Nothing Bad Can Happen: Katrin Gebbe on the Bible and Maggots

I saw Nothing Bad Can Happen at the Cannes Film Festival, where I would see anything just because I was at Cannes. It later played Fantastic Fest, where I will watch anything just because it got into Fantastic Fest. Austin-based Drafthouse Films is releasing the film this week. It is the story of a boy, Tore (Julius Feldmeier) who belongs to a group called The Jesus Freaks and gets taken in by a couple, Benno (Sascha Alexander Gersak) and Astrid (Annika Kuhl). Despite their violence and force feeding him rotten food, Tore follows his teachings and treats them with optimism and gratitude. I spoke with writer/director Katrin Gebbe when we were in Austin together about her debut feature, and what Tore’s story represents for us all.

CraveOnline: What got you thinking about the dark side of things with Nothing Bad Can Happen?

Katrin Gebbe: It was not difficult to find the dark side. It’s based on a true story, inspired [by]. When we were reading about the particular story, the darkness just jumped out of the page. It was actually quite a lot of work to find something beautiful and positive in the story, to find another beauty in all this darkness. So this character, Tore was created because he would be a very light, shining person. And he would be even more than usual in this kind of situation, so he would be like superhuman. Super holy in a way, but one shining person could be the counterpoint of all this darkness in the movie.

That’s what I got out of the movie. How did you imagine someone could maintain that level of positivity when these horrible things are going on?

I ask back, “Why do you read the bible if they don’t believe in something like this?” I don’t get it. You cannot raise these questions without having an idol, so Tore had to be like a modern martyr who just raises questions. If he would be like a usual person, there would be no film I think.

An idol?

Like a hero. Someone who’s better than you, somebody you’ll look up to.

I always think about Gandhi’s quote that you have to love your oppressors, because you realize they’re oppressing you because they’ve been unloved. Fighting them with more anger is only going to build that. I felt that’s what Tore was doing.

Yeah, I read some Gandhi books actually. I was researching on all the religious heroes who came towards me. Gandhi had some really nice quotes but I thought it doesn’t make sense to mix it up so I stayed clearly on the Jesus side just to make a decision. Gandhi said really beautiful things. I feel you really feel the power of his words, but of course when you’re in your everyday life, all your needs and instincts are so strong. So your head, your mind has to do a lot of work to convince you to go against it.

Jesus said turn the other cheek, didn’t he?

The thing is also, I would love Tore to kill Benno in the end, or like to harm these people. So that’s really crazy what it does with you, this kind of movie. People have reactions and that is the interesting thing about it. I feel we did a good job that it’s provocative and it forces you to have a stand on it. That’s a very powerful way, I feel, to make movies. For me, for example, I could really relate to Tore’s idealism, like with this movie it was the same. A lot of people told us, “You won’t get money for this.” But nobody could say for sure, “Your movie goes to Cannes so you’ll be completely happy afterwards.” It could have been that Katrin makes a movie and it’s her last movie because everyone’s like, “You are crazy. We don’t give you money anymore.” We were really following our path and not looking left or right because it makes you struggle, be afraid, take the less risky choices. I felt I could connect to Tore in this way for example.

What was actually the rotten chicken that he has to eat?

Like as a symbol?

No, what did he actually put in his mouth?

Chicken.

But how was it made up to look rotten and disgusting?

We put color into it, like food coloring. Actually there were little white maggots on the chicken. I was like, “Of course we could cut but it would be really great if you could just eat the pieces maybe while there’s no maggot on it” and Annika tried to give him stuff without one for the moment, but he would never know for sure that there’s nothing underneath. He was really brave, but we felt it would really nice if it’s real, and also for the acting, but he could make the choice. If he’d said no, we could have taken it away.

And then it was working well, but still when I was sitting in the grading, I was like, “Shit, it’s not disgusting enough.” And we would do some sound design and maggot noises on the meat. But the grader was really good and the camera was panning sometimes, but he said, “It’s no problem. I can change the color of the chicken.” He did particular grading on the chicken and pushed it to a greenish tone. Finally, me and my DP were like, “Ahhh.” So it had a really cool effect, and then it felt right.

What was your path to becoming a filmmaker in Germany?

I went to art school before and I studied visual communications, but I also had one year of fine art in the Netherlands. Film was one of the courses I would take. I started and everybody’s like, “Katrin, you should study media art” because it was the only film thing there. But people were just drifting, doing stuff every now and then, going to parties and there was not really structure and you really had to learn for yourself. I studied visual communications but I used the media department a lot and they gave me cameras. I was really sneaking into it for every interesting course they had. Then I did an exchange and secretly took all film classes and no design classes. I came back and had some short films. I submitted them to the film school and they immediately took me. I was really lucky after graduating in Holland. I could start the Masters program so that was great.

What year did you graduate from Masters film school?

2008. Verena [Grafe-Hoft, producer] as well. Like this, I wasn’t thinking about it too much. I didn’t want to sell it or anything, but Verena was so crazy about it. She was like, “Yeah, yeah, you should do it.” After 10 minutes of talking I was already sure that I had a really good feeling about it. Actually, I was kind of afraid to work with a big company because this story I would really like to do the way I would like to do it, not having too many market eyes on it. Like if you do it that way, you could get more audience, or you would lose audience. And I remember when we had the contract, there was a debate about the final cut. I was like, “Verena, I will never change it.” She was like, “Katrin, I would never make you change it.” That was really cool so we had the same opinion and also the TV channel [ZDF] was involved. They gave us all the freedom which was really special.

Can you recommend any German films our audience should discover?

There are two filmmakers, Petzold and Hans-Christian Schmid. I think they are pretty powerful filmmakers.

What’s your next film going to be?

We are working on a coproduction right now and I’m also developing with another writer for Austria, but the coproduction with Verena is a German-Danish coproduction. We’ll try to make a big European artist film. We’ll see.