MONSTER FEST BOWS MIKE GREEN'S RED DUST SURVIVAL SHOCKER

When a window of opportunity presented itself, Mike Green needed to act fast. With one feature script on the backburner and fatherhood looming, the writer/director had to craft a bare-bones production that played to his strengths as a storyteller. The result is Outback, a grueling survival thriller starring Taylor Wiese and Lauren Lofberg as American tourists who do everything wrong when stranded in our unforgiving backyard. And Green made it work within the window – Outback was outlined in two months, scripted in four weeks and filmed over ten days. “We had a great bunch of people so it was fun, though,” the director told SCREEN-SPACE, on the eve of his film’s World Premiere at Fangoria x Monster Fest 2019 | Melbourne….

SCREEN-SPACE: The vast and beautiful 'villain' of the film, the Australian outback, is such a unique landscape to film. What was the visual aesthetic you and your cinematographer Tim Nagle needed to capture to convey just how merciless our country can be?

MIKE GREEN: We started off handheld, doco-like to give the audience a false sense of security. As we got deeper into the Outback and the drama and stakes rise we tried not to embellish the camera work because the Aussie landscape already has a built in pre-awareness for good reason. It is vast, hot and hostile. (Pictured, below; Outback stars Taylor Wiese, left, and Lauren Lofberg)

SCREEN-SPACE: Audiences understand the menace of the outback, from Wake in Fright and Picnic at Hanging Rock, to Mad Max and The Proposition, and many others. Was there a cinematic template you used in crafting the look and mood of the film? 

MIKE GREEN: My original idea was Open Water in the outback. Touching the Void was another film I looked at closely. For the use of sound, music, it’s a two-handed, the psychological breakdown of the characters. The look was going to be dictated by the landscape. We knew the red soil would play a huge part in the film. Also the blue skies. We were very selective with the use of colour in the film. Wardrobe, props, hero vehicle, locations; we worked to a restricted colour palette. Production designer/costumer Courtney Covey, DP Tim Nagle and I had in-depth conversations and planning around this. Justin Tran our colourist did an amazing job bringing together our footage. He’s got back-to-back features lined up now. 

SCREEN-SPACE: What was the key human element, the emotional arc of the story that your leads Taylor and Lauren had to remain focused upon?

MIKE GREEN: Thematically the story is about not taking tomorrow for granted. It’s how I try to live my life and it hits close to home for me. At it’s heart, Outback is a tragic love story. Originally when I cast Lauren I had her do some self-tapes. She had a relationship she was working through at the time. With her blessing, I built some of the narrative from her personal situation, which proved an effective way in and a strong anchor upon which to build the story. (Pictured, above; Green, far right, with Wiese and crew on location)

SCREEN-SPACE: Even with the MIFF success of your short Mother and time spent watching Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford as DA on Truth, was the first day of your feature film directing debut a surreal experience? Or did you know the time was right?

MIKE GREEN: I was producing, 1st AD, locations manager, directing, writing; I wore many department hats and had a three month old baby at home. I was [both] tired and focused. There wasn’t time to think beyond the task at hand.

SCREEN-SPACE: How much research was done on the physical horrors of dehydration and exposure to high-temperatures? Is there license taken, or is this as close as your audience should ever come to this kind of physical hardship?

MIKE GREEN: We did a lot of research into dehydration and the breaking down of humans in tough situations. People find themselves in sticky situations very easily and surprisingly quickly. How often do you hear people go missing or getting stuck in the Blue Mountains? And that’s in our backyard. Once dehydration takes place, your decision-making skills leave you very quickly. Silly decisions seem to make sense at the time. After people watch Outback, a lot of them tell me their close calls and horror stories getting lost or stranded in sketchy places. Lucy Woolfman our HMU & SFX Designer went to extraordinary lengths to research the effects of dehydration and the physical and textural subtitles to our bodies. (Pictured, above; Lauren Lofberg, on location) 

The World Premiere of Mike Green’s OUTBACK will screen on Saturday October 12 at Cinema Nova as part of 2019 Fangoria x Monster Fest | Melbourne, then on Saturday November 2 at Event Cinemas George Street as part of 2019 Fangoria x Monster Fest | Sydney. Ticket and session details can be found at the official website.

