Interview: "The Singers" Director Sam A. Davis

by Ben Miller

Actor Mike Young and Director Sam A. Davis on the set of "The Singers"Director Sam A. Davis is receiving accolades and a large amount of views of his short film The Singers following the recent Oscar nominations. I was lucky enough to speak with him about male sensitivity, shooting cigarette smoke, and his role as a director and cinematographer.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity...

BEN MILLER: First off, congratulations. What a what a fun couple of months. The film is promoted on the idea of an underdog mentality.  Do you have that mentality yourself as far as kind of where this film has come from and where we are today, two weeks out from the Oscars?

SAM A. DAVIS: Maybe a little bit as like a kid from a small town in Michigan, but I’ve been I’ve been around for a long time and made tons of shorts. I think I was inspired to try to do something really ambitious with this one, from the concept all the way through to do the festival life and putting together a campaign. We had our sights set on maybe…not the Oscars, but on a really high goal. Yeah, and all that to say, it’s still a little surreal to be to be here and actually to be nominated and on Netflix with millions of people seeing the film. But yeah, it’s a really special moment.

BEN MILLER: The big thing I took from watching the film is your encapsulation of the actual life of a dive bar as opposed to the shinier version that you may be seeing other pieces of art. Did you have a dive, a specific place in mind whenever you’re like, okay, this is what I want from this film and your personal place that you want to convey on film?

SAM A. DAVIS: There was a bar in Michigan where I’m from.  It’s in a town called Jackson that I always dreamt of shooting this film in. And it just became impractical as we put the pieces together and we were flying people from all over, all over the US and Judah [Kelly] came from Australia. So we made the decision to do it in L.A. just for the logistics and the financials.  And other bars that I’ve been to, and lots of scouting online and just poring over images of dive bars on Yelp. There are a lot of little details that came through via those photos.  None of my work is really shiny or polished or sort of studio feeling.  And so that’s kind of just my taste. But also wanted it to be a really believable grounded take on a dive bar.

The story itself is not necessarily grounded or believable, but the setting…and the same thing with the characters and the way the film was constructed, it was like, this is kind of an out there idea. It’s almost like it’s a fable or a poem or something like that.  But what would what would happen tonally if we wove a lot of grounded ideas into that, into a documentary, personalities and these unknown faces. The idea of the characters and the music are so woven into specifically what they’re performing.

BEN MILLER: Did you have the music going in and then trying to match the characters to that, or did you cast the film and then kind weave in the musical sensibilities of each character trying to figure out what would work? Where did you start from with the music and all the songs?

Actor Chris Smither in "The Singers"SAM A. DAVIS: All the songs came from a conversation with the singers and we compiled sort of short lists of maybe two or three songs for each of them. And then the night before the shoot, when they arrived, we met in the bar and we sort of sang through those songs and decided from there. The only one who we already knew what he would sing was Mike Young, who plays the bartender, and he sings “Unchained Melody,” which was the song that I heard him sing that sort of sparked the entire idea almost three years ago.

BEN MILLER: I’ve seen a number of films lately dealing with male sensitivity in a very interesting way.  And this film specifically, you think of these guys in a dive bar and you think they’re hard guys and they’re sharing war stories. But at the end of the film, they’re all hugging and it’s such a touching moment.  It’s not played for laughs or anything like that.  Did you come with that idea or did you come through in the filming when you’re like, “Man, this is there’s some moment here that we need to capture.”

SAM A. DAVIS: I knew that there would be a an embrace.  I didn’t know that it would be all all 20 cast members.  That was an evolution of the original idea, which was which was one hug. But I did like the idea of the film starting with a fight and ending with a hug and and to take the hug almost to a fantasy place, you know, it’s not a literal moment. It’s a literalization of the themes, which is the idea of coming literally coming together through vulnerability, through art.

We made the film without a script, but there were certain ideas…maybe at the end there’s a hug or or this idea of the one one hundred dollar bill and a sea of one dollar bills. Or the idea that the fish would be the first singer.  There were things like that that we had preconceived.  But a lot of the dialogue and the way that the film kind of flows was was really heavily improvised.

BEN MILLER: So needless to say, you Are obviously a cinematographer, as well as the director. And obviously this film is so intentionally lit and it’s one of the most striking things. Being in a dive bar, is there anything cooler than shooting cigarette smoke under certain lights that just makes it look so good on film?

Actor Will Harrington in 'The Singers"SAM A. DAVIS: Yeah, I don’t know if I knew that going into it.  It was sort of a happy accident.  We were talking…we should look into this and see if we could have live cigarettes. And is the bar OK with it?  That would be cool.  But I never expected it to be quite the visual throughline that it is in the film. But, yeah, there’s something kind of just really beautifully atmospheric.  And and like you said, especially the way film registers cigarette smoke in an environment like that is quite magical and nostalgic. So we really leaned into it.

