Giles Edwards sits down with Adam Egypt Mortimer, the director of Daniel Isn’t Real, a 2019 psychological horror about a grown man and his imaginary childhood friend, to discuss stylistic choices and his favorite French New Wave movies. Some controversy arises about what city is actually his hometown. The voice that joins in at the end belongs to Fantasia Fest publicist Kaila Hier.
Category Archives: Interviews
YI OK-SEOP, KOO KYO-HWAN, & THEIR PET FISH, “MAGGIE”
I introduced myself to Yi Ok-seop (the director) and Koo Kyo-hwan (actor/producer) and handed over 366’s business card. Unfortunately, my handwriting in Korean is just as bad as my handwriting in English.
366: My name is Giles Edwards and I’m here for 366 Weird Movies. I may have written that incorrectly below…
Yi/Koo: “Dogs”?
366: Oh dear. My hand-writing is pretty bad, I was just looking that up before I got here… Not “dogs”—um, “movies”. But!… I want to ask about the choice of songs for the movie, as they were very clear and dominant from the beginning.
Y/K: When editing, we usual edit as we play music, and look through what kind of music goes well with this scene, this situation, and this line. And when we feel stuck when trying to explain the story in a better way, we look toward the music instead of hanging on to the problem we have in the story. So we look through music and try to find the solution by looking. We felt really empowered by putting the music and the scene together, because when they go really well together, it feels much more synergistic than when we tried to solve this problem as written, or when we couldn’t solve the problem at all, so it was a hint as well as a solution for us.
366: Last night, you both spoke about the nature of the catfish and the prediction of earthquakes. I was wondering if you might be able to repeat that again for this interview.
Y/K: The nature of “Maggie”, the catfish, is that they can sense, predict when there will be an earthquake in the next three or four days—it could be longer, it could be shorter—it’s not precise, but it can sense it and predict it. We thought the character of the catfish was like, when you were at school, in a classroom, and there are so many different people, but there is one group of people who are not really talking much, not really involved in any groups, or socializing with others, so you might think they don’t know anything, but at the same time they’re witnessing everything going on in the class-room, they know everything, every little story that’s going back and forth with other people. So we thought the character of Maggie, the character of those people on the streets in daily life that we think know nothing are kind of similar.
Also, the look of Maggie, there was this little… beard that would kind of make him look wiser in appearance. So the reason we decided to have a catfish was that we probably need little elements like Maggie, like a catfish in our everyday lives, where it just comforts us by just looking at it. And even if it’s not going to protect us in a precise way, it will let us know when things go wrong. It’s also a question about whether to “believe” or not—something might happen tomorrow, it might happen three days later, or a week later, but it is still there. Continue reading YI OK-SEOP, KOO KYO-HWAN, & THEIR PET FISH, “MAGGIE”
RAW AUDIO: JON ADAMS, ZELDA ADAMS, AND TOBY POSER ON “THE DEEPER YOU DIG” (2019)
After running over his young neighbor, Kurt hides the girl’s body in ever deeper depths while her ghost haunts him and her psychic mother begins noticing Kurt’s strange behavior. Giles Edwards interviews the unique crew of filmmakers (John Adams, Toby Poser, Zelda Adams)—a mom, a dad, and a daughter who share writing, directing and acting duties.
CRYSTALLINE STRUCTURES: DIRECTOR ADOLFO J. KOLMERER ON “SNOWFLAKE”
Snowflake is a twisted meta-narrative movie in which an amateur dentist screenwriter finds his own characters pressuring him to change the outcome in his script that features hitmen, angels, superheroes, and fascists fighting it out in a dystopian future Germany. In his review of the film, Giles Edwards raved, “Using a bold style while slavishly following scripted narrative logic, [director] Kolmerer continued to amaze me at every twist and turn.” Snowflake director Adolfo J. Kolmerer was kind enough to answer a few questions submitted by 366 Weird Movies staff via email.
366: William James is credited as “guest director” (“gast-regie”). What was his role in the production?
AK: William James is not only the guest director, he is one of the editors and the creator of Hyper Electro Man[efn_note]The surperhero character in the film.[/efn_note]. William is one of my closest friends and collaborators, we have been working together for a long time. He wanted to do Hyper Electro Man as a short film and direct it. We decided to put the storyline in the film and I asked him to direct it.
366: Snowflake was made independently on a very low budget— how did you convince so many people to work without immediate pay?
AK: I think we convinced them with the crazy ideas the script was offering. I promised them that I would finish the film, that it will remarkable and different. It was a lot of energy that we invested into convincing people to help us not only the ones in front of the camera, I’m happy that at the end everyone is happy with the result and they are proud of being part of this unique and mostly wild ride.
366: Did your previous work in making commercials influence Snowflake? Commercial directors are often obliged to make a small budget look big.
AK: Well, what we spent in Snowflake is a quarter of the budget of a normal commercial, but yes, that’s something important that I learned while doing commercials, which is to find a way, always! To work under massive pressure and stay focused. Of course shooting a film is a different job but I think it helps a lot to have experience in both.
366: With so many characters, who do you see as the primary protagonist of the story (if there is one)?
AK: I developed a different kind of love for everyone, but the primary are TAN, JAVID, ELIANA and CARSON.
