SHOWDOWN AT THE GRAND: An Interview With Writer/Director Orson Oblowitz

Cinema Scholars interviews Orson Oblowitz, writer/director of the new action comedy Showdown at the Grand. The film stars Terrance Howard, Dolph Lundgren, Piper Curda, and John Savage. Showdown at the Grand opens in cinemas and all major digital platforms on November 10.

Introduction

For lovers of exploitation or grindhouse films, references to the fabled era in cinematic history bring on nostalgia like no other genre. This unique sentimentality also extends to 80s and 90s action movies, like those of Cannon Films among many others. While it’s impossible to go back and capture the exact vibe of the cult classics, many filmmakers today pay homage to these types of films in their work.

Lucky for them, many of the stars from back in the day are still in the mix, ready to ride that throwback train with them. In the new B movie Love Letter, Showdown at the Grand, cinephile George Fuller (Terrence Howard) enlists the help of screen legend Claude Luc Hallyday (Dolph Lundgren) to save his beloved theater from predatory real estate developers. 

Cinema owner George Fuller is a diehard fan of grindhouse and shoot-‘em-up flicks from the past. Particularly those of action hero Claude Luc Hallyday. His encyclopedic recall of countless films paired with an extensive collection of memorabilia proves Fuller’s nerd cred and passion for his business. With bills piling up and a ruthless real estate developer pressuring Fuller to sell, the cinephile reaches out to his screen idol Hallyday to make a special appearance to save his theater.

Written and directed by Orson Oblowitz, Showdown at the Grand follows the saga of the downtrodden cinema owner. The film also features an onslaught of grindhouse goodies from Hallyday’s famous films. With titles like Moses Versus Nazis, Blood Is For The Living, Malibu Massacre III, and Iraqnophobia, cutaways to outrageous scenes from Hallyday’s catalog are featured generously throughout the main narrative. This movie-in-movie motif not only gives Fuller’s obsession greater context, it also helps set up some seriously fun 3rd act mayhem with Lundgren. 

Aside from the obvious homages, Showdown at the Grand also utilizes a constant slew of familiar cinematic musical themes. Like Keith Mansfield’s “Funky Fanfare” from the classic “Feature Presentation” announcement before movies, other vaguely recognizable cues pop up continuously. This not only lends the film cinematic gravitas, it also adds to the Easter egg hunt of movie references. 

Terrence Howard easily navigates his role as the unlikely hero George Fuller. Additionally, his enthusiastic take on the movie nerd is endearing and relatable while still maintaining an air of overall cool. And when things get a bit crazy, Howard steps up for some impressive action of his own. 

Lundgren is everything you wish for in the role of aging action star Claude Luc Hallyday. While Lundgren has enjoyed a steady career in both acting and directing in the years since his action film heyday, it still feels a bit meta to see him play a character adjacent to him. Lundgren aptly fills Hallyday with the uncertainty and angst of a washed-up actor. Thankfully, among all the madness in the film, Oblowitz makes room for some great Hallyday speech moments. And it just makes you wish Lundgren was in more mainstream films today. 

With a high-dollar look and a low-budget sensibility, Oblowitz has crafted a terrific B-movie love letter. End credits showing the crew doing double duty as cast members in multiple sequences and an original song by Terrence Howard himself proves that Showdown at the Grand is a labor of love all the way around.

Cinema Scholars’ Rebecca Elliott recently chatted with writer/director Orson Oblowitz about making his ode to grindhouse cinema. They discuss the gorgeous location, shooting multiple movies in one, and working with an idol. 

Interview

Rebecca Elliott:

Thanks for joining me to talk about Showdown at the Grand. I really enjoyed it. And it’s definitely a love letter to grindhouse films. But then there’s also the influence of the awesome 80s/90s action genre. Tell me about some of your cinematic influences with Grindhouse and action awesomeness.