BEN MILLER: Did you go in knowing you were going to shoot on 35[mm] or was that just kind of a happy accident?

SAM A. DAVIS: No, we knew we would shoot on film.  The exact format was something we kind of debated.  And, it’s a budget conversation.  And it’s a creative conversation. Yeah, I always knew we would shoot on film because I like the idea of taking these guys who had only ever really been shot on phones and kind of photographing them in the optimal cinematic format and projecting them on a big screen and really giving them their moment, sort of an act of love for them.

And then I also wanted to see if I could smash these two sort of disparate sensibilities together. One is like the performance style. For that to be quite documentary and improvised and non-actors and riffing without a script. But then for the visual language, for all that chaos to be encased in something that feels cinematically classic, that was something that occurred to me that I’m not sure if I had seen that before. And so, of course, always trying to do something. But I haven’t seen exactly before. Not to say that I’m not borrowing things here and there.  But, yeah, just pushing myself to be ambitious and try to strike a really unique tone, but both visually and in the story. So that’s that was also part of the appeal of film.

BEN MILLER: One of my favorite sub-genres of Oscar morning is reactions from nominees as they’re announced. How difficult was it to get to everybody in a bar at five in the morning.

SAM A. DAVIS: We called the bar and a couple of days before and asked them if they would open up at 4:30 AM for us, and they were very gracious. We unfortunately couldn’t get the whole team back there, but those who lived in L.A. and Mike Young, the bartender, flew out from New York to be with us. It was a really special moment to be back in the womb, so to speak.  And after a year-and-a-half or so since since shooting and…I’m glad we did it. I’m not sure if I would have been glad if we hadn’t gotten nominated.  I probably would have would have been a good way to end things up.

BEN MILLER: This is your second Oscar nomination [note: his first was for 2023’s Nai Nai & Wai Po].  Now with now with kind of the benefit of been through this before, knowing the paces,  do you have any differently managed expectations going in now that’s your second time through?

SAM A. DAVIS: That’s a good question.  I think I just generally know how campaigning works and and how all the ceremony…what to expect a little bit. Maybe it helps some of the anxiety slightly doesn’t help any of the anxiety when it comes to the competition part of it.  And my category in particular, but at least the run of show is less mysterious. And, yeah, I mean, I’m just as excited…actually, not to brag, but it’s actually my third time at the Oscars because I produced a film called Period. End of Sentence [note: 2018 Best Documentary Short Oscar winner].  I wasn’t nominated for that film. But, yeah, so I’ve been on the losing side and the winning side of Oscar on Oscar night.  I feel like I have a pretty good sense of what to expect at this point.  But I’m still extremely nervous.

BEN MILLER: With directing these shorts, and you’re still a working cinematographer, do you look at your future?  Do you kind of look at the things that you want to do? Do you view it through the lens of a cinematographer or more of the director/producer side, or what is your personal journey of what is next? Where do you view yourself?

SAM A. DAVIS: That’s a good question.  Well, I still view myself as a filmmaker.  I intend on continuing to work as a DP. Still going to continue to shoot and cinematography has never been a stepping stone for me toward toward directing. But I’ve always really been a filmmaker and just now happen to be getting more exposure for my work as a director, which is really cool. I want to continue to direct as well.  And if those projects continue to have success and I’m inspired to, I’ll continue to direct more and my career will evolve accordingly. But I’m also really in love with working as a cinematographer and, really call myself a filmmaker, because if there’s if there’s a project that I believe in and think that I can add to in some meaningful and unique way, then I want to try to do that regardless of what the exact role is that I’m playing on it. So that’s kind of my approach for the time being and we’ll see how it how it develops.

BEN MILLER: Well, I’m sure you’ll only get only more from here because of the success.  And obviously, such a wonderful thing being on Netflix. Like you said, so many people are seeing it and so many people who otherwise wouldn’t be.  Whenever you heard that was starting to happen, did you sit back and go, “Oh, man, so many more people are going to see this than otherwise would.”

SAM A. DAVIS: Even a short, selling a film is stressful because there are so many things that go wrong. And so it didn’t really have a “sit back and enjoy” moment until the film was properly on the app and it felt very real. At that point and started to hear from hundreds of people.  We’re so lucky also because we’re the only live action short on Netflix this year…acquired by Netflix this year. This amount of exposure is unprecedented for shorts, and that’s what we do it for.  That’s our return on investment as short filmmakers is exposure. We’re not we’re not making a bunch of money on our shorts.  But if myself as a filmmaker and my producers and all of the cast who took a leap to be to be in their first movie all get something out of it in terms of future opportunities, then that’s the best we can hope for.

BEN MILLER: Congratulations once again.  The Singers is currently out on Netflix. Best of luck on Sunday and thank you so much for talking with me.