Feature Category: Features

Director and writer Adam Egypt Mortimer’s debut feature, the 2015 slasher Some Kind of Hate, co-written with Brian DeLeeuw, was a breath of fresh air into a genre many thought had been done to death, and brought a unique vision of horror to the screen. It’s been a long wait, but the director’s sophomore feature, Daniel Isn’t Real (also co-written with DeLeeuw), finally released recently, and proved to be worth the wait. Not only does Daniel brim with amazing performances from its leads Miles Robbins and Patrick Schwarzenegger, as Luke and his frightening imaginary friend Daniel, but the story is filled with disturbing visuals and a story which will have viewers questioning their own perceptions of reality.

We spoke with Mortimer about the new film, and the thematic ideas to which he’s drawn.

STARBURST: I’ve been a fan of your work since I saw Some Kind of Hate when it came out almost five years ago and I was very excited when Daniel Isn’t Real was announced because I had really been waiting to see what you did for a follow-up for that movie, and it it did not disappoint.

Adam Egypt Mortimer: You know, Some Kind of Hate was the movie that I made basically so that we could make Daniel. Brian [DeLeeuw] and I had written Daniel first, and then realized, “How the hell am I gonna get this crazy movie made as my first movie?” So, then we said, “Well, let’s write what our version of a slasher movie would be like.” That was supposed to be very fast and easy to come together, and then even that was a nightmare to try to make, but all of that was a good thing, because it meant that, by the time I by the time I was finally able to make Daniel, I knew a lot more about making movies than I had when we first sat down to write it.

I think it really came at the at the right time and if you’re somebody who’s a fan of Some Kind of Hate, I’m sure you can see that there’s a lot of dramatic similarities and some similar kind of ideas. It wasn’t conscious at the time. It was a product, probably, of us writing them back-to-back and sharing the sensibility, but looking back on it, you sort of start to see all these things that are themes that are emerging, because they’re really important to me. Maybe I hadn’t even realized that at the time.

They just showed a double feature of those movies in Wales at a theater in Cardiff, and I thought that was so fun. It’s such a cool idea to be able to watch them back-to-back and see not only how have I improved as a filmmaker, but also how I returned to or developed the same sorts of ideas or feelings.

I was going to ask about what I see as the thematic elements that are similar in both of the movies: how things that happen in childhood / youth can have a very long tail in terms of how they affect you growing up.

Yeah, and I think that the idea of trauma on every level is such a crucial part of the human condition. It’s an important part of what we should be exploring in art. You can experience childhood trauma in so many different ways. Everything that you experience when you’re a child is so loud, and and that’s what it’s sort of getting at in that opening scene in Daniel, where we see his parents fighting.

You see these two adults throwing plates at each other, and then you see this tiny, tiny child with his cat puppet. Sometimes, I talk to my dad and I’ll be like, “I remember that totally insane fight you guys had,” or that horrible experience I had and he’ll be like, “Well, I think that we were just mildly annoyed.” Things are so loud, and affect you so deeply, and stain your DNA forever when you’re a child, and I think that was a big part of what I was trying to get at in Daniel.

To go from the dissolution of his family and what that feels like, to a literal bloody massacre within the same moment: it’s this idea that those things are both metaphors and the actual trauma at the same time. I think that, in trying to make Daniel go from a story that’s got a tiny, intimate childhood trauma story to something that becomes vast cosmic horror, I really sort of started to see the idea that the human race is itself sort of as a product of some kind of traumatic cosmic events, or that our whole thing — our whole society — is based on trauma. It’s something I’ve been coming towards more and more as my way of thinking about how the world works.

Both of your features like have — as you have very ably pointed out — this grounding in trauma. In Some Kind of Hate, it’s very much a more visceral sort of thing, where trauma is literally inflicted and can be then inflicted back upon the person giving it, like a vicious cycle. What I find really interesting about both of the movies is the world-building that you set up very early on, that then have this payoff a solid 90 minutes later. Everything that happens within the those first 15 or 20 minutes of Daniel Isn’t Real are so important to the end of the film.

When we had our LA premiere at Beyond Fest, a friend of mine came to see the movie, and he walked in with his popcorn and his soda 90 seconds after the movie had started — missing the opening. Without spoiling it, the opening 60 seconds of this movie is a shocking thing that is really crucial to the movie, and I have not stopped ragging my poor friend — who eventually came back and saw it a second time a couple weeks later.

There are a lot of movies in the horror genre, where a lot of times people offer this structure, where the first 15 minutes of the movie is like, “Everything is nice!” and it’s sunny with the families eating breakfast together, and then things go awry.

To me, I felt like that’s both sort of cinematically boring, and an inaccurate portrayal of the world. If I’m going to do something that’s a deliberately sort of a scary, bleak, shocking kind of story, the beginnings are so crucial. In those first few minutes that you have with an audience, you can really set a tone, and so I want you to feel like you’re kind of getting your ass kicked at the beginning, and then there is this sort of satisfaction from puzzling it out.

