Look, you don’t have to tell me about it: I was there. There wasn’t a lot going on for movie-crazed kids in Phoenix, Arizona circa June 1987, so when something as significant as Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting a seven-foot-tall alien emerged, a kid like me would hear about it. Never mind that I was just six years old, or that to watch a movie like Predator I had to sneak out of Harry and the Hendersons and into a packed theater of sun-bleached suburbanites: certain moments transcend age or even total comprehension.

This was a special time, mind you. In March of that year, Oliver Stone’s Platoon took home the Oscar for Best Picture, with critics and audiences alike celebrating the deconstruction of any remaining mythology surrounding the Vietnam War and America’s unrivaled military dominance. Hollywood, already scraping the bottom of the idea barrel for whatever cocaine dust remained in the cracks and crevices, realized it had to move beyond cold war villains and other boogeymen of the past. A famous joke amongst executives and industry folk at the time revolved around the fact that Rocky Balboa, having already defeated communism, would have to fight E.T. in his next movie. Joke though it may have been, a spec script by screenwriting duo Jim and John Thomas took this to heart, and after it passed through Hollywood’s sausage maker and came out the other end, Predator was born.

A big-budget slasher flick wrapped in 80s action clothing, the film premiered on June 12, 1987, the same day Reagan challenged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” Living in the twilight of a world where Oliver Stone had ripped the guts out of this country’s swagger, when presidents and premiers traded toothless remarks instead of artillery shells, Predator appeared at a very special moment. The time of pissing contests between nuclear powers was over, with an action hero like Schwarzenegger so lacking in true, honest competition that he had to search for it off-world.

It was a broad sea-change not just for Hollywood, but the world writ large, and audiences and one particular six-year-old in Phoenix took notice. Over the next 35 years, three (soon to be four) sequels and two franchise crossovers cashed in on the magnificent legacy of having no time to bleed. With the release of Prey this week, an examination of what makes a good Predator picture is nothing less than essential.

This isn’t as difficult as it may seem, either. Certain pervasive and undeniable features have always defined your standard Predator flick, and how they were deployed in the existing 4-film (no Alien crossovers) canon can be quantified by way of an 8-point evaluation system. These eight categories are as follows:

• Kill Count (Active Killings Seen Onscreen)

• Kill Frequency (The Average Time Between Kills)

• Total Predators (More Predators > Less Predators)

• Acting Quality (Judged on the EGOT Scale for Top-Line Speaking Cast)

• Box Office (Gross over Budget Quantifier)

• Critical Score (RT/Metacritic/Cinema Score)

• Hand-to-Hand Melee Encounters (As Percentage of Total Runtime)

• Body Mass (As Defined by the 8 Top-Line Speaking Cast)

Using these metrics, we can objectively rate each installment in a broader effort to understand what makes these pictures so special in the first place. Like the Yautja, this will be a cold, dispassionate, disciplined investigation; it is one that looks at what it means to fly a film under the Predator banner, and the lessons the franchise has taught the world over the years: lessons that inform this very study, starting with…

Kill Count & Frequency

Predator (1987)

The original installment in the Predator franchise was a lot of things, but in a hurry wasn’t one of them. 35 years ago, no one knew what the hell a Yautja was, so director John McTiernan and the script by the Thomas brothers had to ease the audience into things. Invoking slasher genre tropes, the film took an unknown but familiar “menace” quantity and pitted it against the toughest, burliest, most sleeve-averse group of bad-asses Hollywood could assemble at the time: led by Mr. Big-Dick-Energy himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Establishing the setting and the players took a bit of time, however, which left Predator with an astonishing 21 minutes and 30 seconds without a kill (Jim Hopper’s Green Beret squad bought it off-camera). Ho-ly shit did it get busy from there, though. Once Dutch (Schwarzenegger) spied the execution of a hostage from afar, his boys racked up a couple of quick and quiet sentry kills that cleared the way for an astonishing 9-in-1 murder maneuver by the good Major himself. This kicked off an absolute orgy of unrestrained 80s violence that knows no peer (in the franchise, or Hollywood writ large).

From 24:33 (the truck bomb) to 27:36 (“knock knock”) there was a remarkable 50 onscreen deaths. This bears repeating: 50 in three minutes and three seconds, which accounted for 81.9% of the movie’s overall kills. Many of these came in clusters, like Painless’ first pair at 0:25:19, or Billy’s (Sonny Landham) grenade triple at 0:26:52, but what’s remarkable is the relative parity of mayhem between squad mates. Like a practiced basketball team, the kills moved and rotated through them like a well-passed ball, with every player getting some shots in here and there.

Granted, the film took almost fifteen minutes off between the final kill from this mass culling to Hawkins’ (Shane Black) demise at 0:42:02, and in the near hour from then to the credits rolling, there was just 6 additional onscreen deaths. At first glance the numbers do not appear even, but with 61 onscreen kills in 103 minutes, the numbers don’t lie. Predator clocked in at 1 kill every 1.688 minutes (or 0.592 kills a minute) with a frequency rate of 99.245 seconds between murders.  

Predator 2

A buck forty-three and it was on, that’s how serious director Stephen Hopkins took this assignment. As already discussed, Predator (1987) waited a veritable lifetime to get to its first kill, but not the sequel: no ma’am. Not two minutes into this thing and Predator 2 was already plugging cops like holes in a dam. Five of the LAPD’s finest dropped before the 4-minute mark, and by the time Lt. Harrigan (Danny Glover) shot half a dozen holes into El Scorpio (Henry Kingi) at the 10-minute hash, it was already up to 17 confirmed onscreen. 17 at 10 minutes in! Granted, this isn’t the kind of pace any film can maintain without driving its audience into a full-bore mental collapse, so it did eventually slow its roll. Indeed, Predator 2 wisely let its script breathe after that first burst and took a little time to introduce its characters and the crime-crazy setting of 1997 for narrative’s sake.

But it didn’t last. No, this one came to party.

There was a 12-minute break in the mayhem before a Jamaican hit squad ambushed a Columbian drug lord, whose murder kicked off a Predator kill spree that saw another 6 baddies dropped in the span of just 2 minutes. By this point one could begin to see a pattern, with the “City Predator” (Kevin Peter Hall) finding conflict in L.A., hopping in to mix it up, only for Lt. Harrigan and co. to then show up shortly after to deal with the collateral damage.

Yet even these pauses between set-pieces weren’t without a little background action, and this kept the audience’s bloodlust satiated at a remarkable pace (see also: Danny and King Willie’s murders). While there were clusters of kills that shortened the average time between executions (i.e., the police shootout at the beginning, the subway massacre, the dismantling of Keyes’ squad), this movie never let its audience go more than 16 minutes without a kill, with an average of 136.5 seconds between onscreen deaths.

That’s a frequency rate of a kill every 2 minutes and 16.5 seconds, which is just absolutely remarkable considering the overall average (42 total onscreen kills in 102 minutes is one kill every 2.42 minutes, or .411 kills a minute). Granted, it didn’t quite add up to its predecessor’s rate, yet as we’ll see in a moment, this wasn’t an easy bar to clear by any means.

Predators

Though pretty damn decent as far as the creativity of kills and its willingness to lean into its R rating, this one lacked where it counted the most: kill count and frequency. A decent entry into the Predator canon and fronted by an absolutely shredded Adrien Brody, there just wasn’t enough dead meat available on this alien hunting preserve to put it in competition with the rest of the franchise.

Although Predators started strong with the blind parachute jump and the unfortunate soul whose canopy didn’t deploy at 03:08, over 24 minutes passed before the next burst of mayhem. But the original Predator went over 21 minutes without a kill, how can one fault this for following in its hallowed footsteps? Well, for starters, because it course-corrected with just 6 kills during the film’s first action set-piece (compared to the OG’s 50), and racked up a total of just 18 kills in all.

Which…well…look: Predators did a hell of a lot right, paying homage to the franchise with several thematic and visual call-backs to the original, yet as far as kills and kill frequency, this one was wanting. Director Nimrod Antal made a valiant go of things by weaving in the deaths of Cuchillo (Danny Trejo) and Mombasa (Mahershala Ali) between the hunting dog and Noland (Laurence Fishburne) set pieces, but the gaps were just too large.

And while this one’s heart was in the right place, and proved to be a helluva fun watch, the stats just don’t lie. With just 18 onscreen murders in 101 minutes (two minutes shorter than the original, and one shorter than its predecessor), this one had a frequency of 5.46 minutes between kills, and an overall average of just 0.17 kills a minute, far below the last two installments, and miles behind the most recent entry.

The Predator

Finally, a Predator movie that realized this franchise requires more than just heroes and Predators: it needs anonymous dead-meat cannon fodder to keep things lively between scalpings. The first one had a camp full of South American soldiers, the second had Jamaican and Columbian narcos, and this one had private military stooges. This allowed for that perfect balance of main character attrition and near-constant blood-letting that gives the audience the kills it wants without depleting the main roster too quickly.

Like all previous installments with the exception of the gleefully impatient Predator 2, this one didn’t really kick into high gear for 20+ minutes. A couple of jungle kills aside right off the top, it wasn’t until 0:28:51 that the audience got a proper tour through the Predator abattoir. 16 baddies dropped in the next 9 minutes, with a few spurts to keep things lively until the next major bloodletting, which started at 1:15:12. Oh, and if you haven’t seen it or don’t remember, it went ever so fucking hard from there: racking up 17 kills in the next 3 minutes and 46 seconds (including a delightful 3-in-1 jeep decapitation maneuver).

It was just magnificent, and it amounted to 52 total kills in just 100 tidy minutes, with an overall average of 1 kill every 1.92 minutes (or 0.52 kills a minute), with an overall average frequency of 108.23 seconds between kills.

So, what does that data tell us?

Although there were some interesting variances in the figures, the data showed that more kills translated not just into a better overall average for the film, but as a boon to its frequency criteria as well. And while a movie like Predator 2 seemed to have better spacing between its kills (including starting strong from the jump), the fact that it came in a full nine bodies lower than The Predator dashed any chances of it moving ahead of its 2018 counterpart in the analysis.

Thus, when evaluating the four existing Predator films based on kill count and frequency, the ranking in this table sets them in order in both categories.

Total Predators

Sticking with the numbers, this next category was even more simple. This wasn’t hard: more Predators is better than less Predators. Fact.

As Mae West once said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” and that’s a sentiment this purely scientific study felt compelled to get behind. The breakdown follows thus:

The original Predator was appropriately titled in the singular, with the onscreen appearance of just one Yautja: the Jungle Hunter.

A few short years later Predator 2 asked how many Predators is too many? To the benefit of audiences and mankind, they settled on 10.

Don’t believe me? Count ‘em!

There was the City Hunter that Lt. Harrigan battled, along with nine visible shipmates that appeared after the plucky human had smote their comrade. It was a brief appearance, but an important one that helped establish a wider universe and mythos for these aliens.

And while Predators did alright for itself with an entirely respectable count of four (three Super Predators, one Classic), it represented a step down for the franchise in this particular category. This was a dubious tradition the 2018 installment held true to with just two onscreen Predators, one Super/Ultimate and one Classic.

Which…look, having a bunch of Predators in your Predator film won’t save it outright, but it won’t hurt it, either. When in doubt: more Predators.

Acting Quality

If one evaluates the top-line acting talent of any given movie on the EGOT (Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony) scale and assigns point values to each award, then this also becomes quite easy to analyze. If we assign One point for a Grammy, two points for an Emmy, and three for either an Oscar or Tony (and a consolation point for an Oscar nomination without a win), then the data does the work for us, here. To wit:

Predator (1987)

Predator might have had the whole governor thing covered, but as far as awards hardware, it was lacking. Only the Austrian Oak himself represented in this category, with just a single EGOT-win under his belt (an executive producing Primetime Emmy for 2014’s Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series winner Years of Living Dangerously). But that’s it!

Predator 2 (1990)

A sneaky-competitive candidate, Predator 2 was more viable in this category than one might expect. Gary Busey’s nomination for The Buddy Holly Story gave this one a point, and another three for Danny Glover’s Academy Award as a recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Don’t look now, though, because Ruben Blades has nine, count ‘em, NINE Grammys! Mr. Blades’ contributions to Latin pop brings the total score for Predator 2 up to a whopping 13, where it enjoyed the top spot for only a handful of seconds…right before the awards buzzsaw that is Predators ripped through it like a Yautja Smart Disc.

Predators (2010)

Nothing less than an embarrassment of riches in this category, Predators had an EGOT Murder’s Row for its top-line cast. Laurence Fishburne alone racked up 10 points with three Emmy wins, one Tony, and an Oscar nomination. Oh, and in case you forgot, fucking two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali was in this movie, too, accounting for eight total points (two Oscar Wins and an Emmy). If you combine that with Adrien Brody’s Oscar win, and Topher Grace’s Emmy, that’s a whopping 23 points for Predators!

Spoiler alert, none of the other three films come anywhere near this number. Respect.

The Predator (2018)

This is a real “A-for-effort” scenario. There were some fine actors and artists in The Predator, several of whom have already locked down awards hardware, but the fact that this picture has had only had a handful of years to earn its cast subsequent statues handicapped it. Indeed, it’s easy to imagine Alfie Allen, Jacob Tremblay, Trevante Rhodes, and even Thomas Jane getting something on the EGOT spectrum one day, but alas, it has not yet come to pass. Only the Emmys from Sterling K. Brown (two) and Keegan-Michael Key (one) allowed for points in this category, which saw The Predator with just 6 total.

Box Office

Money walks and bullshit walks, amirite? Although a Predator film shouldn’t be judged solely on its box office haul, the worldwide gross against production budget formula is an undeniable load bearing point upon which everything else can be evaluated within a larger analytical matrix. According to IMDb the details of all four installments are as follows:

Naturally, some of this was just a matter of good vs. bad timing. Predator 2, for example, came out in late-November 1990, where it had to do battle against awards juggernaut Dances with Wolves and one of the all-time highest grossing movies in history, Home Alone. On the flip side, Predator released in a somewhat thin action market in June 1987, where its primary competition was Beverly Hills Cop 2, released almost a month earlier. Similarly, when Predators dropped over the Fourth of July weekend in 2010, the other studios seemed to have abandoned the traditionally audience-rich weekend to its own devices. Perhaps it was the mistaken assumption that June drops like The A-Team, Knight and Day, and Jonah Hex would still be stretching their legs, but aside from Inception (released July 15), Predators didn’t have any real genre competition until the August 3 release of The Expendables.

And then you get The Predator, which really didn’t have any excuses to hide behind. Released on September 5, 2018, its only competition that weekend was The Nun, and neither saw any interlopers nudging in on their genre’s demographics until September 28’s release of Venom. Prior to September, a mostly dead summer that hadn’t seen a big hit since July 6’s Aquaman should have teed The Predator up for big returns from audiences starved for action, yet the movie just didn’t bring them out.

Thus, at the end of the day, all one has is the figures. This put Predator in the resounding lead in this category, followed by Predators, Predator 2, and The Predator (in that order).

