With reporting by Josh Horowitz

When "Veronica Mars" alum Chris Lowell decided to direct his first film, "Beside Still Waters," there was one tidbit from his own personal life that he just had to include -- the art of slapping someone in the face after they take in a shot of whiskey. Yeah, that's a thing.

"It's a terrible idea that my friends and I came up with when we were in college," Lowell told MTV News. "We were passing around a disgusting bottle of some cheap plastic throwaway whiskey, and chasing it with anything we could find. Soap -- anything. We ran out of a chaser, and I was like, 'I can't take a shot unless I have something to go with it.' My friend Lindsey was like, 'Just take the shot, I'll slap you across the face, it will take the burn right away.'"

Lowell then became "radically attached" to this practice, even bringing it with him to the set of the Academy Award-winning film "The Help."

"We played it on 'The Help,'" Lowell continued. "I've seen Allison Janney do it, I've seen Emma Stone do it. We did it on Emma's birthday that year."

So when it came time to take the helm on his own film -- a film that Stone did the table reads for -- Lowell found the "whiskey slaps" to be a crucial part of the tale, which focuses on a group of old high school friends who get together one last time at their old cabin haunt before it's sold off.

"It plays a really interesting part in the movie," Lowell said. "The first time you see it, it's this fun, silly -- albeit a little bit careless -- game. The second time it comes back, you see it from a much different vantage point. [It's] this very disturbing, violent, weird alcoholic inducer."

"Beside Still Waters" hits theaters on November 14.