Trauma is a puzzle, and if it’s something that can be solved — or, I guess, resolved or compromised with — I think you need those pieces. Some Kind of Hate started the same way, right? The first eight seconds of that movie is a murder, and then you kind of come back around and, at the end, find out who the murderers were, and why, and all that.

I like that feeling of something clicking into place and having an understanding, even if the understanding is a horrific one. Daniel Isn’t Real escalates: it starts out terrifying, with a horrible event, and then I think it dips down, but then it just steadily starts climbing back up and beyond. When the cosmic horror aspect of it kicks in, it’s been built in such a way that you’re you’re there for it. It doesn’t come out of left field.

I love movies where, even like up to the very end, I’m not sure whether it actually happened or if it was all within the character’s head. There are parts of me that still wonder as to whether or not this actually all happened to Luke, or whether he imagined everything that Daniel did.

I think that’s a completely viable understanding of it. I mean, there’s a lot. It’s interesting: in designing the movie, I was obsessed by the idea of what is objective and what’s subjective, and how do you communicate that in a movie like this? How are we gonna live in a movie, where every scene of dialogue, there’s a character that nobody else can see? How is the audience gonna buy that? All these kind of things. It gets you to this really interesting place where, just because you can see something on the screen, what part of that is real and what part of it is not real? Even the title of the fucking movie potentially being, “Are we being honest with the audience or not?”

So, yeah — I’m completely open to the interpretation, but to interpret it the way you’re describing, you would have to look at things that appear to be objective and then sort of have a discussion about what really would be happening there. We don’t do the thing where you flashback and see everything differently, like, “Here’s what it really looked like!”

The way they do at the end of The Usual Suspects is an example of that: where suddenly, at the end, you rewind the whole movie and it’s like, “Oh, it was all a lie because there was actually this thing and there was this thing!” I don’t do that, here. I think I’m much more interested in [the idea that] reality itself is this kind of unstable field, and our unreality is made by our perceptions, and our perceptions are colored by our traumas and our emotions, so where do we stand? That’s the horror of it. The horrific aspect of the story? That’s about perception.

The reason this all works for me is because of the interaction between Patrick Schwarzenegger and Miles Robbins, because it is essentially a twisted buddy picture. I imagine the casting process for those two roles were very intense? These two have to be besties, for lack of a better term.

It is 100% a buddy movie, and the thing was that — no matter what the the metaphysics or the cosmic horror of it or whatever these two characters are in reality — I was very obsessed with making a movie that is accurately depicting the feelings of young male friendship, at that age and at that time, and sort of drawing on everything I could from my own experience of being in college. What is it like when you have these kind of friendships? When you’re 18 years old, with some other guy and it’s this incredibly intimate, energetic, strange kind of relationship that I don’t know that you have any time exactly before or after in your life?

It’s a really particular kind of friendship. There’s the moment where they’re making fun of the roommate, and trying to scare the roommate, and they’re flopping around on the floor laughing together, They’re so in their own world, and so comfortable with each other, and  it’s them against the world. Drawing on those very real experiences, and trying to depict that kind of friendship in a way that I haven’t seen in movie.

So, as far as the casting process? Yeah, I was super obsessed with getting the exact right people and Patrick was able to embody this otherworldly sort of beauty and intensity in the character. Miles was this kind of empathy machine. Then, we had the rehearsal process and put them in a room together for a week, week and a half, before we started shooting — finding that depiction of friendship. The ability for them to be close to each other was the whole crux of the movie.

DANIEL ISN’T REAL is playing in selected UK cinemas from February 7th and will hit Blu-ray and digital download February 10th.

It was four years ago that Robert Eggers burst onto the indie film scene with his directorial debut and supernatural period-horror, The Witch. Now back with one of the year’s best and weirdest films, The Lighthouse cements Eggers’ place alongside Ari Aster and Jordan Peele as one of this generation’s great horror directors. A dizzying tale of supernatural horror and madness, The Lighthouse follows two lighthouse keepers in 1890s New England during a four-week stay tending to the isolated island’s beacon. Thomas and Ephraim, played by the ever-excellent Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, steadily descend into a special brand of paranoid, sex-crazed and booze-fuelled cabin fever. Eggers’ unmatched attention to detail and uncompromised vision make for a sensory and psychological trip you’re unlikely to forget, for better or for worse. On an appropriately cold, grey and drizzly London morning, STARBURST sat down with the director to discuss the making of his sophomore feature…

STARBURST: We read that your idea for this film started out simply as: ‘a ghost story in a lighthouse’. Can you tell us about the development from that to the finalised film? 

