By DEIRDRE CRIMMINS
Writer/director Mary Dauterman’s debut feature film, BOOGER, is many things – many varied things. It’s about grief, loneliness and the intensity of soul-baring friendships that come through right when they are needed. It’s also incredibly (and fundamentally) disgusting. A body horror metamorphosis through and through – with a stiff spine of loss – the film balances these heavy themes with grace… and heaps of vomit. Recently, Dauterman sat down with RUE MORGUE to discuss BOOGER, physical performances, and isolation.
What was the first kernel of an idea for this film?
I had a really kind of stupid idea of a female experience with a bodega cat in modern-day New York that would be a werewolf movie. It was a really silly idea. I’d written – and failed to write – a feature. And there were so many things wrong with it. Okay, I’m going to try again. Really digging up the emotional part of it felt important to get it from being a sketch to a fully-fledged film. At the time I was starting to write it, I had a sad friendship thing happen to me, and then, we went into lockdown, and I was fully isolated from all of my friends. The idea of loneliness and how important female friendship is was what kind of I kept coming back to. Emotionally, I felt like I had a lot to say there. And that’s where the bigger character study came from. It really made sense that the grief was manifesting in this body horror way. It gave everything a reason. Once I figured that out, the two loose concepts became BOOGER.
I reacted quite strongly to the intensity of the female friendship in the film. Sometimes, the intensity of female relationships at that age is not necessarily something people outside of them or even people inside of them acknowledge. So there’s a certain thread of Anna coming to terms with how much Izzy meant to her. How did you ensure that you were showing and not telling their relationship?
The way those relationships feel is that you’re almost like one at a certain point. I asked myself what are all the ways I’ve been codependent with somebody and it kind of became clear later on. It’s not said; It is just how you’re interacting. Who’s the last person you text before you go to bed, and who’s the person that’s the most in your life? So, just showing that was something she was inside of was really important to me. I also just am kind of allergic to people monologuing their feelings as a writer. Grace [Glowicki], as a performer, if she could do a silent film, she would love that. She really wants to be able to say everything with her body. Both of our sensibilities, I think, made this a brilliant internal film,
How was the process of casting?
Grace was the number one person I wanted and the first actor who was truly attached. I work with a lot of Brooklyn comedians in short films and commercials, but for the lead, someone who is extremely physical and down to do something this disgusting was very important. I had been thinking about Grace for a long time. She was in all my lookbooks and mood boards. When I finally felt the script was ready, and we got it to her, we had a really great conversation about how much she related and how excited she was about this challenge. From then on, we were working together. She’s in Toronto and I’m in New York. We had weekly meetings, talking about the script, talking about the character, shaping it to be Grace’s character as much as mine. And then we did a lot of blocking rehearsal. When she got to New York, we tried to walk through every single scene … I worked with her that way for three weeks.
And then, Garrick [Bernard], who played her boyfriend, was someone who Lexi [Tannenholtz], my producer, and I were such a fan of. He’s in Single Drunk Female, a show that, unfortunately, just got canceled, and he’s really great. He was excited about this as well. He has more of a standup comedy background, so they [had] a really fun dynamic together. One of my other favorite performers [was] Marcia DeBonis. We sent her the script. We reached out to her, and she wanted to have a talk. Within minutes, she was sobbing. Okay, you really feel this movie and you’re making me cry. She just really felt it and brought such genuine emotion but also was so hilarious and funny – and weird. So, I was really lucky with this cast.
Were there any marked differences between your Anna and Grace’s Anna? Or did they evolve together?
It is coming from me and then performed by Grace, but I feel like we mind-melded at a certain point. I think she pushed the comedy in places that I’m really glad she did. Also, just the physicality and the barfing were something we worked on together, but she had all of these crazy ideas. She was working with a choreographer back in Toronto. She wanted to do some sessions just about cat movement and was just sending me these videos. It was incredible.
And Booger is your cat, right?
He hasn’t joined us, but maybe he will. Bobby is my cat. We almost named him Booger, but we didn’t, and he plays the cat in the movie for like 75% of it.
I don’t consider this a straight horror film, but it cannot be divorced from its roots in horror and metamorphosis. Do you have any use for genre?
I think my use for the genre – and my way of thinking about – it is that film is such an opportunity to express your emotions in an extremely visual way. I never intend to do something that feels like a hundred percent real life. I feel the grossness pushes people into an uncomfortable place more than any tough conversation or realistic scene could. I think it just basically dials to 11. And personally, that’s the kind of stuff I like. Inventive and surprising and extremely visual. So, that’s how I ended up in the genre space. I also think there’s so much interesting stuff you can express in that way that just pushes beyond reality.
What do you think it is specifically about horror that makes it so easy to tie together with trauma?
Yeah, that’s a good question. I went on a Korean horror deep-dive during COVID, and there are so many revenge movies that are so satisfying and dark. I think the way you feel when you’re in a deep depression or grieving or experiencing trauma is the worst and ugliest of the world. That isn’t anything but horror to me.
In BOOGER, how important was the gross stuff to you? Did anyone want you to pull it back at all?
I wanted to push it. Is it gross enough? The rat scene was a scene I wrote a week before we shot. I wanted to make sure I was elevating the disgustingness and also that this movie was swinging for the fences. Hopefully. During the first screening, I was sitting behind my mom and she was really upset, so I did my job.
Which gross scene was the hardest to film?
Well, I’m really happy with all of the bathroom scenes we did in that pink bathroom. Logistically, it was really tough. It could be just the lens and Grace in the space, but it felt right for those moments to be really claustrophobic. There’s a flash of prosthetics on her hands in a bar scene, and that was difficult because it was like a bajillion degrees, and we were in a basement, and the prosthetic stuff was a little melty, but it turned out awesome. It was a three-hour application. Honestly, the biggest challenge was shooting prosthetics, all the wound stuff, in the summer under the sun while it was sweaty – any of the resets we had to do to make it stop being a blob and start being a wound again.
Were there any films that you watched as research for this or anything that you asked your cast to watch in preparation?
The research films were actually more grief-centric. We watched Margaret, which I think is incredible, and about someone dealing with grief in a really selfish way. Raw, I think, is incredible. There’s a lot of great pieces in that. Grace was asking, what is the genre of this movie? It’s sad. It’s a comedy, it’s disgusting. We want the audience to feel like they felt when they watched [David Cronenberg’s] The Fly, which is the saddest love story ever, while Jeff Goldblum’s being insane and covered in prosthetics. So, that was a big reference for sure. And then, in terms of female friendship, Francis Ha has always been something I thought about – the scenes where friends are present and all the iPhone stuff, I really wanted it to feel joyful and special, and they have their own world.
What scares you?
Honestly, isolation is what this movie is about – being completely cut off is terrifying. Also, a nightmare I always have is about losing my eyesight or something going into an eyeball. That’s the most upsetting, horrible thing, ao when I see that in a movie, it really affects me, and I don’t think I could shoot that scene.
What is the one thing you want audiences to take away from this?
I do hope I’ve created something that I’ve always wanted to exist about female friendship that tries to express that in a way that gives as much importance to that as I think it deserves. That part of making the movie felt really important to me, especially when I got pushback about why they aren’t siblings or something that people would grab onto because I want these kinds of movies to exist. I think that these relationships are really important. But along those lines, I understand I’m making a movie for myself. If I am the audience, I am fully okay if this movie is for some people and not for some people. I think that makes it more interesting.
