Alex Russell is already an Emmy-winning writer and producer, but with “Lurker,” he steps into the director’s chair — and he got some advice from Baz Luhrmann before he did it.
The film, which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year, tells the story of a retail employee who infiltrates the inner circle of a music artist on the verge of stardom. But, “as he gets closer to the budding music star, access and proximity become a matter of life and death.”
Russell has been part of major shows like “Dave” and “The Bear,” but “Lurkers” marks his feature directorial debut. Sitting down at TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt, he revealed that Luhrmann actually gave him some lasting writing advice that he put to work in the project.
“He wrote it in my notebook, and it said something like, when you’re showing the rough cut to people — I guess this applies during production, too — but the idea is like, when you’re showing stuff to people, listen to everyone else’s opinions,” Russell recalled. “Hear them out, and then go into a corner and listen to yourself.
“I found that to be actually very applicable throughout the whole process, because it’s such a balance of, is this making sense?” he continued. “Are you confused by the scene? For any actor, for any department head, for any audience member, you want them to be on board with the thing that you’re trying to tell, and then you have to be like,’But is this the thing that I wanted to do?’ And then you sort of find a balance between those.”
Starring Théodore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, Havana Rose Liu, Sunny Suljic, Zach Fox and Daniel Zolghadri, the story started as just one scene that Russell wrote during the pandemic, as he observed real-life interactions his own friends had in the music industry.
“And then COVID just kept going. So I kept writing it, and then it became a 100-page script,” he said. “And here it is. Here we are.”
You can watch TheWrap’s full discussion with Russell and the cast of “Lurker” in the video above.
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