Critical Score

This one’s a real kick to the teeth, no doubt. Although a few forward-thinking critics harbored some degree of appreciation for the original, the press traditionally haven’t been all that kind to the franchise. Roger Ebert admired the original up to a point, writing, “Predator moves at a breakneck pace, it has strong and simple characterizations, it has good location photography and terrific special effects, and it supplies what it claims to supply: an effective action movie.” He was less enthusiastic about the follow-up, however, writing, “The dialogue is foul and clinical, and the special effects, while expensive, are not interesting.”

And while Rita Kempley was a bit warmer on Predator 2, writing that director Stephen Hopkins, “keeps the pedal to the metal but never allows the explosive action to minimize the actors,” far more fell into the Ebert camp. Which is to say that in most cases, critics seem to spend much more time thinking about the world-building logistics of these films, and less about the escapist fun of watching giant bipedal extraterrestrials underestimating human bad-asses. This theme came up frequently in Ebert’s 2010 review of Predators, where he wrote, “Who runs this game preserve, and why?…Is it a wise use of resources to transport several mammals untold light years through space just so you can watch them getting their asses predatored?”

Yes, Roger. Yes it is.

And while the most recent installment, The Predator, did suffer under the constraints of a studio edit hack job (and a poorly conceived subplot concerned with autism), many of the same criticisms surfaced once again. Even so, the data is important, and thus we have the following:

Hand-to-Hand Melee Encounters

With one decision, just one exasperated resignation, a cherished and essential tradition found life. And it made sense, too. Just put yourself in Billy’s boots in Predator…go ahead, I’ll wait.  

By the time he ditched the radio and his rifle (1:14:25), Billy had not only encountered an actual murderous alien, but he had confirmed his worst fears in the most terrible way imaginable. This is like moving into a spooky mansion, suspecting that it’s haunted, and then watching actual ghosts slaughter your whole family.

The fragile human psyche just can’t be expected to handle something this off-book, and if there’s one thing all Predator films have in common, it’s a sense that every Earthling has a breaking point. For Billy, it was hearing the tortured screams of Dillon (Carl Weathers), whose death seemed to convince Billy that his own was inevitable. Tired of running, of being afraid, of relying on flimsy technology that seemed to have no bearing on the issue at hand, Billy stripped down and ditched everything except a fuck-off-big machete.

And by all accounts, Yautja really, really dig this. In Predator, the Jungle Hunter made short work of Billy hand-to-hand (1:15:40), yet seemed to enjoy that so much that he went back for seconds with Dutch, abandoning everything in his armaments rig except melee weapons. If we combine these two encounters, we get 75 seconds (Billy’s brief stand) + four minutes and 47 seconds between the Jungle Hunter and Dutch (starting with the former’s abandonment of his plasmacaster and ending with the arming of his wrist bomb). Combined, that’s six minutes and two seconds of hand-to-hand fighting in the original.

This seems like a healthy amount (5.8% of the overall runtime), yet it paled in comparison to what’s blessedly given to audiences in Predator 2, which devoted most of the third act’s back half to a melee duel. From 1:27:03, when Harrigan lost his laser-scoped hand cannon, to the conclusion of the spaceship blade fight at 1:35:25, the City Hunter and the good lieutenant spent 8 minutes and 22 seconds going at it hand to hand. And that’s not even taking into account the absolutely metal way King Willie went out when confronted by the “demon” he tried to warn Harrigan about. Like Billy, when King Willie was confronted by the monster that tickled his sixth sense, he more or less went insane and decided to square up with nothing more than a sword. Again, like Billy, the Yautja made quick work of his foe, but at least found a little respect for the species if this franchise trope is to be believed. These two encounters combined for a staggering eight minutes and 44 seconds. This represented 8.6% of the film, a very respectable number.

And while Predators paid tribute to the tradition of honorable combat between human and space hunter, it left far less room for it. Like Billy, King Willie, and Lt. Harrigan, by the time Hanzo (Louis Ozawa) faced off against the Falconer Super Predator, he’d had about all he could take. Once again, we saw a noble warrior tired of running, tired of being scared and waiting for death to come: deciding instead to make a fucking reservation.

And again, the Predator in question seemed to really vibe on this. It was a brief duel, yet a magnificent one, starting at 1:17:23 when Hanzo nudged the katana out of its scabbard, ending with his and his opponent’s death at 1:19:19. And while Royce did go mostly hand-to-hand in his final match-up with the Super Predator, Isabelle used her rifle to seal the deal, eliminating this encounter from consideration in this category. Just under two minutes out of 101 total represents 1.7% of the total film, and put this one firmly in 3^rd place, where it will remain due to the shameful near-abandonment of this trope in The Predator!

And really, there’s no excuse for this. The closest this film came to an honest-to-goodness hand-to-hand battle took place between the two Predators, and even this was suspect (OG Predator opened the tussle with a plasmacaster blast). Starting at 56:45 and wrapping up just 51 seconds later with an admittedly spectacular decapitation, this one gave audiences the least amount of hand-to-hand action out of the bunch (less than one percent of the total runtime).

Body Mass

“It’s important to pack on mass!”

-Mac, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The last and most difficult category to assess with strict scientific precision, yet there’s hope for a fair accounting using a few baseline data points. To do so we start with Predator and the good Major himself. During his late-70s bodybuilding heyday, Schwarzenegger at 6’2’’ came in at 235 pounds in-competition, and roughly 260 when not. And while Arnold wasn’t in prime bodybuilding shape in 1986-87, he has remarked that he slimmed down roughly 25 pounds for his role in Predator, speculating that a special forces soldier would need to carry less weight. Thus, while his overall muscle mass didn’t compare to his competition days, assuming his resting Hollywood weight was slightly heavier than his body-building days, this put him at 265 pre-shoot, and 240 during.

Using this figure and Schwarzenegger’s height as our body mass Rosetta Stone, we can extrapolate reasonable estimations for the eight top-line speaking cast thus:

Using Arnold’s lean 240 lb. frame at 6’2’’ as the measuring stick, we can give Ventura an extra 10 pounds to account for two additional inches and less tone (using that same figuring for Landham at 6’3’’ and 240). At 5’5’’, Elpidia Carrillo gets a generous assessment of 110 pounds, as does Shane Black at 5’10’’ and 165, though what may first seem like a drastic muscle deficiency may well be the victim of comparison bias. Taking conservative estimates all around, this one still comes in at a cumulative mass of 1660 pounds for the top-line acting talent, a figure its sequel did indeed take a run at…

Unfortunately, there were no competitive athletes with archived stats top-lining Predator 2, so there wasn’t as solid of a cast baseline, here, yet the internet came through on heights, and the 8-actor sample remained constant. An impressive 6’4’’, Danny Glover was flat-out cut in this one, showing off his rippling midsection early in the picture during a shirt-change. If we call him 215, then Adam Baldwin’s thinner frame at the same height would put him at around 205, 5 pounds less than the older Kent McCord at 6’2’’, and Robert Davi at the same height. 6’ Bill Paxton never looked leaner than he did here, and while he didn’t pack on a ton of mass for the role, he looked like a healthy 175, 10 pounds less than Ruben Blades at 5’10’’. Rounding things out, Busey appeared to be a hanging a husky 230 or so on his 6’ frame, and 5’9’’ Maria Conchita Alonso, still in Running Man shape, probably came in at about 120 pounds. Although it wasn’t all muscle, mass is mass, bringing Predator 2 in at 1550 pounds, just one Elpidia Carrillo away from the top spot.

Finally: another competitive athlete in the cast! Predators featured former MMA champion Oleg Taktarov, who in his prime sported a fighting weight of 210 lbs. at 6’ tall. More than a decade removed from his octagon days, though still in decent shape, Taktarov seemed to be at around 225 in this picture, allowing for a decent baseline to evaluate the rest of the cast. An inch taller though considerably leaner and shredded, Brody looked to be a healthy 190 or so, right about what Mahershala was at 6’2’’ (though he appeared a bit less cut, and is accounted for at 185). Walton Goggins at 5’10’’ and Topher Grace at 5’11’’ seemed wiry and sneaky tough, but neither appeared to have packed on mass enough to get them over 155 or 160. Louis Ozawa at a trim yet beefy 185 balanced out Alice Braga’s diminutive stature at 5’7’’ and what looks (generously) to be about 135 pounds. And while Laurence Fishburne certainly did his part at what seemed to be about 230 lbs. on a 6’ frame, this one still ended up solidly in third place with a combined 1445 pounds of mass.

There was real hope for this one. Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, and Sterling K. Brown all have frames capable of stacking mass, yet even they couldn’t save this one’s overall category score against a pre-teen kid and 5’4’’ Olivia Munn. Jacob Tremblay couldn’t have been more than 90 pounds in this flick, and Munn was lucky to clock in at anything more than 110 without rocks in her pockets. And while Thomas Jane certainly seemed as if he was doing his part at what appears to be about 185 at 5’11’’, slight builds on Keegan-Michael Key and Augusto Aguilera ran this one out of serious consideration. Coming in at a combined 1340 pounds, net, that’s good enough for last in the overall ranking, and lightyears behind the OG vis a vis packing on mass.

So, it really was Predator in a runaway, here. The combination of rigorous off-screen training, diarrhea, and late-80s big dick energy brought the principle cast to a level of fitness and mass not seen before or since. Indeed, it was such a remarkable achievement that none of the subsequent installments have ever seriously challenged the original on these terms, though Predator 2 did have a stunning collection of tall actors that came within spitting distance of it.

Final Analysis

This investigation began with the supposition that data-driven analytics could determine not just the necessary qualifications for a great Predator movie, but that one could establish the best installment of the Predator franchise by studying these same metrics. Sticking to these figures and applying a straight mathematical average to each category’s ranking, the results are as follows:

So it is indeed the original Predator at the summit! If the data proved anything, however, it’s the fact that the original’s place on top of the franchise heap is no mistake or fluke. You don’t have to pitch a perfect game to beat the OG, as even Schwarzenegger’s best movie failed to lock down the first position in several categories. Deficient in awards hardware, total Predators, and even hand-to-hand combat, it still had enough gas to get it on the podium’s preferred position, though.

Yet that spot is not assured in perpetuity, as this investigation has provided a clear roadmap to unseat the champion. This seems easy enough: take the best parts of the original, improve upon them while increasing the stakes, and cruise to the bank. Although some sequels improved on things by adding more Predators, bringing in better actors, and increasing the hand-to-hand combat quotients, too often the essentials got lost in the shuffle of studio notes and focus group rewrites. This week we’ll all find out if Prey takes heed of these lessons, but if any enterprising, interested party is curious, the data is there for the taking.

This week saw the release of the nominees for the 2021 film season, and to no one’s surprise, the people who care about this stuff had some thoughts. Those nominated for the 94^th annual Academy Awards represent an interesting mix of critical darlings, big-budget crowd pleasers, and everything in between, with The Power of the Dog leading the proverbial pack with 12 nominations (pun absolutely intended).

There are several interesting contenders in the wings threatening to keep these races competitive, however, along with more than a few head-scratchers even the most seasoned minds at Scene-Stealers can’t quite explain. A full list of the nominations is at the bottom, but to get a sense of what the Scene-Stealers crew is thinking about this crop of nominees, look no further.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OR SNUB?

Timothy English: Hard to say a film with 10 nominations has a snub but Denis Villeneuve stands out in the Director category. And while I’m not sure I’d call it a snub, I’m actually surprised Spider-Man No Way Home didn’t sneak into the Best Picture category, especially after the failed attempt to create a Most Popular Movie award. Being the Ricardos probably shouldn’t have gotten 3 acting noms, but it’s hard to resist familiar names.

Warren Cantrell: Everyone is talking about Villeneuve getting snubbed for Best Director (and rightly so), but the fact that The Green Knight didn’t get a single nomination blows my goddamned mind. It almost feels aggressive at this point, like someone at the Academy just threw all those nominating ballots away because David Lowery pants’d them in middle school.

Jonah Desneux: The Green Knight getting shut out of all the technical awards is this year’s biggest blunder. With those visual elements, David Lowery must have pissed someone off to not receive any recognition. No offense to Free Guy, but how can anyone say that the Dumb Giant CGI Ryan Reynolds is better than the Roaming Giants in The Green Knight?

Logan Van Winkle: As with any year, these nominations have a lot to celebrate and a lot to complain about. For me, the biggest surprise of the day was Kristen Stewart getting in for Spencer. When it was released, Stewart seemed like the frontrunner for the Best Actress Oscar and yet, as we got closer, it seemed more and more likely that she would not even be nominated. It was a very pleasant surprise to hear her name called. Biggest snub of the day? Mike Faist missing out on a Best Supporting Actor nomination for West Side Story. I love J.K. Simmons but he has no business making this line-up for a mediocre performance in a mediocre movie (and I’m a Sorkin fan!) Beyond that, I have to shout out how excited I am to see Andrew Garfield nominated for Best Actor for Tick, Tick… BOOM! If I had a ballot, he would have my vote.

Christian Alec Ramos: Biggest surprise was J.K. Simmons and Judi Dench getting in. I’m shook. Lady Gaga and Jared Leto were shit in a shit movie: there’s no way that was a snub. 

Joe Jarosz: I bought into the hype that Spider-Man: No Way Home would get a best picture nod. But also, nothing for The Harder They Fall or In the Heights? All three were great ensemble pieces and I was surprised all three were left out.

Eric Melin: Neither Lady Gaga nor Jared Leto getting nominated for House of Gucci is hilarious. Those “snubs” and Ben Affleck’s “snub” for playing the good uncle in Clooney’s run-of-the-mill nostalgic piece The Tender Bar—I don’t think those should even be called snubs. It’s just that dumb narratives were being built up around them because of their star power: “Oh Ben is being honest about his failures and his love life in interviews…let’s start the comeback narrative.” Ugh. A real snub? Vincent Lindon should have been nominated for the single most pained performance of the year in Titane, a transportive, emotional, surreal movie from Julia Ducournau that was also snubbed for Best Foreign Language film.

WHAT ARE YOUR BEST PICTURE PREDICTIONS? WHO IS THE FAVORITE, AND WHAT’S A LONGSHOT DARKHORSE YOU LIKE?

Christian Alec Ramos: The Power of the Dog all the way but my heart is West Side Story. Netflix better get me a copy on Criterion STAT.

Eric Melin: For the most part, it’s such a weak field. The best two movies nominated are The Power of the Dog and Licorice Pizza, and since PTA’s newest is such a minor lark compared with the rest of his filmography, I’m going with Jane Campion FTW. It’s smart, subtle, assured, and serious.

Warren Cantrell: If only because they got the most nominations (including in the “big-5”), The Power of the Dog has to be the prohibitive favorite. It’s got pedigree, relevant social themes, period-piece shine, and the colossal power of Netflix’s marketing machine behind it. Belfast is the only real spoiler option for it, and even that seems like a longshot at this point (its momentum is ebbing).

