Interview: Eli Morgan – Director (Condemned)

“Condemned” was a great film. What was it like directing?

Eli- It was my first feature film that I’ve directed but I’ve directed fashion films, music videos and also I run a bunch of companies throughout my life.

There are so many intense angles and great shots in this film. How did you come up with some of the Hitchcock inspired frames?

Eli- the VP who shot it is one of my oldest friends and he is like a champ commercial VP. We grew up skateboarding together. As soon as I got the opportunity to shoot this I immediately said I have to have Rich shoot this for me because it was somebody that I trusted and we have the same sensibility. We weren’t at each other’s throats. We both knew exactly what we wanted.

As the writer of the film do you feel you critiqued the movie a little more?

Eli- To tell you the truth, it is a completely different experience. Granted I’ve never directed a feature film with somebodies else’s work but I have done design work, artistic work or consultant work for other companies that weren’t my own company. I had a skateboard company called New York which you might have heard of. I kind of ran everything that came out of that company artistically.

 

The cast was incredible. What was it like working with such a talented cast?

Eli- I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world to get the people in my film that I did. Anthony Chisholm, I’ve always loved him in “OZ” and he sort of agreed to do the film right on scene. He read his part and read the film. We did our first table read and you know he showed up and we went through the entire table read and when we were done he was like, “what the f**k is wrong with you man? What kind of drugs were you on when you wrote this?” He is a great guy.

What advice would you offer to people who want a long-term career in this industry?

Eli- That’s a good question and I will you the single most important thing you can do to have a long career is to be a nice person and be a cool person. Unless you are Stanley Kubrick or some kind of genius who gets rid of anybody that can tell him no just so they can do what they want.

ELI’S TWITTER https://twitter.com/ocularge