Blood on the Tracks

Recent UW-Milwaukee alum Josh Rosenberg was in Los Angeles interning with Whitefish Bay native Niels Mueller, the writer-director of 2004’s The Assassination of Richard Nixon starring Sean Penn, when he wrote Tracks, a film inspired by the 2005 deaths of two Oak Creek teenagers. Produced in Milwaukee with an all-local cast and crew, Rosenberg’s debut feature film premieres at the Oriental Theatre Saturday. Decider spoke to Rosenberg and cinematographer-co-producer Scott Foley about moviemaking in Milwaukee, working with a Hollywood director, and playing with trains.

Decider: What was the inspiration for Tracks?
Josh Rosenberg: I read an article about two girls in Oak Creek that were killed by a train, and they didn’t give a lot of details but they said that they had just known each other very briefly. I’ve always been really taken by the intensities of mistakes that can happen when you’re caught up in a friendship like that, and caught up in the emotion of it.
Scott Foley: It’s a total fictionalization—Josh’s hearing of the event and thinking about what might have led them to do it without having any notion of what happened.
D: How did you come to know Niels Mueller?
JR: I saw an interview with him and I looked up his parents in the phone book and sent them a letter out of the blue. After meeting me a couple times in Milwaukee, he offered me a job for the summer, so I went out to Los Angeles and did an internship. While I was in L.A., I wrote the screenplay and he said if I could get the financing behind it that he’d help by producing it.
D: What was Niels’ role on the set as a producer of Tracks?
JR: Having him there really set a tone for everything and gave the production a level of professionalism that wouldn’t have been there without him, because we had a lot of people who had never worked on a feature before. And it was nice to have a steady hand on set. This was my first film, so it was great having a safety net there, so that if I got into a tight spot it wasn’t just me trying to do it all.
D: What’s it like making a film in Milwaukee? It’s still sort of a novelty when a feature film gets shot around here.
JR: I think that’s the biggest thing, that because it isn’t something that happens every day on every street corner, people are really open to the idea. We were so blessed; so many different families opened their homes up to us so we could get our work done.
SF: I can’t even explain how amazing it was. It felt like every location we were at, that family was part of our community. Jake Taxis works at the Downer with Josh—his family gave their house to us for nine days. We completely took over his house, and the only thing we had to wait on was when Grandma had to go to the bathroom! She had to be helped back in, and we’d hold the roll, and she’d go back outside and we’d start shooting again.
JR: Another thing that goes overlooked is that you’d think to find acting talent you have to be in LA, New York, Chicago, but I was shocked by how much talent is in the city of Milwaukee. I think the acting talent is very rich in this city and there are people that are really hungry to work, and if you put them to work on a good product you’re gonna get a good result.
D: What was it like getting to work with a big-ass train?
SF: The first take we put the actors on the track, we’ve got the train bearing down on us; I’m on the track too, looking through the camera. And suddenly I hear Niels yelling, “Get off the track! Get off the track!” And I’m like, “What the hell’s going on?” And the girls run off the track but I stay on them, and at some point I look down and I notice that the train’s about six inches from me. The conductor had forgotten to charge the brakes.
JR: So we almost lost our cinematographer on the first train shot of the day.
SF: Even though Niels was freaking out, the train was inching along so slow that it wouldn’t have hurt me, but it was a weird thing having that huge train coming down on you.