Up in Flames: Interview with Nick Lyon and Ron Peer on Their Upcoming Film 'On Fire'

Images courtesy of Cineverse

On Fire is exactly the sort of sturdy programmer that the major studios used to churn out in the 1980s and 1990s almost once a month, before a different mindset started to trickle down the business-minded pipes. Equal parts rousing disaster and survival flick and heart-felt family drama, this new independent feature comes courtesy of filmmaker Nick Lyon (TUBI original Titanic 666) and screenwriter Ron Peer (Goodbye Lover), who teamed up to craft an intelligent and especially-polished-for-its-budget picture that will be released in theaters on September 29^th, before hitting VOD platforms in the weeks to follow. It's the sort of unpretentious, crowd-pleasing title that makes for perfect Friday Night at the Movies material, featuring solid performances from a game cast, and some truly spectacular fire footage, almost all of which was crafted by CGI magicians who made numerous sequences feel very real and dangerous.
 
On Fire stars ruggedly handsome Peter Facinelli as your classic American everyman who is just trying to make an honest living while providing for his family. They live in a trailer, deep in the woods of California, and fire season is just starting to flare up. When a massive inferno starts to blaze a course through a wide swath of land, Facinelli and his pregnant wife (Fiona Dourif, all-in), son (Asher Angel, solid), and sick grandfather (Lance Henriksen, always great) have to flee to safety, while encountering any number of life threatening obstacles outside of the raging forest fire that's destroying acre upon acre. Peer and Lyon co-wrote the brisk script, which contains some sly nods towards environmental issues that plague us in the real world, while never allowing the film to become any type of didactic school lesson; entertainment is the name of the game here, and the creative team delivers in that respect. The film also serves as a potent reminder of just how many folks are affected by devastating forest fires each year in America.
 
Lyon and Peer recently spoke with entertainment journalist Nick Clement about their film and cinematic inspirations, as well as their creative process, and what they hoped to achieve with On Fire.

 
Clement: Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me, guys! I had a blast watching On Fire, and I think you guys really knocked it out of the park. And most importantly, given how small the film is when compared to major studio offerings, it's tremendous to see that it's getting an 800 screen release in America.
 
Lyon: Yes, it's very exciting that it's getting a good release, which is really the key these days in terms of giving your film visibility in the marketplace. And considering that nearly everything nowadays in this range is SVOD with maybe very limited theatricals, I think that means it's a good thing and the distributors believe in it enough to put it in theaters. I’m honored.
 
Clement: Before I jump into the movie, Nick, tell me a little bit about yourself - how'd you get into filmmaking. Where did your love for movies get started?
 
Lyon: It wasn't when I was a little kid or anything like that. When I got into junior high and high school age, I was doing a lot of photography and art and then it kind of went into the fine arts, with writing and performance, as well as doing installations and stuff like that. I moved to Germany and learned German and around that time, I really started to get into film. And I made a decision that the only way I can do everything that I enjoy doing is to do it through film, because it combines every artistic application.
 
Clement: Was there a moment for you where you felt: this is it – I have to direct movies, or was it more an organic progression based on the opportunities that came your way?
 
Lyon: As a kid, I'd been really influenced by films like Rocky and Star Wars and Blade Runner, but it wasn't like I woke up one day and said that I needed to be a director. The early work of Gus Van Sant, films like My Own Private Idaho, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Drugstore Cowboy, those films resonated with me because I was very much into the performance art scene and installations, and I didn't know anything about the commercial side to filmmaking. I was doing experimental films, and David Lynch became an inspiration as well, so I would just be off doing strange little films. I sort of found my way to directing naturally.
 
Clement: What is it that you like about Ron Peer as a co-writer?
 
Lyon: If the story doesn't have tension, I have a hard time getting invested and staying focused. Some scripts just take forever to read because they don't have any underlying tension and the same thing can happen with TV shows. Ron's scripts always have that expert level of tension on the page, so it's easy and really fun to tap into those qualities as a director. Our first project, I Love You, Baby, even something like that had a lot of tension running throughout the story, it was a real page turner, and it's very different than On Fire. But since then we have collaborated on multiple projects and Ron and I just have good and natural shorthand while working together.
 
Clement: Yes, you guys had previously worked on I Love You, Baby over 20 years ago.
 
