Die Hard (1988) / Midnight Run (1988)
Writer/directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen are a close-knit filmmaking duo who have already proved adept to the kinds of fun genre filmmaking most of us have been starved of since the ’90s. After the success of 2022’s Significant Other, starring Maika Monroe, their latest film Novocaine sees another Jack Quaid vehicle — hot on the heels of Drew Hancock’s Companion — that delivers the kind of ordinary Joe we have come to expect since his breakout role as Hughie Campbell in The Boys TV series. Here Quaid plays Nathan Caine a man incapable of feeling physical pain who utilises his rare condition in an effort to rescue the girl of his dreams, Sherry, played by Amber Midthunder.
Ahead of the film’s premiere, Dan and Robert took some time out to choose a double bill of movies that were a particular influence on Novocaine, highlighting what we have come to expect from buddy movies and those lovable everyman characters we cannot help but root for…
Hi Dan, Robert — genuinely excited to see Novocaine, especially after 2022’s superb Significant Other. To open things up, I'm interested to hear how your partnership as filmmakers began.
Dan Berk: Thanks Rich — both for the Novocaine excitement and the Significant Other love. Believe it or not, Bobby and I were actually randomly assigned roommates during our freshman year at NYU. We quickly realised we liked the same kind of movies and somehow made almost exactly the same dumb little shorts with our buddies in high school, which were usually Lord of the Rings rip-offs where we used broom handles as swords, ketchup as fake blood, et al. So, years before we professionally collaborated, we established a foundation of being best friends — to which we probably owe whatever success we have now.
Robert Olsen: Yeah, and as we moved through film school and started getting on some sets, we both began to gain more of a sense of the kinds of filmmakers we'd want to be if we ever got the chance ourselves. And, as you might expect, that vision was virtually identical for both of us, so it was only a matter of time before we decided to start writing screenplays together. We had a little commercial success and managed to sell the first two scripts we wrote, but we hit a brick wall whenever we'd mention that we wanted to direct. Neither of us comes from money so it's not like we had some flashy $100K-calling-card short film, and we realized (pretty quickly) that you’re not allowed to direct a feature… until you’ve directed a feature. So that’s when we sat down to write Body, which was released in 2015.
Murder mansion. Helen Rogers and Lauren Molina in Berk and Olsen's feature debut BODY (2015).
Through a friend of a friend, we had access to this mansion in Connecticut, and we effectively wrote a story to fit the location. We went out and raised the budget ourselves from about fifty people, shot the film in eleven overnights, and got it into Slamdance. There it was sold to Oscilloscope, who gave it a baby theatrical release. The modest success of that movie got us hired to direct our second feature, 2016’s The Stakelander, which led us to Villains. With that we ended up at SxSW in 2019 which urged us to make the move from New York to L.A., where we made 2022's Significant Other and now Novocaine.
That’s a solid decade. How do you both approach the writing process?
RO: We’ve been writing scripts together for a very long time, so we’ve had the opportunity to refine the process quite a bit over the years. Whenever we both get excited about an idea, we’ll sit down for about a week, maybe two, to outline it. We try to get it to a decent level of precision by the time we go to script so that there aren’t too many surprises. Of course, we always veer off course while writing, but getting that initial outline relatively fleshed out allows us to really get on the same page.
“We always want the fact that there are two of us to be an asset to a production, not a liability.”
— Robert Olsen
DB: And then once we’re ready, we go off to script. One of us will write Act 1, then pass it to the other guy, who rewrites Act 1 and writes Act 2, Part 1. Then the first guy will rewrite Act 1 again, and take a pass on Act 2, then writes Act 2, Part 2… and so on and so forth until the draft is complete. Then we revise together for a few more weeks until we're ready to share with our reps and a small circle from whom we can get feedback. And this is one of the biggest benefits of the partnership: the fact that we're mailing the draft back and forth — constantly challenging each other’s work and rewriting it — means our first public-facing drafts are effectively the equivalent of third or fourth drafts.
Dynamic duo. Writer/directors Dan Berk (right) and Robert Olsen (left).
How do you approach directing as a duo?
DB: This, too, has been a part of our process that we’ve refined from project to project. Of course, we get a lot more reps with screenwriting than we do directing, which is always a funny thing. On set, the director is often the least experienced person there, on a pound-for-pound basis, but we approach it in a very egalitarian way. Neither of us are specialists — it’s not like one of us is the “actor” director and the other is the “camera” director — we just both do everything.
