Grace revolves around Madeline Matheson (Jordan Ladd), an expectant mother who is determined to deliver her dead baby, Grace, and the bizarre circumstances surrounding the child’s miraculous return to life. I had a chance to sit down with director Paul Solet during SXSW to talk about the gestation of the project – which was adapted from the short film of the same name – and the ecstatic reception the film has gotten since its Sundance premiere earlier this year.

BD: Let’s go from 2006 to now, getting Grace to the screen.

Paul Solet: I basically wrote Grace crossing the country on the way to Los Angeles from Boston. I got to Los Angeles and I had the script and people liked the script – and I sure needed the money – but I took some meetings on it and it was very difficult to get somebody to give you however much money to let you direct your first film. The script speaks for itself but they’re like, “I don’t know kid, what have you done?” So it becomes your responsibility to show the financier that you have something. The goal with the short was to distill the key beats of the first act of the feature into this 6-minute gut-punch short. The short is a different medium; it works totally differently and the goal of the short was to hit you in the gut and say, “I want more.” It worked. I needed to show people that I had the chops to make a real movie, so we shot on 35mm and cast it right. We had Brian Austin Green, and Liza Wheel, and we shot it as a standalone; I didn’t want to make a trailer. It was well-received as a contained story and it did well on the festival circuit, won some awards, and it got the attention of Adam Green. He solicited the script and he really loved it. I’m sure you know Adam Green.

BD: Oh yeah. Well I host a podcast and we had him on and one of the things I grilled him about was Grace.

Solet: He’s really been a selfless champion of this project. Anyone who knows Adam knows he understands what it’s like to pay dues and how this process works. He’s someone that appreciates hard work and knows there are no shortcuts. I ran around with a dead baby in a Baby Bjorn covered in blood to every convention and festival that would have me. You don’t have high-paid publicists on a short film.

BD: How much do you think things like the Fangoria conventions help in terms of getting the project out there and creating awareness?

Solet: I think every little bit helps, but it’s about relationships and attitude and, in the end, it’s all about the work. There’s this myth that Hollywood perpetuates that people end up pursuing this bluster thing and if your script is good, people are going to notice it because there aren’t that many good scripts. There just aren’t.

BD: I agree with that, I read them all.

Solet: I do really think that doing the cons with the shorts, you meet people; people like Adam Barnick. Barnick has become one of my two wolves. He was a documentarian on Grace for two years. He slept on my floor shooting stuff on the film for years.

BD: I remember how excited he was when he sent me an e-mail saying “I’m flying to Canada! We’re shooting this thing!”

Solet: And wait ‘til you see his behind the scenes stuff. He’s a director! I’ve never seen behind the scenes stuff like this. This DVD is going to be so fucking good!

BD: So you started shooting about five months ago. I know you didn’t cast anybody from the short, but I know you have a history with Eli Roth, so did you have Jordan Ladd in mind throughout the process?

Solet: I’ve always had a crush on Jordan Ladd. Who doesn’t? I was introduced to her through Eli’s films. I remember he came over with a really rough cut of Cabin Fever when I was still in Boston and I read that script in like ’96 or something. Jordan’s so beautiful – you can’t not like Jordan – and this role demands someone that is so empathetic, you can’t dismiss her for being a kook or for having an alternative lifestyle. You need to be with her and you can’t not be with Jordan; she was sort of a no-brainer. My first meeting with her was four-and-a-half hours. I’ve never had a meeting that long. My only reason to stop was because my car was being towed, literally. She loved the script so much; she was really, really committed. One of the first things she said to me was, “I love the script so much I don’t want to screw it up because I’m not a mom.” I said to her, “I’m not a mom either, but what really matters is even beneath this core idea of an uncanny bond between a mother and a child, is the theme of wanting something or someone you cannot have, which is a basic human desire we can all relate to.” I asked her if she could relate to it, she smiled and got it.

BD: When you pitched this idea to people, did you ever have people who wondered how you could have written it? To be this story of a mother and child bond, I’m just wondering if people questioned whether you could pull this off.

