How Novocaine Mixes Gore And Comedy Explained By Directors Dan Berk & Robert Olsen

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Reviews for Paramount Pictures’ new gory thriller rom-com Novocaine have been stellar so far. Directorial duo Dan Berk and Robert Olsen mark their fifth collaboration here with this queasy crowd-pleaser, centering Jack Quaid as Nathan Caine, a mild-mannered credit union clerk whose unique disability prevents him from feeling physical pain.

Berk and Olsen last joined forces in the Paramount+ original movie Significant Other starring Maika Monroe, but this movie sees the pair working off a script by screenwriter Lars Jacobson, though they explained that Novocaine saw a few important changes since its original incarnation on the page.

ScreenRant caught up with the directors to discuss how the Novocaine project has evolved since then, and how Jack Quaid’s star turn helped soften the darkness of the original concept in the unique new feature, which is now in theaters in the US. The combination of gore and charismatic charm makes Novocaine one of the weirdest date night movies of the year, a righteous rom-com with a hilarious torture scene at its center that defies description.

Novocaine’s Intoxicating Blend of Violence and Comedy Was Key to the Original Pitch

“The Point Of The Gore Is Not To Shock And Awe”

ScreenRant: I thought it was so interesting how Novocaine combined that squicky stuff with something that was sensitive and closely felt. It’s something of a fractured rom-com.

Dan Berk: Yeah, for sure, those things definitely dovetailed very naturally for us. We knew that, in the movie, it’s a character who can’t feel pain, who’s entering an action movie in a very unlikely way. He’s going to get the sh–t kicked out of him, there’s going to be a lot of blood and gore. We knew that that was going to happen. But we never intended for that to be gratuitous or off-putting. The point of the gore is not to shock and awe, it’s just a product of the story.

But our hope – and when we were designing it, this is what we were trying to achieve – is that all that humor and all that heart that’s so part and parcel with the tone, it softens it, and it makes it so that you can laugh along with the gore. So, even people who are usually queasy about blood, or about seeing an arm snapped in half, there’s [either] a funny moment simultaneous with a beat of horrible violence or, a second later, you get the joke element of it, so that you aren’t [put off].

Robert Olsen: That tonal mixture is required because, if you didn’t have it, if this movie was dead serious, and he was just getting maimed, somebody would be like, all right, I’ve got to go.

Dan Berk: Yeah, you veer into torture porn territory, which is the opposite of the kinds of movies we want to make. We have a very joyful approach to filmmaking. We want our movies to make people feel better about humanity at the end when they’re leaving the theater than when they came in. And so, it was really important to us to make sure that the violence and the gore was contextualized by all the heart and the humor in it.

ScreenRant: The torture scene, which is sort of a centerpiece of the film, immediately did make me think of Hostel.

Robert Olsen: Yeah. What if Hostel, but funny?

Filming Novocaine‘s “Hilarious” Torture Scene

“At Every Stage Of The Process, That Scene Was Funny”

Jack Quaid with bloody wounds on his face in Novocaine

Screen Rant: That was my first thought. So, what was it like filming that scene?

Robert Olsen: It’s a little bit toward the back half, but I think that is probably our favorite scene. And I think that’s also the scene that, when we read the original version of the script, it was great, it had this incredible concept, but it wasn’t as funny. It was a little bit more of a serious action movie. And so, we were like… Great concept, but we’ve got to get it to be funny. And that was the first thing we thought of. It was like, there’s got to be a scene where he’s being tortured, and he’s pretending that he can feel pain. That’s the tonal space.

And, honestly, a huge part of our pitch to be brought on as directors was that scene. Telling them, imagine this scene. And you pitch that to a room of producers, and they’re all cracking up.

At every stage of the process, that scene was funny. It was funny when we pitched it. When we were writing it, we were cracking up. When we were rehearsing it, we were cracking up. And then when we were shooting it, we were blowing takes because we had the crew members laughing. It was just so funny.

I remember the first time we watched a test audience watching that scene, and the theater just rolling. And we just knew it. We were like, that scene is what the movie is. It’s a microcosm of why this movie works. It’s gory, but you’re laughing. You’re cringing, and you’re looking at it through your fingers, but you’re having a good time while doing so. And that’s the special sauce of this movie.

Dan Berk: It also leans perfectly into Jack [Quaid’s] brand of humor. So, we got very lucky in that sense because, when we wrote that scene, we didn’t have Jack on the movie yet, but it just so happens that that is bullseye, the type of laughs that he loves to get.

And that scene, we had to really kill our darlings with that. It could be a 20-minute scene, there was that much amazing material. Because, after he did the scripted part, Jack was just improving all of these insane reactions, and there’s so much good stuff on the cutting room floor.

But, yeah, Jack is a huge component of why that scene is successful.

Screen Rant: Just hearing you talk about it, I’m remembering it and laughing. And I think the theater did erupt with laughter yesterday. It’s impossible to not laugh, because you’re also enjoying that fun trick where an actor gets to pretend they’re a bad actor? So that’s folded into the whole thing.

Dan Berk: Yes, those scenes are always great!

Robert: Those are scenes actors love to do! They have so much fun with that.

A Delightful South African Strongman in Novocaine‘s San Diego

Garth Collins Steals The Show, And Will Hopefully Return In The Sequel

Screen Rant: I have a note here about a very, very, very large tattooed man. Can you talk to me about this gentleman?

Robert Olsen: Yeah! His name is Garth Collins, and he was a local hire in South Africa; we shot the movie in Cape Town. And so, for the Zeno character, there were very, very specific physical requirements for that role. He had to be super, super muscular, and really, really tall, because Jack is 6’2, 6’3. So, we couldn’t have a guy who was 5’7, he needed to be physically imposing even against Jack, and had to be able to act.

South Africa has so many amazing performers, but there’s a smaller subset of them that can do an American accent. And so, we just decided, well, the movie takes place in San Diego. There are, of course, South Africans in San Diego, so we can have this one South African accent. But if we ever had two, it would give up the game, and you’d know we shot it in South Africa! So he was the one accent we were able to have.

But he was amazing. We loved working with him. If we ever do get to make a sequel, we’d love to bring back a blind Zeno, reformed, walking around the grocery store.

Dan Berk: And we were like, you know what? This is a Lethal Weapon 2 reference, that’s what it’s going to be. There’s a lot of great actors; one South African guy.

Novocaine is now playing in theaters.

Check out our other Novocaine interviews here: