Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe Interview The Beta Test

Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe Interview: The Beta Test

The Beta Test co-writers, co-directors, and co-stars Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe discuss their new thriller, satirizing Hollywood, and more.

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Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe Interview The Beta Test

The Beta Test is a thriller centering on soon-to-be-married Hollywood agent Jordan Hines as he receives a mysterious letter promising an anonymous, no-strings-attached sexual encounter, which subsequently puts him on a dark path of lies, infidelity, and digital data. Co-writers and co-directors Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe lead the film’s cast that also includes Virginia Newcomb and Jessie Barr.

In anticipation for the film’s wide release, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with Cummings and McCabe to discuss crafting the film’s intricate system, McCabe making his directorial debut, the duo’s desire to take down Hollywood, and more.

Screen Rant: I’m curious, how did the concept for The Beta Test come about?

Jim Cummings: So we had the idea for the letter service first, where it was like an analog spam email like meet a Russian bride [chuckles]. It was just funny to us how getting something in the mail would change your thinking about it, you wouldn’t throw it away. You’d be like, “Maybe this is [important]” or I don’t know, can completely derail someone’s life.

PJ McCabe: If it was so specific to you and so ornate, you’d have to take it seriously and be like, “Who would send me this?”

Jim Cummings: Yeah, so that was kind of the genesis of the project and then we just kept talking about it, we spent like a year thinking about what kind of a person would actually do this, would take the risk, and go and do this stupid thing. Because we both wouldn’t, like that’s ridiculous, you’d get murdered [laughs]. So that was the origin of the process and then we started talking about lying and cheating and we’re both living in Hollywood and kind of wanted to make fun of the agency world. We thought that being in an agency is ground zero for liars and cheaters, so I was like, “Alright, well, f**k it.”

The whole WGA packaging fight thing was happening, and that was all about cheating and lying, so we incorporated that into it. Also, PJ did all this research of what it would be like to actually run this service and how you would connect people on the internet, so then it became about big data and how you’d run an algorithm to connect people based on their search histories and their public social platforms. So then the movie kind of becomes like The Social Network for about five minutes.

Then we tried to loop all of these things together because they were all connected like the agency world is suffering because they used to connect people, but now we have real social networks that connect people. So that utility is kind of becoming less useful or less sought after, so it was just kind of interesting to us. It was like, “This is a movie, we should just start writing it,” and so we wrote it.

PJ McCabe: It started with the weird envelope and snowballed into this crazy, chaotic, complicated [sexy] L.A. Noire thriller.

Jim Cummings: Yeah and a Korean horror film by the end, it’s super weird. [Chuckles]

PJ McCabe: That’s also a comedy.

Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe Interview The Beta Test

So PJ, how did the decision for you come about to not only be the co-writer but also co-direct the movie with Jim?

PJ McCabe: It kind of happened very organically. Jim and I’ve been writing together for years, but this was kind of the first project where we came up with it from the ground up, and we were doing it out loud already. I don’t know if there was ever a conversation where we were like, “Okay and we’re gonna direct this one together too.” It just happened as we got closer to production like, “Let’s just do it together. Let’s just both kind of co-direct this, it’s kind of both of our idea and vision, not just writing it, but let’s just put it up together.”

Jim Cummings: The way that we make movies is kind of all-out loud and the way we write them specifically is all out loud. So like we were already sculpting the movie, we’re already directing it in the writers’ room and so then I was like, “Well f**k it, I have no ego, let’s just do it together. We’re already doing it, so let’s like actually just bully the producers into letting us both do it.”

PJ McCabe: And they never really put up a fight, nobody ever really cared. They were like, “Cool, you guys are a weird duo who does weird stuff like this, go ahead, go make your movie.” Now here we are and now we want to direct a bunch of stuff together. It’s great.

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Jim Cummings: It was it was a huge mistake.

PJ McCabe: Yeah, you never should have opened this box, dude, you completely derailed your career, you’re in big trouble. [Laughs]

So then what was it like making that transition into the director’s chair?

PJ McCabe: Honestly, I was definitely nervous, but it was great. It was a lot of fun. It really was because Jim and I have been doing this out loud for so long and luckily we were on a set with a lot of close friends and people that we trust. I never really felt intimidated. I think if I had started on a set that was a big studio set, I would have been really freaking out.

But the fact that it was a lot of producers I’ve worked with and crew that I’ve worked with and – it also helps for your first feature, I always recommend you direct it with Steven Soderbergh, who knows how to do everything. He knows how to edit, who’s also acting in it, who knows the camera, who knows how to do everything, because it makes things a lot easier. So it was great. I honestly had so much fun and it felt really natural and now I have the bug and I want to keep doing it because it was a lot of fun.

Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe Interview The Beta Test

Since you do bring up someone who does so many different things, Jim this was interesting to see you come back to the editor’s chair as well after handing off the reins to other people with Wolf of Snow Hollow. What was that like for you, taking that on again for this one?

