertaking.

MW: But now it's back to being a film?

ND: I recently re-edited the entire web series back to its original format as a full-length feature film and just released it on DVD, so, all in all, the project took about two full years from inception to completion. But I'm happy to say that IMDB.com (the Internet Movie Database) has accepted it and listed it on their site.
 
MW: Can you tell me a little more about the film?
 
ND: "K-911" is the story of two LAPD cops who get framed for a crime by some unknown assailant. They're given a week on suspension to try to clear their names and find the bad guy before they end up going to jail themselves. The film is definitely a comedy in theory, but written and shot as an action/suspense movie. And we leave the audience guessing right along as our heroes uncover clue after clue, which adds an element of mystery as well.

Scripting comedy is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. And most good humor comes from absurd situations rather than simply telling jokes and punchlines. So if you were to read the script alone, you'd think it's a completely dramatic crime/investigation story. But the mere fact that one of our heroes is a Chihuahua, plus the fact that no one reacts to him as a dog, creates a completely bizarre reality that you can't help but laugh along with.

And I broke away from the obvious dynamic one might have expected and gave Diego all the bad habits and dangerous, dark back story, whereas I play the straight cop who does everything by the book ... all of which gives way to some really funny, completely unexpected situations.

MW: So you and Diego are the main characters in the film? Is the dog as your personal sidekick or a police dog?

ND: Diego and I play the two main characters, Officer Diego and Johnny Brett. Diego, of course, had to keep his real name for the film simply because he had to learn specific response commands that would've been impossible to do if I had to call him by some other character name. 

MW: I understand you shot the film in both L.A. and DeKalb. How do you tie the two together?

ND: Nearly all of the project was shot in L.A. I had originally wanted to do more DeKalb locations – specifically, I wanted a scene on NIU's football field. But the timing of getting use of the stadium never coincided with my stay in DeKalb. I did, however, use my parents' basement in DeKalb for one location,

MW: Are there any local people in your film?

ND: I cast a local friend, J.T. Schroyer, as the secret informant. I even gave my mother a voice-over role as his mom. But the best local casting decision was adding my brother Ryan to the project. He had assisted me with rewrites and some dialogue early on. And as the characters kind of began to evolve and take shape, I realized that there was no one else that could play this one specific pivotal character like he could.

Ryan came out to Los Angeles in October 2009, and we filmed all of his sequences in about four days – four brutally hot, bloody and bruised days. But my casting decision was proven right, as he has one of the best onscreen introductions/entrances I've seen in years.