By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Now streaming on Shudder, AMC+ and other platforms following a successful theatrical release from IFC Films, LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL is the breakout feature for its writer/directors, Colin and Cameron Cairnes. RUE MORGUE spoke with the Australian brothers about their influences, casting, the technical challenges and more.
The duo’s third fright film after 2013’s 100 BLOODY ACRES and 2016’s SCARE CAMPAIGN, LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL stars David Dastmalchian (who discusses the movie here) as talk-show host Jack Delroy, who’s trying to boost the ratings of his NIGHT OWLS program with an occult-themed episode on Halloween night 1977. We both watch the show and witness what goes on behind the scenes as a series of eccentric guests are brought on camera, before Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) appears with her young patient Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a satanic-cult survivor. Lilly still seems to have a bit of the devil in her, leading to some seriously scary developments (see our review of LATE NIGHT here).
One thing that impressed me in LATE NIGHT was how, as Australian filmmakers, you completely nailed the American pop-culture details and vibe. Can you talk about that side of the film?
CAMERON CAIRNES: Well, obviously since we’re Australian, that world was a bit foreign to us, the American late-night talk shows of the 1970s. But in the ’70s and ’80s, we had our own versions of Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett–not quite as polished as those guys [laughs]. We drew on a lot of that for the film, in particular a late-night host called Don Lane, who was more or less our version of Johnny. He had a very keen interest in the supernatural, so every other week, we were seeing the likes of Uri Geller on his show, or Doris Stokes, and you got the sense that Don was a true believer.
COLIN CAIRNES: And he was American, too.
CAMERON: Yeah, strangely enough.
COLIN: ’Cause no Australian would be good enough for an Australian audience, since we had this cultural cringe–like, the Americans do it best. Growing up in Australia, most of what we consumed, film and TV-wise, was American, or British, even. There was local stuff, but we were, and it’s still the case today, very much imbued with Americana, with American pop culture, movies and music. It felt like it belonged to us, you know what I mean? In many ways, Australia is like the 51st state of the U.S. So it wasn’t too difficult; it felt like a world we were somewhat familiar with.
Added to which, we had both worked in television, and done some live TV, so we had a very good sense of what that atmosphere is like. There was plenty to draw on in terms of creating an authentic and specific world.
In particular, were Dr. June Ross-Mitchell and Lilly inspired by the book MICHELLE REMEMBERS, its author and subject?
CAMERON: Very much so. We were just on the doorstep of the Satanic Panic thing, and our film takes place between the fervor around THE EXORCIST and the burgeoning Satanic Panic of the ’80s.
COLIN: I tracked down a copy of MICHELLE REMEMBERS in a second-hand bookshop, and it’s not a great read, but it definitely had a major influence on the backstory for the June and Lilly characters.
THE EXORCIST exists in your movie’s world, and some of its tropes appear in your film, and then you find other, creative and unique ways to present demonic possession.
CAMERON: Yeah, we just transplanted those tropes into a different format. What worked great for us was, you could really feel the tension in the studio on the day we shot the exorcism scene, for want of a better description. That environment just lent itself so well to such a ghastly kind of thing. It was a unique trick we got to play this one time, using those conventions we know so well, but sort of recontextualizing them.
COLIN: We knew if we were setting the story in the late ’70s, in the real world where Johnny Carson exists and is number one, it made sense to have references to other pop culture of the day, to lend it that verisimilitude. And of course, part of that is THE EXORCIST. I believe it would have been wrong to avoid that, you know what I mean? Hopefully it works the way we’ve played with it.
Was David Dastmalchian the only actor you considered for the lead?
COLIN: Well, early, early days, when we were talking about the way forward, you know, you talk to producers and finance people, and of course they have all these lofty ambitions. “You’re gonna get Tom Cruise,” or whatever. But once everyone was on the same page about just casting the right person, regardless of levels of celebrity, David’s name came up.
CAMERON: I came across an article he had written about regional horror hosts, and he seemed to have an extensive knowledge of that world, and married with his brilliant acting ability, we thought he was a good fit. And just David’s appearance as well; he has this kind of vintage-y look. You put him in a gray suit, and he’s sort of transported into that role.
COLIN: We felt he had that sense of those ’70s movie stars who were character actors. It’s not such a thing these days, but you go back to that period of Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, who did not necessarily look like leading men, but they were great actors and got lead roles that were massive. David has that quality about him; he’s a fine, fine character actor, so why shouldn’t he be a leading man? And he’s such a chameleon; we know that from even the small roles he’s done in a lot of those big movies, the vast array of character types he’s played. We believed he would have a range, also knowing his background in theater in Chicago.
So all that, combined with his love and passion for genre–it was one of those light-bulb moments, and when we shared that idea with the producers, they were also like, “Yeah, that would be really interesting.” And of course [producer] Roy Lee, with his little black book, was on the phone to David that day, and it was like, “Yeah, send me the script, send me your look books,” and next thing you know, we were Zooming with David, and it happened. It was a very exciting period.
