When it was announced that “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors” would be among the films showing at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, the feature became an instant talker. The movie follows Ricky, an autistic teenage boy who runs away from home to wander the subway in the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy. As the first film to tackle the horrific event in New York City history, “Stand Clear” had a lot to live up to.
But that it did — among critics, buzz is strong that the film may take away the top prize in its category. We caught up with director Sam Fleischner, a 30-year-old who until the storm called the Rockaways his home, to discuss his vision for the movie and how Sandy changed everything.
New York Post: You started this film before “Sandy” meant hurricane. Why did you choose to center the film in the Rockaways?
Fleischner: For one, The Rockaways are on the ocean, which is an amazing cinematic environment. Architecturally, it’s a very diverse landscape with these high rises and also these low-laying houses that have been neglected, so a lot of them are just in the midst of decay. There’s a lot of low-lying power lines and streets that are constantly being torn up and repaved in the worst of ways. There’s also an amazing community that I love. It’s actually what I consider home more than anywhere else. So I was excited to treat that as another character in the film.
It also seems like the subway is a character in the film.
Fleischner: Yeah, definitely. Given the themes in this movie, the train represents a metal dragon that the kid is kind of tapped to ride — he has to go and ride this dragon for awhile in order to come out on the other side. And he has to experience these different things and going into complete darkness in order to emerge in the light. I wanted to treat and shoot the train as much like an organism as possible. A lot of that came from the sound design and using the air breaks and the doors to establish these rhythms of breath and movement.
It was interesting to notice which subway stations Ricky ended up at. How did you determine which to use?
Fleischner: It usually had to do with architecture. I had photographed every station on the A line going into the projects. And some are much more interesting than others. The 181st station I chose because that’s a really beautiful station. That one, as well as 190th. They’re like true tunnels — if you look down where the train goes, it’s a round shape, instead of a square shape. I wanted him walking into that form. There aren’t that many that are like that actually.
What were you doing when the storm hit?
Fleischner: Well, I filmed a little bit. There’s that one shot where the waves are just wailing. I shot that, and I shot a fair amount of stuff on a small video camera in my house, just as a document for myself, less than for the movie. But then when it got really serious, I put the camera down. My house started flooding, and we retreated to the upstairs floor of the house to drink Jack Daniel’s and hope the windows didn’t come crashing in. I was with my two housemates and good friends, who I shared this house with for awhile. We watched their cars float away, and we watched the transformers on the power line explode. It was pretty scary.
Did you evacuate?
Fleischner: I didn’t. There was no leaving at a certain point. You’d see people trying to drive away when the surge began, and they were just getting stuck. There was already too much water at that point. The storm was on Monday, and I left on the following Friday.
Did you think about stopping the film at that point?
Fleischner: I wasn’t that motivated to finish the film because it seemed so trivial and insignificant compared to what had just happened. My friend and neighbor had a heart attack the day after the storm — he was an older guy. And that was so devastating. The movie, just all of a sudden, seemed a little bit meaningless to me. But then I realized the importance of what I had done in terms of documenting this neighborhood that I loved. And I realized that so many of my locations were these records of things that are different now.
What changed when you realized Hurricane Sandy would be a part of the film?
Fleischner: Well, it wasn’t for a couple of weeks until after the storm that we were able to get back into shooting. So I had these two weeks to reflect on everything. And I didn’t really have a choice, given the way I’d initially written the ending. The initial ending involved the train going out to Rockaway, and that service is still down. So I couldn’t do that. There were some other shots in Rockaway I couldn’t do, just because it looked so different. I shot a little bit of the storm just in case that it was something I needed to write into the movie. It just made sense. It was such a life-changing, destructive force. That was kind of what the movie was about and what the kid was experiencing on his own. So for that to happen in his world at large — it was a powerful thing for the narrative.
Given that turn around, how does it feel to hear the buzz that your film is a frontrunner to win in its category at Tribeca?
Fleischner: It was such a mad rush to get this thing done that it’s all kind of still surreal. I’ve just been trying to catch up on sleep.
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