It’s almost time for Longlegs to arrive, and if you haven’t been counting down the days, you must not be a horror fan. It stars Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent hunting a truly peculiar serial killer—played by Nicolas Cage in one of his most memorably shocking roles ever, which is saying a lot. You can check out io9’s review of the film here, and keep reading for an interview with writer-director Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter).
Cheryl Eddy, io9: Longlegs made an impression months before release thanks to its unusual marketing campaign. How much of that was your idea and how involved were you in that process?
Osgood Perkins: None of it was my idea. I was involved as much as they wanted me to be. When Neon took the project on, I could tell how palpable their excitement was, and I could tell that they were really connecting with the footage and the materials that we had made. I just trusted them inherently, and it really worked out. The one thing I only ever asked them was to maintain the aspect ratios of the picture in the materials—and they have, and they sort of turned that square look into one of the sort of lead feelings of the movie. And so, the whole thing has been great, but I take zero credit for how great it’s been.
io9: What’s been your impression of how people have reacted to Longlegs so far?
Perkins: It’s kind of overwhelming. Everybody seems to like it. I haven’t come across someone who doesn’t think it’s pretty okay. And that’s a weird thing… I guess the thing that’s weirdest for me is how disturbing people find it to be and how haunted people are by it and how impacted they are in a scary [way]. I just tried to make a fun movie. I think it’s mostly funny. I don’t say that as like a sick person who like gets off on other people’s misery. I just think it’s sort of pop and, fun. And I guess the people who are really scared are having pop fun, so it’s fine.
io9: A movie that came to mind while I was watching Longlegs was The Silence of the Lambs, not just for the story but for particular specific moments too. Would you agree that your movie has a particular relationship with that one?
Perkins: It’s a deliberate one-for-one relationship. When I sat down to write the movie, the question in my mind was: what’s the invitation to the audience that I can make early on that sort of gets people in the roller coaster car. What gains them admission to the world? What’s the tip of the spear? For me, Silence of the Lambs had been such a hugely impactful movie—it came out when I was 15 or 16-ish [when] I really started getting interested in movies, and all of a sudden you’re handed this immaculate thing. I don’t think any of us who are that age and are filmmakers will forget the effect of the perfection of that movie, just like, “Wow, they really just nailed it. This is so satisfying on so many levels.” I just cheated. I just used it as a crib, as a way to soften or tenderize the audience, to say, “You know, it’s this! You remember this.” And then, of course, take a pretty hard left turn to make it not that at all.
io9: Is that why you chose to set the main story in the 1990s?
Perkins: It was very much that. It was how can we make this movie feel like Silence of the Lambs and how can we use the credit that comes with that to our advantage? Both in terms of meeting expectations, and then deviating from expectations. So, yeah, the idea was to make it look like Silence of the Lambs or Se7en. And I think it does.
io9: And setting it in the Pacific Northwest—we know it’s Oregon by the license plates—is that drawing on that region’s true-crime serial killer history?
Perkins: Yeah, it’s drawing on the serial killer history. It was filmed in Vancouver, so you kind of get what you get, you know? Which is great. Vancouver is an exquisite place to make movies. It also felt a lot like a Gus Van Sant moment. Both the cinematographer and I are big Gus Van Sant geeks—and you know, when you’re making a horror movie, it’s kind of nice to say, “What about Gus Van Sant?” As opposed to saying, “What about John Carpenter?” Or “what about Dario Argento?” Can you source references from farther away than the horror section of the video store? Can you reach out further? And so, reaching out to some of the beautiful work of Gus Van Sant—My Own Private Idaho especially—you just want to feel inspired, and that’s the kind of thing that inspires me.
io9: The lead actors, Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe, have such contrasting performance styles. How did you approach directing them to get that contrast just right?
Perkins: Well, they only share one scene together, which he really powers, so I felt like we were going to be able to sort of find it in the editing room, which is where everything ultimately gets found. It’s where what the movie really is, [where it] reveals itself—not until the editing room. And yes I was conscious of the fact that I had two very counterweight, counterbalancing energies. But I think it becomes, ultimately, just that; you get to balance your picture with two extremes. And, luckily, like I said, I was able narratively to keep them apart, so there was very little interplay. Then when they do connect, it’s a very charged moment. And so their opposite charges work even better.
io9: Cage is one of the film’s producers as well. How early on did you know that you wanted him to play this role?
Perkins: When you’re casting a movie, you’re trying to get the best person in it. Obviously, as the director, you’re trying to help yourself with casting as much as you can. So when his name was brought up as someone who might read it, of course I jumped at it. And then from there, he’s not hands-on—he’s not imposing notes on the process. He’s not trying to change things. He’s not trying to take control. If anything, he’s trying to take what’s written and make it work for him, as opposed to the other way around.
io9: He’s definitely going to shock audiences who think they’ve already seen him be as extreme as he can be. How much of his performance and his appearance in the movie came from you and how much was a collaboration?
Perkins: The collaboration is between me and Nic, the costume people, the wig people, the special effects makeup people. And it’s everybody doing their best work and trying to make the coolest thing. A lot of it I brought to it—a lot of it’s written in the script. His pale face, his pale makeup was always a thing. That’s derived from Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue. This kind of quality of being someone who performs—the original idea for Longlegs was that he was someone who came to your kid’s house on their birthday and did, like, a little shitty, kind of dirty show that he was sort of unsure about. He had this sort of performance anxiety thing where he felt weird going to these houses, doing this little weird show. That lives in the movie, when you see him come to [a child’s] house for the first time in the snow, that his sort of shifty uneasiness really is clear. As far as voices go, [Cage] starts with the words as written. It’s like getting any kind of, almost like a dialect, and sort of figuring out, what is the sound like? What’s the cadence of this? Where’s the punctuation?
In Longlegs’ dialogue on the page, there’s a lot of periods. There’s a lot of periods where there wouldn’t be periods, and I just sort of put those in there because it felt like it said something about his inner life—it said something about his uneasiness and his shame in a weird way that he couldn’t make it through complete sentences. It was to sort of put a period in the middle of things. Just a weird thing that occurs to you when you’re writing, and then you give it to an Oscar winner, and one of the great all-time movie presences. And, you get lucky if there’s a little bit of magic, and we got lucky.
io9: I have to ask about Longlegs’ T. rex and Marc Bolan obsession. How did that come into play?
Perkins: It’s one of those things where, as the creator of this stuff, I don’t pretend to know everything, and I don’t pretend to be in control. You got to kind of hold the thing with a loose grip, otherwise you’re going to break it. As I was forming this movie, and this script, and this world, and this character, T. rex was an artist that I didn’t really know very well and had kind of heard of a couple of times, but then all of a sudden it was in my space. It just came to that space. It was shown to me or played for me by the universe, by the source, by the muses, whatever you want to say. And I really do think it’s my job as the writer, as the creator of the thing, to just listen to what’s happening around me. How do my kids speak? What’s my wife worried about? What songs are coming through? What movie did I just watch? If you pay attention then it seems deliberate, like it seems like you’re being given certain things for a reason. And you’d better write them down.
Longlegs opens in theaters July 12.
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