I interviewed Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead for their first feature film Resolution. That movie was about old video formats signaling its heroes impending doom, so we got into a discussion about the long forgotten RCA Selectavision. Here at Fantastic Fest, I was participating in an active bit Moorhead and Benson launched. Since their TIFF review from RogerEbert.com compared their new film Spring to Richard Linklater and H.P. Lovecraft, they asked the audience to tweet the most ridiculous comparisons they could think of, and the winner would get to see an exclusive scene. I accepted their challenge and submitted many absurd comparisons that do not describe Spring at all, including “Spring is like The Birth of a Nation meets The Lego Movie” and “like Jim Jarmusch made a Pixar movie.”
Spring is actually about an American man, Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) who meets Louise (Natalia ) in Italy. They hit it off, but the audience finds out before Evan that Louise has a secret. There may be some mild spoilers in this interview because I did discuss the mythology of Louise with Benson and Moorhead. Drafthouse Films announced they would distribute Spring, and Moorhead and Benson also directed a segment of VHS Viral available digitally October 23 and in theaters November 21.
Related: Fantastic Fest 2014 Review: ‘Spring’
CraveOnline: Very important question. After our last interview, did you explore RCA Selectavision, get a Selectavision player and some discs?
Justin Benson: We wish we would have. Something that’s really funny. We were just talking to the writer of Sinister outside and he’s funny. He’s like, “You guys used every low-fi creepy piece of media and made it really hard for Scott Derrickson and I writing the Sinister sequel because you guys used everything. We were trying to find something.” We didn’t give him Selectavision. It was on the tip of my tongue but I was like nah, Fred’s not gonna like that.
I’m glad you guys enjoyed my contributions to the absurd “Spring is like” contest.
Aaron Moorhead: They were all very, very good. I retweeted them. I just realized, you won, so let’s show him. This is called “The Talented Mr. Evan.” We actually spent time out of our day to make this and cut it together.
[They show me a clip of Lou Taylor Pucci doing the scene from Talented Mr. Ripley where James Rebhorn almost blows his cover (Moorhead played Rebhorn), which they can’t share because it uses the music from the movie. It was just for their own amusement.]
So which of my tweets did I win for?
Aaron Moorhead: Let’s decide. I like the hashtag #Iwin one.
That was Godard’s Week End meets Meet the Feebles?
Aaron Moorhead: Let me just look at my Twitter retweets.
I made myself laugh with The Human Centipede starring your mom.
Aaron Moorhead: Yes!
Justin Benson: That was good!
Aaron Moorhead: That was it. Any “your mom” joke wins. I think that was it. Oh, these are great. Thank you, Fantastic Fest. This is beautiful.
Before I started coming up with nonsense comparisons, I was going to ask: did you see Under the Tuscan Sun and say, “We can do better?”
Aaron Moorhead: I actually have seen that movie, believe it or not.
Justin Benson: That’s one of those things where you get to the sixth draft of the script and you realize you could make one of those self-reflexive lines. “Oh, this is the fantasy of a rich American housewife.” It’s Eat Pray Love, it’s all that.
Is Resolution playing on the TV in Louise’s apartment?
Justin Benson: On her TV one time it’s Aaron and I’s Giallo themed promo video for Trieste Film Festival. And then another time, it’s a a fake DVD menu for apparently a Korean bootleg of a Giallo movie about a medusa woman. If you listen carefully, you can hear a score by a band called Kobalt which is composed of myself, Aaron, our sound mixer and Jimmy Lavalle who did the score of the movie. If you listen even more carefully to the Suspiria ripoff, I perform the vocals on the bootleg Korean Suspiria DVD menu. If you want to get into more detail, when she’s flipping through the channels on the TV, first it’s me, then it’s Aaron in our Giallo themed Trieste Film Festival promo video. Then it’s a shot of a documentary about Pompeii.
How did you create this mythology?
Justin Benson: The strategy behind it that we were very conscious of was that when you first see her, because we’re so preconditioned as audience members to latch onto monsters we already know about, mythologies that we already know about, that in that first one, the audience will probably think we’re going down the road of the vampire.
I did. That’s what I thought.