Robert Eggers: Well, that was my brother’s idea and that just, for me, sort of spawned the visual atmosphere of the movie. You know, the black and white 35-millimetre, the Guernsey jumpers, the whole thing, and you learn more and it becomes more specific as you move forward. But more or less, I saw it like that, and then it was just about figuring out, “Well, what’s the story?” So we start reading about ghost stories and lighthouses, and lighthouse tragedies, and around day two I found the story of Smalls Lighthouse in Wales from 1801 – it was about two lighthouse keepers, both are named Thomas, one is older and one younger, and they get marooned in their lighthouse station. And the old one dies, the young one goes mad and basically, that seemed like a good story. And to some degree, I didn’t take it any further than that!

Do you think that the ghost’s presence still exists in that story? 

I’m more interested in demons and my brother’s more interested in ghosts. And I think that some of the mermaid, and some other elements, are maybe more like demons than ghosts, but there are some things that are shared between the two. And there’s a lot of very serious occultists who, in that time when spiritualism was very popular, were going around saying that what these spiritualists were doing was really dangerous, because they thought that they were talking to the ghosts of their dead loved ones, when really they were conjuring demons who are pretending to be ghosts. So, there’s some nerdy information for the audience [laughs].

As mentioned, you co-wrote this with your brother Max. How did collaborating on a screenplay compare to writing it yourself, like you did with 2015’s The Witch? 

They’re both satisfying in different ways. Right now, I’m really enjoying having a co-writer. I’ve had an incredibly fun time with my brother, and now I’m working with this Icelandic novelist and poet Sjón, which is also incredibly fun, but I do look forward to one day writing something by myself again. But the great thing about working with a collaborator is that you’re just constantly boosting the other person. You know, you’ll get this scene, and you’re like, what if we just tweak it like this, or like that. That’s exciting, and it creates a kind of joy that I don’t quite know of otherwise.

You’ve also often talked about how much you love the research aspect of pre-production, learning about the folklore behind settings, et cetera. Do you think that when you thoroughly research your films, is that more out of a desire of personal satisfaction, or do you believe it works to heighten the story?

For me, there is no story without the research. I mean, I truly love research. If I was not making creative works of some kind, I would probably be an archaeologist, and I’d be happy to just be digging around for artefacts and reading lots of books. I truly do enjoy it, and that doesn’t mean that I think you need to do all this research to create a believable world. You know, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Peter Brook’s King Lear, they create their own worlds, and that’s great. But I do think that for me, the atmosphere is an accumulation of details and when I’m doing research, then it’s easier for me to create a richer world than if I had pulled those details out of my imagination. That’s the hope, anyway.

Is that part of why you decided to build your lighthouse from scratch? 

Well, we partially just couldn’t find one that worked for the story, and that was accessible. If we could have helicoptered onto an island in Maine every day, we could have found a great lighthouse that worked for us. But aside from the practicality, it also gives you much more control as a filmmaker, like in deciding where to place my camera, if I just build everything accordingly.

And speaking of the camera, you used camera lenses from 1912 and from the 1930s which give the image a very distinctive look, as well having the film in black-and-white and in a vintage aspect ratio. At what stage in the creative process were you like, “Right, this is how I want it framed“?

I mean again, when my brother said, “ghost story in a lighthouse“, I pictured a boxy aspect ratio and the black-and-white 35-millimetre. The look evolved and, you know, I originally thought we would shoot the film in 1.33:1, but we shot the film in 1.19:1 which is an early aspect ratio that’s even boxier. That was sort of a suggestion that Jarin [Blaschke], my Director of Photography made, like half-jokingly over some bourbon one night and I thought, “actually, that’s a great idea!” I mean, this is many, many years before we shot the movie. This was something that we talked about often. So it was quite satisfying that we actually made the movie, because we were always fantasising about what it would be. And over the years, exactly what the black-and-white look would be, and how much grain, how much contrast, and so on and so forth, was something that was changing as we spoke, and when it came down to what equipment, what film stock, what lenses were available for us to use, then that made the final decisions for us.

In previous interviews, you’ve said that you and your DP created a ‘camera language’. Could you elaborate a little on that? 

Film 101 suggests traditional coverage. You shoot the scene in a wide shot, and then you go in for your medium shot and your close-ups, and if you need any inserts, you do that. That’s sort of the traditional filmmaking, and it’s certainly how most television shows are shot. If I wanted to photograph our conversation right now, I would want to think about whose point of view I’m telling the story from, and how I’m going to place the camera to convey that. And my DP and I were also looking for an economy of shots, so that every cut point has a purpose. Thinking about what the next sequential image would be and ensuring it had visual impact against the next shot. I don’t know if that’s clear, but we were designing our shots carefully to convey certain things; for example, we wouldn’t show a wide landscape unless the character whose perspective it’s from felt small psychologically. It can be a little precious when you talk about the intentions to find these things, and they’re to be felt, not necessarily something that would make someone say “Oh, blah blah blah, what our intentions are…” but there’s a feeling there.

It works subconsciously for the viewer. 

That’s the hope.

I understand that Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe approached you, rather than the other way around, wanting to collaborate on one of your projects. Once you had decided The Lighthouse was going to be your sophomore feature, how did you know those two would work well together?

