When an itinerant stamp dealer gives a ride to a woman on the run from her abusive boyfriend, he soon discovers that their dark pasts are inextricably linked, and that she isn’t just after a ride… she’s after revenge.

Director Statement

Can you ever escape regret? This is one of the central themes of my film “Cover”. It's also a question I never wanted to confront in my professional life. Because I knew the answer: if I never tried to make a feature film, I would indeed regret it forever. 

In the beginning of 2023, having just turned 52, I decided that it was now or never. I had a camera (two if you count my iPhone), I had a computer, and I had nine short films under my belt. So what was to stop me from making a feature? Nothing except for my own procrastinaic (not a word but it should be) tendencies. That's when I decided to remove the word “should” from my vocabulary and replace it with “will”. And once I had the will, I had no choice but to have the way. 

Knowing that I would have pretty much no money to make the film, I decided to write around what I did have access to. What's a setting that I could use for free? My car. Okay, the movie would be a road picture. What kind of movie would it be? I love thrillers with lots of plot twists, and plot twists are free. So it would be a thriller. Which suited me just fine. “Detour” is one of my all time favorite films, so making a modern noir set in a car was super appealing to me. 

Themes of regret, revenge, and the struggles of human connection have always interested me, so I decided the movie would touch on all of those things.

“Cover” is a movie about two lost souls who deal with their pain in vastly different ways. Trevor is perpetually on the road, constantly on the move in a futile attempt to distance himself from his grief. But if he's ever going to get over that pain, he's going to need to stop and confront it. Macy is stuck in a toxic relationship, trapped by low self-esteem and a lack of courage to change her circumstances. She needs to escape, to go somewhere far away and start over. Easier said than done. The juxtaposition of their wants and needs is what drives the conflict, both internal and external, of the film. Putting them in a car together was the perfect recipe for drama. 

"Thrillers” are usually thought of as being pulpy and exploitative. But the structure and tropes of a thriller can bear the weight of emotional depth and ideas just as well as any other genre. Murder and death are central tenets of thrillers, and this film is no different. But I wanted to go a little deeper and explore how death affects the people that are left behind; how it changes and shapes their lives. At the same time, I didn't want the movie to have a completely film noir fatalistic ending. While the ending is dark, I wanted to leave the viewer with a kernel of hope. That despite the violent events at the end of the story, our protagonist just might be able to build a good life out of the emotional rubble wrought by the circumstances of their past. Whether or not I was able to do explore that concept in a satisfying way, I'll leave to the viewer to decide.