Don Argott & Sheena M. Joyce – Framing John Delorean

By: Ashlee Dell’Arciprete

Q) What inspired you to do this documentary? What attracted you to the subject?

Sheena: We were actually approached back in 2009 about making a companion documentary to one of the original narratives–and here we are years later, exploring the idea of a true John Delorean documentary. And Don [Argott] and I just thought it would be fun to talk about the fact that he’s this Hollywood obsession but no one pulls it off. So, what is it about this man that feels larger than life? That feels like would be perfect for the screen but then why can’t it get made? And then having these conversations kind of encourages us to incorporate this idea of narrative scenes and then having conversations behind the scenes with Alec [Baldwin] about what all that meant and what John was thinking of in these moments, we decided to shoot the-behind-the scenes as well. So, the making of found its way in. But hopefully it’s a richer story for it.

Q) Framing John Delorean was filmed in a very interesting way as a narrative inside a documentary and there aren’t many films like that. What gave you the idea for this?

Don: I think it just gave a lot to work with. When you do a film, especially when you’re making a film, there’s so much behind the scenes stuff that goes on naturally you’re just like… “Oh man, if people knew really how hard it was to get this film made.”

Sheena: And for the record, we’re not curing cancer. We’re not roofing. We have the perspective and realize we understand we’re making a movie here and it’s not that dramatic. But it is one of those things that behind the scenes you’re really like, “Man, if people only saw the shit that goes on.” And it gives us another element to work with for this story because somebody like Alec, and Morena [Baccarin] and Josh [Charles] – They’re so thoughtful of how they approach their characters, even though we weren’t doing a full-length feature where they would really dig into the characters. But in that small amount of time that we worked, they did a lot of research and there was a lot of footage of Alec trying to get his mannerisms down. We just thought that was such a key piece of also getting under the skin of John a little bit because we’re also talking about a protagonist who’s dead so we can’t… All we have are the archival stuff there and he’s not the most well documented person either. He’s also the most dynamic person on camera of all the footage we had, so there was a way we could really fill in all the blanks with Alec as well to really get deeper into that character from the level of an actor trying to understand the motivation behind what John might have been thinking at that time or at least Alec’s perception of that. So, we just thought that was a great thing to also incorporate in that.

Q) What kind of discussions did you have with Alec about inhabiting the role of Delorean?

Don: His big thing was he just didn’t want it to be a caricature. He wanted it to feel like if he couldn’t pull the look off properly then he didn’t want to do it. So, the makeup and the hair were such a huge component for him agreeing to do the piece to begin with.

Q) Was it meant to be a play on words with having it be “framing” because he’s being framed but also within the frame of the camera?

Don: Yeah, how we portray people or how we frame them. Really this is the film that, because it’s so unique in its approach, we felt like it also needed a clever title to help audiences understand what we were trying to do because right out of the gate it’s like Alec Baldwin and a make-up chair like, “What the fuck is this? I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Sheena: Right, is this a biopic? Is this a doc? Like, what are we watching? And we realize it’s a weird one but hopefully people are excited enough and intrigued enough to kind of peel back the layers and go along for the ride.

Q) If Delorean was here and you were having coffee with him, what would you ask him?

Sheena: I would ask John Delorean what different decision would he make. Was there a turning point that if he had an opportunity to go back and say, “You know what, I’m going to choose a different path?”

Q) Do you have something planned for your next project?

Don: We have a couple of things in the works but I don’t know what’s going to come first. You know how it is, gotta throw a bunch of irons in the fire.

Framing John DeLorean held its world pPremiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

The film will be released in select theaters by Sundance Selects this summer.