The working together was a hunch, a hope, and a prayer. I did feel somewhat confident, having met both of them, that it would work out. And, I mean, who else could play these roles?

Well now that we’ve seen them in action, I’m tempted to say no one!

Exactly.

Of course, Dafoe is more theatre-trained whereas Pattinson has done a lot of indie, auteur cinema. Did they require very different directing styles?

Yeah, I mean, they both require different things, and that’s just fine. But their characters are very different and actually, their acting styles and directing requirements sort of mirrored their characters. I don’t know how much of that is my doing a good job casting, or their subconscious behaviour, but it worked out.

With those two stuck in a lighthouse together with no escape, there’s an exploration of toxic masculinity – even though, of course, the term didn’t exist then – set against extremely powerful, feminine forces like the sea and the mermaid. Can you talk a little about the tension that creates?

Looking at this poster here… [we are sat on opposite sofas, a huge film poster at our side picturing the roaring ocean and a lone lighthouse disappearing in the storm], with this tiny phallus surrounded by the sea, you know he doesn’t stand a chance. I think that one doesn’t – or I don’t – write intending a specific message, but things come to the surface as you’re writing. Given the zeitgeist, and also given the fact that it’s just two guys in a giant phallus, it’s only ever going to be hyper-masculine bad stuff. If you’re trying to create something inspired by the notion of a ghost story in a lighthouse, it’s not going to be the story of brotherly companionship and heroism; it’s going to be the dark side of that behaviour. For whatever reason, I like exploring the dark side of humanity [laughs]!

The Lighthouse and The Witch deal with ideas of feminine power in very different ways. Do you consider both films to be in conversations with one another?

I think that this becomes a sort of masculine companion piece to The Witch. But I think it’s interesting because, you know, the sea is the sea and she is what she is. The mermaid is weird because she literally begins as an object, and then this object of fantasy gains more power than Rob, then it becomes all-encompassing to him. How does that speak in conversation with The Witch, I don’t know, but I’m sure someone smarter than myself will have something clever to say.

The design of the mermaid is also pretty unusual; what influences did you draw upon for her design? [If you’ve yet to see the film, think your usual fishtail with a giant vagina in the middle]

So, not always but generally, mermaids in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had a split tail, like the mermaid on the Starbucks cup. So that, with that design, the mermaid would be able to serve the function that her male fantasisers would thrust upon her. And the Victorians unsurprisingly sealed up the mermaid, but we needed to find out how mermaids could make more merpeople, so we based her genitals on shark genitals. And they’re both clearly not human, yet also look slightly human.

You referred to the lighthouse itself as phallic, but the characters often speak of the light as a feminine presence, and Dafoe’s character even calls it a ‘she’ and speaks of the light as though it were his wife or lover. What lies behind that duality?

I think that Dafoe, in his 19th-century mindset, would have to refer to the light as a ‘she’ for it to work in his worldview. For him to express that love for the lighthouse, he embraces a specific gender binary that works with how he sees the world. But, to show more of my hand than I usually do, I think of the light as more hermaphroditic than female.

Finally, as we’re wrapping up, can you say anything about your plans for future projects?

Yeah well, it was leaked that I’m making a Viking revenge saga. So, you know, anything can still happen. If you want to see that happen, think happy thoughts for me. I hope it happens.

Now it’s been leaked, the pressure’s on.

The pressure is on!

THE LIGHTHOUSE is in UK cinemas from January 31st.

Composer and musician Colin Stetson’s score for Ari Aster’s 2017 film Hereditary made his name as someone who can create beautiful, yet extraordinarily disconcerting film music. However, Stetson’s work for director Richard Stanley’s comeback, the brand-new adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Color Out of Space, puts a bow on that name and firmly seals the deal. With the film’s visual palette requiring the composer to really stretch and create a soundscape which does a lot of heavy lifting, Stetson’s music is readily up to the task, and stands on its own as a terrifying journey. We spoke with Stetson about Color Out of Space, his work with Ari Aster on Hereditary, as well as the upcoming Adult Swim adaptation of Junji Ito’s manga Uzumaki…

STARBURST: Color Out of Space is finally out, as well as your score; how are you feeling about the whole situation?

Colin Stetson: Well, I feel great. It was an incredibly fun project to work on and to make. It’s always really exciting when these things come full circle. I delivered the music that first week of August and so, by this time, I’ve been so removed from it, that it is really lovely to hear all the bits and pieces that are being played and be inundated with that world again, after so many months of me apart from it. So, it’s extremely fun and exciting.

How early in the process did you come in?

Very late in the process, actually. I remember for Hereditary, I was the first person they’d spoken with, so I was in the mix for three years and had started writing music for Ari Aster off the script, probably a year before it premiered at Sundance. This one, I started writing and was done, I would say, within two months.

The movie played at TIFF in early September, so if you delivered it in early August, that is very late in the process.