RO: To add to this, it’s really all in the prep. We’re absolute prep-hounds and since there are two of us, we have to be. The night before a given shooting day, we review the pages; often reading the lines to one another to make absolutely sure we’ve got the same ideas in mind, right down to the intended vocal intonation of a given bit of dialogue. Then we go through every single possible eventuality that could occur on set (to the extent that anyone can), and decide how we’d respond. That way, once we’re actually in the trenches, we aren’t spending time debating how to react to a crisis. Our goal has always been that any department head or actor can just ask one of us a question and not need to waste time getting the go-ahead from both. We always want the fact that there are two of us to be an asset to a production, not a liability. And it certainly doesn’t come naturally, so we’re grateful we’ve now had five features worth of experience to get it right.
Walking on broken glass. John McTiernan's DIE HARD (1988) sees Bruce Willis' New York cop caught barefoot in a battle against terrorists while visiting his estranged wife.
So, in terms of influences on Novocaine, you’ve brought a couple of movies to the table from 1988 as a double bill: John McTiernan’s Die Hard and Martin Brest’s Midnight Run. Firstly, what is it about these two films that created a frame of reference or shorthand for you both and how did the ideas behind your own film grow from there?
RO: We went into this process wanting to capture the magic of those late ’80s and early ’90s action films we grew up on. Something that a lot of those films had in common — Midnight Run and Die Hard especially — was their ability to straddle both action and comedy, without ever losing their stakes. They’re both objectively funny movies, but the jokes never seem to take you out of the film. We felt like a lot of contemporary action movies lost that quality and started leaning one way or the other — either they’re dark and dour, or they’d be fun, silly, and totally ungrounded.
"Yippee-ki-yay". McTiernan's film is one of the best action movies ever made, John McClane's blue-collar cop a far cry from Sly and Arnie's action heroes of the decade.
DB: Yeah, McTiernan and Brest really manage to make you care quite a bit for John McClane, Jack Walsh, and The Duke. These aren’t cartoon characters inhabiting a farce. There are real stakes that ground all that humour and to balance that in movies — that also deliver on action and spectacle in spades — isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, but it’s certainly something we strived to do in Novocaine. Nate’s journey is constantly funny because he’s an unskilled everyman thrust into an action movie — but the whole thing would’ve fallen apart if we couldn’t convince the audience to care about him, in the same way we care about the protagonists of Midnight Run and Die Hard (and many other classics of the ’80s and ’90s!)
No easy task. Bounty hunter Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) brings in bail jumper, Jonathan Mardukas in Martin Brest's MIDNIGHT RUN (1988).
What specific themes and parallels would you both highlight about your chosen Companion Pieces?
DB: Building on what we’ve already mentioned, something that we feel sets Novocaine apart from the many action programmers that come out these days is Nate as a character. Of course, his genetic condition is incredibly unique, but in the context of the action genre, it’s actually more that he’s a regular guy who doesn’t know how to fight and doesn’t know how to handle firearms. He’s incredibly relatable in that way to most audience members — much more relatable than your run-of-the-mill action hero.
RO: Yeah, and to us that’s one of the strongest parallels to movies of that “golden age of action” that we’re always referencing. John McClane is a cop. He’s not some super assassin. Jack Walsh is a down-and-out bounty hunter; he wasn’t part of some top-secret special forces group in a past life. These are guys that could live on your block. That’s something we’ve really lost in the action genre in recent years. There's an enormous gulf between audiences and protagonists in modern action because they always have some secretive past that we're now allowed to see at some point in the movie. It puts distance between the audience and the protagonist, which hurts our ability to care once the shit hits the fan.
Agreed. Grounding such characters is crucial. ’88 is a solid year for movies — I’m thinking the groundbreaking Akira could be thrown into the mix; there's an anti-superhero vibe with the material, especially with its postmodern approach of dismantling a supervillain. I'm curious whether these ideas of a "power" (or infliction) have also inspired Novocaine or other projects over the years.
RO: Yes, super solid year! Can’t forget They Live, Twins, and Rain Man either. And, of course, we love Akira. There is that interesting concept in our film about turning a disability into a “superpower” — though it’s something that we’re sensitive to, because we’re never aiming to glorify the condition that Nate suffers from in the film. It’s a real-life disorder that can be quite debilitating. Our goal, broadly, has always been to tell an empowering story of someone who takes a personal liability and not only learns to live with it but finds that it's the unique element about them that allows them to overcome adversity.