Logan Van Winkle: This has been a two-horse race between The Power of the Dog and Belfast for a few months now. With The Power of the Dog leading nominations, I am inclined to think it is all but locked up in its favor now. Though if I am getting crazy and picking a dark horse to win, I would have to go with Don’t Look Up! It might seem insane, considering it only garnered four nominations and is a wildly divisive film, but it landed in Best Editing (Belfast couldn’t do that!) and Best Original Screenplay. Hollywood loves to pat themselves on the back and no choice would be a harder pat than this overlong film about an important issue. You can bet that if we hear “Don’t Look Up” following the words, “And the Oscar goes to…” I will promptly close my Twitter app before everyone sets it ablaze.

Timothy English: I feel like this is The Power of the Dog year. And Benedict Cumberbatch. They’ve been front runners pretty much since Day 1. Seems like the easy choice for the Academy. Checks off a lot of boxes on the “What is a Best Picture” checklist. Licorice Pizza may have a shot if it gets enough legit eyeballs on it.

Jonah Desneux: The Power of The Dog is this year’s front runner for a reason. It’s rare that Best Picture actually goes to the best film of the year, but Campion is going to pull it off. This one’s for you, Bronco Henry! As far as a dark house, maybe Scorsese’s endorsement for Nightmare Alley gives the noir some hope. It’s hard to imagine Guillermo del Toro taking home the top prize right after The Shape of Water, but it would make for a fun end on Oscar night.

Joe Jarosz: This year it is hard to predict a favorite. Nothing is standing out right now, but Nightmare Alley feels like a dark horse, even with Guillermo del Toro behind the camera.

Kate Valliere: I’ve seen nothing. House of Gucci was a bummer. Spencer was a bummer.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE CATEGORY OF NOMINEES?

Warren Cantrell: The Supporting Actress category is a tough one to handicap, which always makes for an interesting race to follow in the Cantrell household. Dunst seems to be a prohibitive favorite at this point, but almost nothing would surprise me come Oscar night. Dench is an easy pick for lazy Academy voters, yet DeBose has been cleaning up in critics circles and would be a peace offering to Spielberg and West Side Story (which will likely go home empty-handed otherwise).

Joe Jarosz: Animated. All are great films, although I would have switched out Flee with Ron’s Gone Wrong. Fingers crossed The Mitchells vs. the Machines takes home the win.

Christian Alec Ramos: Animated picture is lit.

Logan Van Winkle: Most years, my favorite category of nominees ends up being one of the Screenplay categories. This year, I’d have to say the best category of nominees is Best Animated Feature. There is not a bad movie in the bunch! The movie that most people would say is the category’s weakest, Raya and the Last Dragon, is actually my favorite of the nominees. I understand people get tired of Disney’s dominance in the category and I understand the frustration. Admittedly, it would have been nice to see something like The Summit of the Gods replace Luca. Even so, the five films in contention are all worthy of recognition.

Eric Melin: Probably Production Design. There were some truly beautifully designed movies this year and that’s a strong list.

Jonah Desneux: Production Design has heavy hitters across the board. Dune, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and West Side Story have vastly different looks that are outstanding in their own way. Each could easily win any other year, making this year difficult to predict.

Timothy English: Loving the Cinematography category this year. A lot of great looking films this year and I think the nominees this year truly exemplify the crop as a whole. This one could be anyone’s to win. Not sure there is a clean-cut favorite.

WHAT WILL BE THE BIG NARRATIVE GOING INTO THIS YEAR’S OSCARS?

Jonah Desneux: It was only four years ago that the discourse on if Netflix should be eligible for awards ran rampant online. Since then, the face of streaming has had 7 best picture nominations. This year they’ll take home their first Best Picture win with The Power of the Dog cementing their credibility.

Christian Alec Ramos: All we’ll hear about is the Campion vs. Spielberg and whose winning Best Actress. 

Eric Melin: 28 Years Later, the Oscar zombie sequel: Campion (The Piano) vs. Spielberg (Schindler’s List), the Best Director rematch. She’s a shoo-in to beat him this time. Also, Flee being nominated for doc, animated, foreign language – never happened before!

Timothy English: The diversity of films will probably get a nice big fat pat on the back from everyone in attendance. It’s nice to see a film like CODA get its share of deserved nominations. I’m sure a lot of people will be super impressed that Kristen Stewart got a nomination despite the fact she isn’t a very good actor.

Warren Cantrell: Ratings, hosting, and shaking off the stink of last year’s debacle. The Oscars really do seem to be at a crossroads in terms of viewership and cultural relevancy. Ratings are going to continue declining: the landscape of the format all but guarantees that. The question is whether the Academy will continue trying to tweak things to fight this inevitable death, or return to a sense of normalcy to placate the few die-hards still watching live?  

Joe Jarosz: If Will Smith wins, he’s going to have the speech that people talk about for years.

Logan Van Winkle: The big narrative going into this year is: Will the Fresh Prince become the Fresh King? Will Smith has been entertaining audiences in all sorts of ways for over thirty years. He has had a few shots at Best Actor but has never sealed the deal. This year seems like it could be his year. After a string of critical failures for most of the 2010s, I, for one, will be happy to see one of our last genuine movie stars get recognition from the industry in the form of a little gold man.

IF YOU WERE AN OSCAR LOBBYIST, WHO WOULD YOU BE CAMPAIGNING HARD FOR, AND WHY?

Joe Jarosz: Will Smith. Was he robbed for Ali? Maybe. He faces off against Denzel again 20 years later (Training Day vs Ali was 2002, funny timing).

Timothy English: Troy Kotsur for CODA. I thought there were a lot of great performances but he really stood out to me. He was funny, endearing, and his scenes really popped when he was on screen. I’d also love to see Flee cause a ruckus.

Jonah Desneux: I’d give my all to have Flee break down barriers in the animation category, like Parasite did for Best Picture in 2020. This category desperately needs a shake-up from the same Disney death fight year after year.

Eric Melin: Flee – How cool would it be for it to win Animated and Documentary? (Drive My Car will win Foreign.)

Warren Cantrell: Penelope Cruz for Parallel Mothers, if only to encourage people to seek out and watch Parallel Mothers, which is exquisite.

Logan Van Winkle: If I had any sort of sway with voters, I would be lobbying for West Side Story to win Best Picture. “The story has already won Best Picture,” “Spielberg shouldn’t have remade a classic,” “The movie was a box office failure.” SAVE IT! I do not care! West Side Story was the best film of 2021. In a career full of masterpieces, Spielberg has added yet another to the list. From beginning to end, Uncle Steven puts us on his back and shows us how good cinema can truly be when you have someone who cares behind the camera. No disrespect to any of the other films nominated, but I do not understand how one can watch Mike Faist snapping and dancing his way through New York City and not leave the theater wanting to give the film all 23 Oscars – eligibility be damned!

Christian Alec Ramos: The entire West Side Story team.

LET’S SAY YOU ONLY GET ONE: WHAT’S YOUR HOT-TAKE PREDICTION?

Eric Melin: Good lord…Kristen Stewart for Spencer! There was so much “controversy” over her getting snubbed at SAG (which awarded Gaga, Leto, and Affleck, BTW cuz they are a huge body with terrible taste) – Oscar voters will give her the win just to show how much cooler they are than SAG. Runner up: Chastain as Tammy Faye. Why? Colman, Cruz, and Kidman already got theirs!

Christian Alec Ramos: Nicole Kidman is a snooze in Being the Ricardos.

Kate Valliere: None, though I think it’s weird that the Being the Ricardos folks led the marketing campaign with Kidman instead of Simmons, who is an actual draw to watch it.

Warren Cantrell: Kenneth Branagh is going to win Best Director and it isn’t even close. Not that he was the best director of the year (or even amongst the nominees), but vote splits are going to drop this one in his lap.

Jonah Desneux: After all its acclaim and seven nominations, West Side Story will leave the night without a single statue.

Logan Van Winkle: Despite most people assuming that either Paul Thomas Anderson will win for Licorice Pizza or that Kenneth Branagh will win for Belfast, I will go on the record saying that Don’t Look Up will win Best Original Screenplay. Should it? Absolutely not. Will that stop The Academy? Absolutely not.

Joe Jarosz: Another low-ratings broadcast is going to force the Academy to add another category that brings more viewers in 2023.

Timothy English: One of the least interesting and inspiring Best Actress categories in a while. Kristen Stewart will win the award that should probably go to Penelope Cruz. Viewing numbers will continue to drop. Mainstream audiences will complain they’ve never seen anything nominated and next year they’ll add a special category for Disney/Marvel, and The Rock will host and announce all awards.

Best Picture

Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story

Best Actor

Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield, Tick, Tick…Boom!
Will Smith, King Richard
Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter
Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos
Kristen Stewart, Spencer

Best Supporting Actor

Ciarán Hinds, Belfast
Troy Kotsur, CODA
Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog
J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos
Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog

Best Supporting Actress

Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter
Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
Judi Dench, Belfast
Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog
Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard

Best Director

Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

Best Adapted Screenplay

CODA
Drive My Car
Dune
The Lost Daughter
The Power of the Dog

Best Original Screenplay

Belfast
Don’t Look Up
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
The Worst Person in the World

Best Documentary Feature

Ascension
Attica
Flee
Summer of Soul
Writing With Fire

Best Animated Feature

Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Raya and the Last Dragon

Best International Film

Drive My Car (Japan)
Flee (Denmark)
The Hand of God (Italy)
Yanna (Bhutan)
The Worst Person in the World (Norway)

Best Cinematography

Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story

Best Film Editing

Don’t Look Up
Dune
King Richard
The Power of the Dog
Tick, Tick…Boom!

Best Music (Original Score)

Don’t Look Up
Dune
Encanto
Parallel Mothers
The Power of the Dog

Best Music (Original Song)

“Be Alive,” King Richard, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Dixson 
“Dos Oroguitos,” Encanto, Lin-Manuel Miranda
“Down to Joy,” Belfast, Van Morrison
“No Time To Die,” No Time To Die, Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell
“Somehow You Do,” Four Good Days, Diane Warren

Best Production Design

Dune
Nightmare Alley
Power
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story

Best Costume Design

Cruella
Cyrano
Dune
Nightmare Alley
West Side Story

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Coming 2 America
Cruella
Dune
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci

Best Sound

Belfast
Dune
No Time To Die
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story

Best Visual Effects

Dune
Free Guy
No Time To Die
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spider-Man: No Way Home

Best Live Action Short Film

Ala Kacchu – Take and Run
The Dress
The Long Goodbye
On My Mind
Please Hold

Best Animated Short Film

Affairs of the Art
Bestia
Boxballet
Robin Robin
The Windshield Wiper

Best Documentary Short Subject

Audible
Lead Me Home
The Queen of Basketball
Three Songs of Benazir
When We Were Bullies

On Friday May 7, at 8pm ET, the 2021 TCM Classic Film Festival on Turner Classic Movies will air an SF Sketchfest Presents table read of Ed Wood’s 1959 no-budget sci-fi classic, Plan 9 From Outer Space, adapted by comedian Dana Gould and featuring Maria Bamford, Bobcat Goldthwait, Oscar Nuñez, Laraine Newman, Bob Odenkirk, David Koechner, Janet Varney, Jonah Ray, Paul F. Tompkins, Gary Anthony Williams, Baron Vaughn, Deborah Baker Jr. and Kat Aagesen. The table read will be followed by the film itself at 9:30pm Eastern, as well.

Earlier this week, I was lucky enough to hop on a roundtable interview with Dana Gould and Janet Varney to discuss the whole process of putting together this table read, because it is so much more than just a series of Zoom screens featuring folks reading lines. Thanks to miniatures by Mike Carano and a spooky score by composer Eban Schletter, along with some fantastic prop and costume choices by the performers (Bamford and Tompkins, especially), this is a smashing combination of old-time radio broadcasts and the funniest low-budget play you’ve ever seen.

I highly recommend you check this out, because the fact that something this creative and this weird is airing on a major cable channel–and in primetime, no less–deserves as many eyes on it as possible.

Scene-Stealers: Dana, you’ve talked quite a bit about. Over the years about your relationship and friendship with Maila Nurmi, who was Vampira. Do you see this live read as being a bit of an homage to her? Also, how do you homage in a reading someone whose character is mute?

Janet Varney: Give her a line!

Dana Gould: That’s a great question. I always wanted the Vampira character in the live show, because she’s such an intrinsic part of the movie. Even though she doesn’t have any lines, she did have lines in the script. Maila was not a fan of the script, but was a fan of money, so she didn’t want them. And then as we did the show, we found a way to put Vampira into the show and then it just grows. It’s one of those things where you do it once and you get an idea and you try it and get it better.

Kat Aagesen, who plays Vampira in this production has a great look and she’s very gifted in terms of the way she evokes what Maila did and I was really happy to do it that way, but I think that Maila would have liked it and approved of it.

Here’s a weird story: In the late ’90s, I took Maila to see Plan 9 at the Cinerama Dome here in Los Angeles at a midnight show on Halloween. And no one knew that she was Vampira. She’s this old lady. We’re sitting there and it was pretty packed and when Vampira came on screen and the place erupted, and she said, “Oh, there she is,” which I thought was sweet. And then, you could feel her sort of beaming a little bit. It was really sweet.

The thing that makes doing a Zoom read different than doing one live in a theater is that you can have a score and you can have all of these miniature sets. How did you reach out to Mike Carano and Eban Schletter to come up with these and what directions did you give them?

Dana Gould: Well, Eban has always done the show. Eban has done the live show. The beautiful thing about Sketchfest is, one: it’s all of your friends, but in addition to all of your friends, there’s always amazing new things that the other 11 months of the year, Janet is looking at tapes and finding new talent–or, not new talent, but exposing talent–but then there’s always the people that you have known.

I think Eban has scored everything I’ve ever done. Janet and I did a show together called Stan Against Evil and Eban scored that. I don’t know of a thing that I’ve done, that Eban hasn’t scored. And he does it live when we do it in the theater.

Mike Carano, I’ve known forever. He worked for the Improv. I don’t know in what capacity, but he was a photographer on staff. I think he managed one of the clubs.

Janet Varney: He’s also an attorney. Like, he is a full-on attorney. Many people don’t know this about Eban Schletter, and he is an attorney.

Dana Gould: Please don’t let Mike Carano be an attorney in court, but Mike Carano is yes, a social butterfly. Mike Carano is a truly unique talent and a gadfly and one of the best follows on Instagram. I’ll just be on Instagram and it’s a Tuesday afternoon and I look on there and Mike is in Death Valley filming. He, he found a coyote skeleton and he has a copy of Captain Kirk’s chair and he’s putting the coyote skeleton on it. He’s a true artist and he does these little models on his Instagram thing.

I literally just said, “Would you ever want to?” but when we decided to do it on Zoom, I said, “Do you want to come up with something?” It really was one of those things where like I thought he would do 5% and he brought in 90%. It was like, “Not only do we need this, but if we fill them in black and white on this filter, everything will be–we didn’t know how much we needed him. Put it that way.

