The Escort – An Interview with Michael Doneger

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By Nicole Holland

Lyndsy Fonseca and Rumer Willis in THE ESCORT.

Independent Film Quarterly caught up with Writer-Producer-Actor Michael Doneger after the World Premiere of THE ESCORT at the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival. In the film, Doneger plays Mitch, a lonely sex-addicted journalist who stumbles into the world of high-class escorts when he starts seeing a Stanford-educated prostitute. IFQ enjoyed chatting with Doneger about the catalyst for his film, the writing process and double standards.

IFQ: Regarding your latest film THE ESCORT, what’s the backstory that led to its making?

Michael Doneger (MD): I had just finished editing my first indie film THIS THING WITH SARAH, and was trying to figure out what story I wanted to tell next. I was tossing around a couple ideas when my friend told me he was dating a stripper. That immediately stuck with me and I thought about expanding upon that. So I decided to go a little further, and made her a prostitute. Artistic licensing, right? Then Brandon Cohen (my co-writer) and I began writing this story about a guy dating a prostitute, and eventually the story evolved into the guy having a lot of baggage of his own as we pushed the envelope a little more and made him a sex addict.

IFQ: You play a sex-addicted journalist. How did you go about researching for your role?

MD: There’s quite a debate about sex addiction and whether or not it’s a real thing. Early on in researching, I chose not to judge if it was a real thing or not and decided to study up on addiction itself. What makes people addicted to drugs or alcohol or pain medication? What are they running from? That’s the approach I took and tried my best to apply it to the world of being obsessed with sex.

IFQ: Which of your own qualities did you bring to the table in this particular role?

MD: I think I play earnest really well, and that was a trait I didn’t think I had to shy away from for this role because here’s a guy who is thrown into this world of high class prostitution, and we wanted it to be a sort of fish out of water story. I think that quality added to his naiveté and contrasts others in this world appropriately for the story we were telling.

IFQ: What did you learn about yourself?

MD: We learn something new about ourselves everyday don’t we? Let’s come back to that question. [Laughs.]

IFQ: In your character’s case, the film also deals with social media and dating apps. Do you think Millennials will relate to his experiences? What’s the feedback been like from this particular demographic?

MD: I actually had no experience with these apps before we began filming. But in the last six months or so, I’ve experimented with these apps and it’s absolutely crazy! Dating is literally at your fingertips. I’ve been on dates with girls and while on those dates you get a notification on your phone that you’ve matched with another girl from one of the apps. It’s kind of weird. It’s the ultimate numbers game. I’m still new to it all, but I don’t think the dating apps are for me. It feels like you’re playing a game on your phone, when the objective is to meet someone you connect with. But then the apps keep sending you more and more people. And you’re only human… So you look at those people… It takes a lot of courage to go up to a girl at a bar and start up a conversation, and I find those to be pivotal moments in a man’s life. That’s not an easy thing to do. And sometimes the girl likes you and you have a nice conversation and sometimes she flashes her ring finger and you see a giant rock on there, and sometimes they turn away because they’re just not interested. But all three of those scenarios are vital to a man’s development and the apps are a big hindrance to that. Plus, as a writer, I get such better material going up to random girls and starting a conversation that I ever get on a dating app.

IFQ: The film also touches on the current subject of bullying.  During the writing process, did the Belle Knox/Duke University scandal inspire the backstory behind one of the characters?

MD: We actually finished the script before the Belle Knox story came about, but that was certainly a topic of conversation as we were filming. We noticed that these stories were actually happening, and it made it much more real for us.

IFQ: There’s always been this double standard when it comes to sex. Do you feel that Mitch and Natalie (the escort) are in fact similar and equal in their own ways?

MD: There is definitely a double standard when it comes to sex unfortunately. Guys are celebrated for their sexual conquests and girls are shamed for it. But we didn’t want Mitch to be celebrated, nor did we want him to feel like he accomplished something after sleeping with a girl. Mitch sleeps with girls to fill the voids of being alone, working in a sad field as an obituary writer, and I’d characterize him as being a little depressed. He does it more as a hobby, where Natalie sleeps with guys out of necessity to pay her bills and student loans, and the fact that she was sex shamed on the internet and can’t get a “regular” job. So their motivations for sleeping with other people are different, but their solitary existences are quite similar.

IFQ: The film features strong performances. How did you get Lyndsy Fonseca, Rumer Willis and Bruce Campbell on board?

MD: We were so lucky to get Lyndsy attached as our escort. It’s important to have all hands on deck when making an indie film, as we don’t have the luxury of having trailers for talent and other nice amenities (but I will say our craft food was quite good!), and for someone like Lyndsy, who works a lot in the studio system world of film and television, to shoot 14 out of 17 long days with us and be a total trooper while doing it was critical to the overall filmmaking process. With Lyndsy we sent her agent the script with an offer, he liked it enough to have Lyndsy read it. When she liked it we met with her and we hit it off from the very beginning.

I actually share an agent with Rumer and he suggested Rumer for “Dana”. After watching some of her material I thought she’d be great. We met, she liked the role, and then boom, we had our “Dana”.

Bruce was a similar situation in that we’re repped by the same agency so the degree of separation wasn’t so far, but this is Bruce friggin Campbell after all. You don’t meet Bruce Campbell in a meeting and see if he’s right for the role. You make the role work for Bruce Campbell… And when we heard he liked the script and wanted to do it, we couldn’t have been more thrilled.

IFQ: Tell us a bit about any challenges you had with the script and production.

MD: That’s funny; I was just talking to Brandon Cohen about this yesterday about how the scripting process is the most peaceful process of it all. It all started with an idea. Then the scripting stage began, when Brandon and I spent about three months getting the script where we wanted it (and then of course your typical small tweaks all the way through the shooting draft). So the writing process was actually the most stress free. I’m sure that’s not the case when you’re working for a studio and you’re getting noted to death, but we were just two guys writing a story that we wanted to see up on the screen.

Once we finished writing, I brought the script to my friend Blake Goza, who has a very good sense of the market place and we began raising money. The money raise came at a good time, as it was right when my first film was being released on VOD, so we drafted off of that momentum. Like anything, there are plenty of highs and lows during a production. All you can do is make the best hires you can, from talent to the crew, and hope everyone understands these are going to be long days, and we have to make our day, because we don’t have the extra money for more days. So as long as we made our day, that was a win.

IFQ: When writing the script, was there a specific message you wanted to convey?

MD: We loved the idea about these two outcasts – a prostitute and a sex addict – falling for each other, and how they share this common bond that circulates around sex.

IFQ: Any upcoming projects?

MD: Yes, I’m actually in the middle of putting together my next indie feature from a script I wrote – a coming of age story of sorts about a minor league baseball player who is approaching 30 and has never sniffed the major leagues. I feel like I’ll always be writing some version of a coming of age story no matter how old I get. I have a serious case of Peter Pan syndrome.

The Orchard acquired all North American rights to THE ESCORT. The Orchard will release the film on July 28th in the U.S. and Canada across all VOD platforms, including iTunes. Foreign sales are being handled by Taylor & Dodge.