There’s this really inane rumor circulating online that Kane Parsons didn’t actually direct A24’s “Backrooms,” and that it was his mentor Osgood Perkins who was calling the shots.
A similar rumor had floated already about Curry Barker and “Obsession,” which turned out to be nothing, and this will too. I reached out to two crew members who worked on “Backrooms,” and they both laughed it off, adding how surprised they were by Parsons’ maturity and preparedness.
What’s true is that “Obsession” and “Backrooms” are the work of young, and inexperienced filmmakers who got their start on YouTube, which has led to “ghost directed” claims by others. People are trying to “Tobe Hooper” these guys.
The ghost directing rumor has travelled far enough online that “Backrooms” actor Mark Duplass went on social media to quickly shoot it down.
When I was there, Kane was 100% in control. More so than many directors three times his age.
Duplass explains in a video post on Instagram, “So a lot of takes going on right now about whether Kane Parsons, at the tender age of 19, actually directed Backrooms. Or whether it was more ghost directed by one of his more experienced producers. Um, I was there. I suspect one of the reasons I was hired is because I mentor a lot of young filmmakers, and they may have thought it would be good to have someone there who’s sensitive to that. And I was prepared to help out, and what happened was, he didn’t need any of us […] So for those of you who have all these thoughts, were you there?”
Of course, given that Parsons was making his first film, budgeted at around $10M, with no true film set experience, he was mentored on and off set by James Wan and Osgood Perkins.
Parsons as much admitted it, telling DiscussingFilm:
When we started production up in Vancouver, I was working very closely, literally in the same office with Osgood Perkins. So, he’s been a really great mentor figure in a number of ways, in that it’s very much the crew that he and Chris Ferguson put together over a number of years. There’s a lot of secondhand resources I’ve been able to lean on while working on this.
“Backrooms,” set for release this Friday, is currently tracking a $50M+ opening weekend. The review embargo has yet to lift and is now scheduled to come down at 3am PT / 6am ET on Wednesday—a somewhat unusual time, to say the least.
It’s no wonder 20th Century decided to dump the movie during the last week of August—a place where movies are set up to die quietly before the fall movie season begins.