Hot off the release of his bizarrely appealing debut The Greasy Strangler, Director Jim Hosking is back at it again with his equally oddball sophomore feature, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn. HOME’s Artistic Director of Film Jason Wood caught up with him to find out more…
The film is a writing collaboration with David Wike. How did the collaboration come about? With an idea, with a character or with a more general mood? The Greasy Strangler (‘I call bullshit on that’) was also a writing alliance (with Toby Harvard) so I wondered if this took a similar form…
The idea came about when David Wike sent me a scene featuring three bungling tragic characters who worked in a coffee shop apparently planning a heist. The scene is no longer in the script or hence the film. But that was the springboard. He asked me to write the next scene if I fancied, and I didn’t fancy and so then it all got going. It started for me in a very unexpected fashion, and that made it feel like an unexpected gift.
An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn feels very different in tone to The Greasy Strangler. There is the sense of adventure and outpourings of comedic filth and depravity (for which I thank you) but there is more heart and tenderness here. Was this a conscious decision on your part? Was there also any concern that you may ostracise those that loved The Greasy Strangler? Directors should be allowed to experiment and branch out but audiences sometimes just want repetition…
The script was written in the months before I shot The Greasy Strangler. The Greasy Strangler was written by two people, only one of whom was involved in writing Luff Linn. So there is some crossover in sensibility but also this means that Luff Linn is a different beast. The Greasy Strangler is tonally more like the kind of thing I have written with Toby Harvard. I feel though that I went where I wanted to with that. I don’t care about shocking people. And the great challenge in this new film was to make people laugh while also making them care and even to move them emotionally. That felt genuinely exciting to me. I found the more emotional scenes really gratifying and I would like to move more in that direction. It’s hard for me to suppress my desire to act up though. I’ll see how this all pans out. I didn’t have any concerns about ostracising people that liked Greasy. To me Greasy was a comedy with heart, and I loved the characters in it. The least interesting parts of Greasy were the faux-horror elements and the grease and gross out elements. I liked the screwed up relationships and the ‘father and son having the same girlfriend’ story. It made me laugh. I don’t second guess people’s reactions to anything I do. I have no idea why people don’t like things or like things. I only know what I like and what i think is worthwhile.
Inevitably we turn to Aubrey Plaza who is characteristically fearless in her role. Can I ask firstly about whether Aubrey was someone you immediately associated with the part of Lulu Danger and secondly about the depth and complexity she brings to the role? She is of course very funny but also captures a sense of melancholy and general dissatisfaction with her life…
I don’t write a character necessarily with one actor in mind, though I had thought a lot about Aubrey as Lulu. But I had thought about a new version of Aubrey. I thought she had a really genuine quality and a softness and a sweetness, beyond the fact that she is so funny and so game. The sincerity that she brought to the role and yes that sense of melancholy has made me want to make more with her and to create more characters like this. I couldn’t stop watching her. There is so much truth and openness and vulnerability. She is fearless genuinely. And she is inspirational.
This is more of an ensemble piece. Was this another conscious step on your part and in terms of bringing to life characters such as Colin Keith Threadener, Shane Danger and Beverly Luff Linn himself how did this affect your approach to casting?
It was an ensemble piece because we just enjoyed creating more and more characters. I had no great strategy behind that. I’d be perfectly happy to make a film with only one character in. This is just what seemed to work for this script. We wanted to feel free to keep thinking up new self-involved self-important sad characters trapped in this tiny world that seems so trapped itself. It was a new challenge for me to approach well-known actors and to offer roles rather than to see unknown actors reading for roles. I had always wanted previously to use actors that audiences would have no reference of. But it’s good to try new things and to head in new directions, otherwise it becomes too formulaic. And then the brain will switch off and wither! So yes it was a wonderful challenging jigsaw puzzles to fill out this cast. Initially we were thinking of people while writing, then I would think of actors I liked, then we started casting also in New York and finally LA. I was trying to populate the film with lovable eccentric characters who all feel like individuals and none of them feel cliche.
I wondered if you could talk about the location you used for the film both in a general sense and in terms of the hotel where the film is largely set. You’ve described it as ‘a poor man’s Overlook Hotel’ and it becomes a character in the film in its own right…
The hotel was the most specific location and could have been an expensive location too. We knew if we found the right hotel then we could base the whole shoot around that location. My production designer Jason Kisvarday, who I worked with on The Greasy Strangler also, found a hotel in Eureka California that he was really interested in. It looked perfect and it had many locations within it that seemed to work. We visited Eureka before Christmas after we had already decided to shoot there. It was absolutely freezing, the hotel had very little heating. The town has a very bleak feel in a way that feels very British. It’s melancholic and out of step with the world. It felt perfectly just like another character in the film. We all loved it there. It was a great bonding experience to be stuck so far from anywhere or anyone else. Was I ever happier than I was in Eureka? That is a great song title. Now I must write the song.
The characters in the film are tragic – but also funny – so how did you set out to achieve this in the look and feel? It’s a slightly muted palette but there is also a timelessness that makes the time scale hard to place.
Well it’s a funny thing that actually when you make a film you pay so much attention to all the details but you end up being the one who is most blind to them. Everybody in the film starts to look normal and the dialogue starts to sound normal. But you need to keep remembering how it felt when you wrote something or when you first saw the wardrobe. I’m digressing. I’m not interested in creating characters that look like the most boring people we see in real life. I want to remain interested as I make the film. That seems to be about creating characters whose faces hairstyles and clothes I react to. Tragedy and comedy are intertwined. Characters acting with tremendous self-importance in characterful clothing but in a bleak town and in bleak jobs and locations creates some comedy and tragedy I suppose. Honestly I don’t analyse it though. I know what the tone of the script is and then all the decisions just become like: what hair would he/she have, what clothes would he/she wear, what would he/she drive, and then we just go for what feels the most enticing option.
I admire the singularity of your vision, mostly because it feels unique and not like the work of anyone else. Is there a sense that you also want to surprise yourself in terms of the work that you create? Does there need to be an element of mystery and risk-taking to your thought process?
I always want to surprise myself as much as anyone else. You never know what you have until you see the characters in their costumes together on location, and suddenly there is a world. And each layer you add brings more opportunity for more character, if that’s where you want to go. Personally I don’t want a wasted pair of shoes or a wasted piece of music. There absolutely needs to be mystery and risk-taking. The mystery is not analysing why I make what I make or how it may feel to anyone. I just have my taste of interests and so my work will exploit those, and then I will make something I am engaged in. My hope is that others are engaged too. If you do anything different, and to me there is no point making anything unless it is different, then you are taking a risk. The real risk would obviously be to not take a risk.
An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn is released on Friday 26 Oct. Find out more and book tickets here.