One of my favorite movie experiences of recent years was enjoying the vampire flick Stake Land at Fantastic Fest in 2010 and turning around and having a lengthy discussion with the director (Jim Mickle) and cast. So I knew I had to set up an interview with Mickle when he returned to Fantastic Fest this year with his latest slow-burn horror film, We Are What We Are. We had a great chat and among the highlights are how he geeks out over tech questions, how one kid on set just couldn’t stop eating the cannibal chili, his qualms with playing in the midnight slots during festivals, why the film starts with a quote, and much more. Check out the conversation below.
The Film Stage: Did you play at midnight here?
Jim Mickle: Yeah, last night it showed at like 11:30 I think. We make kind of slower, more dramatic horror movies and they always throw us up at midnight. I’m always like, “do they really want to watch a slow-burn movie from me at midnight?” I guess so, if they keep doing it.
It’s funny, I was talking with some friends about Stake Land. We were mentioning movies that are awesome, but don’t exactly work well at a midnight arena and Stake Land was one of those. It went over like gangbusters during the festival, but…
Yeah, I’ve been to a lot where they don’t. I’ve been to a lot where it’s like midnight and Mulberry St. was the worst, because we were midnight on the first night of South by Southwest. I remember being here in 2007 and people yawning and being like, “Oh my God, why did they choose to make the first hour about the characters? What a dumb decision.” [laughs] The next movie will hopefully be the evening show, not a midnight movie.
In this movie, you start off with a quote and I’m curious where you pulled that from and how important that quote was.
That was a late, kind of game time decision. We had the whole backstory of the film — it kind of gets peppered in, the whole flashback thing. We played with that on and off. There was a version I remember, the producers wanted to try without, just to see what it would look like without it and we kept playing with it, kept playing with it and I think we had folded maybe five of those down to three. And because of that, we did a whole rewrite on it and at some point, Nick went off and wrote this voiceover excerpts from it.
And that was one, when it came to me, it really stuck out to me. I thought this was kind of great, it feels like it should be a bigger moment and it is. I wanted to do something at the beginning that said, yes, we’re going to show you a beautiful backdrop of the Catskills mountains, but also be able to give you an idea that there’s a really heavy sense of tradition throughout this movie. It felt like the kind of movie that needed to open with a quote and then at some point, I was like, “it’s it. It’s the line that Nick had written,” to really give you a taste of the mythology that we’ve made up, right off the bat and kick you in the pants with it.
Can you talk about the process with your previous collaborators, along with the new actors you’re working with?
It’s the same crew, so Liz Vastola, the costume designer, we’ve done three movies with her now. Jeff Grace, done three movies with him. Kelly McGillis, obviously, was in Stake Land. We actually just did another movie, which wrapped two weeks ago, and we used Wyatt [Russell] again. Ryan Samul shot everything, so yeah we just wrapped a movie in August and it was almost the exact same crew from We Are What We Are, and from that I’d say it was about two-thirds of the crew from Stake Land and from there’s a bunch of people that even worked on Mulberry St., who were just working for free. A little bit in the cast, but it changes. I love being able to work with the same people over and over again, cast-wise.
Especially with Wyatt, who plays Deputy Anders in this, the sort of nice guy next door cop. In the movie we just did, he plays the exact opposite of that and it was really fun to take him and flip him. It’s the same production team, it’s the same creative producers that have been there for all four films. I think it’s really important that you get a rhythm and you’re able to bring the best out of each other and challenge each other. So coming into this we said to everybody, “we’re not doing Stake Land again. That was a big, sprawling warm, sort of male-driven action/horror. This is going to be the opposite. It’s going to be a cold, blue movie. We’re not going to do a lot of hand-held. It’s not going to be a road movie. We’re going to be sitting around a table.” So it was really fun to be able to challenge everyone and say we’re going to do the exact opposite. Again, the movie we just finished is the exact opposite of that. So I like to be able to play, have fun and challenge people.
What was it like casting Kelly before, a long process?
Yeah, we were in the middle of shooting and hadn’t cast the role yet. We were up until a five o’ clock deadline of if that role isn’t cast we’re going to have to take off and stop the shoot and find somebody and come back and start shooting again. She responded as the bell was ringing at the witching hour and came back to us. That was a total hail mary, here’s somebody who hasn’t been in a movie in 10 years. Nothing in her resume reflects that she wants to be in a low-budget vampire movie. What was kind of fun was, in reality she’s a really fun person and she laughs at herself and she laughs at the world and she’s kind of always laughing. It kind of sucked that we had her in this role that she had to be so stern. It was kind of nice we had her character in this, she’s kind of the comic relief of the whole film. It was fun to be able to call her up and be like, “This is something that’ll be completely different from the last time.” No one will assault you, etc. [laughs]
This film deals with cannibalism. I’m curious what the flesh tasted like, did you do tests?
It tastes like turkey chili. [laughs] It was cool. The little kid in it, he didn’t really get the movie, obviously. His parents were actors and we had an early conversation. I said to them, “how much do you want Jack to know about the movie?” And they said, “right now, he’s read the script and he doesn’t understand the darker stuff, but he’s read the script. He basically knows as much as his character knows.” So we thought, great. His character thinks I just show up and I eat food with my parents. So we did the first day with the meal and the girls are getting into. He just eats it and we call cut. I’m watching on the monitor and he’s still eating it. I’m like, “Jack, we’re going to do like 20 more takes, dude. Do not fill yourself up.”
And Bill’s sweet, he’s been in so many movies. He’s like, “Jack, when you’re an actor there’s an art to eating on film where you look like you’re eating but you’re really just kind of chewing the same thing over and over. You don’t want to stuff yourself.” He’s just like, “I’m cool. I’m cool.” He kept eating it and the girls would be crying and I’d talk to Jack and be like, “how’s it going man?” He’s like, “this is so good. You have to give my mom the recipe for this.” The next day he came in and he looked so ill. His mom said that he actually left and he threw up at the hotel, he had eaten so much. Now he knows. I think he’s in the Michael J. Fox show or something now, so he’s like a seasoned pro. [laughs]
With this being a remake, I imagine the production is really fast, but the pre-production as well.
I hadn’t seen it until they came. They came and said, “are you interested?” and I hadn’t seen it, but I said I knew all about it. It felt like I sort of had a spiritual connection to the film before they came. But they approached right before Christmas and we sort of hemmed and hawed for awhile. I think it was actually the beginning of December they came to us and finally decided over Christmas break that we were going to do this and I think it was January 1st and I remember, specifically, I went up to the mountains and said Nick, we’re going to do this. Then January 2nd we started sending script pages back and forth to each other.
By February 1st, we had a first draft of the script. On like a Thursday or Friday we sent it to them and by the following Monday, they called and said it’s greenlit already. We already got the money raised. And we had been trying to make another movie six years before that and we couldn’t make it. Maybe because it’s a remake, I don’t know. Basically they said, “you’re greenlit. Pre-production starts right now.” And we shot the film in May and then we premiered at Sundance, less than 12 months after we looked at a blank white page — all the way from pre-production, all the way through. It was insane. It was good, because we didn’t have a chance to stop and think about it. It was like, “OK, second draft and now I’m going to send this to the costume designer.”
You’ve been doing press for awhile now. What’s the best question you’ve got so far?
You know, somebody last night asked about the diopters we used, the lenses we used. It was the most fun, because it was getting to answer a really nerdy tech question. You do a lot of talking about mythology of this and that, but it was fun to just geek out, especially having to come from a shoot. It still feels like you’re on set talking about what kind of lens your going to use. [laughs]
We Are What We Are is now in limited release.