Ingrid Torelli is great as Lilly. How did you find her?
CAMERON: Just through a casting call. She was an absolute standout in her audition, and just nailed it all. She’s this little Aussie kid, maybe 16 or 17 when we shot, and you see it in the film: She just has this kind of hypnotic stare that we were only too happy to exploit!
COLIN: And she loved it once she knew she was free. Because it’s usually like, “Don’t look at the camera,” but on this movie, it was, “The camera’s there, this is the world we’re in, you can look at the camera as much as you like.” It took a little while, but she develops this relationship with the studio cameras, and thereby with the audience–the studio audience and the home audience, and then the cinema audience. There were lots of little discoveries. We might have written the whole staring-down-the-camera bit into one scene, and that became a very important part of the character, and her overall creepy vibe.
What were the challenges of staging the makeup effects in the real-time presentation you use in LATE NIGHT?
CAMERON: Well, it’s always challenging on a low-budget film with a short shooting schedule, so often you’ve only ever got one bite of the cherry. But we had a great team, including a guy called Russell Sharp who did our makeup effects. Obviously there’s that big gag in the middle of the film; I don’t want to spoil it, but that was probably our biggest practical effects day, and I believe the whole day was dedicated to that one shot, basically. We only had one go at it, for obvious reasons when you’ve seen the film, but it was so exciting. Whenever you’re on set doing one of those big effects moments, everyone’s so tense during the buildup to it, but once and if you pull it off, it’s like being at a rock concert.
COLIN: High fives all around!
Did you shoot the movie in an actual TV studio, or did you build a set for it?
COLIN: In preproduction, we were looking at old warehouses and office spaces we could convert, but in the end we thought it was best to get into a studio. In Melbourne, we have the Docklands precinct, and there are about five soundstages there. A lot of big stuff films there, but we managed to get access to one of the smaller studios. They do actually shoot TV shows–game shows, that sort of thing–in that building, so in terms of the layout, and what was going on backstage, that worked in terms of the production design.
CAMERON: You could shoot 360 degrees the whole time, the bleachers and so on. Obviously, being on a soundstage, we had a lighting grid, but we were using all the old gear from the ’70s.
COLIN: Yeah, it was all period lighting. We toyed with the idea of shooting on old tube cameras from the ’70s, but that was just going to be fraught with danger.
CAMERON: Our producers weren’t going to be happy about that.
COLIN: To be fair, that would have made it harder for VFX, and if one of them had broken down, we would have been screwed, because we were shooting three cameras the whole time, as if it was a live TV show. Like Cam was saying, no matter where we pointed the cameras, some crew had to duck out of the way, so basically it was 1977 in that building. Which was great for us as directors, and also for the cast, to walk into that space and feel like they’d been transported back to ’77.
For how much of the shoot did you actually have the NIGHT OWLS audience in their seats?
COLIN: That’s a good question. Not long. We had the full audience in for one day. We might have had another day where we just had a little corner of the audience, for some of the commercial-break stuff.
CAMERON: We had to get pretty creative with our coverage, because there was obviously scripted stuff we needed to get first, so that took us most of the day. Then, getting general reactions was like the last half hour of the day, and we just smashed out all those.
COLIN: Cam, myself and our 1st AD basically did a pantomime version of the film in one take. We just ran through, “And then Lilly comes out, and then this happens, and react here, and we need a scream…” It was insane. We were quite delirious–a lot of the time, but particularly that day. But the audience is essentially one of the most important characters in the film, and hopefully when people see it, they’ll get the sense that there is this relationship, this chemistry, between Jack and his audience–and by extension you, watching the movie. You become wrapped up in it, and almost a participant in it as well. So it was important to make that work. Sound also played a huge part in that, and our sound designer, Emma Bortignon, is the best in Australia, and we were very lucky to have her.
CAMERON: She was responsible for TALK TO ME as well.
Indeed, there seems to a new renaissance of Australian horror going on.
CAMERON: And we’re all for that! The more horror films that get made in Australia, the better, as far as we’re concerned. We’re big fans of TALK TO ME and the Philippous, and long may it continue!
COLIN: The attention that film got and that our film is getting, we need that to translate into more interest from the people who make decisions in Australia. There’s always been a slightly snobby attitude toward horror in Australia, this idea that it doesn’t work theatrically–which is patently false, because the American horrors that do well in the U.S. also do well in Australia. But hopefully that attitude is changing, with a couple of successful films.
I think we do it well, and part of the reason is that we do not feel as beholden to the conventions of American horror films, because we’re not caught up in that studio system. It behooves us to do something different; we need to stand out, because our accents are different, so why fight that? Embrace your difference, and take a bit of a swing, do something different and bold. The Philippous did that with TALK TO ME.