1BR GIVES HORRORS OF RENTAL LIVING A NEW LEASE

David Marmor’s directorial debut, 1BR, will play well with Australia’s capital city audiences, for whom rental-house hunting is its own nightmarish reality. For Marmor's protagonist Sarah, the gated apartment community she’s found in sunny LA seems too good to be true; in true spine-tingling psychological-horror style, so it proves to be. Working from his lean, taut script and with a fearless leading lady in Nicole Brydon Bloom, Marmor (pictured, below) has crafted an intensely gripping examination of modern urban living. Ahead of the Australian Premiere of 1BR at Fangoria x Monster Fest 2019, Marmor spoke with SCREEN-SPACE about the film that RogerEbert.com praised as “unique horror.” 

SCREEN-SPACE: Your understated directing style serves the simmering tension and unfolding puzzle of the film superbly. Films such as Polanski's The Tenant and Rosemary's Baby came to mind for me, as well as Brian Yuzna's Society. Who are the filmmakers and what are the films that inform your directing?

DAVID MARMOR: You hit the nail on the head with Polanski. I'm not sure it'd be possible to make a movie like this without being influenced by his apartment trilogy. I also found inspiration in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, which I think is a masterful example of subjective storytelling, planting us firmly in Nina's troubled mind from start to finish. Michael Haneke and Stanley Kubrick always influence me, and for 1BR I drew especially from Caché and A Clockwork Orange. Other influences are harder to pin down, as I think I've subconsciously absorbed lessons from so many filmmakers I grew up on. Odd as it may seem, there's probably a little Spielberg in there, too. (Pictured, right; Nicole Brydon Bloom, as Sarah, in 1BR)

SCREEN-SPACE: There's a strong thematic subtext that explores the sacrifice we have to make to conform; one of my favourite lines is, "The sooner you give up, the sooner you'll be free." Is your film a call-to-arms, to cling to your individuality and personal voice? Did you come at the story with a socio-political agenda?

DAVID MARMOR: I really don't have any political agenda. I know there's at least one reviewer out there who was convinced the movie is an Alex Jones-style paranoid fantasy, and someone else once came up to me and said conspiratorially that he understood my real meaning - that it was all an indictment of socialism. I'm actually happy that different audiences are finding different meanings in the movie, but my intent in creating the community was in fact to give it very positive underlying values--and then twist them into something terrible. That was the most frightening idea to me, and it's also the way these things often seem to evolve in real life. I don't think anybody starts out intending to create a repressive religion or a violent death cult (at least I hope not!), but when your goal is to save all of humanity, there are no limits to the means you can justify to yourself. If there's any deeper meaning underlying the story, for me it's more metaphorical than political. I think many people struggle with the tension between being true to ourselves and what we owe our family, our friends, and our society. Those obligations, as important as they are, can make us feel trapped in our lives. On some level, I think of this story as a kind of extreme exploration of that internal tension. (Pictured, above; Marmor, right, directing Bloom during principal photography)

SCREEN-SPACE: The dark psychology that goes into breaking Sarah's spirit is agonisingly specific. Is the methodology you employ based upon research or just plucked from the dark recesses of your own mind?

DAVID MARMOR: Sadly, the world has much darker recesses than my mind, and I found I didn't need to make much up. The methods in the movie are almost entirely based in reality. Many of the physical methods come directly from techniques the U.S. government has used in the Iraq War and other recent conflicts, as well as practices employed by the British government during the Troubles. I also drew heavily from my research into cults, many of which seem to share a common set of psychological tools for isolating people and keeping them dependent.

David Marmor's 1BR will screen as part of Fangoria x Monster Fest 2019 (Melbourne - Oct 13/16; other states Oct 31-Nov 3). Full session and venue details available at the official website. 

