My feet are killing me, we need to stop.
Whatever.
What do you mean, whatever?
You're the one who brought us here.
Yeah, and I'll get us home, too.
Can you just figure out where we are, please?
Look, I know exactly where we're going, just trust me.
I'll get us where we need to go.
We're lost.
- We're not lost. - We're lost,
and you need to admit it.
Look, check this out, all right?
So...
I know we started here.
Yes.
So, I'm pretty sure we are
- here! - Lost!
What?
Dad!
- Dad! - Yeah, I'm here.
It was a bad dream?
- Dad, I was so scared! - Okay.
How bad was it, hmm?
How bad was it, one to ten?
- Ten. - Ten?
Oh, that's pretty bad.
Remember what we talked about?
Dreams aren't real.
They scare you, but they can't hurt you.
Okay?
- Good night. - No!
Dad, stay.
Please stay here.
So, as long as this line, right here,
stays connected to the diver,
he'll never get lost.
You're not scared in the caves?
Little bit.
But it's good to be scared sometimes.
Makes you feel like you can take on anything.
Plus when you're down here,
it's beautiful.
It's like this
amazing place. You... you get to see things down there
that no one's ever seen before, ever.
It's like real-life magic.
You'll see it. I'll take you down there.
One day. And you'll love it.
Please don't go tomorrow.
I have a really bad feeling.
Is this your bad dream?
I don't wanna talk about it.
Well, I'm not going to the caves tomorrow.
You're not?
Mmm-mmm.
Where are you going?
I'm going to the lake.
I'm just gonna try on some equipment down there.
Dad?
Hmm?
Can you read me a story?
No. It's bedtime.
Please...
Mom already did.
But you're way more fun when you read.
Well, that's true. That's true, but we're not gonna tell your mom that.
Okay, fine, fine. Just one. Pick one, but only one.
Oh...
- Good choice. This is your new one, right? - Yep.
Okay.
"Take a deep breath."
You think he's gonna make it?
Well...
Still plenty of pages left, so...
I think we're good.
But what if he lets go?
What do you mean?
Like, what if he just lets go?
He can't hang there forever, could he?
What, he just gives up?
Yeah, like...
What if he just does that? Then it's over, right?
Well, he would probably...
I think he's gonna make it.
- You do? - Oh, yeah.
You see this little raccoon here?
He lost his parents, right?
So, he's gonna do whatever it takes to find them.
Because he needs them.
Just like you and me. We need each other.
But what if...
If he never does?
And...
He's all alone.
I'm not gonna be alone, right?
You won't ever have to think about that for a very long time.
I'm done with this stupid book.
- I wanna read something else. - Hey, hey, hey.
Let's go find out what happens?
Huh? Your little raccoon friend, he's hanging there, look.
He's hanging there with his little paws.
His little baby fur paws.
Baby fur paws.
Sometimes in life,
you just get problems that you don't see coming.
But you face them...
You face them and you persevere.
That's what he's trying to do.
He's trying to persevere.
I guess. But what happens to him?
Well, let's find out.
Hey!
Help!
Help me!
Help!
Hey!
Help. Help me!
Hello.
Hello!
Is anyone there? Hello?
Talk to me!
Careful... Get hold of yourself.
You can do this!
Ouch!
Hey, it was just getting good.
I don't think you're gonna like where this is going.
You want to keep reading it, Dad.
Not all fairy tales have the happiest endings.
Yes, they do. They always do.
Remember that book I read you, last week,
um, Hansel and Gretel?
The one with the old witch in the house?
Mmm-hmm. Well, in the original story,
they never left the house.
What happened to them?
The witch bakes them into pies,
and then you know what she does?
She took them and she...
- Ate them? - Ate them.
Yeah, mmm-hmm.
- That's scary. - Yeah, I know.
See, they would write these scary endings
to... frighten the kids
and hopefully teach them some lessons.
Like a school?
Like, don't talk to strangers
and always listen to your parents.
Do adults learn from them, too?
What's that supposed to mean?
All right, that's enough for tonight.
We'll finish tomorrow.
It's bedtime.
Can you stay with me till I fall asleep?
- Sure. - Okay.
- Good night. - Good night.
Honey?
Robbins 29.
Robbins 29. Come in.
Over.
Robbins 29. Robbins 29. Location, over.
Hello? Hello? Hello?
Who is this?
Robbins 29.
Can you help me? Help me.
Where is the rest of your team?
There's no team.