Orson Oblowitz:

Yeah, I mean, I love all of those films. Last House on the Left and all the early Wes Craven stuff, for instance. And John Carpenter is one of my favorite filmmakers. Then into the cult Cannon films of the 80s and 90s. Neon City, the Carolco movies, Albert Pyun’s Nemesis. All that type of stuff. Omega Doom with Rutger and Johnny Mnemonic later on. These are kind of like amalgamations of what the future would be. Dealing with real issues like, we’ve run out of water. And that’s why in the opening of the movie, it’s the desert and it’s New York 2026.

Rebecca Elliott:

No water! Tomato juice. That’s all you get.

Orson Oblowitz:

Exactly. That’s probably where we’re all going anyway. So they were right.

Rebecca Elliott:

Totally. The film revolves around this gorgeous theater, that you really lovingly capture in general. And you wrote the script as well. Did you already have this specific theater in mind that you crafted your story around, consequently? Or was it the reverse? Tell me about bringing that gorgeous location to life.

Orson Oblowitz:

It was actually originally written for New Mexico more like a small-town movie theater. Your single-screen, small-town theater. Like Truth or Consequence, New Mexico, for example. But then when we changed back to L.A., we found the most beautiful place. The Warner Grand is down in San Pedro. And we just embraced it, and it just kind of became home in reality.

The script had a lot more outside of the theater originally. And once we got in there, we were like, I don’t need to show the rest of the world. All that matters to this guy is this world in his theater. As a result, we embraced it. And the first time we went there, I actually had COVID. So I was like video chatting. But Terrence was in there and he was like touching the curtains and looking at the etchings on the walls. After that, it clearly was about to become our home.

Rebecca Elliott:

In essence, the film has a “movie within a movie” in multiple scenes. And I was just dying at some of these titles. Moses Versus the Nazis, Blood Is for the Living, Cyber Cartel, for instance. All these amazing grindhouse or action movies within movies. Can you talk about shooting your main narrative for the film while also filming these amazingly fun little short films? Did any of those already exist or did you shoot them all for the film simultaneously? Additionally, what was it like shifting gears for the different genres in this one movie?

Orson Oblowitz:

Those were fun because we got to break away from our whole narrative and just go have a good time. I mean, one of them, is the Malibu Massacre.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yes, that was another great title too!

Orson Oblowitz:

We literally shot that in a backyard in Topanga. Just us and the camera. And it was really nice because we had a lot more freedom in those situations, surprisingly. But we did shoot them really fast as a result. In two days, we shot all those movies in the movie. If we had a desert town, one side of it was going to be an Iraq film with this little shack, and the other side was going to be a sci-fi crime movie. We were just having a good time doing it, nevertheless.

And we tried to stick to practical effects for the most part. Using blanks and squibs, that type of stuff so we could kind of stick to how they did it in the day. Not as much as they would have then, with slow motion and blood flying because of time and creative costs. But yeah, they were really fun. And some of them like Moses Versus the Nazis. My DP Noah [Rosenthal] was just like, what about Moses Versus the Nazis? I was like, I’m writing now. Basically, we wrote it about a week before shooting. PAs dressed as Nazis. It was really fun.

Rebecca Elliott:

I was going to ask you about that. You have some pretty amazing production value with impressive scope overall. But you do give a little away in the credits that some of your crew members were also in the cast, evidently. And I just love that DIY spirit. 

Orson Oblowitz:

Oh, yeah. My first AD, everyone. By and large, the whole film is like this kind of circus family of people. The art director is one of the punk characters. My parents are in the movie. And then just a bunch of the crew. Meanwhile, one crew member dies four times I think. [someone yells in the background, “Nine!”]. Nine times I’m being told! So he dies nine times eventually. He’s in different outfits throughout it. Basically, whenever we needed to kill someone, we just threw him in and we’re like, nah, you’re going to die.

Rebecca Elliott:

Surprisingly, I didn’t even notice that. So, very well done. Additionally, you have an incredible cast. Terrence Howard is your lead. Again, in reality on a smaller film, you don’t always get that level of talent. And then, of course, Dolph Lundgren! An actual 80s action icon, which fits perfectly. Can you talk about assembling your cast, working with them, and letting them in on your vision of what this movie was ultimately going to be all in all?