Jim Cummings: It was great. I think editing is probably my strong suit. I think directing is just an avenue towards editing for me where you get to say, “Actually, we don’t need this many shots in the scene, it’s just gonna be these two, and it’ll cut right here and I know that that will work because I’ve been an editor for 20 years or whatever.” So it was really great to be able to come back into the edit and because I didn’t have final cut – I still love Wolf of Snow Hollow, but the studio wouldn’t give me final cut, which is fine, the movie is better than my stupid version of it. [chuckles]

But to have left that experience and talk to the producers and say, “I’m gonna make this movie and I’m going to make every decision in this movie, and nobody gets to tell me a g**d*mn thing” and they were like, “Go do it.” Then PJ and I had 16 months to edit the film, I edited it on the computer I’m talking to you through, and then we did the full mix down in here, we got speakers from Guitar Center and then returned them after 45 days so that we could actually afford a 5.1 mix.

But we did everything on our own and every editing decision that went into the film is PJ and me and nobody else, which is so fulfilling. Even if people are like, “That’s a weird movie,” it’s like, “Yeah, but I had complete creative control” and that rarely happens in the film industry.

What was it like doing the post-production process during the pandemic, since you wrapped just prior to everything shutting down?

Jim Cummings: We already knew that it was probably going to take a year to do the edit of the film and do all the mix and stuff, it’s usually how long it takes to make something very good. So PJ and I were already prepared to be spending months doing it and we were already getting rejected from film festivals in the summer or whatever, so it’s like, “Alright, well let’s just keep making it until it’s perfect, then someone will take us seriously.”

So we didn’t really have a deadline. It sucked for PJ because he had to get tested, then come and stay with me for a week or so and then we would do it in these fits and starts, and it was very lonely because it was just me doing it. Then we couldn’t organize test screenings so that always sucks.

But we’d already had that experience with Wolf of Snow Hollow because it came out in October of 2020, so nobody had seen it in the crowd until like three weeks [prior to release]. So I don’t know, it was different, but I really liked it. It felt like I was waking up and going to work every day in the garage and making a little movie.

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PJ McCabe: Honestly, thank God we had this to work on. We had considered pushing the shoot into 2020 before, obviously, we knew, and thank God we didn’t, we probably never would have shot it and then we’d really be in trouble. So it was nice to have this to work on through the chaos of 2020.

I was going to say this is definitely a film that would have been challenging, I think, to shoot during the pandemic.

PJ McCabe: It would have been impossible.

Jim Cummings: I don’t think we’d have done it. I didn’t shoot anything during the pandemic because I’ve been treating it like it’s 28 Days Later. My dad is 84, so I don’t think we would have done it.

PJ McCabe: We never would have been able to afford the testing, we never would have been able to do any of that. It would have been impossible.

With films like this and Eyes Wide Shut, so much of the intrigue is the mystery behind how the secretive society works, so when it came to building how yours worked and the reveal, what were some of the biggest challenges for figuring out that structure and the reveal?

Jim Cummings: We definitely did a bunch of tech research of how you would scrape data to connect people and then PJ was the most adamant about that, of like, “If we’re gonna be talking about building a business and having this guy run this letter service, it’s got to actually work and we have to have all of the answers for how you do it on your own from a basement, for how Johnny PayPal did it.”

So literally it was months of just researching this stuff, off and on, of how you do it, we had a friend of ours build the algorithm of how you’d connect people, build the program that Johnny PayPal uses in the movie, which is terrifying. It was just nerdy stuff of going through blogs and asking questions and Reddit was very helpful. Then for the agency stuff, it was the same thing; I would tweet about being interested in the agency world and the agency war and would anybody want to talk to me, and it was just long phone calls and meetings and stuff.

We ended up building that world to try and make it seem as authentic as possible because we knew if we’re making jokes about people that are powerful, it’s got to be right, it can’t be synthetic. So it was just a long time of research, unfortunately.

PJ McCabe: Yeah, the deviousness of on-the-surface Hollywood and that whole political dynamic and also the deviousness of under-the-surface data mining and intersecting the two. Just a lot of research and just trying to make sure this is something that would actually work.

Jim Cummings: To be entirely honest, we are Johnny PayPal. The whole metaphor is that we are able to do stuff using the internet in our basement that is derailing Hollywood, and the whole thing is this bizarre, stupid, double f**k you to the film industry. [Laughs] Because we are these termites that have invaded this house and started to spread the rumors that you can make movies on your own. It’s very fulfilling.

With that all in mind, how has it been for you guys to finally bring this to festivals and see the early positive response from everybody who’s seen it?

Jim Cummings: It’s f**king amazing.

PJ McCabe: It’s a relief, it’s awesome. Dude, we swung for the fences, so I’m so happy that people are responding to it and getting it because there’s a lot going on and I’m glad people are appreciating the final product.

Jim Cummings: To me, it’s fulfilling that the jokes work. PJ and I were laughing, but it’s good to know in a crowd at Tribecca everybody bursts into laughter, that’s really fulfilling as a comic. But then also, I have this weird psychosis of wanting to champion independent film and feeling like I have to be the person carrying the torch or whatever.

So the fact that we were able to spread the rumor that you can make movies on your own with your buddies and have it play on the world stage – we got into Berlinale, we got into festivals we have no business being in, but it’s fulfilling man.

It’s great to be able to say that you can do this and to actually deliver and to inspire people to go and do it themselves. It’s another f**k you to the film industry, who makes these people feel terrible and inadequate.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/beta-test-movie-jim-cummings-pj-mccabe-interview/

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