Pat Healy

Cheap Thrills feels like a film that keeps escalating — what drew you to something that pushes characters that far?

The movie is about a guy who has a wife and an infant son who loses his job and receives an eviction notice on the same day. As fate would have it, he goes to a dive bar to drown his sorrows and runs into an old friend similarly down on his luck. They meet a strange, wealthy couple who offer them money for simple dares like drinking a shot for fifty bucks or getting someone to slap you in the face for 200. As the night goes on, the money goes up, and the dares get crazier and more dangerous.

I was drawn to the character because he begins in one place and runs through every conceivable emotion to end up in a completely different place, emotionally, intellectually, and physically, by the story’s end. He runs a gauntlet that takes him through his past, present, and future, revealing who he really is on the inside. As an actor, you rarely get offered a part with such range. I’d be lucky to do all of the things in this film in my entire career, much less in one movie.

“As an actor, you rarely get offered a part with such range.”

There’s a real sense of control to the chaos in the film — how important was it that everything still felt believable?

I liked that the story was simple and suspenseful. You truly didn’t know what would happen next; you couldn’t wait to turn the page. And things get truly absurd and out of control and spiral into madness and violence, yet nothing ever felt like it didn’t follow logically. I always knew why the characters did what they did. It was really well-written.

And the director, Evan Katz, also did an uncredited rewrite. He’s a smart, sensitive and really talented guy that I wanted to work with. Like me, he is also a devout cinephile, so we spoke the same language. Even though the story goes to insane places, he always wanted it to be grounded in reality. I really respond to that. There’s little I hate more than a movie where you don’t believe the people or the story would ever happen on earth. It happens all the time, though. Evan is meticulously well-thought-out, so we never ran into those dilemmas. It always felt real. I think that’s why people respond to the movie so strongly. It feels like we know these people; we can relate to them.

And it is shot and cut in a way that makes it feel like we are actually there, as if this is really happening. It’s a verité way of presenting something, almost documentary-like, but also very operatic. I mean, things get CRAZY. Very Grand Guignol in a way. And these two very different styles mesh very well together. A really good director must know tone very well. Here are two very different tones, almost at opposite ends of the spectrum, and Mr Katz blends them effortlessly.

“There’s little I hate more than a movie where you don’t believe the people or the story would ever happen on earth.”

That finger-cutting scene is hard to shake — how did you approach something that extreme as an actor?

We took a full day to film that scene. It’s the centrepiece of the movie. I had to imagine what that felt like emotionally, intellectually, and physically, of course. It was difficult. What’s interesting is that it flips the whole ‘dare’ concept of the movie on its head, where the two characters are underbidding each other to do something awful to themselves. I liked the political subtext of that. It’s what’s going on in our economy right now: rich people turning poor people against each other, letting them undercut each other, for their own benefit and amusement. Instead of turning on them, we’ve turned on each other like animals.

“Instead of turning on them, we’ve turned on each other like animals.”

Looking back, how did Cheap Thrills shape you as an actor?

Definitely the character of Craig… As I said, it’s everything I could ever want to do in my entire career in just one movie.

“It’s everything I could ever want to do in my entire career in just one movie.”

And lastly, if we could go back to the beginning, how did you first get into acting?

I have always loved movies since I was a young child. My entire family, my parents and three brothers, have always loved the movies. Acting was something I loved to do and seemed to have a natural inclination towards since I was a little boy. I was a bit of a ham. I liked performing and making people laugh. But I would say that getting into the movies was the important thing. If I had learned to be a writer and director at an earlier age, that might have been what I did. We didn’t have the technology that kids and young people have now, which makes being a filmmaker so accessible. However, I am still doing those things as well. At some point, one of my scripts will get made, and I may even direct something. It’s a lot of work and usually several years of your life in terms of commitment. So I have to weigh the pros and cons carefully.

Pat Healy is an actor and screenwriter known for Cheap Thrills, Compliance and his work across independent film and television.

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Interview by Carl Marsh