Janet Varney: Yeah. And I would say too, my memory of of you asking him was like, if there’s a way I could have gotten the email that he was in faster than the email in which you posited asking him. It was like, “I could ask him, he’s in.” He just immediately had all of these ideas and it was amazing.

Dana Gould: Mike Carono: follow him. I just want to camera crew following him around all the time. It’s that great.

SF Sketchfest presents Plan 9 From Outer Space Table Read, adapted by Dana Gould, airs at 8pm EST / 7pm CST on Friday, May 7, as part of TCM Underground at the 2021 TCM Classic Film Festival.

The debut feature from writer/director Adam Stovall, A Ghost Waits, now streaming via Arrow, follows on the heels of last year’s acquisition by the venerable genre company of another left-of-center, oddly quirky, black and white fun take on genre cinema, The Lake Michigan Monster. It’s exciting to see a company known for restoring classic films like Deep Red, Re-Animator, and more to glory turn to championing independent productions which attempt to do something more.

Therefore, it was a real joy to speak with Stovall, as well as the lead actor, Macleod Andrews (who was also a producer) about the making of this fun and emotionally-driven film.

“Tasked with renovating a neglected rental home, handyman Jack (Andrews) quickly finds out why the tenants keep leaving in droves – this house is haunted. The ghost in question is Muriel (Natalie Walker), herself employed from beyond the veil to keep the home vacant. Against the odds, Jack and Muriel find they have a lot in common… pulse notwithstanding. Having found a kindred spirit in an otherwise lonely existence, they must fight for their newfound affection as pressure mounts for them each to fulfill their ‘cross-purposes.’”

Scene-Stealers: I keep seeing this described as a “years in the making” film. Exactly how long did it take to get it made?

Adam Stovall: I had the idea in like autumn 2015. And we finished it – as in stopped working on it – in last December, because it took about five years. Took about five years to make this baby.

What was the reason behind that?

Adam Stovall: We have no money. Yeah. It costs money. That’s a glib answer, but you know, it was that: it was the fact that we were doing everything ourselves. And also, it just took time to find the movie. We shot it in August 2016 and then, when I cut together the assembly, it was an hour and 50 minutes. It was not good. I mean, assembly cuts are pretty much never good, but it was like, “Okay, the ending works, but good Lord – the rest of it?”

Then, as we edited and as tinkered with it and and everything, suddenly it was like, “Oh, this seems really good.” We got it to a point where like, from minute 34 – basically from the moment Muriel enters the film on – it worked, but we hadn’t really earned it in the previous 33 minutes. So then, we had to go back and we had two sets of pickups to, to go back and like re-imagined the first act.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the story of Breaking Bad: the writers’ strike happened and forced them to hit pause and they took that time to look back through what they had done and decided not to kill Jesse Pinkman and it became this thing where – whenever they wrote themselves into a corner – they just looked at the show that they’d made and they would inevitably find something that was like, “Oh, you know what, we can use this.”

Then, it’s paying off stuff and it feels like we did it on purpose. We were re-imagining the first act and we were taking cues from what worked in the second and third – not that this is really a three-act structure – but we were taking cues from what worked later in the film. You know: payoffs that didn’t have an existing setup and figured out a way to make the setup so that the payoff looks like we planned it the entire time.

Given that there was so much work and – as you admit, Adam – it didn’t quite gel on screen, Macleod, what initially attracted you to this film?

Macleod Andrews: Adam and I met a couple years before shooting A Ghost Waits on the set of another film and while we were doing that film, Adam asked me to do a reading of one of his scripts – a stage reading – and I fell in love with his writing. From that moment forward, he and I tried to get films made and over the course of that, we became very close friends. And so, when Adam got some funding for A Ghost Waits and just wrote a script at breakneck speed, it wasn’t a question of whether I would join him in that endeavor or not. It was just, “When can you be there?” And I showed up.

Oh, I find that really interesting. I think the film that most folks might know you for is They Look Like People and Wyatt in that film is a 180-degree turn from, from from Jack in A Ghost Waits. Was that part of the appeal of getting to play this character who, even though he’s going through some personal stuff, everything just does not phase him. That’s one of the things that I appreciate about this film: the deadpan initial acceptance of Mariel.

Macleod Andrews: That’s something that I feel like only Adam can do and when I saw that in the script, I’m just like – you know, Adam and I share very similar sense of humor and once you go there and once you just say like, “All right, ghost: what’s she got for me?” and it just breaks all the rules. Then suddenly, there’s this wonderful tension of “Where are we going to go? What can we explore?” That’s so much fun. So, to speak to your observation: yes, that was one of the things I really loved about taking Jack on, is that he was very different from, from Wyatt and from Al who I played in the second film [Siren] that I made with Perry [Blackshear] and Evan [Dumouchel]. I was really looking forward to playing something a little closer to myself, a little more of a character who’s was a little bit more forthcoming and insouciant.

[Adam and Macleod begin singing the word “insouciant” to the tune of Phil Collins’ “Sussudio”]

You singing makes a very nice transition to my next question: that song – “Yellow Cotton Dress” by Wussy – plays a very strong role in the film. I’m assuming that was in the script from the beginning?

Adam Stovall: That song wasn’t originally there and the beat of him singing the song wasn’t originally there. We did that in the pickups, but music was always a key element to the film. I’ve always been a film nerd. Since I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to make movies. I just didn’t think I could, but when you’re an aspiring filmmaker, you spend a lot of time thinking about like, “What would my movie be like?” ‘Cause you also think like, “What makes a Martin Scorsese movie, Martin Scorsese’s? Why do I love Steven Soderbergh movies?”

We’re both existential people, Macleod and I, so there’s this “What matters?” and music really matters to me, so I always knew that music would be a key element of the relationship between Jack and Muriel. The idea was that he sings while he works: he just makes up songs, ’cause that’s the thing that I do. I just make up songs as I go about my day. It never landed – it was there, but when we would get notes back, it never really landed.

So we realized like, “Okay, we’re going to have to do something that’s a bit more overt.” And were we had the idea of, okay, let’s make him sing a song and then we just stole that scene from Stranger Than Fiction, with Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal, when he goes to her place and picks up a guitar and sings “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric and she falls in love with him. We just stole that, but – with the knowledge of how creepy it was that it was a ghost coming up on him – that seemed like a way to subvert what was there.

Like I said, that was that song wasn’t originally. There was something else. All these musicians are people that I knew, but I could never get this guy to answer an email and say that we had permission to use the song. And that’s fine when you’re just plug-and-play, but Macleod’s gonna sing this. It better be cleared. So, when he didn’t respond I reached out to Mark Messerly in Wussy.

I’ve known him since before they were a band. I used to do comedy in Cincinnati and for a while, I ran a show that was sketch and stand-up, but it opened with a musical act. I actually booked Wussy for one of them, and it was his very first show, opening for us. So I messaged Mark and was like, “Hey, can we use ‘Yellow Cotton Dress’ in the movie? And he said, “I’m pretty sure. Let me check with Chuck [Cleaver] and Lisa [Walker]” and 15 minutes later he said, “Yep.” And then we went to a pawn shop and bought a guitar so that Macleod could learn to play that song.

I love that story and that makes me very, very happy. So, single location films are very much a thing for low budget movies. I’ve talked with quite a few other producers and writers and directors and actors about the fact that it’s cheap. You can do it with just a couple actors and all of that. But the location in this film, it looks really good. The house has a lot of character to it. Was it all shot in one particular house?

Adam Stovall: The ghost realm stuff was not. Where Ms. Henry is, was an office in Curtis Visual Communications, which is a production company in Cincinnati. The little space that Muriel goes to with the exposed brick was my friend Corey’s condo. She’s just one of my best friends and we could shoot there for no money. She was down. So we used that, but outside of that? Yeah, everything’s in one house.

The haunting middle-management and the exploration of the various facets of ghosting, along with Macleod’s Jack asking a litany of questions to Muriel: was that an important part of the script from the beginning – the idea that you’re not just exploring a relationship between a person and a ghost, but the relationship of ghosts in general?

Macleod Andrews: Yes. Adam can speak to it better than I can, as he is the originator of that, I’ve walked through it enough that I could, I could do my version of it. That idea came from a web comic called Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, in which somebody asks, “What do you think is the most American movie ever made?” She says, “Ghostbusters. Here you have demonstrable proof that there is, in fact, an afterlife and all they talk about is growing a small business and dealing with government bureaucracy.

That sparked in Adam the thought of, “Oh yeah: if you meet a ghost and now know there is an afterlife, how do you not prod that and investigate that a little bit more deeply?” There are bigger things to worry about than just running away. No, you know, I’m gonna run back in because fascinating of questions, like, “Is there a God?” It’s not a thing that we had seen before, so that’s one of the things that, as soon as it came up, I was like, “Oh, I enjoy this. It’s interesting.”

Adam Stovall: There was originally a different ending and it was abandoned very quickly. I don’t even think it ever made it to the script stage, but the general idea of ghosts is that they exist because of unfinished business. They’re not able to pass on to the next world because something is keeping them here. I had an idea that played with that, but it wasn’t satisfying. I told a friend about it and we were both just like, “Oh yeah, you can’t do that. Like, people will get mad,” but that opened the door of like, “Oh, yeah: every ghost movie covers the same shit. Every ghost movie is unfinished business, but that’s not trauma.”

Not that it can’t be interesting, but it’s not interesting to me, because I’ve seen it so many times, it becomes really easy. What’s something that we can do to sit to stand apart while we cannot cover the same ground that other people have covered? So, all right, well: instead of her being tied to this house, because she died there or whatever – which is, of course, what Jack assumes – that led us to the bureaucracy element of “What if it’s just their job?”

Haunting is literally their job and if you have a job, you have a boss, you have coworkers, you have some bullshit employee of the month program that doesn’t actually do anything, but placates the labor force and keeps them from rising up, and suddenly it’s like, “Oh, I’ve never seen a movie do that. Let’s do that!”

A Ghost Waits is currently streaming via ARROW.

Out Tuesday, Dec. 15 on VOD, Digital HD, DVD and Blu-ray from RLJE Films.

Director/writer Jeffrey A. Brown‘s feature debut, The Beach House (on VOD, Digital HD, DVD and Blu-ray from RLJE Films Tuesday, December 15), is a slow-burn turn from relationship drama to creeping cosmic horror. After appearances as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, Chattanooga Film Festival, Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival, and Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival, Brown’s film has generated a lot of acclaim, and for good reason. The Beach House is the Lovecraftian terror for which I’d long hoped, but had yet to see fully realized onscreen. It’s absolutely one of my favorite horror films of the year, and so, I was thrilled to get a chance to hop of the phone with director/writer Brown to discuss how this excellent piece of small-budget terror came to be.

One of the things that’s been noted a lot about The Beach House is that it does a lot with a little. It’s a one setting film, so what was the process of crafting this tale and making it seem as big as the ideas are with the budget and locale as small as they are?

I’ve been doing locations on movies for 20 years. I come from very small films – it’s where I cut my teeth – and I don’t believe that budget equates quality. I root for the underdogs. I really like lower-budget movies like Coherence and Upstream Color – these very intimate small films that were low budget and had these big ideas. That was really part of the gestation of it: to try to accomplish that. Sometimes, as much as I like them, I am disappointed in a lot of indie dramas where they have these four characters in one location and it’s like, “They laugh, they cry, we learn a little something about life, and call it a day” and and I wanted to kind of take that concept and really push it as far as you can.

We can still have the four characters, one location but let’s think about the origins of life on the planet and hopefully planting those seeds in the audience when they’re watching the movie. It’s not just characters being chased by creatures – I love that, too – but it’s like, “Where is this coming from?” and to try to give it not a sense of reality, but a grounding in something to pique the the audience’s interest. I hope that somebody would see it and then be interested in what the characters are interested in and and what they’re talking about, because I’m interested in that stuff. I find it fascinating.

I still read lots of  pop science books because I’m not in college anymore, so I’m not going to read text but it’s just my natural curiosity and I’d hope that the curiosity of the characters would instill a sense of curiosity in the audience, so it all is intertwined.

Were you going for a Lovecraftian vibe – also, I feel a little Junji Ito-type stuff in there, as well – or is that just what came out as as the film was being put together visually?

Lovecraft was definitely in there. I mean, he’s come up kind of way more than I ever thought he would. I think I’m going to owe that to Color Out Of Space coming out around the same time. I think Color Out Of Space actually shot after we shot The Beach House. That, I think is at least the third version? There was that one movie with Boris Karloff that’s awful from the ’60s [Die, Monster, Die!] and then The Curse – which is actually I think pretty underrated  – from the ’80s is also Color Out Of Space.

I think we were we were cutting the movie and the editor’s like, “Hey, I hear they’re making Color Out Of Space.” Like, “Oh, great. Who’s making it?” and they’re like, “Spectrevision,” and they did Mandy and I love Mandy, so it was like, “Fantastic! Who’s directing it?” “Oh, Richard Stanley.” So, it was like, “Oh my, god. Really? Like, this year?”

I think it’s brought some associations but I definitely think there’s something in the water – pun intended – in terms of climate change and global pandemics and other types of afflictions that are that are affecting people. I think that movies, and especiallly horror films are the id of whoever’s making them, so I think that that was coming through.

Lovecraft, if you look up his definition of what a “weird tale” is, The Beach House is pretty much exactly it. It was from reading a lot of his fiction and then others like William Hope Hodgson and Arthur Machen and – who wrote The Willows? Algernon Blackwood. It was taking those ideas and then applying it to a contemporary setting which is what I hadn’t seen in a movie before: what could a contemporary cosmic horror film look like or what could it be? Then, on top of it, how can we do that without a big budget?

Sometimes I feel that directors are correcting movies. I love John Carpenter but I’m not crazy about The Fog. I love the opening sequence of it. It’s, to me, the best thing about the movie and then it doesn’t quite work for me, so I was like, “Well, what would what would I want The Fog to be?” Similarly, The Mist is another one that comes up a lot and we probably had 1/40th or even less than the budget of The Mist, so how can we convey some similar ideas that Stephen King was writing about in that and The Tommyknockers into four characters and maybe a half million dollar budget or whatever it wound up being. 

It was always gonna be a small movie and I wanted to make a movie that you couldn’t make with a big budget so that it wouldn’t be a square peg in a round hole where the whole time we’d just be like, “Man, it’d be great if we had 20 million dollars!” It’s like, “We’re not gonna have 20 million dollars. We have this small amount of money. Let’s make the best movie we can for that amount of money.”

It seems that, because so much of the movie hinges on the character of Emily, that casting the role must have been a very uh important thing for you. How did you come to cast Liana Liberato in the part?

I think with a lot of of things there’s a lot of luck involved. Timing is another thing. We shot for essentially three weeks, three and a half weeks and so, it kind of went down to the wire. With Liana, I met with several actresses and Liana really came after it. She’s a great actress. I really learned a lot about acting from her – and from all the actors. They all come from very different places and experience levels. Liana has been acting for over a decade. She’s been acting since she was a kid. Jake Weber is a very experienced actor. Maryann [Nagel] comes from a totally different background than either of them and. Noah [Le Gros] is, I think, older than Liana but hasn’t been acting as long, so they all come from very different things.

