Neal Dodson knows how to come out of the gate strong. The first feature film he produced with partners J.C. Chandor and Zachary Quinto was Margin Call, which was made for a pittance with an incredibly timely script and a smack-your-head- great cast (including Quinto himself, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, and even Dodson’s wife, actress Ashley Williams). That film won the Robert Altman Award at the Indie Spirits, and its script was nominated for an Oscar. His followup film, again with Quinto and Chandor, is this month’s stunning All is Lost, which stars Robert Redford. And no one else. Literally. His next project stars Javier Bardem and Jessica Chastain. Are you getting the picture yet? You can’t even say Dodson’s on the rise any more; he’s already there. Today is Part One of a four-part interview we did with the producer. Come back for Part Two tomorrow.
Paste Magazine: Let’s start out at the beginning. Where did you grow up?
Neal Dodson: I grew up in York, Pennsylvania. I went to a public high school there. My parents were both high school teachers. They grew up in York too. They sort of fell squarely into the camp of people who swore they would never go back to their home town the day that they left for college, and then found themselves back there after adventures farther away. They graduated in the same high school graduating class but didn’t know each other. They met at their five year class reunion and then ended up moving back to the town they swore they’d never return to. It’s a small little farming and commuter town. You can commute to Philly, DC, Baltimore; it’s a long commute, but you can commute to Pittsburgh. Or New York as well. Or Harrisburg as well. So, it’s sort of a suburban sprawl meets Amish farm town. I grew up there, and my father was an art teacher and my mother was an English teacher. I always thought if you stick those two things together you get what I do.
They were always really supportive of me and my younger brother in the arts. There was a small theatre in my home town called York Little Theatre. We would do plays at children’s theatre and otherwise, you know, we did twenty or thirty plays there from the time I was five years old to the time I graduated from high school. It’s really where I got my love for it. My brother was doing it because his big brother was doing it, and had no real interest in it. He’s an anthropologist now. And lives in Texas. I sort of got hooked. I was the star of all my high school musicals and all that stuff. Then I went off to college for it.
Paste: Was it that high school acting experience where you got bitten and knew that was what you wanted to do? Or was it earlier than that?
Dodson: Yeah, I was one of those obnoxious kids of which there are many-and I’m not sure I would advise most of them (myself included, maybe) to have gone on to pursue it, knowing what I know now. But yeah, I was one of those kids who was told “You’re gonna be famous,” and “Will you sign my high school program, cause that’s gonna be worth something someday!” which is of course totally ridiculous because that’s nowhere near being true and still not true, even remotely. Nor is it my goal, anymore. But yeah, from very young I knew that that was what I wanted to do in some form. I don’t think I knew, quite then, that I wanted to produce-I was still pursuing it as an actor. Although I think part of that was “What the hell does that even mean?” especially in high school…to be a producer. I sort of always was doing shows on my own and my friends and I would shoot ridiculous, offensive short films at sleepovers. But yeah, I always had a bit of a producer in me for sure, but I didn’t even really know what that job was until a little bit in college. So, I went off to one of the best drama schools in the country as an actor-with the goal of being an actor.
Paste: That was Carnegie Mellon, right?
Dodson: Yeah, That was Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Part of it leads to the formation of my company. I had met, in high school, Zachary Quinto. We had met at a summer acting program in 1994 where, as I joke, he played a much better Mercutio to my Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet. We met in 1994 and stayed in touch. He was a year older than me and went off to college in the year of 1995 at Carnegie Mellon, and then I joined him a year later in 1996. That’s also where I met my other partner, Corey. And then the directors or some of our projects and a lot of the other people we’ve worked with and the writing of our graphic novel and all this different stuff. A lot of these relationships were certainly formed at Carnegie.
I was there as an actor. In the summers I would go off and do summer stock; Shakespeare in southern Utah or bad musicals outside of Philadelphia. Or, wherever it might be. While I was there, my sophomore year, was the first time I’d ever really produced anything. I produced a stage production of a dark German play called Woyzeck which is also an Opera called Wozzeck but it’s the same basic story-it’s this old German play. I did that in a basement at Carnegie Mellon-in a basement. I built the theatre and I ran a four month advertising campaign that we did for free. I went and sought out the actors that I thought were the coolest including the most beautiful and talented senior actress in the school and she said yes to coming and doing my little play in the basement. And I adapted from five different translations of the play and made sure that the play was exactly what I wanted to do, and that the play had special effects, and it was terribly adapted and terribly directed. But really well produced.
The first time anybody said anything about me being a producer-my friend, Victor Quinaz who just directed our movie that came out this year called Breakup at a Wedding so we’re still friends although he’s a director now, not an actor-the first time anybody ever said it was after that production of Woyzeck, he gave me a postcard, I still have it, that said “Those are some dark woods you took us through, my friend” which was certainly true“I had a revelation about you today. What an amazing producer you would make. That’s a high compliment. Congratulations,” and I still have that today. Nobody had ever said that to me nor had thought about it.