PIERCING: THE MIA WASIKOWSKA INTERVIEW

Mia Wasikowska has spent the last decade establishing herself as one of the most daring and in-demand actresses working in film today. With only a handful of local credits to her name (including Greg McLean’s killer-croc romp, Rogue), Wasikowska hit the Hollywood casting circuit, where everyone noticed her immediately opposite Gabriel Byrne in the TV series In Treatment. In quick succession, she was sought out by such A-list directors as Edward Zwick (Defiance, with Daniel Craig); Lisa Cholodenko (the Oscar-nominated The Kids are All Right, with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore); Tim Burton (her breakthrough lead role in the blockbuster Alice in Wonderland, opposite Johnny Depp); Gus Van Sant (Restless); John Hillcoat (Lawless, with Tom Hardy); Chan-wook Park (Stoker, opposite Nicole Kidman); Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive, with Tilda Swinton); John Curran (Tracks, for which she was AACTA-nominated); David Cronenberg (Maps to The Stars, co-starring Robert Pattinson); and, Guillermo del Toro (Crimson Peak, with Jessica Chastain).

Her latest is the body-horror/romantic thriller Piercing, in which she stars opposite wanna-be psychopath Chris Abbott as a prostitute willing to go the gory distance with her latest john. The sophomore effort from The Eyes of The Mother director Nicolas Pesce, the film is playing a limited season in Australia before its US run begins on February 1. In front of a sold-out session at her local cinema, the Dendy arthouse multiplex in the cool inner-city Sydney suburb of Newtown (“It’s the first time I’ve been able to walk to a Q&A!”), Mia Wasikowska joined SCREEN-SPACE managing editor Simon Foster to discuss the light and dark of her latest challenging role… (Main photo: Sharif Hamza) 

SCREEN-SPACE: You were coming off a string of very big productions – Crimson Peak, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Man With The Iron Heart – when you took on the part of ‘Jackie’ in Piercing. Was part of the appeal its two-room shoot?

WASIKOWSKA: Yeah, sort of. I really wanted to do something modern, very contemporary, very different to the repressed women I’d been playing for the last few years; anything that means I didn’t have to wear a corset. This was the most obvious antidote. I was originally approached to play the wife, with an older actress set to play ‘Jackie’. Then, a week before shooting, shat actress fell out and Nicholas came to me and said, “How about you play Jackie?” I had 24 hours to decide and then I was into the role. (Pictured, right; with co-star, Christoper Abbott)

SCREEN-SPACE: So not a great deal of time was spent crafting a backstory for her?

WASIKOWSKA: I used to do that quite a bit, in my earlier days, but [now] I just like jumping in, not thinking about it too much. Especially with a character like Jackie, who is a character that could have overwhelmed me, it was better just to not overthink the part. As I get older, I’m looking for more and more movies that I just hope I am going to enjoy making.

SCREEN-SPACE: You put a lot of faith in your collaborators when taking on this sort of material. How did you find those early days with your director, Nicolas Pesce?

WASIKOWSKA: I was a little dubious (laughs). It is a bunch of men making this type of movie and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to get when I turned up. I couldn’t quite figure out who was going to make this movie. But when I first met Nic I was really comforted by the fact that he just seemed like a really genuine guy, someone I could trust, and then the excitement set in. (Pictured, left; l-r, star Chris Abbott, Wasikowska, director Nicolas Pesce)

SCREEN-SPACE: Did you draw upon the same source material as Nicolas? Did you read Ryû Murakami novel?

WASIKOWSKA: No, I didn’t. I still haven’t (laughs). I didn’t have time. Chris, Nic and I decided that this film talks about the affect of trauma, notably childhood trauma. You get an indication, in those flashbacks, of what Reed has been through and how that applies to who he is now. We applied a similar thinking to Jackie. Although there is nothing stated in the film, I took the notion of two traumatised souls finding each other as a starting point to understanding her and their dynamic.

SCREEN-SPACE: Despite all the on-screen nastiness, it is a very sweet film, a true romance in every sense…

WASIKOWSKA: When we were making the film, we were always conscious of both sides of these characters. Of course, there is their darkness but there’s also a kind of childlike vulnerability or sweetness that comes through in their interactions. That subtext was really fun to play, given the outwardly nasty nature of the film’s context. (Pictured, right; Mia Wasikowska as 'Jackie' in Piercing)

SCREEN-SPACE: Piercing exists within the same sub-genre as Secretary or American Mary; the author’s previous work was adapted into Takashi Miike’s shocking masterpiece, Audition. Are these stories you would gravitate towards as viewer?