Orson Oblowitz:

My producer, Christian de Gallegos, met Mira, who is Terrence’s manager and wife. And she’s also a producer on our film. He just slipped her the script and was like, hey, take a look. And in two days, they called us back. They were like, read halfway through the script, and they’re like, whatever you want. And we were like, what? This is stupid.

Then the next week, we had a Zoom. And then we were just kind of in it together. There were no agents or none of that nonsense. We stayed away from all of it. There was no casting director. It was just us calling people. And once we had Terrence, that kind of gave us a little more cred. So then we hit up Dolph’s team and they were like, yeah, the script’s great. I was like, what? You guys are crazy. And then he was down.

Then we just kind of went from there and pieced it together. It was very organic. The whole film was this kind of crazy mishmash of being organic. And I’m a low-budget dude. That’s where I come from. I like small bootstrap filmmaking. Those are the films I love. So, yeah, they all just kind of came on and played their role and were really fun to work with.

I mean, Terrence is a friend now. He’s awesome. I love him. He brought so much. And he was putting in 12, 13 hours a day, every day, doing almost all his own stunts. I think he might have done almost all of them. Even when he was off camera, like with another actor, it was always him. He never wanted not to be in it. So I got lucky.

Rebecca Elliott:

That’s really cool. Therefore, it kind of turned into a passion project for him as well. As a cinephile and as a filmmaker at this point. And then Dolph. I mean, that must have been your ultimate casting dream to get him to do this. What was his take on it since he actually worked through that phase of 80s/90s action filmmaking? Did he have any special insight?

Orson Oblowitz:

It was really dangerous making movies then because there’d be a truck coming at you. And they were like, go left. He was like, okay, you’re sure left? They’re like, yeah, if you go right, that truck is going to blow up and kill you. So he basically said it was a crazy time. And sadly, we obviously weren’t getting to blow up any trucks. He had a lot to say about that.

But he was really into the character. He really had broken down this character and had all his notes on it. So, he was all about, what’s the history of Claude Luc Halliday. Where had he been? What was his life like in Estonia? He was like the Daniel Day-Lewis of this movie in a weird way. And he really brought it. So I was like, let’s go, man. And I think that comes through. He is a character actor in a crazy way as much as he is an action guy with age. 

Rebecca Elliott:

He has that gorgeous soliloquy at one point. And I’m like, I need more Dolph Lundgren in movies today! But in a serious drama or something. Everybody, hire Dolph Lundgren!

Orson Oblowitz:

I want to see him do a Coen brothers.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yes, like something where he gets to really flex those dramatic muscles. I mean, obviously, he’s very talented. But you forget sometimes what a varied talent that encompasses. I would be Nerding out hardcore if I had him on a set.

Orson Oblowitz:

Yeah, I had him sign something from one of my favorite films when I was a kid. I Come in Peace, this alien cop film he was in. I had a shirt from it, and I had him sign it one day for me. And he was like, what? Yeah, dude. I love the movie. No one else did, but I love it. I’ve got it up somewhere around here.

Rebecca Elliott:

In the background of the film, there are also a lot of posters and memorabilia for the fictional films. Tell me about working with the production design team with all the fun props, posters, and things.

Orson Oblowitz:

That’s all because of my awesome team. And they didn’t have a lot of time because we had moved production from New Mexico to L.A. a month before shooting. They just smashed it. And they were really good. I have them displayed all around. I collect posters. So I was also kind of like a fascist dictator with what I wanted. And they’re like, dude, are you serious? Then they would show me things and I was like, yeah, you’re killing it. Don’t worry about me.

They did a great job, and it was really them and Laura [Seaman], the prop master. Everyone just kind of came together and figured it out. Then Coco Rigal, a costume designer, with this kind of looks-on-a-budget, used the same materials that they would have used in 1992.