Peer: Yes! I was managed by Zide/Perry at that time, and they had that script and went out with it. At the time it was called Family Reunion. We had a lot of meetings on it and people were interested but it didn't quite happen, and so then Warren Zide, he knew some German producers who were looking for some scripts for the German market, and he gave it to a woman who brought it to actor Til Schweiger's production company, Brown Entertainment. Then, German actor Mark Keller, who was the star of a popular TV show called Alarm for Cobra Eleven, read the script and he decided he wanted to play the lead role. So he ended up buying the script and financing it with Warner Brothers.
 
Clement: I've had the pleasure of speaking with you, Ron, a few times in the past, but I'm not sure I've asked where your cinematic journey took shape. How did it all come together for you as a screenwriter?

 
Peer: I loved books when I was a kid, so I always loved writing and reading, and that was my primary thing, but I was also into film very much. And then during my teenage years, I got really into the Bond films, and stuff from the 60s into the 70s, like Once Upon a Time in the West and The Graduate and the films of Sam Peckinpah. The Wild Bunch is a phenomenal work and that really got me interested in film. And so I became fascinated by the writing and the directing side of the business, while kind of keeping an eye on people and how the creative world was taking shape. I went to college and I got a business and marketing degree and then after college, while I was managing a bookstore, I decided that I need to go back to school to get an English degree. So I got a Bachelor's in English and worked on a Master's in Creative Writing, and then got into the theater world with some of the people I went to school with at ASU. They were also trying to get some film projects going, so we formed a little writer's group and because of some screenplay contests I'd recently entered, I got my foot in the door that way.
 
Clement: Your first script, Goodbye, Lover, ended up becoming a big deal right out of the gate for you.
 
Peer: I'd entered a couple of screenplay contests, one of them being the Nichol Fellowship, which is a probably the most preeminent screenplay contest in the world, and then also with the Austin Film Festival, which was in its early incarnations. And with Goodbye Lover, I ended up attracting the interest of two different producers from each of the contests, so I was kind of like "wow," this is weird. I mean for me, it was so easy, I just kind of fell into it. And then I was approached by a group of producers, three guys who used to work for Miramax who had broken off and had formed their own company, and they optioned the script. It was meant to be a little $3 million movie, but they didn't have the funds, so they met with Alexandra Milchan, who is Arnon Milchan's daughter. She was in town around the holidays, and they gave her a copy of Goodbye Lover to read on her way back to L.A. during her flight. And the next thing I know it's January and I'm going to meet Roland Joffe, who directed the movie, so that was like the most ridiculously quick thing I've ever heard of in my life.
 
Clement: Things never happen that fast these days!
 
Peer: Yeah, at the time, I didn't know anything about the industry, so I thought that sort of thing happened all the time, which of course isn't the case. It takes a while to develop stuff, but then, on occasion, something will come out of nowhere really fast, and it just happens because so many forces really want it to happen. And after Goodbye Lover I wrote another one with another friend and that one got made, so I'm thinking: "Oh, this isn't so hard!" But this was back during that great time period during the 90s, you know, during that run of spec script sales.
 
Clement: That's a perfect segue, because a movie like On Fire, in 1997 or 1998 during that golden period of spec sales at the major studios, that would have been a movie that would have been made at a much bigger price point, and while I don't know how much your movie cost to make, I know that it's an independent film, so one can surmise that it was not a $50 million dollar budget the way that the studios used to pump into their near-monthly actioners. The production value you achieved was unbelievable considering the somewhat limited resources.
 
Lyon: We had a fantastic and very dedicated production unit who really put every ounce of themselves into the making of On Fire, and from the get-go, I knew we could pull this off by bringing the right elements together. One of the key ingredients was our visual effects supervisor, Joe Lawson, who did a tremendous job, along with everyone on his team, in terms of making all 383 CGI shots look as real as possible.
 
Clement: And outside of the technical aspects to the film, the script has a solid dose of social messaging, without getting in the way of pure cinematic drama. What were the goals on that front?
 
Lyon: I've made a lot of movies, a lot of visual effects-based and disaster films, where one could argue that there really isn't any social message behind the projects, but with On Fire, we wanted to do something that was both entertaining and enlightening. This is a very real issue that lots of people face every year, and nearly all forest fires are man-made catastrophes. So to make something that straddled both sides of the fence seemed important and worthy.