WASIKOWSKA: I would much sooner make this movie than watch it (laughs). I loved the idea of playing Jackie, not least because it allows you to be somewhat removed from the stylised graphic elements of the story. When we shot the scene where I stab my leg, I was fitted with the prosthetic and two guys on the other side of the room pumped blood through the holes. That’s hard to watch, but it was fun to play. When I made it clear to Nic that on-screen violence is not something I am always comfortable watching, he rationalised it away by telling me, “There’s no murder in the film, there’s no sex.” (Laughs) 

SCREEN-SPACE: The slightly surreal sense of time and place adds to the film’s allure…

WASIKOWSKA: I love that so much about Nic’s vision. You never see daylight in the film. Part of the set was a window, and outside that window was a screen that showed Asian cities that kept changing. He wanted everything about the setting to be somewhat disorienting, never allowing the audience to be sure where they were. He allowed me to use my normal accent, as part of bringing this eclectic style and feel into the mix. That confusion, that sense of slight unreality, is so much part of what the film is. (Pictured, left; Chris Abbott and Wasikowska)

SCREEN-SPACE: You’ve made inner city Sydney your home. Does this mean you will be focussing on making more Australian films, or is this the hub from which you continue an international career?

WASIKOWSKA: I guess both, really. Of course, I’d love to do more work here at home. We have such a great industry, with wonderful storytellers and craftsman, so it is more just about if we have the funding to inspire them and increase the numbers of productions here. We have so much talent but sometimes we just don’t have the [financial] resources. That’s something that’s not necessarily in my control, but I’d love to work here more. I love living here and would love to be able to stay here to do my work.

Presented by Monster Fest in conjunction with Rialto Distribution, PIERCING is screening for a limited time via Dendy Cinemas. It is released in selected US markets and on VOD on February 1.  

PREVIEW: 2018 SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

The latest from New Zealand’s ‘New Wave of Comedy’, a German film student’s thesis being hailed as one of the most exciting debuts in years and a triptych of punkish retro classics are just some of the avenues that adventurous patrons can wander down at this year’s Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF). The 12^th annual celebration of cinema that shocks, confounds and seduces kicks into gear September 13 at its spiritual home, the iconic Factory Theatre in Sydney’s inner-west.

The 4-day soiree leads with the Australian premiere of Mega Time Squad, a crowd-pleasing, off-kilter romp from across The Ditch. Having won hearts at the genre confab Fantasia (rogerebert.com called it a, “sci-fi mini-odyssey with lots of creativity and even more laugh-out-loud gags”), writer/director Tim van Dammen’s time-loop comedy features Anton Tenet as a wannabe gangster who stumbles upon mystical jewellery that allows for time-space shenanigans. Co-star Jonny Brugh, who stole all his scenes in What We Do in The Shadows, will attend Opening Night ahead of hosting the Screen Acting & Improv Workshop on Saturday, September 15.

The feature film roster runs to 27 idiosyncratic visions, including 11 Australian premieres. Most notable amongst the 2018 line-up is Tilman Singer’s Luz (pictured, top), a film-studies thesis project shot on 16mm that Variety lauded as, “equal measures demonic-possession thriller, experiment in formalist rigor, and flummoxing narrative puzzle-box.” Other sessions certain to rattle adventurous Sydney patrons include Reinert Kill’s Norwegian yuletide slasher epic Christmas Blood; director Ethan Hawke’s Blaze (pictured, right), a deconstructionist musical-biopic of redneck country music star Blaze Foley, starring Benjamin Dickey in the title role alongside Alia Shawkat and Sam Rockwell; Wang Jinsong’s How Far Tomorrow, one of the first Chinese films to address drug addiction and in doing so, defy the strict censorship laws governing the nation’s filmmakers; and, Lucio A. Rojas’ appropriately-titled Chilean home-invasion horror ordeal, Trauma (read our full review here).

Underground icons represented this year include Canadian badboy Bruce La Bruce with The Misandrists, a lesbian-anarchy patriarchal takedown that deconstructs feminist ideals; Sion Sono, whose buckets-of-blood mini-series opus Tokyo Vampire Hotel has been re-edited into a still-epic 144 minute theatrical cut; and Winnipeg’s favourite son Guy Maddin who, with collaborators, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, presents his latest montage masterwork, the Vertigo-inspired The Green Fog.

