With Perkins new film,The Monkey,the filmmaker is finally ready to embrace the absurd.
Bodies that explode like pinatas full of dynamite?
A babysitter whose severed head winds up on a hibachi grill?
Production still courtesy of Neon
An excruciating two-minute-long kitchen stove immolation?
Delivered, with a cartoon flourish.
“I’m never sitting over anybody’s shoulder,” explains Perkins.
Production still provided by Neon
This is the dream for this shot.
Is this going to be stunts?
Is this going to be special effects makeup?
Image by Nimesh Niyomal Perera
Is this the special effects team?
Is it visual effects?'
It really ends up being a handoff from one to the next to the next."
Production still provided by Neon
“With Ed it remains that kind of division of labor thing,” Perkins agrees.
Then he worries about who on his team to assign that problem to."
“That scene was intense even without the visual effects,” says van Dyck.
Production still provided by Neon
“What we did was actually quite simple:It was modeling up a collapsed nose cavity.
There was a lot more creative animation, more playful.
One of the words that kept coming up was ‘Looney Tunes.'”
Production still provided by Neon
The hornets all fly lockstep into Thrasher’s mouth, tearing away his face and jawline from the inside.
Everything had to be so inspired by the dummy, but created by Chris and his team."
The impression you hopefully get watching it is chaos.
Production still provided by Neon
It was about being shocking and almost fun, you know?"
“How many hornets can fit in one man?”
“All of them.
All of the hornets.”
Who Needs Comedy When the Horror Is This Good?
His frequent reference points to the team wereAn American Werewolf in London,Gremlins, andDeath Becomes Her.
Production still provided by Neon
Perkins elaborates by saying;
“My job is all about seeing something and saying something.
Shape that, nudge it in the right direction, nudge it away from the cliff.”
Trusting that it’s going to work… so much of it is trust.
Production still provided by Neon
Trusting that the fucking hornet’s going to look in any way organic, and it looks great."
“I had to go pick up Thrasher,” remembers Pyne.
Van Dyck adds;
“We then got that asset to our studio to use as reference.
Production still provided by Neon
It was a full-body dummy of this guy with holes in his face and blood everywhere… pretty gruesome.
The trust Perkins put in his team ultimately paid off big time.
“When you surround yourself with the best people, the trust fall is easy.”
“We tried to bring that flexibility early into the process.
“The swimming pool explosion woman was so many pieces, so many passes,” Douglas says.
“We were at a swimming pool at 2 in the morning, blowing stuff up.
We have a greenscreen guy in a suit throwing limbs around everywhere.
Every single limb is a real piece of practical, so we’re filming elements.
It’s daunting but also great because it all blends and gives you a really nice result.”
“We approached everything with a cartoon sensibility.
As long as it was delightful, then it was going in the right direction.
Nothing was ever supposed to be off-putting.
Those who stay after the movies credits will catch a glimpse of Perkins next genre project.
And finally, we did a version where I thought, ‘Well, this is way too much.
It’s just ridiculous.’
And then he was like, ‘Yeah, that’s it.'”
“It was a Disney fountain-amount of blood,” Douglas laughs.
“Every person in this movie has three times as much blood as a normal human by design.”
What Would the Looney Tunes Do?
Perkins pushed this unrealism, saying, “We approached everything with a cartoon sensibility.
As long as it was delightful, then it was going in the right direction.
Nothing was ever supposed to be off-putting.
Then visual effects will take that and enhance whatever look they want.
We made 30 feet of fake intestines, but Oz kept saying ‘more more more.’
When he wants more we just keep giving him more.”
We had to go in and animate part of the intestine and then augment it a bit.
We still used the real jiggle as reference.
Having it on set to match the lighting was amazing.”
He’s even averse to reframing shots or stabilizing cameras digitally, as is common practice these days.
“Most of the time, practical just looks better and feels better,” opines Perkins.
“Your actors are able to interact with it so it remains human.
We’re always looking for that element.
It’s mostly rigging that ends up going away.”
Christian had it so in the bag …
They were so good in the movie.’
And it was like, wait a minute …
Truly, truly, cause I haven’t seen him in a while … and I completely believe it.
He was so easy with it, it was kind of infuriating.
The team knew their twinning effect was successful during a small pickup shoot toward the end of production.
We had a new cameraman who came out to help with the pickups, explains Douglas.
He saw a copy of the movie and had no idea that Christian wasnt a real twin.
He thought it was two actors who played both characters.
We were collaborating, like, When do we move the hand?
When do we pick up the object?’
A lot of key timings and details within the blocking really made this a difficult challenge to overcome.
You use a Technocrane, Theo James adds of that decades-old process.
The Technocrane will cover a piece of it and then the computer locks exactly that movement.
We didnt have that, reveals Perkins.
Its just our brilliant Steadicam operator doing camera moves, our own motion control camera himself.
We just track it to put both Hal and Bill together in the same shots.
We realized a Technocrane would box us into performances, James says.
You like being light on your feet, change things, throw in new lines.
you gotta plan as the actor.
We got to film a dance party with Tatiana and Christian in this movie.
Maslaney herself only had glowing praise for her young co-star.
Christian had it so in the bag.
There didn’t seem to be a second of [questioning].
He was so good.
They were so good in the movie.'
And it was like, wait a minute.
He was so easy with it, it was kind of infuriating.
“It’s veryFinal Destination-esque,” adds Chris van Dyck.
The one for me was the pool.
I feel like they gave that away a little bit too much in the trailer.”
“The Monkeyis more like an insane carnival rolling into your town,” concludes Osgood Perkins.
It’s like going to a Vegas buffet, just crab legs and pancakes."
“So many days where I’m sitting thinking, ‘How ridiculous is this conversation we’re having?
How weird and wild is it that this is what we get to do?'”
The Monkeyis in theaters now.
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