Solet: I never got any resistance; I think the story spoke for itself. It’s a really good question. For me, I always grew up surrounded by really strong, independent women, from my mom on, and if you look at who made Grace, there’s very strong women involved, like our supervising producer Rhonda Baker. When Rhonda walks onto a set, you know what’s going on. It was very important for me to be vigilant about recognizing that I am not a woman and I am not a mother and there are some things I will never understand, and for that reason it becomes even more important to solicit the opinion of women. Part of this year long rewriting process was continually soliciting the input of women and mothers, making it authentic. One of the most satisfying things about the Q&A’s we’ve done at Sundance and here is you get women saying, “I’m so amazed you did it right. It was so right, so authentic; I was so surprised to see a man walk onstage.”

BD: That’s fantastic. I couldn’t imagine a better accolade than that. This isn’t the typical film that plays Sundance. What was it like getting in there for you?

Solet: People talk a lot about “Sundance politics” and I can tell you we didn’t know anybody at Sundance. We submitted the film and they called and were so excited about the film. Any sort of doubters about Sundance loving film – whatever goes on there I don’t know – but they really embraced the film and they didn’t know whether to put it in regular dramatic competition or the midnight series, which is another compliment. The film is emotionally accessible enough that it works for everybody.

BD: You shot the short film three years ago. The script was in various stages years before you got the green light and you were ready to shoot. Now, you’re at your second festival. Has it been like a whirlwind for you after years of prep?

Solet: I love a whirlwind. That’s why I love directing. You’re forced to trust your gut, to trust the work you’ve done so far, to trust the story and to trust the script. Being on the festival circuit and talking to people about the film is the same thing. There’s no time to prepare your answers and think about what’s going on. You just talk about the film. I’m a fan first; I make movies I want to see – I’m my first audience – and that’s one of the reasons why I like being available to talk to people. I really lucked out with mentors, like Eli and Adam. They’re still fans because they go to conventions and they’re still psyched when they find an old Fulci soundtrack. That’s who we are; it’s in our blood! This actually isn’t the second festival. We went to Sundance, and then a week later we went to Gérardmer, which is an amazing French festival, and we won the jury prize there. Then we went to Scotland for Frightfest’s winter event. Everywhere it goes, the film is well received. At Sundance, you have people passing out, which you’re not going to get at SXSW; it just doesn’t happen, this is our tribe. It works viscerally, as a distressing movie that gets under your skin and works emotionally. I mean, I’m a gorehound from way back but that’s not what this story called for. In a lot of horror films, I’m three minutes in and I want the characters to die and until they do, I’m angry. That’s not this film.

BD: That’s one of the great things about the short film. In that miniscule timeframe, you actually bought into the character and at the end of it you’re totally disturbed. It’s rare for a filmmaker to capture that emotional span in such a short amount of time, like 5 or 6 minutes. It amazes me that it took as long as it did to find real financing for it.

Solet: Well, we didn’t just jump at the first offer; there were a lot of offers. It wasn’t until Adam came on board, and Adam is integrity manifested in a physical form. Believe me, I look for chinks in people’s armor and he does not have any; he is a completely selfless dude. When he came on, it was a director’s dream to turn the film over to a talented producer who really believes in your project.

BD: So what does the future hold for you?

Solet: Release plans are still speculative. As you know, in the genre we have the power of word of mouth that you do not have for traditional drama or comedy. We determine what we want to see and we raise the bar. If the fans love the film and the fans are heard, it’ll happen. As for the festival circuit, we’re going to AFI Dallas next, and from Dallas we go to Phoenix, from Phoenix we go to Boston, then San Francisco, and there are many more down the line.

BD: I’m so tired of remake after remake, and the Asian retreads. Whenever something really original comes out, it gets swept under the rug; it’s the saddest thing in the world. When I first heard that this feature had been greenlit, I thought if it’s anything like the short, it’s going to be phenomenal but how are they going to market it?

Solet: I really believe in the horror community. We have unity here like nowhere else. If you look at the comedy scene, those guys are trying to one-up each other with jokes. We always have each other’s backs. Adam Green is a perfect example. It really is our voice. If the sites get behind us and other fans, like me, talk about it, that’s great. We don’t have money; we don’t even have enough money to strike a print. We’ve got to get the fans talking.