Yeah, I was brought on right around June, and so just dove in, and hit the ground running, as they say.

How familiar were you with the Lovecraft story before you started working on the film?

I was not familiar with the Lovecraft story, specifically. I had heard that Richard [Stanley] was coming back. To be entirely honest, they had me at Richard is coming back, but the fact that he was doing a Lovecraft story – and one that was very near and dear to his heart, as it was one of the stories that his mother had been telling him as bedtime stories as he was growing up – and then, to top that off with it being Spectravision? I had been fans of what they had done with Mandy, and then getting a chance to work on something that that Nicolas Cage had done was also another ‘can’t pass on it’ opportunity.

I had been just in complete fascination of him and what he’s capable of bringing to the screen. I’ve watched Leaving Las Vegas dozens of times, and had been so inspired by his craft, so I was excited on quite a few fronts.

Watching the film, so much of the Lovecraftian aspect of it is very much that your imagination has to do a lot of work, as part of that. A score always helps to direct the viewer, in terms of emotions and things like that, but your score in this particular film has a lot of directing people to do, because it is a color, it’s almost like a synesthesia you’re having to create.

That’s the word I was looking for! Ding-ding-ding! When I when I first came in on it, Richard’s initial, broad, sweeping question posed to me was something along the lines of, “What exactly does a hyper advanced alien life-form that manifest themselves as a spectrum of light, in a color that does not exist in our reality – what does that sound like?” I love starting from places like that; from big, broad, ridiculous questions like that. So immediately, the task was to not only identify that and to define that, but also then to identify and define the theme: the overall aesthetic and mood for the hapless protagonists, whose lives are going to be upended and altered in every way, mutated by that alien, and how then to take those two things, and merge them, with one to infiltrate and inundate the other over the course of the film, and do so in a way that’s got to be kind of Lovecraftian: hallucinatory, surprising, and unexpected at every turn.

It was actually the most fun, ‘cause all these things are always a puzzle for me. When you enter into starting to score a film, all the pieces of the puzzle – the things that need to be figured out –  it’s all a very simple equation. You know where you’re starting, you know where you’re ending, you got your point A and your point B, and you know the devices that are there to be utilised to get from one to the other, and the rest is just going and painting.

It’s interesting, because when you put it in terms of the colours and the sound and communication, we immediately flash to that end scene of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but almost writ large across an entire film.

Thank you. I guess it’s one of the challenges, whenever you’re trying to do something that are there already. There are already monster movies, there are already horror films, there are already alien invasion, first contact movies, so you never want to really think about that and use archetypes. Beforehand, for this, I thought, if there is anything that’s using an archetypal structure, that I would need to find something akin to a Jaws moment. So, the sound that comes in as Jack is walking in the hallway when the colour is just about to land is, I guess, the colour theme. I actually wrote that hook right when I found out that this movie was being made. I was in the bathtub and I read about them making that movie, and then I was downstairs later on that day, and I was like, “You know, what this is probably how that would sound.” Then, later on, I ended up being able to actually take that thing that I wrote and use it as the theme for the colour, which is pretty rad.

With Hereditary, and now with Color Out of Space, those pictures have gotten like a wider release than some of the films you’ve scored in in the past. It seems interesting, because Hereditary is a horror movie, Color Out of Space is a horror movie, and the upcoming Uzumaki anime is very much a horror story, but in the scoring work you’ve done prior to this, there’s drama and there’s westerns. How did you come to horror? Was it with an interest in it, or is it just the projects themselves, with the script and the story that attracts you to these films?

I would have to say, for sure, the latter. In my case, as a consumer of film and music, it is roughly the same as my output as a performer and composer. I don’t have any particular bent. I would not call myself like a horrorphile or something, but I’ve been tapped to do mostly darker-themed pictures – thrillers and whatnot – but not exclusively, and that’s been really good. I was really I was very happy to be able to follow Hereditary up with something like The First, which unfortunately just had its one season and got cancelled, but it was a very fun show to work on and offered me the opportunity to flex a lot of different muscles, whereas with Hereditary, I took a route of avoiding recognisable theme, and melody, and convention. The First was something that really needed things in an epic, grand scope and so that something that was a lot of fun.

I don’t gravitate towards horror, per se, and Ari tapped me for Hereditary not because of the horror element inherent in my music, although he is acknowledging of and I am acknowledging of, that a lot of what it is that I create in the solo music does translate to many people as a lot of those sounds are inspiring a panic and other feelings of melancholy and distress. I totally get that. It’s not to say it’s not where my intention might be – it is where my intention lies – but not as the end result. You try to use those things to get in the door. That’s how you catch someone’s attention: by disturbing their equilibrium and then, once you’re there, once you have them, then you can actually direct them in some way to feel real emotion, not just to feel the things that they that they think they should feel, the kind of stock things that we’re inundated with every day.