It was very hard to cast Emily because I had some particular things that I didn’t want the character to be. She had to be able to really express her intelligence and and not be like some movies, where you watch and this one character is a rocket scientist and you’re like, “Yeah, no way.” I think that Liana does that very very well: she just sells every line. You know she knows what she’s talking about in the course of the movie. That was the most important thing.

She’s totally photogenic and she is a great, almost athletic actress. Physically and mentally, she just embodies the frame and the scene. It’s like she’s not acting – she’s being, which is what the best actors do.

Director Antonio Campos held a Q&A with reporters ahead of the release of his latest film, The Devil All The Time. Scene-Stealers was able to take part in the roundtable discussion and learned more about the filmmaking process that went into the period drama that stars Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson.

Here’s what was discussed:

You worked closely with the author Donald Ray Pollack on the adaptation. Was there any specific changes from the novel that you fought to bring your vision to life?

Campos: Well, what I’ll tell you what really kind of, I think, it turned into my favorite scene of the movie is in the end, there’s a confrontation that happens between Arvin, Tom Holland‘s character and Rob Pattinson plays Teagardin, and in the book, it happens in this remote little corner where Teagardin takes his victims, and we, we switched it into the church and we changed the dynamics so that you almost start the scene off as though this young guy has come in to confess to this preacher, and then you realize that the intention is way more dangerous than that. And so, you know, that was one example of how we took a note from Don and then just played with it and sort of kept the essence of the scene the same, but just kind of made it a little bit more dynamic and cinematic in a way.

What are your thoughts on Bill Skarsgård’s comments that the film is not necessarily a comment on religion, as much as it’s a comment on what people do with religion?

Campos: I mean, I think that’s beautifully articulated by Bill, who is such a wise, wonderful soul. You know, it really is about extreme believers in religion in their faith, and the dangers of that because, you know, all these characters are screaming to the heavens looking for answers and what they get in return is silence and in that void, they fill it with an answer themselves. And it is a person who is traumatized or delusional, they can fill it with a dangerous answer. And so, the film is exploring the dangers of extreme religion and how people in power can take advantage of people’s faith and manipulate them. That’s what we’re exploring. The film isn’t anti-religion. It is it is more comment on the dangers of religion in the wrong hands.

In terms of the adaptation process, both juggling all those characters throughout, but also introducing them in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the viewer. That has to be a challenge?

Campos: It’s definitely a challenge, juggling this many characters. What we have to do with this movie was to sort of like, introduce characters in the periphery and let them be known by the audience, so that when they come back, you’re like ready to go with them. And that’s kind of why you have to cast some of these actors with recognizable faces. Because if you go and you’re like, oh, that’s Jason Clarke, oh, that’s Riley Keough, you go, they’re going to be in this movie again. There’s just something subconsciously that’s happening when you’re watching that go down. So, without doing very much, you’re like, oh, that’s a character that’s gonna be part of the movie. And then, when they come back, you’re like, ready for it. So, it’s about how do you kind of like pepper the other characters in before their story lines sort of take over. And then also making sure you cast them with someone that’s either going to be memorable or someone that you are familiar with, that you know is going to come back.

It felt like Robert Pattinson just kind of took it up another notch, like a like a step above everyone else. Was that a choice you guys made together, or was that all him?  

Campos: We always wanted Teagardin to have like this other worldly quality, like a big entrance, like he’s designed to come into the movie and shake it up. Like when Teagardin comes in, you’re just like, you know you’re settling into this other storyline. You’re getting to know Tom Holland’s character and Eliza Scanlen’s character. And then you’re like, what’s gonna happen? Where is the danger? Where’s the danger and then Teagardin shows up. So, we always knew that Teagardin kind of was like this force, that kind of shape who picks up the rest of the movie. And because he’s from so far outside the realm of the the movie, like so far outside of West Virginia and Ohio, he had, he had so much freedom to kind of like just run with that character and go. And I really was like, just go as just go as far as you want to go, like just swinging for the fences. And if I ever had, like, if I have to rein it in, we will, but like, I just love performances like that. And that was really sort of the mandate across the board. I think everybody in this film pushes themselves into places that they might not have gone before. Like, I think Sebastian Stan’s Bodecker is like, it’s just amazing. I mean, he’s doing stuff that is just kind of like that is swinging for the fences and he transforms his body and everything and says, so everybody was kind of like just that. I tried to do give everybody a sense of freedom to go and have fun with their characters.

QWhat scene were you the most proud to do that you were like, man, I really flexed all of my talent and hard work and everything?

Campos: Simple. For me. It’s this one scene that I just think is like my favorite, one of my favorite things I’ve ever directed, which is the face off in the church between Tom and Rob. From the moment that we wrote it to just every step of the way of shooting it, of directing the actors, because it was like theater. You know, it’s just two people sitting there looking at each other, having a conversation making something that we designed. You know, when you have these kind of very simple setups, you really kind of spend so much time designing it. So that every shot, every moment, just kind of feels really rich. And then in that scene, my wife is the editor and we worked on that in some way. Like every day for eight months, like I, I went to bed thinking about that scene, I woke up thinking about that scene. It was like this obsession. And then in the sound mix, we were like obsessed with every detail of them sitting with the sound of the chair, their clothes, the rattle the gun, and then the score. Just really nailing the score the kind of ride the music takes you on through that scene. So that is the scene that is like, I think the most complex in terms of its design, and in some ways, the simplest in terms of its setup. So, I really, I really love that scene, and I think that’ll be one of my favorite scenes that I’ve ever made or been part of making.

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies is out on VOD today.

We were big fans of director Danny Wolf‘s three-part documentary series which released earlier this year, Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All Time, so when we saw that he had turned his eye toward creating the first-ever film to trace the 100-year history of onscreen nudity, we knew we had to check it out. Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies is a fascinating and illuminating look at how social mores have changed, as well as how the industry itself treats the subject. Therefore, it was really great to speak with director Wolf about his recent spate of work, and the art of presenting underrepresented topics onscreen.

This is your fourth documentary for the year, so good on you, sir.

Well, yes, technically though Time Warp is three volumes. It just came out so long. I mean, it was six and a half hours, so we had to turn it into three volumes. So, yes: technically four docs but genre-wise, two.

There is some overlap between some of the guests that are in Time Warp and some of the guests that are in Skin. Did you conduct some of these interviews simultaneously, where you covered a lot of ground?

No, not at all. When I was doing Time Warp – which took two years to shoot because there’s 115 interviews – we weren’t thinking about Skin. Skin came up towards the later end, so Amy Heckerling, I went back to interview again. Malcolm McDowell, I went back to interview again. Erica Gavin, I went back to interview again – and they were all cool. I mean, they’re all willing to do it. I think Martha Coolidge from Valley Girl was the only one I used a line from her Time Warp interview in this one.

You say that Skin came up towards the end of working on Time Warp. Did it come out naturally, given the sheer amount of skin on display in so many of those genre pictures?

No, actually the executive producer of Time Warp is Paul Fishbiin and he is friends with Jim McBride, who’s Mr. Skin, and some point when we were shooting or editing Time Warp, Jim and Paul said to me, “No one’s ever done a documentary on the history of nudity in the movies,” and I’m like, “No! You gotta be kidding – every documentary’s been done about everything.” No, believe it or not, no one’s ever done like a definitive, historical look at nudity. I’m like, “Well, we better jump on that, because someone’s going to do it.” That no one’s done it, I couldn’t believe it.

So, we kind of rushed to get it going and start our research and get the cards up on the wall as fast as we could before someone else did it. We’ve got a couple documentaries we’re going to do next. Same example: we can’t believe no one’s done two other topics. In the age of everyone making documentaries, it’s hard to believe not everything’s been done. I just looked the other day and there’s no documentary ever on Neil Diamond and there’s no documentary ever on Barry Manilow. That might be their decision, but sometimes you go, “How has no one done a documentary on Neil Diamond?”

In terms of the the tone of Skin, you walk this very fine line between acknowledging the purient nature inherent in talking about naked people on a gigantic 35-foot screen but also really humanizing the story of these these actors, as well. Was that a decision that you made going into this or did it sort of evolve over the course of speaking with everyone?

Absolutely. That was a decision. I asked the same questions, generally, to everybody and one was, “How did doing nudity impact your personal life and how did it impact your career?” That’s the question where you start getting the really personal, interesting stories, like Erica Gavin from Vixen talking about, “After I went to the premiere of Vixen and saw myself on the giant screen, I didn’t like the way I looked,” and she became anorexic because of it and almost died – went down to 70-something pounds.

You really get interesting answers just when you ask, “What did nudity do to your personal life or how did it, in fact, affect your career?” Those two questions, we got a ton from, but we really just wanted to lay out kind of a definitive historical, educational – but fun – story. You have to have the nudity from the beginning to the #MeToo today. The one thing we just said starting this was, “We can’t make something exploitative. This can’t be a breast fest. No one’s going to watch it if it’s exploitative.”

We made a very conscious effort all the way through to include all the history: to interview authors and critics and experts about the Hayes Code and the pre-Code movies and really make it thorough. It’s easy to do things chronologically. It was easy to go from the ’60s to the ’70s, because things were changing. Political and social changes obviously predicated a more liberal attitude to nudity so that, we wanted to cover. Really, all we set out to do was make something historical and definitive and not just a breast fest.

In terms of it not being a breast fest, the one thing the the one thing I noticed missing from this is what’s become a joking trope: for some reason, in ’80s and ’90s action films, it seemed like every male action star had written into their contract that there was supposed to be a butt shot.

That’s funny we didn’t. That’s not something I thought about putting in, but you are right.

You do tackle like male nudity and what’s intriguing about it is that the way that it is portrayed on screen is that frequently, male nudity is used in a comedic way as opposed to a salacious way. I’m curious as to what your view on that is. Is it just the male anatomy is inherently hilarious?

I think that nobody wanted to see male anatomy. Males and females go to movie theater. Male likes to look at female because it’s a beautiful body. Female likes to look at female. Then when you go and see a man, usually men don’t want to see men naked and women generally don’t want to see men naked. The ratio for the longest time was mostly all-female until really the late ’60s, when it opened up with Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy.

Then John Voight’s doing nudity and Robert De Niro and then Bruce Davison, who we interviewed. It kind of became more acceptable, but I just think male nudity was just not something studios were interested in putting in their movies. That wasn’t something that was going to drive anyone to a movie — people would go see Sophia Loren and people would see Brigitte Bardot and people would see Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield.

The ’80s were known for the teen sex romps or just movies that were, essentially, as you you referred to earlier, “breast fests,” and really feature heavily in Skin, so was it important to you that you get someone like Mamie van Doren because she goes back so far? Was it difficult to find people who had a perspective on this beyond like within the last 30-35 years?

Yeah, it was. You cast a really wide net of who you’re trying to get and there were a lot of names we didn’t get that I would love to have interviewed like Kathy Bates, Kathleen Turner, and Julianne Moore, but you can’t get everyone. Brigitte Bardot, we were we were close to getting. With Mamie van Doren and Erica Gavin, the older you get, everyone has their own experiences.

When you talk about the teen sex comedies it’s all pretty much the same. The stories are kind of the same. For distribution, you have to have nudity in those movies. As Martha Coolidge said, “When I did Valley Girl, I had in the script three scenes of nudity and Atlantic Releasing said we’re not going to distribute your movie unless you have a fourth,” and she had to add at the last minute, a nude scene with E.G. Daily, which E.G. Daily didn’t sign up to do. That wasn’t in the script. They had to have a long conversation with the agents about adding it and making sure it looked good and it was artistic and everyone was happy and then it ended up in the movie.

Certain movies – like the teen sex comedies and the horror films of the early ’80s or the women in prison films – there was an expectation of nudity, because that was your distribution. Doing a women in prison movie, there’s of course going to be a shower scene. As Sybil Danning said, “You would not get foreign distribution without it,” so everyone knew what they were getting into in those days.

Given that Skin and Time Warp both look at under-explored aspects of cinema in a really deep way and you gather like all of these really intriguing people, is that why you’re already working on two new documentaries? Has each one fed the next?

No, but you hit on the head what I love doing in these things and that is I like the actor or actress you wouldn’t expect to see interviewed. If it was all Julianne Moore and and Jennifer Lawrence and Reese Witherspoon, where they have all these big names, it wouldn’t be as interesting. I think it’s cool to have Camille Keaton for I Spit on Your Grave – the people you would never expect to see and hear their stories. That’s what makes these cool. Who would expect Ken Davidian from Borat to pop up in a documentary about nudity in the movies?

But why wouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t we include him? Here’s one of the most famous, hysterical, comedic nude scenes in probably the last 30 years, so why shouldn’t Ken Davitian tell his story and talk about the nudity he did? I think the most fun I have is is that element of surprise. You never know who’s going to pop up next: “Oh, I can’t believe Mariel Hemingway is in this and she’s talking about Personal Best! I would have never thought of that.”

But, again: why shouldn’t it be in there? Yeah, I mean, if I had Sharon Stone, that would be cool. We had Gina Gershon in Time Warp, but I would have liked to have Gina Gershon talk more about Showgirls and the nudity in this, but it’s it’s hard to get everyone. You try, but you can only get who you can get. But, if you’re a film freak, to see Diane Franklin from Last American Virgin now, today talking about it? That’s cool to me. Kristine DeBell from Alice in Wonderland? Where else is she appearing or talking about her acting?

That was one of my favorites. I was going to remark on the fact that Diane Franklin speaks really frankly and openly and honestly about the whole thing. It seems like almost everyone you spoke with was very forthright and honest and I wonder if it’s that they’re at that point in their career now where they’re just like, “I’ve got nothing to lose, so I’m gonna lay it all out.”

Sean Young syndrome, basically: “It doesn’t matter what I say, so I’ll just say it.” That’s why I love interviewing Sean Young, because she has no filter and if she has a problem, she’ll say she has a problem. That’s the people you want to interview: the ones that are not going to edit themselves or hold back or not kind of tell it like it is.

Everyone we interviewed was great and had no issues with any of the questions asked and had no issues talking. I mean, they knew what our documentary was, so they knew the kinds of questions that they were going to be asked. Some asked for the questions in advance so they knew what they were going to be asked, but even when Bruce Davison does Last Summer in 1969 which is one of the first male frontal nudity films, he couldn’t have been happier to talk about it and his experiences. You wouldn’t expect to see Bruce Davison pop up in a documentary about nudity, but male nudity to us was important to talk about and that’s why Malcolm McDowell is so great – to have that male perspective.

If you’re a fan of genre cinema, actor Munro Chambers is a rising star. After growing up, appearing on Canadian television series, he came to the attention of many fans when he appeared in 2015’s retro-action post-apocalypse sci-fi horror film, Turbo Kid. It was an utter joy to watch Chambers take on hoards of mutant freaks. Then, last year, the actor appeared in one of the best small-ensemble black comedies we’ve seen in years, Harpoon, wherein his character undergoes transformations both physical and emotional, really making for a bleakly hilarious viewing. We spoke with Munro Chambers by phone about his career, and the intricacies of Harpoon.