 
Clement: Ron, I wanted to ask, because you've written lots of things, both produced and unproduced, that walk a wild tonal line for audiences. And with the studios sort of forgetting how to make fun movies for a Friday Night Audience and almost solely concentrating on IP-driven items and a few Oscar bait projects, how hard is it for more original storytelling to find its way through the cracks?
 
Peer: I think most screenwriters know how difficult it is to get interest in original screenplays nowadays. It's no secret that for the last few years, studios have been focused on producing superhero movies and expensive blockbusters in order to lure moviegoers back into theaters. But recently Kevin Feige of Marvel admitted that his company went too far by producing too many films and over-saturating the market. However, the overwhelming success of Barbie and an intense drama like Oppenheimer may indicate a sea change. I think audiences are ready for something different, something a bit off kilter. Even streaming shows feel like they have a certain "sameness" and have lost their luster. Audiences may ready to swing back to the wild ride of 90s indie sensibilities again. Wouldn't that be a blast? I'm crossing my fingers because I've got some fun quirky scripts in my bottom drawer!
 
Clement: How did On Fire take shape as movie project?
 
Lyon: I was actually camping with my boys and was just surrounded by the woods. Fire season was just around the corner, and I couldn't help but feel how terrifying it would be if you and your family became caught in a major forest fire. And with this sort of thing happening so often in real life, often with tragic consequences, the story felt all the more timely and important. I just couldn't stop thinking about what I'd do in this particular situation, and from there I felt like we could make a really cool movie out of it. I came up with a treatment which Ron then ran away with in the best ways he knows how to do. I also told him we needed a script in two weeks because we had people interested in financing! He delivered the first draft and we continued to restructure the script together, but his first draft was really great!
 
Clement: So, Ron, how hard was that for you to put together a script so fast?
 
Peer: This was all taking shape right around the tail end of the first COVID explosion, and there wasn't really a lot going on for anybody. Things are still really coming back to normal now even. But I was attracted to and loved the challenge of the idea that you have two weeks, because sometimes, as a writer, you need that deadline to keep you disciplined. And I knew what we had from an outline perspective, and where the story needed to go by its conclusion, so it was all about putting the broad strokes together and keeping it lean and compelling all the way through. We didn't have all the characters fleshed out so that's really where most of my time was spent. At one point the family had a dog, but we took that out because it would have been too expensive.
 
Clement: I want to ask Nick – what was the hardest aspect of this production?
 
Lyon: The hardest part of shooting was putting together the ingredients of the film and understanding and crafting the shots to create a world with the fire surrounding our actors and making it feel as tangible as possible. Basically, creating the disaster and doing so with a minimal level of crew and a much smaller budget. Normally, it would be a big-budget studio film that takes on a task like the one we set for ourselves with On Fire. You always want more time and money, but I'm used to working fast and on a budget.
 
Clement: I'm pretty amazed by the visual effects work in this film.
 
Lyon: Yeah, I brought on Joe Lawson, who had worked on a bunch of films I had done, and he was one of the VFX supervisors at the Asylum for years, and you know, they're notoriously known for "Asylum Product," but I will say, they are all very good at what they do, they're just not given the time and money to take things to the next level in many instances. That's why the VFX turns out the way it does so often. So with On Fire, we had a certain amount of money which afforded more time for our VFX shots, and Lawson's team was able to work with the already excellent footage we'd shot on location, and they rose to the challenge.
 
Clement: And the majority of the film was lensed on location?
 
Lyon: Yes, we filmed in Texas in November, which proved to be the perfect location for geographic and weather related reasons. We shot in Bastrop, TX, which is outside of Austin, and it's the one major pine tree region in Texas, so it really fit the bill in terms of what we were looking for on a visual level. And we'd even planned to do some of the fire stuff practically with massive fire bars, but it proved to be too dangerous as the forest floor had a two-foot-thick bed of pine needles, so we would have started our own fire out there had we gone that route. We had them for some background shots, and we lit stunt people on fire in the old-school ways, so there was still a lot of practical moviemaking going on. Our second unit got some great shots of forest firefighters in action, which added to the reality of the situation.
 
Peer: And what's great about Nick is that he's worked on so many low budget projects that he really knows how to make something look really good and he really squeezes that production value out of every facet of his productions.
 
Lyon: I just wish every script was written by Ron Peer!
 