Justin Benson: The next one, the imagery very much suggests no, it’s a werewolf. Then you start taking them down that road. You just keep escalating from there. You’ve got the picture on the phone and suddenly you get into this Lovecraftian creature thing, which by the way, I didn’t know anything about Lovecraft until I started reading Resolution reviews. It was never intentional. It was really just like this is how her body works. She’s a monster and the idea that monsters that are nature-based always have more psychological impact for the viewer.
Aaron Moorhead: If you see the big monster, the Evolutionary Frankenstein we like to call it, yes, that is the culmination of all the early mythological monsters we’ve been showing. But also if you want to break it down, everything’s also from evolutionary things. Like, we used to be primates so a werewolf was actually a gorilla that had a tail. The tentacle thing is a little stretch but it looks great. We kind of wanted to go down the evolutionary chain and connect that to myths and then plant this teeny tiny suggestion that maybe her or something like her is the origin of a lot of our myths and really, the science just hasn’t caught up yet.
Did you digitally make her thinner in one shot where we see her exposed?
Justin Benson: Yeah, Aaron did. He said, “I don’t want no fat chicks in my movie.”
Aaron Moorhead: I can tell you personally she looked wonderful before we made her even thinner but we just wanted you to see it.
Justin Benson: There was a really interesting conversation I had with MASTERSFX early on. We were planning a long time for getting these effects right. One of the more interesting conversations we had in the office was okay, there’s this scene and we want her to basically look like a discarded corpse of a junkie just left for dead. When she falls down in the ritual scene against the wall, it would just be like imagine if you saw a forensics photo of a dead body. “Guys, you realize that there is literally no way practically to make someone actually look like a dead body. Go look at a picture. Something happens not long after you die that your body changes in such a way. You simply can’t do it entirely practically.” What we got to was basically that some pretty basic makeup to make the texture and colors look corpse-like, and then basically shooting a day on a stage where we shot pooling blood underneath flesh. Then Aaron would composite on the pooling blood underneath her almost like rigor mortis setting in. And then on top of that he’d go in and basically thin her out so it gets closer to its actual creepy image of an actual corpse on the ground.
Aaron, did you do the plants withering and blooming too?
Aaron Moorhead: Yeah, that was all just basically we bought for $20 the image of plants on a green screen, or a black screen just doing that. It’s great. Thank God that existed.
Wait, someone made a time lapse of plants blooming and withering against a blank screen just for visual effects shots?
Aaron Moorhead: Oh my God, there’s every compositing element in the world. Still normally you have to go shoot your own if you want it to be perfect. Those are actually, in my opinion, some of the more imperfect effects in the movie, although I really like them. But yeah, that’s the idea.
How many times did you do the tracking shot in the alleys?
Aaron Moorhead: Not that many. I think there were eight of the main shot that you saw and then we did it five more times, two from behind and one from each side just in case we needed to cut. I think there were eight takes and we used take seven. By the way, our steadicam operator, Will Sampson, he is a badass. Do you remember that it doesn’t even cut after they leave the alley and it goes all the way through that phone call, until he turns around to the shot of Angelo?
Yes, I did.
Aaron Moorhead: We had to watch it all back, all eight minutes of it every time you do it. And there’s extras and everybody’s holding. We’re locking down a whole city in the middle of the night watching this little monitor going, “Oh, I hope we got it.” There’s times when you just know you didn’t quite get it, like let’s just go again, it doesn’t matter.
Was the sunrise at the end a real sunrise or was that something you could do digitally too?
Aaron Moorhead: That was digital, but we did get a volcano to explode on time. We planned that out very carefully.
Justin Benson: They have these dogs that can sense tectonic shifts.
Aaron Moorhead: We were just like, “Guys, go, go, go!” It was like that scene in Twister where they’re like, “It’s touchdown!”
Was Resolution also called “A film by Moorhead and Benson?” How did you decide on that as your credit?
Aaron Moorhead: I don’t think we took the possessory credit on Resolution. I don’t think it was “a film by.” I think that’s what we’re doing now because it’s a brand building thing, but Moorhead and Benson is our director team name. But then when we say “Directed by” it’s Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead and we can take turns.
So you switch the order each time?