Is it a requirement that all Canadian actors have to appear on either Degrassi and/or Corner Gas?

Yes. It is written in the contract. There’s a birth certificate clause that you see and you must be a part of it. [laughs] No, not at all. It’s just like any community. It’s a small community, and it’s a great show that has a lot of characters, and a lot of great ensembles. So, when you’re young – or even your late 20s and 30s – at some point, you’ll get on it.

You got your start in television and it seems like you’ve continued that on, but it seems like you’ve been steadily ramping up the films you’ve appeared in over recent years. What’s that process been like?

It’s wild. In my experience, it wasn’t something I ever chose. I like to see where things fall and just to kind of ride the wave, so when I when I was very very young, it started off with TV, and then it was a lot of films. Then, when SARS hit Toronto, there was a big gap there where nobody really worked in Toronto. There were some in Vancouver, but a lot of productions didn’t come didn’t come here, so there’s a little gap there where I didn’t work.

Then, out of nowhere this audition for TV sitcom on Family Channel came up, and then from that just sprang an eight-year span of doing television through The Latest Buzz and Degrassi and some other things. Everything after Degrassi is kind of leading to a job that just kind of came up, which was Turbo Kid and from that kind of sprung off films.

I think it’s nice – at least in my personal experience and in my career and the way it’s gone for me – is that it’s nice to not be like, “Oh well, now I’m choosing film,” because because it’s so unpredictable, this industry. Just ride the wave and enjoy it. I’ve been very very very fortunate that one’s kind of led to the other and some really great projects of falling into my lap.

Is it that Turbo Kid being a genre picture has led to other genre pictures or is that also something you’re choosing to work towards?

I think Turbo Kid spawned it. It wasn’t something that I chose. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. In specific genres, like with the horror/thriller side, I never had truly a great desire. There was a couple ones where I’d love to be the antagonist, or would love to be the villain, but I just never thought I’d ever get cast in those roles – especially with Knuckleball and Harpoon, I just never thought I’d ever get cast.

The fact that people were giving me that opportunity to try that out, and to flex muscles I feel like I’ve worked on over my career, was a real joy, but Turbo Kid is really what spun that. That was the one that kind of initiated the genre films, especially the indies that have just been so much fun. I find with the genre – the “genre” genre –  in that corner of the industry, there’s so many unique scripts out there, and not one is like the other or similar with little tweaks. It’s a lot of freedom to be creative and to be bold and to do something different, and that’s something that I’ve always aspired as an actor.

When you say you didn’t think you would get cast in something like Knuckleball or Harpoon, what do you mean: is it because those characters are a little less black-and-white than some of the other parts you’ve played?

A friend of mine put it towards me that was an incorrect interpretation of the way I perceive myself. As an actor, you always try to transform into something else. You put yourself in their shoes and imagine yourself as this, that, and the other, but there’s always a little bit of that third eye that looks at yourself: “Yeah, well, I’m not really that,” and so they got a little bit into that where I thought, “Maybe I’m not scary enough, I look a little too young, look a little this, look a little that,” and then when these roles started to come my way – Michael Ironside is a very good friend of mine, and he said to me, “That’s only your interpretation that you wouldn’t be cast like that and some of the people may not, because it’s opening the door to it.”

But, even [Michael] Peterson said he had a different idea for [Knuckleball‘s] Dixon, until we started really playing with it so, to be given that opportunity to try different things, it’s just your own interpretation, and then they get to make the tough choice of if they want you or not, and luckily for me, it worked out well.

The reason we’re talking is Harpoon and Harpoon is a film in which, what you think the characters are at the very beginning, shifts and then shifts again, and then shifts some more. Was that part of the appeal when you read that script: that you get the opportunity to play a very fully fleshed-out character?

100%. I really love characters that are just more than just meets the eye. I love the imagery of an iceberg, of what’s below, and then what’s on the surface. All three of these characters have that. Maybe they show you something at first and then, over and over, more layers are peeled away, and there’s something completely different. That was the same thing with Dixon – the same thing, a little bit more turbid, where he’s more black and white a little bit.

I was always amazed by actors that had a complete range in their catalog of performances, so the main one I always go to is Robin Williams. How he did do Mrs. Doubtfire and then The Fisher King? That just amazed me. Then, you look at Gary Oldman, and you look at Glenn Close, and these incredible actors that are just, like – how did they do that? How can they touch so many ranges, where they make you laugh and smile and cry and feel fear and grief and do all that? Anything that kind of leads towards that, I’ve always wanted to jump to it and Harpoon had that.

Part of Harpoon‘s appeal is this narration by Brett Gelman. It’s interesting, because you get like a lot more backstory on the characters than you usually get for people in most films. Did reading that narration help you in developing Jonah?

Yeah, absolutely. It always helps.  That’s the beauty of film, opposite of of TV – where when you’re doing episodics, if you’re starting it off and they do the pilot and then it leads on, you don’t get the ending story. You don’t get how it fully ends or the beginning, and you don’t know, so with the film, you get everything – or mostly – but it definitely helped.

The dialogue that Brett Gelman did in the original scripts was kind of a little bit different than what it ended up being, which it usually does, but Rob Grant had such a such a clear mindset of how he wanted these characters and their history. When we were doing rehearsals before the filming – which I think was two or three days in Calgary – we really hashed it all that out, and we actually were able to give our own interpretations, and throw in our our own mindsets.

I’m like, “Oh, what were we like when we were kids? What were our interactions? Me and Emily [Tyra]: when we had that night? Let’s dive even further into how that night happened and went. Maybe there was times before where it almost happened.” It was a really creative process. It wasn’t just like everything on the page – it was that we actually got to be involved.

One of the things I find really fascinating is, when I was reading the backstory on the production of the film, is that it’s a film that takes place in very warm, lovely weather, and you shot the majority of the interiors in Calgary. How does that affect your performance, when it’s freezing cold outside but you’re having to pretend that it’s in the middle of a very lovely ocean?

Well, the studio was heated, to a degree, but when we’re running through certain takes it was easier. It was weird. It was wild. They did such a great job with set dec and making it look great, like little things with the way the sun would peel through the windows. I don’t know what it was. When they call action and slaps, you just do it. There’s no easy way about it.

For me it was a little easier, because my character – if you haven’t seen this, spoiler alert – loses a lot of blood, so there’s certain things that the body goes through that could mirror being cold or freezing. There’s parallels there, so it’s like, “Okay, if I’m feeling this, well, I’ll just use it,” and then you kind of add a little bit more – especially when you’re covered in blood – but, no, it definitely helped with everything.

Also, just it helped with that isolation, We were all in it together, and we were all just kind of fully invested and so, even if we were cold, or if we were a little bit under the weather, the production did a great job to make sure it wasn’t too cold, but it was a lot of fun.

Speaking of losing a lot of blood, one of the things I wanted to talk about was the the violence in this film, especially towards you. Pardon my language, but you get fucked up in this movie. Harpoon begins with you just getting the shit kicked out of you. It seems like this  – and, to an extent in Turbo Kid – you play characters who get knocked down a lot?

Yeah, I don’t know why that’s been kind of like my spell for the last five years, where I’ve died a lot. I think I’ve had like, six deaths in five years, but you know, it’s always fun, because as an actor, it’s so vulnerable. With the words, “I love you,” “I need you,” “I miss you,” or “I hate you,” those are things you can say, and they’re really really tough, but when you’re being beaten down like that – especially with Turbo Kid, where he has to show his strength, and for this one, where he’s trying to hide his secrets, and he’s trying to do it for what he believes is the greater good – oh, it’s fun, when you have someone like Chris [Gray] who’s just throwing haymakers.

At the beginning of the year, The Nightingale became a must watch at the Sundance Film Festival and has now finally made its way into theaters across the country. Many have eagerly awaited Jennifer Kent’s follow up to her acclaimed debut The Babadook and the writer/director succeeded at making her second showing a strong one. The Nightingale is one of those rare films that leaches into the audience’s mind as an emotional experience, opposed to an entertainment event. The film is all at once educational, thrilling, at times humorous, soul crushing, but most importantly honest. The Nightingale is cinema at its most confrontational. The film demands audiences to not sweep uncomfortable history under the rug like we are prone to do.

The film is set in the Tasmanian wilderness in the early nineteenth century. The conquered area is ruled viciously by British soldiers who take whatever they desire without serious repercussions. Under the command of the soldiers are convicts and the remaining aboriginal men and women of the land. Clare (Aisling Franciosi), an Irish Convict has served her time and attempts to gain her deserved freedom from a vile British Officer (Sam Clafin). It is in this instigating incident that Kent steers away from censorship in place of a haunting reality. When there is no justice to be found for Clare, she is determined to gain it on her own. With an unlikely partnership with Billy, an Aborginal tracker (Baykali Ganambarr) the two set out to right the wrongs that have become them and discover the inherent faults in the “us vs. them” mentality that they have grown accustomed to. 

Even though the subject matter is dark, Aisling Franciosi lights up the screen as Clare in a career-defining performance. In fully committing to the character, Franciosi adds the authenticity that the film strives for, as she embodies the song bird to perfection. I was privileged enough to speak with the star to find out her experience in such a demanding role. Franciosi opened up about her process in becoming Clare and gave her assessment on the importance of the film. With much conversation surrounding The Nightingale and if crossed a line, it is crucial to hear from the woman who experienced it all first hand.

How did you come into this role? It’s obviously a very intense part, so I’m curious about your preparation after the discovery and what drew you to it.

I was sent the script much like any other project by my agents. I read it and was instantly drawn to the writing. As an actor you read tons of scripts and it’s rare for one to jump out quite like this one did. I’ve heard of it happening and you really do you know within the first 15 pages. So this is really my at-instant love affair with a project. It appealed to me because it wasn’t geared towards entertainment; it was geared towards telling an important story and dealing with very big and important themes, so that really appealed to me. Obviously working with Jennifer Kent was a huge draw. Frankly as well,  just as an actor getting the chance to play a character like this; they do not come along all that often, so I really wanted to try and prove myself and just show that I could do more than what I have been doing. 

You’re right, there’s a lot of material to deal with in many different ways. I mean just the sheer scope of the performance and what you have to go through, but also thematically it’s very heavy and sensitive. Between getting the role and shooting, nine months past and within those nine months, actually even before I got the role, I was already just devouring books on convict history, colonalism, PTSD, violence against women, sexual violence. Basically getting my hands on every piece of research I could that I felt could play into the role. Obviously I was guided to a certain extent by Jenn and what to do for that. Then once I got there to Australia, I spoke with a clinical psychologist. I met with real rape victims. I met with women who worked in centers for domestic abuse and sexual violence, and then on a practical level, learned how to horse ride and shoot a musket and chop wood. There was a lot; there was a lot to prepare.

Was there anything specific in your preparation that really helped you get into those very brutal scenes? I feel like that would be a daunting task for anyone. Did you have the one breakthrough moment that you felt as ready as could possibly be?

I don’t know if there was a moment I knew I was ready as can be, but I definitely know that people sharing their stories with me about their experiences and talking with the women at the center for domestic violence abuse, I instantly felt a massive weight of responsibility. Responsibility to be as authentic as possible in those scenes and also honor the people who’d been good enough to share their stories with me. I find it really moving that people were willing to share their stories for the purpose of telling ours. That in itself even when I think about it just gets me a little bit emotional. That definitely helped and I’m sure all the research I had done. Documentaries and interviews I watched really set into the emotional well. And of course as an actor you draw in your own experience, and you draw on your own trauma, and also sometimes your imagination. It’s all a combination, but definitely the thing that really stuck out with me the most was people’s generosity and bravery in telling me their stories. I’ll never forget that.

You said that you had that big responsibility and I think you handled it incredibly well. It’s a very important film and I think the discourse that’s happening with it right now is from the people who it might be a little too intense and then those who say it needs to be watched for its honesty. What do you personally see as the importance of the film for those who can handle the subject matter?

There are a few things we show with our film. We’ve become very desensitized to violence. I think there is a really interesting discussion happening around violence and I find it quite fascinating to watch removed from it all. People talk about the violence in our movie. Well, I just came out of a movie that came out recently that’s a massive film and there’s a scene that’s incredibly violent, so bloody, really in-your-face violent and people were laughing at the screen. I’m not judging them. I can get it because it’s framed in the way that kind of makes it comical, which is fine in one way. But in another way, it’s kind of dangerous. The fact that we can sit back and look at someone with whatever it is that’s happening to them and laugh, I think just shows that we’re so used to violence being part of the entertainment side of cinema that we can’t then handle it as well when we see the emotional ramifications. I think that our film is emotionally extremely violent, but I don’t think graphically it’s extremely violent. Ours is not graphically violent in the way we’re used to on screen. It really goes for you emotionally. It highlights how emotionally damaging violence is, and how hard it is, and makes us really face up to what you’re doing to a human being when you inflict pain or suffering or violence on them. I think that that’s something that people are struggling with a bit because you know it’s uncomfortable to watch. It’s confronting. It’s harrowing. And if you’re going into the movie theater for entertainment, that’s not what you’re gonna be getting with our film. You’re going to be getting a study of violence, a study of why it is to be human, and how important it is that we realize that we need to become more empathetic with each other and how important it is for us to evolve as a society of the world. That’s definitely something I think is really important.

I think highlighting the horrors of colonialism and really looking at them in order to be able to move forward. I think you have to with any kind of history, acknowledge it first in the clear light of day for what it is. That aids healing on a much deeper level, but in order for that to happen I do think you have to look at it without it being sugar coated. I think this film does this and also looks at the fear of the other and how we’re really way more similar than we are different. Clare initially is racist; she’s a product of her upbringing. She’s a product of her society, so she is of course going to be racist at the beginning of the movie. It’s deplorable, but she is, and through the journey she goes on with Billy, her eyes are opened. He’s also sexist towards her at the beginning. Everyone has their prejudices of course. She as a white person towards an aboriginalist is terrible at the beginning, but she goes on this journey where they’re forced to realize that they’re both human beings, that they both have traumas that aren’t necessarily comparable, and I really don’t think that our film conflates feminism and racism in the film. I don’t believe that because Clare has to come to realize that she was prejudiced and was blind to the plight of the aboriginal people. She’s really taught that by being with Billy and he’s ultimately the one that leads her to save herself, and save her humanity, and can choose humanity for her own survival, but again it’s Billy that leads her to that conclusion. She goes on an arch, on a journey, and a character is entitled to have an arch whether it be uncomfortable or not.  

Possibly the most important element of the story is that we tell the story of the aboriginal history. Our story deals with the aboriginal people of Tasmania, but this is the first time this story of the Tasmanian Aboriginal has been put on screen. It’s important for us to remember that because I don’t think it’s even taught properly in Australian schools, let alone anywhere else. There’s a lot, there’s a lot. As I said, the importance of empathy and clinging onto and not perpetuating the circle of violence, but as you say that there’s that there’s a lot to take from it.