366: Is Hauke (synonym for “warrior”) Winter based on anyone in particular, or just representative of the rising fringe in German politics?
AK: Hauke is based in Populism, the men of power that disguise themselves as victims of the system to get to power (Left and Right wing). It is very sad to see what is happening in the world right now. No continent is safe from their own Hauke.
366: Did you know screenwriter Arend Remmers before beginning this project? How did the script come to you?
AK: I was involved on the project since the beginning, the writer Arend Remmers is one of my best friends. Snowflake was born out of frustration because of failed past projects, that never got done because of financing and producers trying to make our stories more conventional, so Arend and I decided to do a bonkers film and break the rules, but only under one condition: we have to do it ourselves together with our friends, so we don’t have to compromise, that meant no fancy production companies or any budget. We have known each other for 8 years now, we worked together in many small projects before Snowflake. Now Arend is one of the most brilliant writers in Germany, he is not afraid of breaking rules and changing the form, which I love. I am like that too, so we work together very well! We are like brothers, we respect each other’s opinions and share the same film DNA.
366: Why was “dentist” the day job for the in-movie screenwriter?
AK: Because a friend of ours is a dentist and said “you can shoot here.” Everything in the movie is based on Robert Rodriguez’s rule: Use what you have 🙂
366: How did you go about casting someone to portray a character with the real name of the actual screenwriter?
AK: Alexander Schubert, who plays Arend Remmers, is a friend of ours. I remember we pitched him his character and what he does and he was very excited. When we told him that his name is Arend he went crazy and started laughing. He took the job on the spot, ha ha.
366: Did you consider a cameo role for the real Arend Remmers?
AK: No, ha ha, my Arend is too shy, it would give me a headache to direct him.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: THE MAKER OF “MANDY”
From my vantage point on the less-esteemed side of the velvet rope, I saw my quarry, Panos Cosmatos, posing for innumerable photographs with various industry and festival bigwigs just before the Canadian premiere of his new movie, Mandy. I had been shuffled around no fewer than four times before being planted right underneath a bright spotlight a few feet from the director. Eventually, he came over—and I got my four minutes.
366: I’m with 366 Weird Movies, and we’re a big fan of your previous movie, Beyond the Black Rainbow. It beat out 63 contenders in a readers’ choice poll to be certified on our list–
PC: A list of “weird movies”? Nice.
366: Yup. We’re looking for 366 of best, weird movies we can find, one for each day of the year including leap-year.
PC: Love it.
366: I have a few questions for you. In Beyond the Black Rainbow, we saw some Kubrick and Ken Russell influences; I was wondering if you might remark on some of the directorial influences specifically for Mandy?
PC: Honestly, for this film, I felt more that I was just tapping into myself, just following my instincts a little bit more and seeing where that took me.
366: In Beyond the Black Rainbow, there’s a melancholic, sort of space-y feel. Obviously it’s a very different tone from Mandy.
PC: Yeah, it’s more “melancholic and barbaric”.
366: Nicely put. Now, tapping into yourself, I know that your father was involved in any number of motion pictures. I was curious personally in regards to your mother, who was a sculptor. Did she influence you artistically in any way?
PC: Very much so, yes. She nurtured my creativity from the beginning and had an incredible way of looking at the world, and that’s a big part of me.
366: Now your previous movie and this one, they both take place in 1983, and you’ve indicated in a number of interviews your reason for that. [efn_note]1983 was the first year that a young Cosmatos went to the store “Video Addict”, during which time he would imagine the stories behind the box covers of horror films he was not allowed to rent.[/efn_note] Obviously it might be too early to ask about future projects, but do you think you’ll be sticking with the year 1983 in the future, or do you think you might eventually go forward or backward?
PC: *laughs* I think the next film will probably go forward — but never the present. Never the present.
366: Your previous film was largely self-funded–
PC: Yup.
366: –This was a larger production. Were there any problems with “strings attached”, or were you able to maneuver things?
PC:Amazingly I was given basically complete freedom, that’s why I got involved with SpectreVision, because they vowed to protect my vision and nurture it all the way through, and they lived up to that.
366: That’s excellent. I’m from the United States, and I’m fearful I might not be able to catch this movie again; do you know anything about wider distribution?
PC: I think it’s getting released on about 300 screens in the US on September 14th. Where in the US are you from?
366: Upstate New York.
PC: Cool! I always romanticize that area in my mind, having never been there. But I do have that romanticized version of Upstate New York in my mind.
366: Well, Upstate New York is very flattered.
PC: *laughs*
366: In regards to Mandy specifically, where in Heaven’s name did that “folk song” come from?
PC: The lyrics were written by me and Dan Boeckner from the band “Operators”. He wrote the verses, I wrote the chorus. And then Milky Burgess wrote the instrumentation and Randall Dunn produced it and we kind of just threw it together in the recording studio in a day or two.
366: It is, in its way, a very good song–
PC: *laughs*
366: –and it certainly conveys that fellow well. And one question I like to close all my interviews with, what’s your home town and do you have a restaurant you can recommend?
PC: Where I live now? Vancouver, and I would recommend “Kingyo”.
366: Thank you very much for your time. Fantastic movie, and I wish you the best of luck.
…and with that, mere minutes before the film’s start, he was summoned for further photographs.