Aaron Moorhead: Yeah, we flop it. But I think just because we do so much holistically together, instead of just being like, “Cinematographer: Aaron Moorhead. Writer: Justin Benson” which we do as well, because it’s all such a cohesive monster thing of stuff, the easiest way is saying “it’s a Moorhead and Benson film.” The same way eventually, hopefully, people will say, “A Coen Brothers film.” It’s not like, “What’s the film? What film is it?” “Oh, it’s a crime noir that’s really funny.” No, “Well, it’s a Coen Brothers film.” Oh, got it. I know what that is.
Is it true the DGA doesn’t like co-director credits?
Aaron Moorhead: I’ve heard they’ve opened up to it but we’re not DGA.
But eventually you would be in success.
Aaron Moorhead: Yeah, we might do it like the Coen Brothers do it which is they swap off, or we might give them the finger. I don’t know.
Justin Benson: We’ve heard that actually now it’s fine.
So if Spring was written by Justin, was Resolution written by Aaron?
Aaron Moorhead: No, he writes everything.
So the writing is Justin’s territory, and cinematography is more Aaron’s?
Justin Benson: Yeah, but everything, every single thing gets so heavily filtered through Aaron and as the projects get bigger and there’s more producers, every single note gets filtered through Aaron. I can’t write scripts like that without Aaron. That’s not just me alone behind the keyboard.
Aaron Moorhead: I still can’t take any credit though. He puts a lot of hours on that keyboard and I don’t do anything.
Resolution was often mistaken for a found footage movie or a deconstruction of found footage. Did that inspire you to participate in VHS Viral?
Justin Benson: Not really. The main motivating thing in participating in VHS was just that that franchise was known for progressing and innovation. It wasn’t like other horror franchises. The second one was so much better than the first one. They were doing really neat things and it was the opportunity to, not compete, but join the ranks.
Aaron Moorhead: They only have really cool, talented up and comers and I would love to be among those people. Those guys are awesome.
Justin Benson: You know how certain people see Top Gun and they join the military? Aaron and I saw Safe Haven and we started begging to do VHS 3.
Have you always wanted to see skate punks fight zombies?
Aaron Moorhead: I didn’t know that I always wanted but I did. What we love about the idea is that we always wanted to do this Jason and the Argonauts, like hyper 2014 version. But we love to say that it’s Mortal Kombat meets Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. We really like going the video game angle because our found footage is not like deep rooted slow burn horror. It’s crazy, in your face, fuck you action. That was where we wanted to take it and we really got to.
So was it akin at all to doing the 8mm and video segments from Resolution?
Aaron Moorhead: I don’t know. I never really associated the two really just because VHS was such a nightmare to make from a production standpoint. It was very difficult. It was hot as hell, a lot of logistical stuff. Whereas those scenes, we just ran out with just the two of us and an actor with a camera and just got it so I never really associated them.
Justin Benson: It wasn’t an 11 page fight scene where every shot had special effects.
Do you have a title for your Aleister Crowley movie?
Aaron Moorhead: Beasts.
What period of Aleister Crowley’s life is Beasts about?
Justin Benson: When he was a young man, he was really, really charismatic and had some really interesting views on personal freedoms. That’s all in addition to being the rock star of ceremonial magic. He went to a house on Loch Ness to perform this ritual called the Abra-Melin which required a lot of self-discipline which was not something that he had at all. So he was very poorly matched for this ritual. Our movie’s about that week of doing that ritual. It’s sort of a fictionalized telling of his transformation from a young man with a lot of potential into what we now know as the wickedest man in the world.
Have you cast it?
Justin Benson: We have not cast it but it’s getting pretty close to going out to cast.
Aaron Moorhead: And he still occupies a pretty big place in the mental real estate of counterculture and subcultures, but he’s on the cop of the Beatles album. We’re crazy excited because we get to tell the story, and we’re also doing it in the strangest way. It’s not The Aviator or anything like that. It’s just this extreme pressure cooker of a week where things just go so wrong, so badly that he can’t even believe it. Unlike Spring, it’s one of the darkest things we’ll ever make probably, and it’s still raucously funny and weird.
Justin Benson: Crowley’s kind of like a cross between Tyler Durden and Captain Jack Sparrow.
Aaron Moorhead: We think he’s going to be one of the most interesting singular characters we’ll ever get to play with.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