How has this performance of a character with such a divisive mindset possibly influenced your future and how you look at roles?

I think it was more so with the project then just Clare specifically. One of the really nice things I discovered was how liberating it is at the end of a project like The Nightingale. I went into it wholeheartedly ready to give it everything. I gave it everything. I know I couldn’t have given it anymore, like I literally couldn’t give anymore. To be able to work like that is amazingly liberating because when it comes out, well I’m certainly finding with this experience, I don’t really, not that I don’t care what people think, but I’m not emotionally vulnerable to people’s opinions. What I mean by that is if people love it, I’m like “cool,”  but if people don’t like it, I also don’t find myself being attacked by that feeling, I just go, “Okay, yeah, it wasn’t for you.” That’s something that I would love to try and do as much as possible going forward with my career. To choose projects I completely believe in because no matter what happens then, whether they go the way that you hope they do or they don’t, you know that you went into it for all the right reasons and because you believe in it. So that’s definitely something I will try to take with me going forward

Last quick question not related to the movie, but just about yourself.  What’s a movie that you love that you would recommend anyone reading this to watch?

Two of my favorite films just off the top of my head, I mean I have so many I don’t think I could choose one, but one film that really had an impact on me was Magnolia, PT Anderson’s Magnolia. That really struck a chord with me because I came into film education pretty late. What I mean by that is that I didn’t grow up watching tons and tons of film. So I was already I think twenty when I kind of started trying to educate myself in film and that was definitely one  stuck out for me. Just the emotional intelligence and all the performances was something that I really was drawn to. I also love Barton Fink. I think it’s my favorite Coen Brothers film. I just love the kind of dark humor, and I also just love John Turturro’s performance in anything usually.

Dust off your high school best and grab your significant other. It’s Homecoming season at the Alamo Drafthouse. Celebrate the debut flick for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest Avenger when the Alamo Drafthouse Kansas City hosts the Spider-Man Homecoming Dance on Thursday, July 6.

The web-slinger will hit theatres that night and the Alamo Drafthouse is celebrating in style with a free admission to a Homecoming-themed dance from 6 to 10 PM in the Chesterfield Bar.

Be sure to wear your slickest high school duds, because a Homecoming King and Queen will be crowned.

Tickets are still available for Alamo’s 2D screenings of Spidey, but even if you’re not quite ready to soak in Marvel’s latest and greatest, you can still enjoy the Homecoming dance. It’s free to the pubic and there will be plenty of entertainment. Live music will be provided by Grand Marquis and Scene-Stealers contributor Tim English from the Reel Hooligans podcast will be on hand, recording his latest episode and handing out full-sized Spider-Man Homecoming posters.

Spider-Man Homecoming is directed by Jon Watts and stars Tom Holland, Chris Evans, Donald Glover, Hannibal Buress, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Martin Starr, Michael Keaton and Robert Downey Jr.

After three weeks of the best and worst the independent film community has to offer, the 2016 Seattle International Film Festival comes to a close at last. For the fifth year in a row, Scene-Stealers has had the privilege of wading through a veritable ocean of cinema to pick through the vast ecosystem’s offerings, and has discovered no shortage of fare. And while the movies themselves have always been at the forefront of this coverage, SIFF’s special events, featuring luminaries of the film community in-person, consistently surprise and delight. Previous years have seen industry mainstays such as Sissy Spacek, Joss Whedon, and Kevin Bacon here in Seattle, and 2016 has been no different.

Although SIFF 2016 got off to a great start with an appearance by Molly Shannon, one of the final events enjoyed the company of one of Hollywood’s most elusive, talented, and thoughtful stars: Viggo Mortensen. He was in town this last weekend of the festival for a tribute event celebrating his career, which included a showing of Mr. Mortensen’s newest film, Captain Fantastic. And while the official closing night ceremony didn’t occur until the following night, Saturday’s tribute event for Mr. Mortensen acted as an unofficial high note for the festival’s conclusion.

And 2016 has been quite the festival! Although not stocked with as many jaw-dropping stand-outs as previous years, there have been several shockers. New documentaries like The Weekend Sailor and Bang! The Bert Berns Story told fascinating, original stories that weren’t weighed down by blind adoration, and features like Vanity and The Final Master surprised (both positively and negatively, respectfully). Others neither impressed nor disappointed, yet it all amounted to a varied, healthy film-going experience that spanned the expected gamut of quality (or lack thereof).

When Viggo Mortensen arrived at the Egyptian Theater in Seattle for Saturday’s event, the conversation turned to the actor’s selective nature when it comes to his projects. Although he’s been around Hollywood for a while, the guy broke out in a big way following the smashing success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, yet has been seemingly reluctant to jump into other franchises or high-visibility roles.

Scene-Stealers: Professionally speaking, what excites you? When you’re sitting down to debate whether or not you’re going to be involved in a project or a role, what is it about that that excites you, or charges you, and gets you to commit?

Viggo Mortensen: Well, first of all, if it is a well-written story, if the characters are well developed, which is harder than it seems. You know, when a movie works, or when a screenplay works really well, it flows, and you’re interested in all the characters, it seems easy: it seems effortless. Just like good acting, or good directing, it just seems like realistic behavior. But it’s a lot harder than it seems. You don’t come across scripts as good as Captain Fantastic very often. I guess I’m looking, first of all, is it really well-written? Second of all, the part, if I’m being offered the part, do I personally think I am the right guy for the job? It’s silly if you really know in your heart that you can’t do it. Though sometimes you do have doubts, and the director can convince you to take a chance. And thirdly, and just as important, is it something I haven’t tried before, and is it something I can learn something from?

S.S.: With Captain Fantastic, was there something in particular that you felt was new for you? Was it part of the script, or…?

V.M.: I thought it was incredibly original as a story. And without in any way being ideological or political, it touched on many things that are going on in the country right now. I mean, dealing with three kinds of family models in the story…like, ours, the sort of extreme, off the grid, me with six kids in the middle of the forest with no electricity or running water. And kids who have never…the youngest of them has never seen anything different. And there’s my sister’s family, Katheryn Hahn, she’s more of a suburban mom. And then there’s the grandparents, who are more conservative, with different values. But it basically talks about the problem of communication. What happens when people don’t communicate. Which is obviously something that’s very actual right now.

S.S.: Yeah, I was just about to say…

V.M.: Yeah, with the presidential campaign, it is just an echo of the ridiculous, the absurd, the absurdly polarizing rhetoric of our current presidential campaign, which is probably only gonna get worse, unfortunately. It is just a symptom of a real problem. I don’t think it’s just invented by the politicians, or the media, we have a communication problem in this country. And it should be addressed. Because, you know, fierce arguments and yelling matches, you know, as unpleasant as they are, at least there’s a conversation happening. If there’s no engagement, and people are just in their camps saying nasty things about each other, then there’s no real progress in terms of getting along, or the country being run better. I think there are some politicians who have done a decent job, I suppose, over the last couple of years. But in recent years, there seems to be more discord than ever; very little collaboration, very little responsible governing going on. And people see that, and kids see that, and kids who grow up and this is the only political situation they know, they think, “oh, that’s what the country is about. That’s the way it is supposed to be.” And it doesn’t have to be that way. So this movie, inadvertently I guess, in some way touches on that, on the communication problem, and on the need for self-reflection. When the movie starts out, when I start reading the script, I see that this guy is kinda crazy, he loves his kids but he’s a bit extreme, he’s one of these sort of a left-wing crazy, alternative lifestyle guys against the world. That’s the story. That could be interesting. And I suppose if you were a conservative viewer, and somehow you accidentally walked into the movie theater, you might go, “oh, Jesus. We gotta watch this now?” And then it turns out that it’s not what it seems like it’s gonna be. Because they’re not…they’re flawed. There are problems. There’s extreme behavior, and in the end, what’s great about it is that all the characters, not just mine, as the father, but there are several characters who stop and think and realize, you know, maybe I’ve gone too far. Maybe I can take in a little bit of what the grandparents say, or the more conservative values, and maybe there’s a balance, a new balance. And that’s what the movie is about, finding a new balance. And I hope, in some way, I hope the same can happen in the country.

S.S.: Sure, yeah, absolutely. That’s magnificent! Well, I appreciate you taking some time to chat with me, and it was just wonderful talking with you. Thank you!

Next up was the director of Captain Fantastic, Matt Ross, whose acting credits include supporting roles in films like Face/Off, The Aviator, American Psycho, and as I reminded him when we began speaking, P.C.U. (a personal favorite).

Scene-Stealers: So, I’m gonna dork out real quick. One of my favorite movies of all time is P.C.U., so this is sort of a dream come true for me, speaking to Raji.

Matt Ross: Oh, you always wanted to meet Raji? Aw, dude: that’s sad. [Laughing]

S.S.: I’m sorry, it’s true! [Laughing]

M.R.: Naw, I mean, the truth is at that time in my life, I was right out of school, and I was super happy to get that part, and it was a lot of fun.

S.S.: No, no, that’s awesome! Now, can I ask you about the jump from going from acting? Because, I know, for a lot of the 90s, I’m thinking of, like, Face/Off, American Psycho, what is it that compelled you to want to get behind the camera?

M.R.: The truth is, I was doing theater as a child, and at the same time I was making films, so at least privately, I was always doing both of them at the same time. And then I went to theater school, and then afterwards I went to film school for, literally, like a heartbeat. The first money I made as an actor I made short films. I made like, eight to ten short films, and acting has been the way I’ve paid the bills, sort of, but I’ve also had writing jobs professionally, I’ve been paid to write. So this is my second film [as a director], so I guess the transition…there was not a transition insofar as I just woke up one day and thought, “I admire directors, I want to make films.” I had been doing that my whole life. And as a child, you didn’t think, like, “I need know what screenwriting is.” I just got together with my friends, and I had storyboards in my head, and said, “let’s do this.” So I think I have really been doing it the whole time. And if people like yourself were aware of me on any level, you just happened to see me as an actor. But short films certainly don’t get this kind of attention. And I’ve had short films as far back as the 90s, like at Sundance, it just wasn’t on peoples’ radar.

S.S: As far as this picture, with Captain Fantastic, what did you find was the biggest challenge of this production? I’m maybe assuming here, but was this the largest production that you’ve helmed as far as a director?

M.R.: Yeah, absolutely.

S.S.: So what challenges did you find with this?

M.R.: Well, the central challenge is having six kids in every scene. With child labor laws, and I’m not bemoaning child labor laws, we do need them, but it made it very difficult, obviously, to shoot regular days. You know, they were very truncated days, and we shot in two different states, in the states of Washington and New Mexico, so there was a lot of travel. A lot of the movie takes place in very rural areas in the middle of forests, in the middle of nowhere, and so getting to those locations was challenging. We have two action sequences that dealt with kids, we have two musical numbers that deal with kids, and we’re a road movie, so every single day you’re somewhere else. So if you’re asking me what the challenges were, they were logistical.

S.S.: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I appreciate you chatting with me. And it was wonderful meeting you!

A more formal on-stage Q&A with Viggo Mortensen followed the red carpet interviews, as did a screening of Captain Fantastic (a movie that, sadly, has a review embargo at SIFF). The sold-out event saw Mr. Mortensen receive his SIFF career achievement award as well, and amounted to a brilliant send-off to a festival that clearly saved the best for last. For those in attendance, it was a magnificent chance to watch a brand new film with the director and star in the room, and was yet another opportunity for Seattle’s true cinephiles to engage with films and filmmakers in a manner only the Seattle International Film Festival can offer in this small but vibrant corner of the country.

Photos by Ashley Roden

The 2016 Seattle International Film Festival may have kicked things off with the opening night gala last week, yet it didn’t seem to really shift into high gear until noted Saturday Night Live alum Molly Shannon hit the scene. In Seattle to promote her new dramedy, Other People, which had its world premiere at the Egyptian Theater on Sunday, Ms. Shannon’s confidence, humility, and generosity infected all those in attendance. Her presence at the premiere had the audience buzzing before, during, and after the event, and lifted what might have been an ordinary evening into a charged celebration. Sadly, there is a review embargo on Other People until it has its general release this September, yet that didn’t stop Scene-Stealers from attending the premiere and taking a few moments to chat with one of the queens of improv. comedy.

Ms. Shannon isn’t the only big “get” for SIFF’s 2016 season, however. In a few weeks, Viggo Mortensen will be in town for a special tribute event, along with a screening of his new film, Captain Fantastic. This is all aside from the business-as-usual 3+ week celebration of cinema in all its wonderful variations, from feature, to short, to documentary (all of them represented by offerings both foreign and domestic). Seattle is at its best during these early summer months, when the weather has finally begun to turn, and seemingly countless options abound for folks looking to take in the film community’s newest offerings.

This was the case on Sunday evening, when lines snaked around the block on Capitol Hill’s Pike/Pine corridor to gain entrance into SIFF’s ‘Evening With Molly Shannon’ event. Those in attendance fidgeted with a palpable aura of excitement at the prospect of seeing not just a new film, but also its director and star in attendance. Indeed, when both arrived, they did not to disappoint. On the red carpet just outside the theater, Ms. Shannon took a few moments to speak with Scene-Stealers about her preparation process, and the film itself.

Scene-Stealers: What’s the difference, if any at all, between how you approach preparing for a dramatic role versus a comedic one?

Molly Shannon: There really isn’t that much of a difference, I treat them both the same. With comedy, I still try and play the emotional truth of the character, and drama, same thing. So I find them very similar.

S.S.: For Other People, how did you approach the role when you read the script? Was there something that jumped out at you, as far as the character, that you felt would allow you to get inside this person? That it was familiar to you in some way?

M.S.: Yes! I think that the character of the mother, Joanne Mulchahy, I just really related to how she felt about her family, that she would do anything for her kids: that she would go to the end of the Earth for them. And I just thought it was the most beautiful script I’d ever read. It literally took my breath away. So I deeply related to it as a mother.

S.S.: That’s fantastic!

Before Other People started, Ms. Shannon took the stage for a Q&A to discuss her childhood, her early career in L.A., her auditions for Saturday Night Live (one failed, the other successful), her place in SNL’s proud alumni troupe, and subsequent work. It was a surprisingly candid chat that bounced around between stories detailing her formative years with her single father, and others that painted a picture of a driven, broke actress struggling within Los Angeles’ aspiring herd of pre-fame wanna-be’s. One thing that came across was Ms. Shannon’s burning drive and passion to succeed, something fans of her SNL work (especially Mary Katherine Gallagher) would recognize. She admitted that of all her characters, Mary Katherine is the one she feels closest to, as it represents a sort of pure Id that’s never left the actress.

Ms. Shannon’s work in Other People is a much more dramatic exercise, however, as it relies on her ability to humanize the excruciating cancer experience. As far as the picture itself, Other People seemed to hit its marks, and elicited hearty laughs, and eventually, sniffles. The story of a late-twenty-something comedy writer (Jesse Plemons) who comes home to Sacramento to help care for his terminally ill mother (Molly Shannon), it never flinched in the face of its difficult subject matter, even if character exploration did sometimes overshadow the development of the larger narrative. The film is the feature directorial debut of Broad City and SNL writer Chris Kelly, who was in attendance, and held another Q&A after Other People concluded.

