From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. And if you like horror movies and you spend time in L.A., then, you know, the ultimate nightmare is to drive in Los Angeles.

And my guest, Jeremy Unger, has made his first feature film about that experience of driving industries of L.A. at night.

It's a film is Ride. And first of all, Jeremy, thanks much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

And it's fun because there are so many film references in it, including the characters quoting films in it, including a memorable quote from a Martin Scorsese film that won't give away here.

I'll just say it's a quote that Martin Scorsese actually offers in a film, just a sort of tease viewers with listeners with it.

And talk a little bit about your cash.

You got Will Brill and Jesse Usher and Bella Thorne.

Who did you go to first with it?

So Will Brill and I went to college together.

And I actually sort of did a short film to prove that I could do the feature.

You did a short version of it.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

I'd written the script, and then I kind of condensed the opening into 15 pages that I could shoot as a short. And I did that with Will Brill and two other fantastic actors, Ian Harding and Mimi Janopoulos.

And then based on that, I went to financiers and, you know, sort of pitched myself to direct this feature.

And one of the things that was really important to me was being able to keep Will in that role, because I thought it was, I sort of wrote it with him in mind, and I thought he was so well suited to it. So that was kind of a big, exciting thing for us to be able to do that. In what way? Because he's almost the classic sort of like thriller, shape shifter type villain in this. So what were his strengths that you wanted to write to? Well, I think Will is just, he's a theater actor, and I think his chops are really, really incredible, but also Will has this quality that when you hang out with Will, you just feel kind of cool.

And I wrote this very manipulative character and I think his key to manipulating people is by making them believe the thing they want to believe about themselves.

And so there's this kind of gratitude that they have to this character that I think is hopefully subconscious on the part of the characters that he's manipulating.

But he just kind of has this coolness that makes the Bruno manipulative tactics really kind of feel effortless.

And also, so he's really good at creating false intimacy.

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