— To keep it cohesive, we’ll focus inspirations for Bound to a single time period - the mid ‘50s to early ‘60s. I ended up there through my mother, and the things she made me watch as a kid on our single television. The first (non kids) movie I made it through was Some Like It Hot. My admiration for the movie and its time grew, and like so many things we discover as kids or teens, it stuck. So, even though I should be Marvel-izing or Friends-ifying the examples, these are the real ones.

If you’re less familiar with that period in TV and movies, it’s a beautiful pocket of time where things start to crack pop culture-wise (and real culture-wise) before enduring change bursts through in the mid-60s. Each work below has a general style element that could (read: we’ll try our best) feature in So Far Bound. Lastly, to be clear, Bound is set in the present day 2020s. We’re just using the mid-century projects below as guideposts for the filmmaking. — Evan S

HOW bound could (PLAY).

— How’s the dialogue? How do the characters (or actors) generally perform? The answer: Like Billy Wilder in beast mode. In the 1950s, the director Billy Wilder went on an all-time hot streak starting with Sunset Boulevard in 1950 and ending with The Apartment in 1960.

You’d call every piece a comedy first, with their bouncy dialogue and spirited characters, but each gave room for sincerity and, at times, darkness. Even Some Like It Hot, the silliest of the bunch, evokes great vulnerability through the delicate (but still rowdy) performance by Marilyn Monroe.

And so, in Bound, we take inspiration from Billy Wilder and company by showing characters that start as damn near cartoon-ish, and then, the fun challenge is trying to deftly slide them into quiet or dramatic, and into moments of mania or sensuality, when the story calls for it.

 how bound could (feel).

— What environment does the story create? It’s not unlike one found in the “golden age” of westerns. To be clear, Bound won’t look like a western but the elements found in that sub-genre were considered during the writing. Things like: a frontier, outlaws, posses, and a certain kind of volatility.

For the characters in Bound, they’re in a similar pioneering position in a world that’s fledgling to them. As for outlaws, no one is on the run per say, but they sure were happy to get away. Finally, there’s a palpable edge in all westerns, born of tense times that could also feature in Bound, as the city around the characters undergoes a transformation.

Maybe the cleanest example is The Magnificent Seven, in which a group of gunslingers are brought in to protect a town. The characters in Bound ain’t no saviors, but, there is that “posse” element in a group of outsiders arriving someplace new and having an affect on that place, for better or worse.