I never really saw Hereditary as a horror film. It’s a narrative. It’s like a character study in grief and loss and familial dysfunction, but couched in the shell of horror, touching the guise of a horror film and so, I tried not to approach it as such. I didn’t want to approach it as a horror film, but now that most people know me as ‘the Hereditary guy’, I you should have seen what I’ve been offered. I didn’t want to do Color Out of Space because it was a horror film. I wanted to do it because it was Richard. Because it was a story that he was so passionate about. Because it was Spectravision, this was gonna offer up an opportunity to do something that was truly unique and a scenario where it would it would force me to challenge myself to do something I’d never done before. I learned a tremendous amount, working in a way I had not done before to get that score done, so that’s how I how I continue to try to approach new jobs.

Speaking of new jobs, just last year, you got to do your first video game, with Red Dead Redemption II.

I did do a fair amount of work for those guys over there on Red Dead. I wish I had time to play, ‘cause I hear it’s fucking fantastic, but I don’t, unfortunately.

There were so many musicians involved in that score. Duane Eddy plays guitar on it, and then on the soundtrack, you’ve Rhiannon Giddens and Daniel Lanois. It’s a big thing, but based on your response to this, we’re assuming this was a very positive experience for you, yeah?

Yes! My part of it was great, because largely 95% of what I do is absolutely solitary and so this was great — to have these idea come in from everybody and for them to send me in my workshop. Things that I would either be starting from some sort of a skeletal idea, or creating the skeletons myself and and sending back, and we collaborate. The bulk of the collaboration that I had was with my friends in Senyawa, and those fuckers are just the best, it was a playground. You get bass tracks from Senyawa, and then vice versa, and just collaborated with them back and forth in in our respective studios. It was super fun.

How’d you come to do Uzumaki? It seems to tie very nicely with Color Out of Space, because Junji Ito is very open in terms of how much Lovecraft influenced that particular work.

They approached me. It was as simple as that. They had the idea to work with me, and it was one of those things you’re just crossing your fingers that the scheduling is all gonna work out. [Adult Swim] are absolutely the kind of project and organisation that I love, because those guys came well over a year in advance to say, “Can you and would you like to do this?” They got a very prompt and enthusiastic, “Yes!” because that’s the kind of thing that I like to do: this singular, original, particular and uniquely voiced story.

Again, it doesn’t have to do with the genre. It’s just about the storytelling there. The thing that I love about Uzumaki is that it is not only does it harbour some of the most disturbing imagery, but it is also gorgeous. It is beautiful and haunting, and some of the scenes? The way they’re stylised, and imagining them brought to life in the way that they’re talking about animating it? I mean, I’m blown away. I’m very excited because it’s really merging a lot of my favourite things: being able to get truly twisted and disturbing, while doing so in such a way that is worthy – in a way that is showing real beauty and elegance.

Color Out of Space is out now in the US and is released in the UK on February 28th.

To the generation of today, composer Kurt Farquhar is a man of drama; his work for The CW on shows like Black Lightning, Bounce’s Saints & Sinners, and BET’s Being Mary Jane is all very serious, thrilling stuff. However, to those from the generation before, the composer’s resume reads like a who’s who of classic sitcoms: Moesha, Sister, Sister, The King of Queens, and The Parkers are but a few of the shows Farquhar has worked on. So it was a joy to speak with the composer about how he made that switch, how he made his bones in sitcoms, and how that iconic Moesha theme song came to be.

STARBURST: Early in your career you did so many sitcoms, but now you’re moving into drama. What’s it been like, making that transition?

Kurt Farquhar: I’ll tell you two things. At one point in my career, I thought that it would never happen – that I wasn’t going to get to do dramas and I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll just retire from this, and call it a day.” I just made a concerted effort to try to make that shift, because I thought it was a shame, since that’s the one thing that I was trained for. I wrote my first symphony when I was 12 years old, so the one thing that I actually knew how to do, was more orchestral and symphonic works and to have had a television career, and not be doing very much of that, just seemed to be a shame to me. That and some other factors that made me really get aggressive about making that shift, and it added up to me getting where I am now.

It’s really kind of funny: although like, 90% of my initial career was all network sitcoms, I remember being recently in with the directors of one of my dramas and they said, “Well,  you did the shift in there, and it seemed it got kind of light – almost comical. This is really good. I don’t know whether we should go there, but this is really good. I didn’t know that you had a comedy strength.” I said, “Oh yeah, hate to tell you, but most of it has been.” [laughs] There’s a group of folks that now come up thinking that all I do is dramas, like Being Mary Jane and Black Lightning and so many others, so it’s interesting.

Given that you worked on Moesha and Sister, Sister – these beloved shows of an entire generation – and also because that’s where you got your start, do you have some fond memories of those shows?