There's no team. I was swimming.
I was dropped off here.
And I don't know where I am. I don't know where I am!
I need somebody. I need someone to get me.
Dropped with what team?
- My name is... - Dropped with what team? Over.
Who is this?
- Who is this? - USFS.
Who?
United States Forest Service.
Help me. Help me. Help me.
Hello?
Yes, I'm getting your location
and we'll send someone to you now.
Oh...
You shouldn't be here.
What? What did you say?
Are you listening to me?
You're not supposed to be here.
Do you want me to read you another story?
No.
I don't want another story.
Let me tell you a story.
My dream, I saw you.
In a strange room, a room that could change its shape.
You stood there for so long,
for so long, you didn't know what to do.
I couldn't do anything to help.
I could see the door for you to leave,
but I couldn't tell you where it was.
And every time you turned to see that door, it was gone.
I could see on your face that you were so scared.
Then I watched the room get smaller...
- Honey, honey, honey. - Shh.
Look at me.
I can't because I don't want you to see it.
See what?
To see...
Ouch!
Okay, look at me, look at me.
Dad...
What?
Do you feel it?
Feel what?
You're on fire!
Wake up! Wake up!
Wake up!
USFS.
USFS, come in.
Roger. This is USFS.
Robbins 29, do you copy? What is your position?
I don't know!
Triangulating your coordinates.
Robbins 29, there is a ranger tower half a mile due east.
We'll send a chopper...
Charlotte.
Charlotte!
Hey! Hey! Hey!
Charlotte!
Hey! Hey! Are you all right?
Wait.
Wait!
Hey!
Is there anyone there?
Hey!
Come on.
You ready?
Are you ready?
I love you.
What is it?
Thank you.
No, leave it on.
Bye, Dad.
Bye, hon.
All right. That was "The scuba diver in the tree."
One of my favorite, favorite, urban legends.
It's just so completely insane,
and I'm now joined by the director, Mike Gallant.
- Mike, welcome. - Thank you for having me.
All right. So, there was a big discussion about this episode.
And a lot of people told me it was unfilmable,
or too crazy,
or, "How you're gonna pull this off?"
And of course, the answer is, "I don't have to."
"The director has to," but I...
I fought so hard for this episode,
um, because it's one of those urban legends
I just wanted to see rendered.
Tell me about what excites you about it
and what's your approach?
Like, how were you gonna pull this off?
So, I'm actually in agreement with you
in terms of the excitement around the scuba diver myth.
As soon as I was told that's what we were doing,
I was very excited because
we would make it a lot more about the scuba diver himself
and we put our own spin on it, whereas,
"Okay, he didn't die from the fall.
He's actually in the forest, in the fire
and he's using his own oxygen tank,"
which makes sense obviously being a scuba diver,
to keep himself alive for as long as possible.
When I saw that we were taking that approach to it,
I got really excited because this sort of became a survival, uh, story.
But overall I just find that the scuba diver myth itself
is just a really, really great urban legend.
Is just a really, really great urban legend.
Is it true? Did it really happen? Did it not happen?
Could it happen?
Yeah, it's... It is...
Well, the best urban legends live in that zone,
- where it's so absurd... - Yes.
That you'd think, "Well, that could happen.
- "That is a freak acc... Freak accidents happen." - Yeah.
"The Scuba Diver," what I liked about the episode
is that anytime you have kind of the velociraptor in the kitchen,
you know, something completely out of context
- in the wrong place... - Right.
It's instantly unsettling.
If you're in a forest fire, the oxygen tank, if it doesn't explode,
- is the thing that's gonna save your life. - Yeah.
But now you gotta walk around in this wet suit.
What do you do if it's burned
- and sticking to your skin? - Yeah.
I mean, it's literally a contained horror film.
What I love about this episode and this story in particular
is that it falls in that category of pure cinema.
No, dialogue, just camera work.
There's no talking. It's all, like, a kinet...
And in this case it will be some kinetic, visceral cinema.
Talk about that kind of approach,
where you're shooting the scene
that, you know, other than the father and daughter,
there's not a lot of dialogue.
Yeah, so you have to definitely get a very strong performer.
That's directing 101, I guess you'd say,
and fortunately we have someone really great,
Nick Smyth, uh, who is carrying
this whole thing sort of on his shoulders.
I told him, I was like, "This is gonna be rough.
This is gonna be hard. You're, you know,
you're gonna get your ass kicked for about four days."