SUFF will also recognize one of the lesser-known DIY giants of alternative art in the form of Stephen Groo, a micro-budget auteur whose output of over 180 films of next-to-no quality has earned him cult(ish) status and fans such as Napoleon Dynamite filmmaker Jared Hess, screenwriter Mike White and Jemaine Clements. Scott Christopherson’s profile-doc The Magic of Groo will screen ahead of the World Premiere of Groo’s latest effort, a remake of his own 2003 film The Unexpected Race, which this time around has ensnared Jack Black in a lead role (pictured, right).

The always-popular retrospective sessions include a 30^th anniversary screening of William Lustig’s cult ‘video nasty’ Maniac Cop, set to screen after the Sydney premiere of the documentary King Cohen, a profile of the legendary Larry Cohen, the film’s writer (read our review of King Cohen here); a restored print of Slava Tsukerman’s 1982 post-punk/alien invasion oddity, Liquid Sky; and, with director Alex Proyas in attendance to front a post-screening Q&A, the 1989 dystopian desert-world freak-out Spirits of The Air, Gremlins of The Clouds. Also enjoying a resurrection of sorts will be Charles Band’s VHS-fuelled Puppet Master franchise, with the latest installment Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (written by Bone Tomahawk’s Craig Zahler) having its Australian Premiere at The Factory.

The 2018 factual film program once again honours a diverse range of free-thinkers, from vanguard artists (Oren Jacoby’s Shadowman, a profile of NYC street-artist Richard Hambleton; Philipp Jedicke’s study of enigmatic muso Chilly Gonzalez, Shut Up and Play the Piano; Chuck Smith’s Barbara Rubin & The Exploding New York Underground) to left-field theorists (Daniel J. Clarke’s insight into the Flat Earther’s movement, Behind the Curve; Werner Boote’s environmental industry expose, The Green Lie). Of the 13 feature-length docs programmed, six films bow on these shores for the first time, including Josh Polon’s MexMan and Jerry Tartaglia’s Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith.

The traditional five-tiered Short Film program returns, under the banners Love/Sick, LSD Factory, Ozploit!, Reality Bites and WTF! Most intriguing amongst the eclectic agenda is Allen Anders Live at The Comedy Castle Circa 1987 (pictured, right), a now legendary stand-up session meltdown that was thought to have been lost to time but which has resurfaced in all its grainy, white-knuckle glory thanks to director Laura Moss.

The 12th edition of SUFF will close out with one of the hottest genre titles on the 2018 festival circuit, Panos Cosmatos' bleak and brutal headscratcher, Mandy. Starring Nicholas Cage in one of the most critically-praised roles of his contemporary career, Cosmatos takes on 80s-style revenge-fantasy cinema with a pulsating urgency and nightmarish bent that Sight and Sound described as, "a mind-melting genre orgy of cosmic proportions that’s ridiculously fun."

The 2018 SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL will run September 13-16 at The Factory Theatre, Marrickville. Session and ticket information can be found at the events’ official website.

LOST GULLY ROAD: THE DONNA MCRAE INTERVIEW

MONSTER FEST 2017: The great horror films, works that linger in the minds and hearts of genre fans, are those that have meaning, convey a message, confront truths. Writer/director Donna McRae’s Lost Gully Road establishes a classic ‘cabin in the woods’ premise; a lone heroine (Adele Perovic) in a secluded location, an unseen menace threatening her, physically and psychologically. But McRae, a Lecturer in Film & Television at Deakin University when not behind the camera, wanted to confront the very nature of violence against women within her genre setting. The shoot was isolated and McRae’s depiction of domestic brutality, unflinching. “I think that this was the only way to do it,” the director told SCREEN-SPACE, ahead of the World Premiere of Lost Gully Road at Monster Fest on November 25….

SCREEN-SPACE: Lost Gully Road adheres to an Australian cinematic tradition via its contemporary spin on the 'haunted country home' genre. What are the films, books and art that influenced the project?