Oh, I do. I remember doing Moesha, and The Parkers, and Sister, Sister like it was yesterday. So many of these shows, like you say, are now kind of iconic shows a lot of people came up with, but I was just a young guy hoping to do television, and I was just excited to be there. So many of these producers remain friends of mine and we all had such a good time doing the music. I remember that it was something magical that was happening – something in the air, you might say. I remember, with the theme song to Moesha, the producers were talking to me about the theme song, so I had already started thinking about some portion of it. I was doing the music and then, I thought I’d get to the lyrics at some point, but I’d already completely done what the music was gonna be – the instrumental part – and then they came to me and say, “Look, Brandy wants to be involved with the theme song, and she has an idea for it, okay?” So, we got together. She came over to my place, she sang to me her idea, and I said, “Oh, my goodness, you are never gonna believe this!” and I just turned around and turned on the tape. I said, “Count down four bars and start singing,” and she did, and she got the thing. Everything that she had written, exactly how she had written it, was in the exact same key, and it all worked – and even ended at the exact time! You say ‘something in the air’, and that’s one of the classic things, and it literally came together like that. We never changed another thing. She went into the studio and recorded it.

That’s amazing.

Yes. Amazing, but true. It was one of those things that was just meant to be. Of course, she was such an amazing voice to work with and also, just a lot of fun, just a lovely person to work with. Brandy’s just amazingly talented. Way back then, she was actually still a teenager when she was doing that show, so she was like the voice of young black teendom when she when she still was a young black teen.

What we find really fascinating about your career is that, as you’ve moved into drama, it’s also been side by side with doing documentaries. You’re the first composer I’ve ever talked to who has worked on a reality show. I’m curious: being as how you’ve done drama and you’ve also done documentaries, it seems that a reality show is like halfway in between those two things. Is that kind of the case?

Yeah, you know, people kind of poo-pooed the whole reality sort of thing, and I thought – much like hip hop – it was not going to go away. I remember, in the early days of hip-hop, you wonder if a guy doing poetry to beat is gonna last? Well, it’s something that’s happening culturally that people would be doing anyway, when it bubbles up from the streets like that. It’s likely the same thing with reality. I just think that it’s something of interest to people. All I could think of is, “I want to be a part of that, too.” I love the craft of doing music to pictures, and telling stories. However those stories are told? That’s not what I’m trying to do. I mean, that’s above my pay grade. My thing is, “How do I add musically to the whole concept of storytelling with pictures?”

Black Lightning is your high-profile thing, right now. Is this your first action score?

Well, my first superhero thing. The closest thing I did to something like this was a show called Stitchers on freeform few years back. That was about the government program hacking into the minds of the recently dead, and so you could imagine you got to do some pretty crazy music with that. I think that, because I did that, people could actually imagine me doing something like Black Lightning. I don’t think that there’s a stretch to say that if I had not done that, that I would not have been on the short list to do to do Black Lightning.

The interesting thing about Black Lightning is because it is one part of a larger sort of TV and cinematic world. Are those concerns that you have to think of, when you’re scoring the show, being as how it connects to so many other things?

Well, in the initial season, the marching orders were that it should be a standalone, and that we should take Black Lightning for itself, in its own world. Initially, they were thinking they weren’t going to crossover and yet, here we are in Season Three, and I don’t think I’m breaking any news to say that Black Lightning will be going into the air over something when they do this big crossover this year.

The producers told me they wanted it to feel authentic to these characters, and something to feel new and fresh – but at the same time, the reality of it is, you can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are certain things that are just a staple of the whole superhero genre. I mean, yes, you still hear the soaring French horns and so on, but there’s certain sorts of things that set it apart. I mean, it is a primarily African-American cast and a primarily African-American portion of a city.  I’m trying to make you feel that, and hear that, and understand that point of view – while at the same time, not closing on a hip-hop beat every time. If I had to toss on a hip-hop beat every time you saw a black face on that show, we might as well just have a Drake album play. We do it in a little bit more complicated ways. An example that I had in a previous season: basically what I did, is I took a part of a hip-hop beat and transposed it throughout the string section. The basses were kick drums and the violins were the fast high hats and so on. You still had the melodic content of traditional orchestral with the rhythmic propulsion of hip-hop, within the traditional instrumentations. So, you had those who are looking for that an urbanism feel something that was natural to them about this, but at the same time, it still sounds kind of classical in nature.

We keep trying to do more interesting ways of approaching the music. Another thing that I did, was I basically took the essence of a Miles Davis solo and put it throughout the violins and it’s like the violin sounded like Miles Davis within it. When I bring it up to people, and tell them where it was, it’s like, “Oh, my god, you’re right.” These are the other ways of making it feel a little different. Plus, there’s an enormous amount of songs that the wonderful music supervisor provides and the editors and showrunners provide within the body of the show. I’ve always been very big about how I don’t want it to be like, “Here’s a song,” then, “Here’s the score,” and “Here’s the phone,” and “Here’s the score.” I wanted it to feel like an organic outgrowth of things, so sometimes you don’t know where the song ended and the score began and vice versa, and it just kind of bubbles up out of things.

