TRIBECA 2011 INTERVIEW: Panos Cosmatos

TRIBECA 2011 INTERVIEW: Panos Cosmatos

by Nick Schager

Hypnotic insanity of the finest order, Panos Cosmatos' Beyond the Black Rainbow is one of the true highlights of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Playing in the genre-centric Cinemania program, Cosmatos' debut is a nightmarish acid trip with myriad cinematic influences?Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, John Carpenter and Ken Russell are merely a few of its most prominent spiritual ancestors?and yet one that melds and warps its many '70s and '80s sci-fi and fantasy elements into something distinctively unsettling. With a malevolence amplified by the obliqueness of both its form and content, the 1983-set story concerns a doctor, inhumanely creepy Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers), and his patient/captive Elena (Eva Allan), who may be a psychic, and whom he treats in a facility which an intro VHS recording indicates is concerned with achieving pure happiness through therapy and pharmaceuticals.

That somewhat basic description, however, doesn't begin to convey the uniquely beguiling madness that follows, all of it conveyed through dreamlike aesthetics that reach an apex during a flashback of unholy down-the-ink-blot hellishness. While in NYC for the film's festival presentation, Cosmatos?whose late father, George P. Cosmatos, was best known for helming Rambo: First Blood Part II, Cobra and Tombstone?spoke with me about VHS box art, action figures, and balancing otherworldly ambiguity with storytelling demands.

You certainly haven't held anything back for your maiden feature.

I just love movies so much that I felt if I was going to take that leap, I wanted to do something that was different, that I hadn't seen before. Otherwise, there's really no point to make a movie.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch R-rated or horror films for a long time. My parents wanted to shelter me from violent imagery. But we'd go to this video store, and I'd spend hours looking at the video box covers and reading the descriptions, just imagining my own films based on these descriptions. The memory came back to me and that was the core of Beyond the Black Rainbow, the idea of making one of those films, an imaginary version based on descriptions and looking at artwork.

Years ago, I read an interview with Kurt Cobain. He grew up in a small town and read about punk rock, but the only records that were available were Black Sabbath records. So he'd listen to Black Sabbath and imagine what he thought punk rock sounded like, and that's kind of where [Nirvana's] sound came from. If you don't have access to something, you create your own version of it.

The film feels indebted to the spirit, if not the letter, of many genre classics. Were there any specific films or filmmakers you consciously evoked?

Not deliberately. But when I was writing the film, I was watching a lot of Jean Rollin films, [which] are filmed in a very flat, detached, almost uncinematic way. So I liked the idea of a Jean Rollin film but framed in a much more photographic way, like Michael Mann. I kept his mentality of how he framed shots.

There are a couple of shots that are quite Michael Mann-like, although maybe it's not apparent. But the films that inspired the attitude behind it were more stuff like Georges Franju's Eyes without a Face, Last Year at Marienbad, and even Alphaville?approaching genre material from a more esoteric perspective.

Though it's not a self-conscious retro effort, did you ever fear that the film might become too much like the recent spate of self-aware genre homages?

I knew there was a possibility that it might get lumped into that sort of thing, but I had to go for it. I knew that what I was doing was different. I'm not a fan of wink-wink, nudge-nudge stuff. When I'm making something, I tune out and just focus in on my own inner world.

How did you balance the material's dreamlike atmosphere with the need to provide a narrative throughline?

I shot more information than was necessary. That way, I could modulate exactly how much was being imparted in the final cut. I ended up muting it way down because I didn't want the storyline to be in the foreground, I wanted the mood to be. All the story is there, if you pay close enough attention. Everything you need to understand what's going on is all there, but I wanted to mute it. Hopefully, it's a movie that will reward repeat viewings, because other layers will come out when you watch it.

A second viewing definitely provided clarity for me, especially since I went in the first time without knowing anything about it.

I think the best way to watch any movie is to not know anything about it. People these days, on the Internet, they get so much info beforehand. I think it pollutes the experience. Back in the late '80s, I wanted to see a film, and there was an ad in the newspaper with just a title?Paperhouse. I didn't know what the hell it was, I just walked in and watched it. I literally didn't know anything but the title, and it was one of the most intense moviegoing experiences I've ever had. I'd like others to stumble into this movie that way, too.

How did you settle on an aesthetic?

When I write, and as I'm starting to come up with a concept, I collect hundreds and hundreds of reference images for every set or character in the film, and I use those as inspiration. Also, I create a soundtrack, a playlist, and I listen to it as I'm writing.

[Sometimes] the story is imparted just through sound. A lot of that is in the screenplay, but it also developed more when we were mixing it. The sound designer on the film, Eric Paul, is an incredibly talented guy, and loves to create an incredibly dense soundscape. Still, I knew, even as I was writing it, that it was going to be difficult to pull off, to impart actual information through abstract sound. But I think we did.

How did you shoot the whiteout flashback sequence?

We just filmed on a white set. The look was partially created in a color-correct, but then I re-filmed the entire sequence off a computer monitor.

So you had it playing on a monitor, and then filmed the monitor?

Yeah. I wanted to have multiple layers of distance on it, to seem like a faded artifact.

The finale, on the other hand, has a slasher-flick vibe.

I thought it was maybe time for a moment of comic relief. More Laurel and Hardy, Heckyl and Jeckyl. [laughs.] I like movies that surprise me and take unexpected turns.

I wasn't allowed to watch any of that [slasher] stuff. I went to a birthday party sleepover, and they showed First Blood?ironically?and when my parents found out, they flipped out and got really mad that I'd watched this violent movie. Strangely enough, after that, they didn't give a shit anymore what I watched. I mean, why bother trying to protect him anymore?

When I did finally get to watch these films, I think I overdid it. I started having chronic nightmares as a kid about Jason and Freddy. I liked the idea of?I don't know how to say this without it being a spoiler?taking one of these characters and making them pathetic and fragile, ultimately. Barry Nyle has built up this incredibly complex ego structure around himself. But at the end of the day, he's just this feeble, pathetic man.

The film is out-of-step with mainstream B-movie fare, as if functioning as a rebuke to its contemporaries. Have any recent genre films appealed to you?

I really liked Antichrist because I felt that that was a straight horror film that was totally untethered to the restrictions of a genre. But it's a horror film. I find that movie totally exhilarating for that reason, because there's nothing better than watching a film and having the feeling that almost anything can happen.

There's a Bu�uel film, Belle de Jour. At the beginning, they create this sense that literally anything can happen, because a lot of it takes place in the imagination of the protagonist, and then almost nothing happens. Just the fact that they've created this world charges every scene with possibility.

What's the story with the baffling post-credits image of an action figure on the carpet?

I love when movies do that, like at the end of The Howling, there's just a shot of burgers being fried. I guess it was a shot that they couldn't put in the movie, and so they just put it at the end.

One of the things that inspired the set and costume design was Mego action figures and play-sets from the '70s. I wanted to have a Mego version of one of the characters from the film. There's a level of the film that's a dream film, and all of this could be taking place in the imagination of a kid. It's sort of like these imaginary films I created from reading the backs of these VHS boxes. Potentially, one way to look at the film is, this kid is watching TV in the suburbs, and imagining this entire world in the empty lot across the street.

Posted by ahillis at April 25, 2011 11:45 PM

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