When Bill Oberst Jr. read Thomas Mentel‘s script for Overtime, he had one question: why the gas mask? Among the apparitions Oberst’s blue-collar protagonist sees in the shadows on a night shift is this alternate version of himself, a character Oberst affectionately calls Gas Mask Man.
“Why the gas mask? I have no idea and Tommy didn’t give me an explanation either,” says Oberst. “I just know that is was weird and primal and sort of feral crawling around a creepy factory in Los Angeles at midnight in a gas mask. I felt like an insect. So now I want to do a whole film in a gas mask…”