The end result was an event that delivered on its promises, for it was indeed a full evening with the delightful Molly Shannon, along with a presentation of her new film which, if it did nothing else, allowed that actress to showcase her formidable big-screen chops. It was a back-to-back triumph of sorts, as she surprised with her work in last year’s biggest surprise at SIFF, Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl, and managed to do it once again this season. If the rest of the Seattle International Film Festival keeps up this pace, those in attendance are in for a hell of a treat.

Richard Linklater’s latest film, Everybody Wants Some!! follows a freshman college baseball recruit and his first wild weekend with the team.

Billed as a “spiritual sequel” to Linklater’s 1993 cult hit Dazed and Confused, the film features a cast of All-American party boys and all the sounds, clothes and bravado that 1980 had to offer.

After a special early screening and after-party at Kansas City’s Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet last Thursday, we got a chance to chat with Glen Powell, J. Quinton Johnson, and Wyatt Russell – who play smooth-talking Finnegan, unwavering chill Dale, and Twilight Zone-obsessed Willoughby, respectively – about playing athletes, working with some of the hottest behind-the-camera talent in Hollywood and the movie’s place in the gender conversation.

What was it like living in the 70s/80s?

J. Quinton Johnson: “It’s interesting that [some people feel that EWS!! is set in] the 70s, because Rick says the 1980s. The film is [set] in 1980. Rick said that 1980 is still technically the 70s and that the 1980s didn’t really start until around 1983.”

Glenn Powell: “It was transition time, y’know, in clothing, politics, presence. Everything was kind of shifting and changing, our relationship with the world was changing and I think this movie is about guys who are shifting from either from college to the real world or high school college and figuring out who you are in the framework of that world… So, it was awesome (laughs) to answer your question, it was awesome. The clothes, the hair, the music – everything was just sexier. I love that era.”

JQJ: “And not feeling like you had to live your life and have fun for someone else. Nowadays, we have social media, we have our smartphones and things like that. These parties and things, if it was done today, […] everyone would have their phones out showing people how good of a time your having. But, in that era, it was like we’re having a good time with the people that are actually here.”

GP: “Look, I’m at the Beiber concert!”

JQJ: “Whooo!”

GP: “It’s definitely different. Also, we were athletes who were on the dance floor. Rick talked about [how] athletes were peacockers in every sense of the word. When I was an athlete, you […] were wallflowers. You’d go to practice, you’d do your thing and it’s […] so intense these days. These guys were drinking beer, these guys were partying. Back when I was playing ball, that’s your world, you focused. Now, today it’s so competitive. You’re not out at the club.”

Wyatt Russell: “Not in the same way. I played hockey. You’d go out and get drinks. In Europe, it was different. In Europe, it was like that. Where I played it was just like this but when I was in the states, it’s pretty rigid. And they were making like 40 grand a year. It wasn’t like this thing […] you’re gonna make a ton of money at.

GP: “Rick also talked about the body type of an athlete back then. Now, it’s like there’s supplements and these guys are almost like Adonises. Like, shredded. And [Linklater’s] like, ‘You guys would’ve been in good shape. You’d have been athletes but you don’t necessarily look like athletes. You look like cornfed Texas guys. It’s a different body type.”

You’ve all worked with Richard Linklater now and Glenn, you’ve worked with Ryan Murphy on Scream Queens, and Wyatt’s worked with Phil Lord and Chris Miller on 22 Jump Street – all different, distinctive voices in Hollywood. Is that what you look for when searching for roles and auditioning?

GP: “It’s the only thing we search for. Chris and Phil are killing it right now. Those guys are taking the most random IP and they’ve done the most insanely cool things with it.”

WR: “They’re just super smart people. You meet them and they’re funny but they’re smart. They get it. When you meet someone […] you can tell if they have a vision in their mind about what they want to execute or if they’re chasing some sort of dragon or dream or idea but they don’t have it planned out in their mind.”

GP: “I’ve worked with directors who’ve had a specific reference, like, ‘We’re making The Deerhunter,’’y’know? And I’m like, ‘No, we’re not.’ And the problem with that is that it’s rare to find a director that hasn’t proven themselves. Like [Miller] and [Lord], Richard Linklater, Ryan Murphy – they’ve proven themselves. They obviously have a very particular worldview and they chase it in away that nobody else can chase. Nobody else could make this movie besides Richard Linklater. And, as an actor, that’s all you look for is somebody who’s got a specific taste because a specific taste in a director gives you a specific taste in a character.

In regards to the film’s gender politics, a lot of fuss has been made about them – including, but not limited to, the lack of consistent a female presence in the film. Do you guys have any thoughts on that?

WR: That whole thing is a wash. That’s not what [Linklater] sets out to make movies about. If you wanna make it about that, you can make it about that. That wasn’t his experience, that wasn’t his life. If that was his life, that’s the way he would’ve made it. Movies that are contrived, that are meant to say something about something that didn’t happen – if you want to make a story about it – that’s when it’s open for discussion. When it’s about someone’s life, you can look at the 80s as they were or as you wanted them to be. This was 36 years ago; this is  just the way it was. I always find it difficult to answer that question because it doesn’t really apply.

GP: ”I think you’re missing the whole point of the movie if you look at it from a gender equality point of view. It’s about a baseball team so you’re trying to shoehorn that aspect of it in. I think that the Beverly character is a very strong female character who has a lot to say. You see the light of of what you can be and can see in college. We’re a team of fun neanderthals at the end of the day. [Linklater] talked about the essence of what is to go to college and when you have relationships in college. They’re very transient. The first day of school, you don’t know anybody. The first guy you meet is your best friend and that’s how you treat each other. It’s just the nature of what it is in college. The first girl he meets, he sees her and then he hooks up with another girl and then he goes back and he goes, ‘Oh, she was really special.’ He’s try to reflect reality and not trying to push some political agenda.”

Sometimes a good weekend is just a good weekend?

GP: “Exactly – I love the way you phrased that – ‘sometimes a good weekend is just a good weekend.’”

JQJ: “I remember doing literature studies and English and you read a novel and it’s like ‘What does this blue bush mean?’ and ‘What is the significance of this character’s journey?’ And some authors are like sometimes there is some thought behind that stuff but, if you go too deep into it, you’re completely missing the point.”

GP: “And I feel like that’s why a lot of movies suck these days, because they’ve been executive-noted to death. This movie was made with love in Bastrop, Texas without the pressure from a studio that was noting it to death. It’s all from [Linklater’s] life, his heart and our lives – we got to kind of collaborate with him – but the problem is that you can water down an amazing movie when you overthink it.”

Trey Hock talks about all things Oscar. The 88th Annual Academy Awards are this weekend. Join Scene Stealers at Screenland Armour to watch.

So this is the time of year when most critics publish the end-of-year lists. Top tens, mostly. Now I do have one in the works but I’m having a bit of trouble putting it together, so I thought I’d just remind myself (and you, dear readers) of every film I saw in 2015.

Every. Single. One.

Let’s do this.

American Ultra
If this movie came out in 2005 people would have swarmed the theater and laughed their asses off. It’s not 2005.

Amy
Everybody seems to love this one and you know what? I get it. I also kind of like VH1.

Anomalisa
What kind of filmmaker are we dealing with when Charlie Kaufman’s simplest, most normal film is an animated flick involving stop-motion cunnilingus, a Japanese sex robot, a trippy dream sequence with a golf cart and an entire world populated by enumerable Tom Noonans?

Ant-Man
Come for Michael Peña, stay for… something else. Apparently.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
“You know what would make the original Avengers even better? SUBPLOTS!”

Beasts of No Nation
One note but beautiful and terrifying. No joke for this one, sorry.

Best of Enemies
I keep switching between hating Gore Vidal and kind of wanting to be Gore Vidal…

The Big Short
“Hey girl, I’ll be your tour guide through the 2008 financial crisis. I will make you laugh then feel absolutely terrified.”

Blackhat
Still wanna call Michael Mann a genius? Huh? Yeah that’s what I thought.

Black Mass
Hey look Johnny Depp’s acting again! Hey look Joel Edgerton’s having a stroke!

Bridge of Spies
Republicans need their Oscar bait too, and Spielberg is there to give just that.

“Didn’t you really like Lincoln though?”

No idea what you’re talking about.

“No I remember you totally loved that film, just thought it was too long!”

MOVING ON.

Brooklyn
“I think it’s beautiful. The palette is so soft and it’s just adorable” – every Downton Abbey-watching mother on Earth.

Burnt
I was mildly excited about this one for some reason. I have no idea why.

By the Sea
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Carol
Greatest film ever made that tells its story entirely through shoulder-touching and Rooney Mara staring longingly out of car windows. 10/10.

Chi-Raq
Man I missed Spike Lee. I mean, yes he hasn’t gone anywhere and this thing is still a giant mess, but MAN I missed Spike Lee.

Cinderella
Kenneth Branagh made possibly the best Shakespeare film of all time with his Henry V. That was 1989. Now it’s 2015, and he’s shooting Disney remakes.

Creed
Hey look! They made a good movie out of a franchise whose appeal I’ve never understood! WOO!

Crimson Peak
“Sexy Siblings: The Movie” – Trey Hock

Da Blood of Jesus
Yeah, this is why I missed Spike Lee…

The Danish Girl
No the plot doesn’t sound like “forced femme” erotica what are you talking about? (laughs awkwardly)

Dope
Title is accurate, this film was cool. Nobody saw it but you know, whatever.

End of the Tour
SHUT UP! TALKING CAN BE CINEMATIC! (crosses arms and sits angrily in corner)

Ex Machina
Yes yes it’s horrifying and fascinating BUT THAT DANCE SCENE THOUGH.

F4ntastic Four
You know how the original Star Wars was a terrible execution that turned brilliant in editing? Yeah I think the exact opposite happened here.

And no I will not type the name without th3 4.

Far from the Madding Crowd
I actually liked this one. A lot. I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting a rather pleasant nap.

Fifty Shades of Grey
Just remember, this is a trilogy. Prep thyselves. Winter is coming.

Focus
Perfect movie to watch on a plane.

Furious 7
I know these films make a lot of money but does anyone actually care about them? Like are there rabid Fast and Furious fans out there that care about the characters and the cannon and all that? Please, tell me, and if so why?

Get Hard
No, no I don’t know why I saw this please just stop asking.

The Gift
The best executed stupid premise of the year.

The Green Inferno
“Guys, the tribe was really excited about it so it’s not racist.”

The Hateful Eight
The first half is really good and then I’m almost unsure the second half actually exists and I didn’t just slip into a fever dream. Part of me is assuming I’ll love it after a second viewing.

Inside Out
Wall-E’s better.

Irrational Man
It’s Woody Allen. It’s decent. Yes the age gap subtext is creepy, but again, it’s Woody Allen. What’d you expect?

It Follows
It’s atmospheric, scary, super cool, and overrated. Yes I can think that all at once.

Joy
So… J-Law’s only gonna be a thing for, like, another year, right?

Jupiter Ascending
“Bees were genetically programmed to recognize royalty.”

Jurassic World
As exciting and realistic as the plastic toys it was made to sell.

The Look of Silence
… I feel like if I joke about this one I’d be warming my seat on the tram to hell so… yeah I’ll just give it a 10/10 and move on.

Love & Mercy
60s Narrative: Incredible. 80s Narrative: Eh?

Macbeth
I really, really, really want to love this one. WANT to.

Mad Max: Fury Road
What a day. WHAT A LOVELY DAY.

Magic Mike XXL
Yeah I saw this in theaters. I have nothing to apologize for.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
So, fellow critics, are we still not regretting letting Guy Ritchie be a thing? No? Okay I’ll give it another film.

The Martian
Okay so this is about as deep as a teaspoon but still I’ve seen it three times and it’s fun as hell.

Me, Earl and the Dying Girl
WHY DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP TELLING ME THIS IS MY ORIGIN STORY!?!

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
So uhm… I actually really like Tom Cruise. (ducks from the flying rotten fruit and tin cans)

Mississippi Grind
A film so charming and laid back I keep periodically forgetting it exists.

Mistress America
I love Greta Gerwig but this film changes its focus as often as the protagonist changes career paths.

Mr. Holmes
Ian McKellan is getting old. I do not approve.

Outcast
Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen in a direct to redbox action film. Go forward. Enjoy.

The Peanuts Movie
It’s cute, I guess. Whatever.

The Revenant
(Looks up from buffalo carcass with blood streaming down cheeks, then rasps out) 10/10.

The Ridiculous Six
I didn’t actually subject myself to this thing, but a good friend of mine did and she got a nosebleed and almost vomited so… thumbs up.

Room
It feels like being punched in the face repeatedly for two hours straight. I kinda loved it.

Sicario
See above, translate into Spanish.

Spectre
That awkward moment when you realize that most of the films in one of your favorite franchises are bad…

Spotlight
The most boring choice to be a critic’s film of the year. Also my film of the year. UNORIGINALITY FTW WOO!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I did not realize I hated this film. Here I thought I rather liked it but had reservations, especially when comparing it to the originals, but since my article was published you all have graciously informed me that I hated it. Thank you all, so much, for your insight.

Steve Jobs
Because Social Network would have been better if everyone pretended all the drama happened on just three separate days and had a happy ending.

Straight Outta Compton
CRAZY MOTHAFUCKA NAMED ICE CUBE! FROM A GROUP CALLED N-maybe I won’t write the whole song, actually… yeah…

Suffragette
Also did you know Dr. Dre is a perfect little shining star who has never done wrong despite a rough life? I didn’t know that. Thanks movie!

(clears throat) SUFFRAGETTE
Oh right. I was supposed to write a blurb for this one too. Uhm… Go women? I guess?

Tangerine
The most brutal, gritty and realistic depiction of the hardships of being a trans woman and prostitute ever caught to film with a messy, acidic camera style. Best Christmas film of the year!

Terminator: Genysis
I can safely assume the writing process for this flick involved a dozen other scripts being thrown into a blender.

Tomorrowland
So Brad Bird almost did Star Wars. Huh. Picture that.

Trainwreck
Amy Schumer’s really good at SHORT sketch comedy.

Trumbo
It’s actually a lot of fun. Kind of terrible and pointless, but fun!

Unfriended
Worst executed great premise of the year. Maybe I should put this entry up next to The Gift…

The Visit
Shyamalan being just okay is such a surprise it blows everyone away.

We Are Your Friends
Did I see this? Really? No shit. Huh.

Welcome to Me
Little weird, not the best made but I really liked this one. It’s subversive and funny and Kristen Wiig gives maybe my favorite film performance of hers. Again, no joke, I just think more people should give this one a look.

Youth
Beautifully made, beautifully acted, and the most pretentious pile of garbage of the year.

The 33
Antonio, please for the love of god stop trying to win an Oscar, you’re doing it wrong.

99 Homes
See: Macbeth.

Happy Holidays, see you soon for my Top Ten.