DB: Yeah, we felt that focusing our energy on that broad thematic thrust would make Nate’s character journey relatable to just about anyone — whether you've got a rare disorder or not. Everyone has felt lonely, isolated, or stuck in a rut… and insecure because of it. Being able to look at that insecurity and discover that there's a real utility to it — there's a wish fulfilment in that we think it makes Nate’s journey incredibly satisfying to watch.
Ordinary hero. Jack Quaid's Nathan "Nate" Caine is a fish "painlessly" out of water.
What do you think it is about the ’80s that begins to explore these more vulnerable “ordinary Joes” at the centre of the crime and action in these movies?
DB: I’m sure there are some compelling socio-political theories for why so many characters were coalescing around this more “everyman” archetype, but we’re not smart enough to clearly communicate them. That said, you’re absolutely right that these action protagonists in this era feel eminently relatable, and that’s why these movies resonate so much, even 40-something years later.
You have both worked with incredible actors who have exploded in recent years — such as Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe — and now with Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder for Novocaine; Jack this year already delivering a double dose of his own with Drew Hancock’s Companion. Both Die Hard and Midnight Run have a phenomenal cast that is integral to the success of the movies. I’m interested to hear about your experiences with casting (and the process); specifically when it comes to working out the dynamics/chemistry.
RO: The process of casting is obviously different for us than it is for someone like Christopher Nolan or James Cameron. We don’t have actors lining up and begging to be in our films (yet!) so a lot of times we’re the ones pitching our services to them. We’ve been extremely fortunate to work with so many incredible actors, each and every one of which really took a chance on us and our vision.
DB: Yeah, and our good fortune has really continued with Novocaine. Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder are two of the most charismatic actors we’ve had the pleasure of working with, and the chemistry between them is extraordinary. You obviously never know if that’s going to be the case before you show up on location, but you can make an educated guess. We’d met with both Jack and Amber independently, and they both just had the most easy-going charm to them — so we had a sense that it could work out. But it wasn't until our first dinner down in Cape Town, South Africa, when the four of us were sitting at a table (horribly jet-lagged, mind you) that we saw the spark. And that's when we knew everything would work.
Coffee talk. Nate (Jack Quaid) and Sherry (Amber Midthunder).
RO: Also, we don’t want to forget an enormous shout-out to Ray Nicholson, who we think really showcased how ready he is for the next leap in his career. The same goes for Jacob Batalon, Matt Walsh, and Betty Gabriel, as well as our South African cast of Evan Hengst, Conrad Kemp, and Garth Collins — they’re all absolutely incredible in the film and we’re so lucky to have worked with them.
What is it about the dynamics of the characters in both Die Hard and Midnight Run that stand out to you?
DB: It always comes back to that relatability we mentioned earlier. To us these are stand-out characters because they feel so close to the viewer, you could pass them on the street and not know it.
RO: And, of course, in the specific case of Midnight Run, Jack Walsh and The Duke make such an incredible pair. Charles Grodin’s dry, tempered performance is such a contrast to De Niro’s fast-talking Jack Walsh, and it just makes literally every line they share fertile ground for laughs.
“… 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon were certainly utilising the same playbook. But those movies walked so things like Bad Boys could run.”
— Dan Berk
It felt like Midnight Run was perhaps Robert De Niro’s first foray into more commercial territory.
RO: And what a decade it was for him. There are only a handful of actors in history who could pull off Raging Bull and The King of Comedy (one of our favourite movies!)… then Midnight Run feels like this nice commercial palette cleanser right on the heels of playing Al Capone in The Untouchables. He's continued to show that he can bounce back and forth between comedy and drama with the likes of Meet The Parents and Killers of The Flower Moon... which are not exactly tonal duplicates.
. Midnight method. Towards the end of the '80s De Niro embraces a more accessible character than those of the New Hollywood era.
Die Hard has helped to shape so many action movies over the years, but what do you feel it is about Midnight Run that has inspired more subtle storytelling hacks?
DB: That two-hander that Bobby mentioned definitely feels like a kind of proto-dynamic for so many movies that followed. Or perhaps it was just in the ether since the likes of 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon were certainly utilising the same playbook. But those movies walked so things like Bad Boys could run.
RO: Outside of that character architecture, it’s also just such a well-executed road movie. There’s nothing better than a simple plot — get a person or a thing from A to B — that’s just rendered perfectly, with a tonal balance that makes it such a re-watchable classic.
Small similarities. In John Lasseter's TOY STORY (1995) Woody and Buzz Lightyear strike up an interesting love/hate relationship.
I never realised Midnight Run was also the direct inspiration for Toy Story… and it all makes sense in its economic way of developing a friendship. The “buddy movie”.
