Follow the tapes.
World Premiering tonight at SXSW is The Signal director Jacob Gentry‘s thriller Broadcast Signal Intrusion, billed as “an unsettling journey into our collective technological nightmares, confronting our deepest, darkest fears of both man and machine.”
“While logging tapes of decades-old TV broadcasts, video archivist James discovers a surreal and disturbing clip that James believes is the product of a mysterious broadcast signal hacking. His discovery takes a sinister turn when he tracks down similar broadcast intrusions that send him on an obsessive mission. Now James must confront two very real possibilities: that the videos may be clues to a crime beyond all comprehension; and that whoever was behind them may be very aware that James is coming uncomfortably close to the truth.”
The coolest aspect of Broadcast Signal Intrusion is that it was inspired by actual broadcast interruptions that occurred in Chicago in the late 1980s, and remain unsolved to this day.
“It’s inspired in large part by a 1987 event known as ‘The Max Headroom Incident‘ where video pirates hijacked the broadcasts of two different Chicago TV stations on the same night,” Gentry tells Bloody Disgusting ahead of tonight’s premiere. “They hacked the signal of both the nightly news on WGN and ‘Doctor Who’ on the PBS affiliate with bizarre videos of someone wearing a Max Headroom mask with strange distorted ranting over eerie feedback sounds. It was considered a federal crime at the time, but even after a long FBI investigation the case still remains unsolved to this day.”
“Broadcast Signal Intrusion is set in the late 90s and is a kind of historical fiction of similar events that focuses on a video archivist discovering them while transferring decade-old videotapes,” he adds, explaining how the real-life event influenced the story of the film. “Even though our version of the intrusions is fictionalized, there are many interesting parallels between fact and fiction.”
Cautioned with a spoiler warning, the tapes presented in Broadcast Signal Intrusion all feature an absolutely horrifying android.
“The concept of the creepy android was in Phil and Tim’s original script,” he reveals. “Then once we began designing it, a creepypasta from the early days of Youtube called “I Feel Fantastic” aka “Tara The Android” was a primary touchstone for the aesthetic. Once we began creating the pop-cultural ephemera within the world of our story such as the 80s sitcom character, SAL-E Sparks, which would’ve inspired our fictional video pirates, we cross-pollinated that with Tara the Android and a host of other unsettling video artifacts from the recesses of our disturbed minds. Then ‘Dan Martin’ turned it into silicone-based nightmare fuel.”
While Broadcast Signal Intrusion reminds this writer of investigative horror such as The Ring or even Mothman Prophecies, Gentry shares the many influences from film to filmmaker.
“The biggest inspiration for the approach came from all the movies in the Paranoia Thriller or Conspiracy Thriller subgenre that had its prime in the 1970s with movies like Alan J. Pakula’s “Paranoia Trilogy”: Klute, Parallax View, and All The President’s Men,” Gentry reveals. “BSI is sort of a 70s paranoia thriller recontextualized with a more modern setting for a contemporary audience. And since the story concerns a kind of forensic analysis of videotapes, it’s in dialogue with the triptych of Antonioni’s Blow-up, Coppola’s The Conversation, and De Palma’s Blow Out. I’m by no means putting BSI at the level of these masterworks, but those are definitely its antecedents.
“Actually, I’d say Brian De Palma is probably the single biggest influence on me as a filmmaker so of course the look, feel, and especially some of the set pieces are very much inspired by his work.”
As for what Gentry hopes fans will take away from Broadcast Signal Intrusion: “We were attempting to make a movie that’s a fascinating character study of a grieving widower on an obsessive search for answers, a surreal journey through a labyrinth of interesting characters that blur the line between dream and reality, and the kind of intriguing mystery that leaves enough room in the imagination to inspire some heated discussion in the ‘parking lot’ afterward.
“But the most interesting interpretations are always the ones that the audience gleans for themselves. And I’m excited to see what they are.”
Broadcast Signal Intrusion will be World Premiering at SXSW 2021 tonight, March 16 at 9pm EST.