Clement: And Ron, given that you didn't have a ton of time to work on the script and that it wasn't an original creation that you came up with, what was the most important thing for you as a writer to bring to the collaboration when you saw Nick's treatment?
 
Peer: When I saw his blueprint, I knew that in order to really make it sing, we had to delve into the characters and make them relatable and strong, yet vulnerable. So we came up with more background on everyone, especially Peter Facinelli's character, who was always involved in construction from the get-go in some form, we had him on the roadside maintenance working for the county, and then we bumped him up to his own business owner of a small construction company trying to do his thing. So it's just about figuring out who the characters are, and what was going on with the wife, who originally wasn't pregnant, but somewhere along the line, I think Nick suggested making her pregnant because it makes everything feel more dangerous. And when we found out that Lance Henriksen had been cast, we went back and tweaked that role and gave him a bit more to do. Having an older, sick parent for the characters to be responsible for also upped the jeopardy level for everyone. So it was just figuring out who they are and giving each character some moments and beats together so we can understand them as a group.

 
Clement: I'm also really impressed by the pacing to the film. It clocks in at an ultra-efficient 80 minutes without credits. Not a moment is wasted and there isn't anything unnecessary on the bones to the narrative. Was making a film so ultra-streamlined always a major goal?
 
Peer: I wanted it to be a slow burn until we got to the fire, taking a little bit of time to get to know the characters, but without wasting time on stuff that distracted from the main themes and the main storyline. We cut back some stuff in an effort to never feel like we were overstaying our welcome, and like Nick said earlier, creating this escalating sense of tension was really important so that the film had a sense of driving forward at all times.
 
Clement: The film has a strong cast of actors and everyone really felt invested in the material. And most importantly, everyone felt like they were exactly proper for the role that they were playing. How difficult was it assembling the team of on-screen talent?
 
Lyon: To be honest, because this film came together so quickly, a lot of it was last minute, and there was some issues of politics involved, in terms of putting out offers and knowing that some people wouldn't be able to say yes or that they'd get snapped up the next morning by a bigger film, but we really had a terrific cast who brought new ideas to the table every single day of shooting. I had worked with the casting director, Paul Weber, on Species: The Awakening, and I knew he had great taste. When he said that I had to meet Asher Angel, I did.  I knew right away Asher was perfect for his role. One of my favorite pieces of casting in On Fire was Ashlie Foushee who played Kayla, the novice 911 operator. She gives a tremendous performance, and for Ron and I, this role was our “thanks” to the first responders, and really showed the emotional trauma that even they experience during such a disaster. Fiona brought some extra stuff to it that I never anticipated, and it makes you realize just how strong of an actress she really is in those moments. Lance is an absolute legend and he's the nicest guy in the world, and he really let himself go. He was playing frail and old and his time has passed and you know his wife is gone and you know he doesn't want to leave his home, and he's completely overwhelmed by the situation. And it's a great, quick performance for him and yet it gives you that emotional pull. Everyone in this story is meant to feel like a normal person.
 
Clement: Yeah, there's this great, throwaway line that Fiona's character makes about how the family doesn't have insurance for their trailer.
 
Lyon: Exactly, and they're a little bit behind on their bills, and they're just like normal people you know, and so for these people, having a forest fire wipe out everything would be the end of everything for them. And sadly, that's happening in real life far too often. There are lots of people who don't have insurance and don't have a bank full of savings so that they can just rebuild their house after it burns down. So protecting their house becomes something that they feel they have to do, and that is very dangerous.
 
Clement: Yeah, the film really showed how a family in this socioeconomic bracket would attempt to save their trailer from going up in flames.
 
Peer: It was that mentality that we wanted the characters to have. I can't run away from my house because I'm going to put the sprinklers on, because I can't afford to lose my house and all of my equipment and everything we've worked so hard for.
 
Clement: I think that the film's greatest strength might be showing just how terrifying this situation would in fact be, and how hard it would be to survive if you faced any of the issues that the family in the film faced.
 
Lyon: Thanks for saying that, because that was certainly one of our main intentions. The sad fact is that 85-90% of forest fires are man-made, so until we start learning from the errors of our ways, a movie like On Fire will sadly be reflective of the real world, but it can help us see what real people must endure when we aren’t careful. Unlike other natural disasters, Forest Fires can be prevented, and maybe understanding the suffering that happens to real people will help people remember to be more vigilant in preventing wildfires.

--Nick Clement