RO: Absolutely! It’s an engine that always works. It’s similar to a romcom in how it causes the audience to long for something — only instead of wanting your lovers to finally kiss, you’re waiting for these mismatched protagonists (who hate each other at first!) to finally acknowledge they’ve become friends.
Both films have memorable supporting roles. How do the two of you personally approach supporting characters during the writing and casting process so there is no danger of them stealing the film… that they remain memorable?
DB: In our experience, you never really have to suppress a side character necessarily, if your protagonist is as interesting as they should be. If you’re writing and you find that a side character is stealing all the spotlight and screen time, you’ve probably got a bigger issue on your hands.
RO: Yeah, they’re “supporting” roles for a reason. While they should be rich and colourful in their own right, they’re usually there to help you examine something about your protagonist. They can provide contrast, exposition, and comedic relief — but at the end of the day, they are there to help your main character reach their goal. So, we usually aren’t finding ourselves in danger of the supporting characters driving the narrative themselves too much, because we’re using them for deliberate purposes when they're getting screen time.
Support act. Matthew Walsh as Coltraine and Betty Gabriel as Mincy.
What attracts the two of you to watching and now making genre movies?
RO: It’s likely because that’s what we grew up on. We came of age in a kind of golden era for blockbuster cinema — the ’90s. We had some of our first theatrical experiences with things like Jurassic Park, The Matrix and Scream, so we’ve always had a tendency to want to make genre films that could have real cultural relevance. Novocaine is definitely a step in that direction for us — perhaps a baby step — but still!
How do you go about deconstructing tried and tested formulas? I’m thinking about how you are also downplaying the superhero movie… or at least returning to the roots of what makes these kinds of films work so well. Again, pain and vulnerability. The ordinary hero.
DB: We’ve always tended to take tropes and try to subvert them, sometimes because it creates humorous results and we love comedy, but sometimes just to excite ourselves. We have to be genuinely passionate to pour several years of our time into a project, so the idea of just staying within the bumpers has never been something we’ve wanted to do. Sometimes you manage to break out with unexpected environmental dynamics (something we discussed a lot on Villains), other times you experiment with structural expectations and tonal pivots (our goal in Significant Other).
Genre work. Berk & Olsen's previous movies include VILLAINS (2019) starring Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe and SIGNIFICANT OTHER (2022) also starring Maika Monroe and Jake Lacy.
RO: Yeah, and in Novocaine it was really the character of Nate being an unexpected hero. The idea of an action star who doesn’t know how to fight just lit our brains on fire and would certainly count as “breaking” a tried-and-tested expectation/formula.
Both your choices of movies trip up the central characters by employing some kind of weakness, either mentally or physically. How did you find and employ your vulnerable device for Nate?
RO: Well, of course, Nate's physical condition gets a lot of the oxygen in this conversation, but it's really his emotional state that drives the movie. He's extremely isolated and lonely at the top of the film, so much so that when Sherry comes into his life, it's this bolt of lightning that changes his entire world. If he were more confident or more romantically experienced, I’m not sure you’d buy him going on this journey to save someone that he went on one date with.
With each of these films having spawned sequels (Midnight Run’s “Midnight Run Action Pack” series of TV movies?!) are you averse to exploring your own movies and their characters further or prefer to tackle fresh stories each time?
DB: We’d love to come back for a Novocaine sequel if all the stars align. We’ve got the story ready.
RO: Ball’s in your court, Paramount!
Do you each have a favourite of the two movies you have picked?
RO: It’s honestly hard because they serve different purposes, but if I had to rewatch one of them in this instant, I’m going with Midnight Run. If only to hear that sweet, sweet, ever-present score.
DB: Yeah, me too. It’s just funnier at the end of the day and I think we all need some laughs nowadays.
Screen time. AMC's The Grove 14 and the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles.
If you were to present your double bill at a cinema of your choice, which would it be and why?
RO: We usually see movies together at AMC's The Grove 14, generally a couple of times a week during the day when we don't have meetings, so let's just go with that for convenience.
DB: I'll also throw in The Vista because it's way closer to where I live, and you cannot beat the legroom.
Thanks so much for the discussion and sharing these movies — I wish you all the best with Novocaine, guys.
DB: Thanks so much, Rich, this has been a blast!
RO: And everyone go see Novocaine when it hits theatres on March 14th! It's always better to laugh and squirm with a crowd.
You can remain up to date on Novocaine and further release dates, including theatrical, streaming and physical media via the official Instagram page @novocainemovie.
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