By SHAWN MACOMBER
Jean-Paul Sartre famously posited “Hell is other people,” but the raucous, imaginative new board game-centered horror-comedy GATLOPP argues it might actually be what those people play when they get together.
To find out more about the origins of this JUMANJI-style romp, Rue Morgue recently spoke with GATLOPP writer/star Jim Mahoney.
RUE: I love the idea of building a horror film around a board game—these things just open up such a can of worms conceptually and socially. It’s like motive and opportunity for a supernatural force. Can you tell me a bit about how GATLOPP developed?
JIM MAHONEY: Well, I love social games in general—like alcohol, it can be a social lubricant. People come out of their shells when they’re in the throes of these games. You see a lot of connection and fun, but also competitiveness and miniature fights and personality conflicts and kind of cracks in the camaraderie. So, from a storytelling perspective, it’s a cool way to set people on a journey that tests their relationships, their reactions, and their idea of themselves. That’s why movies like JUMANJI or READY PLAYER ONE connect with people—because it’s ultimately about what we discover about ourselves when we play the game. I really wanted the beginning of GATLOPP to feel like a really good hang with old friends getting together to play this game and wanting to believe it’s going to be like the cliché—Well, it’s like no time has passed at all! And then, once the guard is down, both for the characters and the audience, we start throwing daggers at them.
RUE: This might be a silly question, but the relationships here feel so authentic I’m curious how much of GATLOPP comes from an autobiographical place?
MAHONEY: That’s an interesting question. I mean, I feel like most things begin autobiographically, and then as you develop the story it kind of takes a life of its own. I’m a big Stephen King fan and it was interesting to me reading ON WRITING, which has a lot of autobiography to it, to learn how many of his characters are really messed up versions of things he dealt with as a child or struggled with as an adult. It felt like he took the scary parts of himself or just his fears generally and removed the guardrails to explore them in these intense, wild stories. So, in that sense, GATLOPP is probably thirty or forty percent autobiographical, but then I tried my best to open it up and give it as wide an appeal as possible. And, considering that it’s a one-location, super low-budget film, there were other factors that ensured it would become its own animal as well.
RUE: I love that. And to make any movie effective—but especially a horror comedy with a supernatural premise, which is already a balancing act—you must have that sort of real heart as a foundation to get an audience to buy in and suspend disbelief. Which GATLOPP does.
MAHONEY: Well, thank you. I think that when you have a grounded flaw or relatable humanity you can justify a lot of insanity.
RUE: You definitely ran with that!
MAHONEY: [Laughs] I feel like real stakes make the jokes hit more effectively. ‘cause I just love the idea of characters that have no business being in extraordinary circumstances suddenly thrust into the most extraordinary of circumstances. Everyone’s self-perception is different from the reality of how they’d actually respond—and that discrepancy can be really funny if you play it right.
RUE: Did the story evolve at all as you worked with the cast?
MAHONEY: I mean, I feel like everything is an evolution in filmmaking. The initial idea evolves as it’s translated to the page. You revise multiple drafts—evolution. Then the director comes on and adds a visual language to it. And all of that is just a framework for the actors. Obviously, the opportunity for input varies from film to film, but it’s always an actor’s interpretation there. On GATLOPP there was a lot of improvisation and the cast made it their own.
RUE: Any specific examples?
MAHONEY: Well, there’s an argument between Troy (Sarunas J. Jackson) and Samantha (Emmy Raver-Lampman of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY fame) in the film. And Emmy and Sarunas approached me very respectfully and were like, ‘We don’t want to mess anything up, and you’re obviously the writer, but as two black people, we would not say these things.’ So, I said, ‘Walk me through it.’ It was wonderful and enlightening and ended up so much better than what I initially had on the page. The scene is more powerful and more of a conversation piece because they made it their own and brought their backgrounds to it. I just kind of sat back and was like, ‘Just out of curiosity what else would you do?’ [Director] Alberto [Belli] was like, ‘Thumbs up. Let’s do it.’ It was everything you could ask for out of a collaborative environment.
