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Sometimes inspiration can come from the most unlikely of places. In the case of the Oscar-nominated, multi-hyphenate filmmaker Sam Davis, motivation came from an old Russian short story and the social media juggernauts Instagram and TikTok. Davis’s short film, The Singers, based on the Ivan Turgenev story of the same name, follows a varied group of down-on-their-luck men who find themselves making a connection with one another through an impromptu singing competition.
The 17-minute short has garnered wins for Best Director and Best International Film at HollyShorts London, the Grand Prize for Best Narrative Short and Audience Choice Award for Narrative at the Indy Shorts International Film Festival and Best Cinematography in the Professional Competition at SCAD Film Festival.
Here, Davis talks to Deadline about the vulnerability of men and the fun, creative challenge of turning talented buskers into lowkey film stars.
DEADLINE: What compelled you to adapt Ivan Turgenev’s story? And what themes were you trying to convey to the audience?
SAM DAVIS: There were a few things that sparked for me when I read the short story. Initially, I wasn’t thinking about adapting it, and I even fell asleep a couple of times while reading it because it’s dense and tough to get through [laughs]. But by the time I did, I was so taken by this unexpected testament to the power of connection through singing. You could extend the book’s ideation to art of any kind or the concept of vulnerability. The characters in the story are these crusty, hard-shell underdogs who reminded me a lot of the people I grew up around, in particular. I’m from a small town in Michigan, and there were a lot of these people who were really soulful and complete with talents and passions, but you wouldn’t know it at first glance.
Then, I saw this project as a unique opportunity for me as a filmmaker to apply my background in documentary work in a fiction piece that could be a hat tip to Robert Altman and some of my other favorite filmmakers like Chloé Zhao, Sean Baker and the Safdie brothers, who are modern examples of people synthesizing narrative and documentary in their own way.
DEADLINE: You found your singers on Instagram and TikTok? Walk us through that.
DAVIS: As I mentioned earlier, I enjoyed the short story the first time I read it, but I didn’t close the book and think, “This is for me. The next three years, I’m dedicated to making this, a film adaptation of this story.” That moment didn’t come until a few minutes later when I opened my phone and looked at Instagram. The first video was a viral clip of this incredible New York City busker, Mike Yung. It was an unbelievable performance [of “Unchained Melody”] that I was watching and so moved by. I saw people passing by without paying much attention to him, and I also read a story about all these modern-day viral-video singing sensations who, for whatever reason, had never really broken through. So, that’s where the idea came from. This was the idea of basically filling a bar with these unexpected geniuses, letting them shine, and giving them a stage they’ve never had but always deserved.
DEADLINE: How did you end up pitching these guys?
DAVIS: When I reached out, most of them thought they were being scammed. I would reach out and tell them, “Hey, I’m an Oscar-nominated filmmaker in LA trying to do this new project.” And they were like, “Go to Hell.” It’s a long story, but basically, my documentary background came into play. Docs are about, at least in the development and pre-production stages, building relationships with people before a camera is even turned on and gaining a sense of mutual trust. I have to trust that they’ll be able to deliver on some level and be vulnerable on camera. They have to trust that they’re not being scammed and that they’ll be represented with respect. So, getting everyone together was this long, arduous, and clumsy process of scrolling whenever I had an opportunity, leaving comments, sending DMs, and eventually it all just came together into this eclectic group of guys from all over the world who had never been on camera before. And who were all willing to take a leap after getting to know each other a bit via Zoom and phone calls.
DEADLINE: When did you know which songs you were going to feature in the short film?
DAVIS: Not until the day before we filmed. The whole process was radical: we just went all in on spontaneity and having real people in one room and took a documentary approach to a narrative film. Because of that, I didn’t feel I could commit to a specific song until I heard it from the singer’s voice in the space where we were going to film. Unfortunately, with the tiny, short-film budget, we couldn’t get them in that space until the day before the shoot. It was impractical because these guys were all coming from all over the place to LA to film. There’s an exception with Mike Yung, the bartender, who was the first [cast], he sang “Unchained Melody” in that viral video and in the short film. That was always going to be his performance. But for the rest of them, it was just a conversation. We sat together in the bar the day before the shoot and talked until we eventually landed on these songs you hear in the film.
DEADLINE: What was the most challenging thing to adapt?
DAVIS: I’ll talk about the bar first. I like that the bar in the story is this one building, and the opening shot is this dark void next to the railroad tracks. In a way, the bar is a visual metaphor for each of the guys in the bar. These are all these unsuspecting little containers for so much story. And in that bar, little do you know in the opening, but there’s a huge world of lived experience, possibilities, song, and connection that will come out of that little room, and that’s what each of the characters is about. When we were casting, we didn’t just want people who could sing. We wanted people who would bring real-life experience that would enhance their characters, like an ingredient that could explode outward and affect the story in different ways. For example, two war veterans could talk to each other, which was an idea that we didn’t have until we found ourselves there. These two guys were genuinely sharing their experiences: one in Vietnam and the other in Afghanistan.
The idea of the bar we ended up filming in was inspired by a [place I grew up near] in Michigan, where I always imagined shooting [a film]. However, it became impractical to get everyone to this small town in Michigan, so we ultimately decided to do it in LA and just fake the exteriors. We spent a lot of time hunting for the right bar, because we didn’t want anything too precious and cute. Just like the guys in the film, I didn’t want to cast people who were going to get right back to me or those with websites and managers; I wanted to hunt and chase. I wanted the type of person who maybe didn’t want to be found. My ideology was the same as finding this bar. I knew this bar wasn’t going to show up on Eater’s list of coolest dive bars in LA [laughs]. We eventually found it after exhausting hundreds of bars in LA and the surrounding areas – Moose Lodge. It’s a non-commercial, private, members-only bar in La Habra, and it just had the right vibe.
Secondly, pulling this cast together and getting all of these guys under one roof felt like a mini miracle by the time we were there at the Moose Lodge. I’ll never forget walking in and seeing all these faces. We spent a year and a half handpicking from all over the internet to find them. It was this really jovial and strange bringing together of different people, and like in the film, there was this evolution from a group of 20 to 30 strangers, plus our crew, into a little family by the end.
DEADLINE: What’s your musical style?
DAVIS: Keeping in line with The Singers, I think the film has the spirit of John Prine and Leonard Cohen. There’s a Leonard Cohen song [“Closing Time”] in the end credits, which I am so thrilled that we were able to get.
DEADLINE: You’ve made the rounds at SXSW, Hollyshorts, AFI and SCAD, to name a few. Now you’ve landed the Oscar shortlist. What do you think people are responding to?
DAVIS: The film is a sneaky crowd-pleaser. It starts rather calmly, but by the end of it, maybe you’ve cried a bit, or have been touched by it or laughed. It’s a full meal of emotion. I hope people are enjoying it in that sense. Also, I don’t think it’s a political film. A lot of Oscar films, docs and narratives tend to be political. This film is more soulful than political. Of course, though, we can unpack it and talk about vulnerability and masculinity. All those things are real, and those themes are in there. There’s a David Lynch quote that I love, where he says, “The film is the talking,” which is this thing of, after watching something, we talk about this and that and beat things to death. But I think those themes are important. Growing up in a small town in Michigan, where we weren’t really taught how to process, men especially, our emotions in a healthy way – that’s something I still work through to this day. And for me, the art of filmmaking is a great outlet. In a lot of ways, that’s what’s happening in the story, the beautiful act of being vulnerable and connecting with a stranger next to you, who, 10 minutes ago, you thought had nothing in common with you. I think that message has a universal application.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
English (US) ·