By MICHAEL GINGOLD
THE MONKEY, opening tomorrow from Neon, may be the most blackly humorous film yet from writer/director Osgood Perkins, but it may also be his most personal. He discusses that side of the project and a lot more in this RUE MORGUE interview.
Adapted from the Stephen King story, THE MONKEY (see our review here) is both gruesome and irreverent as it charts the death-strewn saga of Hal Shelburne (Christian Convery as a preteen, Theo James as a man). The titular toy, which causes death whenever it’s wound up, comes into the lives of Hal and his twin brother Bill (also Convery and James) in their childhood, and although the boys apparently dispose of it, the cursed thing reappears 25 years later to wreak more deadly havoc. The fatalities include members of their family (including their uncle Chip, played by Perkins himself), for which the filmmaker drew on the deaths of his father, Anthony Perkins, when he was 18, and his mother, Berry Berenson, in the 9/11 attacks nine years later.
Is “The Monkey” a story you’ve always wanted to adapt, or was it brought to you?
It was like Charlie Bucket opening the chocolate bar and finding the golden ticket inside. It was absolutely by chance, and a huge win for me. The producers came to me and said, “Are you interested in doing this? We have this material, we’d love to have you give it a try,” and I jumped right at it. It was out of nowhere, and a perfect fit.
Are you a longtime fan of Stephen King’s work?
If you’re a horror writer or a horror filmmaker, and you’re not, I think you’re probably in the wrong game!
Have you ever been involved with or tried to develop a King project before?
No. I never thought about it, never aspired to it; it came my way, as things sometimes do. This was just kismet, a planetary alignment–the right story, right vibe, right time.
When you read the story, what were your first ideas on expanding it, and how did it develop into the eventual feature?
I needed to get a sense of what it is, right? That’s my job as the author of a movie: to be as pithy as a person can be about what it’s offering, what the truth of it is, how it’s going to operate, and try to be as streamlined and as simple about it as I can. So I started thinking about the monkey, and it didn’t take very long to realize that it doesn’t do anything. The monkey doesn’t jump on people, it doesn’t stab you, it doesn’t wait for you around the corner, it doesn’t trip you so you fall, it doesn’t walk around when you’re sleeping. It’s inert, like a deity or an idol or a statue. It’s like a god in that way: It doesn’t do stuff, it makes stuff happen. I was able to settle into that, and this feeling that it’s kind of like life: People die, and sometimes in insane ways. Then I went a step further and personalized it: “I’ve had people die in insane ways. Oh, look at me, I’m an expert on the monkey now. I’m an expert on the truth of this thing.”
From there, I was like, “Well, I can make it autobiographical. I can make it a story about my life, and my relationship with my brother, and the loss of my mom. And I can do that from a distance, with a smile.” Once I connected with all of that, it was easy.
At the same time, THE MONKEY takes a very irreverent tone in dealing with death, and it’s easily the most humorous genre film you’ve made. How did you arrive at that approach?
I felt like the image of the monkey smiling like that, it was just going to evoke pleasure, right? It just felt to me like this should be a fun thing that’s enjoyable for an audience. And also, if I was going to make a movie about death, where the thesis is, “Hey, everybody dies sometime,” I might as well do it with a soft touch, and a certain irreverence and some real comedy aspects, as opposed to being heavy-handed about it. That would have been a real drag; no one would have seen that.
With all the creative deaths you came up with, were there any that you couldn’t fit into the story, or that you were unable to realize on film?
Yeah, there was a gag with a priest walking through a construction site, and one of those wet concrete/cement saws slips out of a guy’s hand and flies through the air and cuts the priest right down the middle like salt and pepper shakers. We just couldn’t get that one.
Were you influenced at all by similarly themed films like THE OMEN and FINAL DESTINATION?
I’m glad you said THE OMEN, because that absolutely was. THE OMEN has the same sort of thing, these amazing deaths that happen in a Rube Goldbergian way, where you’re looking that way and it’s coming this way. That was much more impactful and influential to me. The FINAL DESTINATION movies are…that kind of movie isn’t necessarily in my consciousness as much as something as smart and aware and playful as THE OMEN. I’m actually really good friends with David Seltzer, who wrote THE OMEN; he’s a mentor of mine, so I definitely referenced that one a lot.
What went into staging all the deaths, and how much did you want to do them practically as opposed to digitally?
Whenever possible, we did it all practically and then just cleaned it up digitally. We were able to shoot plates, and layers of things, and then remove pieces that we didn’t want or add pieces that we did want. So the VFX element was merging practical shots. If we’re seeing the swimming pool from a certain place, for example, we had layers of action that we shot, and then we merged them all into one action.