- And he's in a scuba suit. - Yes, on top of that, and...
I mean, I went outside in a T-shirt at 100 degrees and I was hot.
Being in a scuba suit, you know, walking and doing the shot
- of someone with flippers... - Right.
- Trying to... It's such an absurd image. - Yeah.
And I think that the best urban legends.
And I think that the best urban legends
- weirdly have an element of absurdity to them. - Right.
You're like, "That's so crazy. How could that ever happen?"
But it did happen.
Because someone you know
- knew someone who knew someone... - Right.
That swore that it happened.
That's the thing about this myth,
um, I would say even more so than,
uh, all the other ones in my opinion,
my humble opinion, is that
everyone swears this has happened,
you know, California or France were these big locations.
It happened in the '80s.
Somebody swears by it.
Planning a shoot like this,
how much is practical fire?
What can you do with a flame bar?
What are you doing with LED screens?
What's CGI?
How do you break that down in your head?
And as a director, what do you like to use?
Right. Well,
in terms of the locations that we were
in terms of the locations that we were...
They're very fickle about
just how much we are able to bring fire into it,
understandably in the middle of the summer.
Um, so we're using a lot of visual effects
to portray the fire itself,
- but we're using a lot of smoke machines. - Mmm-hmm.
- Um, and our great DOP has flickering LEDs that... - Mmm-hmm.
Not just LEDs but bigger lights than that
that we're sort of lining our whole forest set with,
so that it's constantly flickering on the scuba diver as he's going.
So that it's constantly flickering on the scuba diver as he's going.
And we were having a lot of conversations,
and, you know, finding the best angles and everything to utilize
and just make it as believable as humanly possible.
I was going through a lot of different films for references for this.
And obviously nowadays they play it a lot more safe and lot of CG fire,
which is completely understandable.
But when, you know, you think about stuff that
performers such as yourself go through
because you had to deal with Tarantino's wall of fire
while you were shooting Inglourious Basterds,
- and... - I almost died.
- Yeah. - Crazy.
- Not on purpose, but... - Of course. Of course.
If the fire got much closer.
They'd done, like, a bunch of tests,
but they never tested the fire with the flags on the scene.
But even on camera when you see how close you are...
- Yeah. - To that wall of fire,
you know, it just... It makes you unnerved.
I had no frame of reference
for what that level of pain was.
'Cause it... They... It was... They said, "It won't get"
closer than 20 feet," and it was right up over us
and I couldn't gel my hands...
Yeah, that's the thing, right, you didn't have protection.
- My hands were so burned and... - Right.
I passed out after it.
They said another... It was... It was multiplying.
You see a swastika fall in the film.
That wasn't supposed to happen.
- Oh, okay. - The steel liquified. It was 2,000 degrees.
They said that another 30 seconds,
the structure we're on would have collapsed.
So, Mike, tell us, uh, just a bit about,
for people that aren't familiar with your work,
that are gonna see this episode for the first time,
tell us a little bit about yourself,
where you started, what you're doing,
other work of yours that they could see,
where they can find your stuff.
So, I've... I've actually worked a lot as an editor
so I've, uh, edited a lot of feature films
and many horror films, actually,
so that's sort of how I got into the whole thing.
How did all those years of editing.
How did all those years of editing
prepare you for directing?
I think literally editing is probably one of the best
ways to learn how to direct, personally.
Uh, even writing, too, because you see all the mistakes.
And then you see how you have to fix it.
You know immediately if you're shooting something,
"All right, that's not gonna make the cut.
That's not gonna work."
We don't have the reverse of that.
"I need a transition from this scene to this scene."
As an editor now directing, do you pre-edit a scene before you go shoot it?
Do you, like, play it in your head going,
"I need that, that, that, that"?
Or you're doing that while you're cutting?
I believe when I sort of make my shot list initially,
that's sort of where my head is at.
When I'm on set, I try
and just sort of live more in the moment
and just make sure that the performances
are getting out. Like, I really care a lot about performances.
So, where can people follow you?
Yes, so I'm on Instagram,
Helix Reel, R-E-E-L, Ent.
- I'm very, very easily, uh, Google-able. - Awesome.
Easy to find on Google.
No, I want people to watch this and check you out.
No, I want people to watch this and check you out
and follow you and see your other works.
I really appreciate that.
I think your stuff is really fantastic.
Thanks, man, I appreciate that.
Great job, man.
It was, uh, really a pleasure to sit down with you.