“No Permission” | Nicholas Tomnay, What You Wish For
Nick Stahl in WHAT YOU WISH FOR, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
Ryan (Nick Stahl) is a talented, down-on-his-luck chef with crushing gambling problems. Circumstances being what they are, he leaves town in a hurry for the safe haven of an unnamed Latin American country where his friend Jack (Brian Groh), a more prestigious chef with his own unique troubles, welcomes him into his home.
Ryan has no idea how Jack's able to afford his extravagant lifestyle cooking for the elite in paradise; he doesn't want to feel envious, yet he can't help but want this life for himself as well. Soon, a grim twist of fate will give that to him. Ryan assumes his friend's identity and soon discovers just what Jack's been doing to maintain the lifestyle he so desperately craved.
Screening Tuesday, May 7 at 4:30 p.m. at the Music Box Theatre (get tickets now), as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival, Nicholas Tomnay’s suspense thriller co-stars Tamsin Topolski and Randy Vasquez.
Ahead of What You Wish For screening at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, writer-director Nicholas Tomnay graciously took the time to answer this year’s CCFF filmmaker questionnaire. Below, his individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
I’m an only child and spent a lot of time at the cinema by myself as a teenager. During high school, I started making skit and comedy videos with my friends, and then made a couple of short films for my final high school art exams. I went to art school and, after that, got a job as an assistant editor at a commercial post-production house, which led me to becoming an editor in Sydney and then in New York.
Before I left Sydney, I made a short film called “The Host,” which got me some attention, and ultimately, representaion in LA. I wrote the feature version of “The Host” when I got to New York. But it took a long time to get The Perfect Host, financed. In the end, my then-manager and her husband financed the movie and, once David Hyde Pierce was on board, we were able to start. We shot The Perfect Host over 17 days in the fall of 2008. The film premiered at Sundance.
Nicholas Tomnay, writer and director of WHAT YOU WISH FOR, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
After The Perfect Host, I signed with ICM and had a new script ready to go. We tried to get that project going, but it didn’t happen, so I wrote another script and then another. In the end, I wrote 12 original scripts between The Perfect Host and What You Wish For, and a few of them got close. But there are so many steps needed to make a feature, and such a constant “asking for permission,” that it ends up out of the filmmakers’ hands.
The final straw came probably when my most commercial script was set up. I had the money, a start date, and a movie star, and then the movie star had a change of heart; soon after. the money went away. So, finally, I decided to stop “asking for permission.” Looking over the scripts I had written, it occurred to me that What You Wish For was my favorite script and could also be made for a low budget. So, my wife and I began the process of looking for money. A couple of years later, with the money secured and with the help of producers Francesca Silvestri and Kevin Chinoy, we were able to make the film ourselves. No permission.
In terms of the actual film itself: I had come up with the story after a disastrous school reunion with a couple of friends from Sydney. We all met in Vegas, a place I’d never been before, and the idea of who we are now versus who we were then was ever-present. I outlined the story, and it occurred to me that it sounded a lot like The Talented Mr Ripley, which I had seen but never read. So I read that incredible novel by Patricia Highsmith and became an instant fan of hers. The other inspiration comes from where we are in America now. “Late capitalism,” is what it’s called, I think. I wanted to say something about that.
Nicholas Tomnay, writer and director of WHAT YOU WISH FOR, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
There are so many films I love, for different reasons. But for What You Wish For, it’s probably Rope by Alfred Hitchcock and The Servant by Joseph Losey. The Servant is an astonishing film with incredible power. It’s one of my favorite films of all time. But the film I actually referenced the most was Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. With a limited budget, I looked to it as something that could be done in a stripped-down way, which is something our film needed to be. So, it became a question of how a stripped-down aesthetic could help the story, and Down By Law does this, I think.
A scene from WHAT YOU WISH FOR, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
The film’s location is never named. I like the idea that this is happening “somewhere in Latin America.” I think the anonymity helps the morality-tale aspect of the film. But we shot the film in Colombia.
We were having a lot of problems finding the main location for our film. 80% of What You Wish For takes place at what in the script is called “an aspirational villa” — and with a small budget, that’s not so easy to find. We found a pretty incredible house in the outskirts of Medellín, but there was just too many production problems. Then, Francesca offered up a location south of Bogotá. She had a friend-of-a-friend connection and, instantly, it was clear this was “the place.” My feeling was, if the location isn’t more than incredible, the film doesn’t work. And finding this place, which also gave us access to several other rural locations, plus cast and crew accommodations, was such a gift. Filmmaking presents a lot of challenges, but sometimes incredible things happen too.
Nick Stahl and Tamsin Topolski in WHAT YOU WISH FOR, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
I saw The Master in 70mm at the Castro in San Francisco. I was a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s work and excited to see his new film. But I had no idea how powerful this film would be in that cinema, projected on 70mm, with a packed house. The Master is an incredible film anyway, but seeing it in that setting completely blew me away — cinema’s power, complete and absolute.