What was your favorite death scene to stage and shoot for the film?
The swimming-pool death is probably the most glorious one, and was a great team effort by all the departments. It’s also the most absurd, and it nails the conceit of these deaths being cartoonish, and not in any way based on physics or life or how electricity and water interact. I really like that one.
Let’s talk about the monkey itself. Can you discuss the process of getting the right look for it, and changing it from playing cymbals, as in the story, to beating on a drum?
When the project came to me, one of the first things the producers said was, “It can’t have cymbals.” I asked, “Why can’t it have cymbals?” and they said, “Because Disney owns the cymbals. The monkey was in TOY STORY, and now that they’ve got that image, Disney owns that.” And I was like, oh well, I guess there are two ways you can answer something as absurd as that. You can say, “Well, God damn it, I want my fucking cymbals. How dare they take my cymbals?” Or you can say, “Oh well, I don’t have the cymbals anymore. Maybe it’s a drum.” And then you say, “Well, the drum actually creates this weird, ominous rhythm, and it’s got this great dynamism to it. I want the drum now, I don’t want the cymbals anymore!” You take something that seems like a limitation, and turn it around to your benefit.
As far as designing what it looked like, I wanted to adhere to the classic look as much as I could, because I felt that toy monkey with the smile is something that most people have some feeling about. They’ve seen it somewhere in their lives, somewhere in their childhoods–even if it’s just fuckin’ TOY STORY, they’ve seen it. So I wanted it to look like that, but then have an uncanny element: “Oh, are its hands a little bit too realistic? Are its teeth kind of smoker’s yellow? That’s sort of strange. Do its feet grab the drum underneath, gripping it as if it’s articulated? Is this thing real, is this thing not real, is it alive, is it a toy, is this thing made of plastic, is it filled with black goop? What is this thing?”
Who actually created the monkey?
It was done by this team called, of all things, Amazing Ape Productions in Vancouver. They did Nicolas Cage’s LONGLEGS makeup as well.
This is the first film of yours I can think of with a male protagonist, or two male protagonists. Did that focus change anything in your approach to the film?
I kind of felt, like I said, that this story was especially personal to me, and it was a nice change to be almost one for one with it. The brothers are both representations of me, aspects of my personality, and they also reflect my relationship with my little brother. It just felt like, if I’m an expert on this story, I might as well also feel like the main characters. Also, the protagonist happens to be a guy like me, so it was, as I said, kismet, the right story at the right time.
Given how personal these characters were to you, how difficult was it to find the right actors to play both the older and younger Hal and Bill?
With the younger ones, it was a casting process. We saw a lot of kids, we saw what they could do, we got an impression of them, we looked at their other work, like we would with any role. Christian Convery turned out to be brilliant in the movie, and his distinction between the brothers is so rich. Theo James [pictured above with Perkins] I’ve known a little bit; he was a producer on some things I was attached to and tried to develop, so I knew him as a guy before I knew him as an actor. I knew he was a playful, irreverent character who is not precious or guarded in any way; he’s very loose and silly and mischievous, so he felt like a good match for the movie’s tone.
What led you to decide to take a part in THE MONKEY yourself?
It just presented itself as something I could do, so why not? I’ve done a couple of parts in my life that people have really liked; LEGALLY BLONDE is certainly something that people constantly refer to me as being “the guy from…” So I felt it might just be a cute little moment. I consider myself a relatively bad actor, but when I’m able to deliver my own dialogue, I feel a lot more comfortable.
Did you know you were going to play Uncle Chip while you were writing it, and if so, did you save that especially extravagant death for yourself?
I didn’t really cast myself in the part until we got into preproduction. As I was writing it, I was kind of invoking Randy Quaid from NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION; that was the vibe of that guy, and that’s a beloved movie to me. And Chip’s death is…you know, he gets the death that he gets.
Have you seen the movie with audiences, and if so, which death has gotten the best reaction?
The swimming pool, for sure, is the one people seem to enjoy the most, because it’s so ridiculous and so splashy. Whether you like a horror movie or not, it still feels more like an Itchy and Scratchy moment, where it’s so unhinged that people can’t help but scream out loud and laugh at the same time.
Did you have to trim any of the death scenes to get the R rating?
No, never had to recut anything. I don’t know if it really works that way anymore; I think especially because it is obviously so playful, no ill will is meant toward anyone or toward humanity or anything, there’s no brutality, really, and I think it just comes off as a cartoon.
Are there any other Stephen King stories or novels that you’d like to adapt in the future?
I’d go for doing an anthology thing like CREEPSHOW. If there was a smattering of little vignette-y Stephen King things, it might be fun to do a group of shorts that are somehow connected.