Rebecca Elliott:

As far as music goes, I stayed through the credits to see the list. Because there are, like, 100 different themes. And some of them were recognizable. Some of them might have been original. I wasn’t sure. But there are a lot, and I love it. Every one of them is so evocative of different genres or different time periods. Can you talk about all the musical choices? Was that on the page as you were writing? Or was that something that came after the fact?

Orson Oblowitz:

A lot of it was on the page when I wrote. Obviously, you can’t afford every theme that you want. But we got really lucky with APM, the library catalog. We worked hand in hand and made a deal with them. They opened up their whole amazing library. I became obsessive and I didn’t even know what to pick. My editor and I, just kind of designed it as we went. And I really owe it to them. To have cataloged all this music and working with us on such a budget to do something that’s so cool.

And I always called it like, minimalist filmmaking. This is like maximalist filmmaking. Let me throw everything at you, and we’ll see where it sticks. And hopefully this whole mishmash, this kind of, like, buffet comes together in its own know. Then, my composer, Daniel De Lara, most of his stuff is a little more subdued. His kind of tonality grounded us in the cinematic sense.

Rebecca Elliott:

It was like an Easter egg hunt.

Orson Oblowitz:

Yeah, and Terrence has a song at the end.

Rebecca Elliott:

I was just about to ask you about that. So a nice segue there.

Orson Oblowitz:

Yeah.

Rebecca Elliott:

Terrence Howard has a song at the end of the film. How did that come about? Did he write it specifically for the film, or was this an existing song? I didn’t even know he was a musician, so I was like, well, he’s good at everything.

Orson Oblowitz:

He’s kind of annoying.

Orson Oblowitz:

He also builds these beautiful sculptures. It’s, really annoying. The song is the one he’s playing on guitar in the first scene when he’s in the pawn shop. He had recorded it on his phone at some point. So when I was finishing the movie, it was very different than everything else. And I said, just send me the song. Let me try it. It was more like a stamp for Terrence to have on there. And it worked. 

Rebecca Elliott:

Basically, he’s like an old-school triple threat. 

Orson Oblowitz:

He can sing, he can dance. Also, he’s, like, playing piano in the background because there’s a piano back there. We’d just be, like, eating lunch. Suddenly, Terrence would just be playing the piano and jamming. We’d all sing and hang out. And he did a comedy routine one day because we were waiting. He was on stage doing this monologue and just started doing a comedy routine. Wow.

Rebecca Elliott:

Obviously, a Renaissance man.

Orson Oblowitz:

He cuts and makes these plastic sculptures.

Rebecca Elliott:

I had no idea! All right, one more question. In the event that you were to take one of the movies within a movie in your film, which one would you turn into a feature?

Orson Oblowitz:

Moses Versus the Nazis.

Rebecca Elliott:

Ok, so why Moses Versus the Nazis?

Orson Oblowitz:

I know how far I could go with that. Moses shows up in World War II. And it’s the Nazis, but it’s like a really dark story where he has a hard time acclimating himself to the times, you know what I’m saying? He could get caught himself, caught up in some sort of a “Moses steals money” or something. So I would probably do Moses Versus the Nazis.

Rebecca Elliott:

Okay, cool. I was curious. I’m like one of these is begging for a feature-length treatment. Which one would Orson choose?

Orson Oblowitz:

Moses beheaded Hitler with an axe.

Rebecca Elliott:

Or just, like, smash his head with a tablet or something.

Orson Oblowitz:

Yeah, exactly. I did this other film, Trespasses, where we just smashed this guy’s head with a camera, and it was, like, Irreversible. I’d do like, the Irreversible head smash, basically.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yesssss! All right, well, I guess that wraps it up for me. Thank you so much for chatting with me about your film.

Orson Oblowitz:

It was a pleasure.

Showdown at the Grand, starring Terrence Howard, Dolph Lundgren, and Amanda Righetti opens in cinemas and all major digital platforms on November 10.

Read more Cinema Scholars interviews!

SHAKY SHIVERS: An Interview With Stars VyVy Nguyen and Brooke Markham

An Interview With The Talent Behind RE: UNITING At The Austin Film Festival

Keep up with Cinema Scholars on social media. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.