MCRAE (pictured, above): A sub-genre of recent independent horror films has been the secluded house by the lake, or deep in the forest, as a site for psychological upheaval. Films like Honeymoon (2014) or Shelley (2016) use this trope well – the seclusion, the claustrophobia and the landscape. The Australian Gothic is fascinating, and I think the landscapes rather than films from here are influences, although I loved the elegant simplicity of Lake Mungo (2008) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Babadook (2014).  The presumed quiet of the bush is something that intrigues me. We scouted for locations in The Dandenongs frequently. It’s so cinematic but offers an uneasy feeling of one step wrong and you are lost. There is a sense of concealment; unlike the outback where you can see what is coming, in the forest one never knows what is out there. Having said this, some of my favourite films are the older ones that use the house as character, such as The Haunting (1963), The Innocents (1961) and, strangely, The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947).    

SCREEN-SPACE: A key thematic concern is how the past continues to haunt the present. Why is your film specifically, and the horror genre in general, so effective in dealing with grief and memory?

MCRAE: I have always been interested in ghosts and haunting. In fact my Phd was on (cinema) ghosts and memory. I feel that they are inextricably linked. The horror genre, or its subgenre the ‘ghost film’, is a fantastic place to delve into this area as it offers an arena to present many levels of an idea. You can represent grief or memory as a ghost, which, depending on which way the story goes, can be loving, traumatic or very nasty. So it is no wonder that this genre is so inventive. (Pictured, right; a scene from Lost Gully Road) 

SCREEN-SPACE: Your casting of Adele Perovic (pictured, below) catches her primed for her first feature lead role. How close was she to the 'Lucy' that you and writer Michael Vale envisioned, and what did she bring to the characterisation?

MCRAE: I had seen Adele on television, and was struck with the immediacy of her performance. When we first spoke, she came across as the embodiment of our character – a millennial that was smart, aware of the world around her but with her own point of view. We only had two weeks to shoot so we had no rehearsal time scheduled, [yet] Adele gave the most naturalistic performance, which I doubt would have been possible if we had tried to rehearse. She put herself in the character’s shoes and just went with it. It was a textbook study of an actor producing truth.  It was important to us all that she remain ‘in the moment’, to make decisions for her character, and I would only interfere if I wasn’t seeing it in the monitor. It was risky, but having trained as an actor myself, I know how hard acting is on a film set, so I was happy to take the risk.  My DOP Laszlo Baranyai is a great believer in letting the actor do what they need to do and then we shoot it. Laszlo and I had days of script conversations, so by the time we got to the set, we had made many decisions. He just got on with his department and I concentrated on the performance. I did have my favourite scenes though in my head, like the one where she walks down the corridor with a camping lantern. I wanted it a particular way, so I very much led those.

SCREEN-SPACE: Violence and horror films go hand-in-hand, of course, but your use of violence is not exploitative or gratuitous. What functionality does your depiction of violence serve?

MCRAE: I needed to get my point across. I wanted to show a disintegration of trust and the complications of when no means no. It is a film about random and domestic violence and I saw no point tiptoeing around that. I made choices about how it would be done; I didn’t want to make it a typical ‘cinema’ depiction of domestic violence. As a female filmmaker I found it hard to write these scenes but they were connected to the story so they needed to be in there. These were the only scenes that we rehearsed with a stunt co-ordinator and we were very careful to make it seem real. The fact that Adele does it all by herself is amazing. (Pictured, above; the director, on location).

SCREEN-SPACE: The final frames hint at the cyclical nature of violence against women and the inevitability of those actions. Is that the message you hope audiences will take from the film?

MCRAE: The primary message that I want to get across is that no means no. It doesn’t mean yes but I’m just being coy, it means I’m not interested and please stop. Women’s actions should never be misconstrued. And yes, the last frames of the film do reflect the cyclical nature of violence against women. But there is also another aspect, and that is the enablers of this violence. I don’t want to give the story away but there are lessons to be learned here – and I have seen it time and time again – people let things slide because of connections.

LOST GULLY ROAD will have its World Premiere on Saturday November 25 as part of Monster Fest 2017. Ticket and session details can be found at the official festival website.