Sometimes, I’m just bubbling up out of the sound effects and making it a natural organic moment, so it’s seamless in a way. We’re using all of these different variations to create a particular world, and this season, we have a great deal of change.

Black Lightning Season 3 is currently screening on The CW in the US.

The Star Trek universe welcomes a new television show this year, simply yet unexpectedly titled Picard. To the glee of Trekkies everywhere, Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard was announced to return to the screen after a twenty-six-year absence; having originally starred in Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994, and last seen in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, the beloved Starfleet captain (later admiral) is back for at least another two seasons.

STARBURST had the pleasure of sitting down with Picard’s executive producers and creators, Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, and Kirsten Beyer; Star Trek alumni Jeri Ryan and Jonathan Del Arco, reprising their respective roles as Seven of Nine and Hugh the Borg; newcomers and stars Isa Briones, Michelle Hurd, Evan Evagora and Harry Treadaway; and of course, the man of the hour himself, the legendary Sir Patrick Stewart.

“Next Generation has its own fanbase, which almost goes deeper than the broader franchise,” says Akiva Goldsman, “and Jean-Luc Picard is a huge and iconic part of that. So, if one is revisiting Star Trek, one is likely to have a fantasy about it. And in truth, it was little more than a fantasy at first! We were chatting about making a Short Trek, and the pitch was that maybe a young man could be revealed to be a young Picard. And then Alex [Kurtzman] has this tendency to always push you and ask, ‘Why stop there?’.”

And so, the prospective showrunners approached Stewart, hoping he would reprise his role as the iconic Starfleet captain. “For many years, any suggestion that I might revive this role in different formats and contexts, I passed on immediately – straight away and without hesitation,” explains Patrick Stewart. “And not because I wasn’t proud of what we did on Next Generation. I was, and I loved all the people that I worked with very, very much. But I thought I had said and done everything that could be said and done about Jean-Luc, and the Enterprise, and his relationship with the crew and so forth.

“But I found myself sitting in front of the producers one day, and they began to talk about the new series in a way that was unexpected. And all I did was listen… And then, I gave a bit of a long speech as to why I was going to turn them down,” he laughs. “That took them a little by surprise. But then they talked some more and went into more detail about the storyline. And when the meeting was over, I asked my agent to contact them, and ask if they could put in writing everything they’d said. Two days later, I got a 35-page pitch. It was undeniably interesting, and it was not going to be like what I had experienced previously. It would be different, a very different world… which appealed to me, because the real world too has changed in the last 19 years.”

Though Picard follows on from the deeply divisive Nemesis, executive producer Kirsten Beyer asserts that this is not course-correction. “It’s not the motivation. Sometimes in the wider universe, the books and all the things like that, stories exist just for that purpose, to work on something that we were uncomfortable with and maybe try to fix it. In this case though, it’s all driven from the character of Picard and elements of his story that still resonate,” like dealing with the aftermath of Data’s (Brent Spiner) death. Interestingly, Picard also appears to follow the canon established by J.J. Abrams’ rebooted film series, in which the planet of Romulus was destroyed.

In the time since passed, these events have led to a dramatic rift between Picard and the Federation, but Michael Chabon is keen to emphasise that the Federation has not become the ‘bad guy’ of the show. “I think that, in spite of the fact that Picard says he can no longer stand behind the Federation, he means something very specific by that. And what has gone wrong with the Federation is exactly the same thing that has gone wrong with Picard: they both made promises which terrible – almost impossible – circumstances forced them to break. It’s a tragic thing. It’s a painful thing. It is something that a governmental entity like the Federation is bound to encounter many times in the course of its history, just like the United States have. Picard will come to reckon with the effects of his having failed to keep the promise that he made.”

The new world in which Picard is set draws parallels with the current political climate, says Stewart. “I thought that they were addressing not only a science fiction story, but the world in its current condition – because it’s bad. It’s really bad. And so, if we can give little nudges to what we all believe about what’s going on…” he trails off. “What I liked about the proposal that Alex and the team made was that the world that we had inhabited, and the world of the Federation had changed. It was no longer the secure, trustworthy, reliable place that it had been. And that was one of the major things that convinced me that I should look seriously at reviving this, and I’m very glad that I did.”

The Federation is not the only thing to have dramatically changed, however. The man we reunite with is not the Picard of old. As Isa Briones, who stars as Dahj explains, “something I notice is that, in past iterations of Star Trek and in many sci-fi or superhero genres, we find ourselves looking at this wonderful leader, someone who is perfect. And of course, we do have a wonderful leader in Picard, but I think we’re done seeing stories of that perfect person who can solve everything. We want to see heroes as people, we want to see them be humans and make mistakes. And I think that is what we are bringing into this show. We are seeing the almighty Picard, but he’s retired and he’s unhappy.”

“When we first meet Jean-Luc, he is in poor shape,” says Stewart, but that does not mean that the character we know and love is gone. “Even over the space of the first episode, he undergoes change because of his encounter with Isa’s character. And as the story goes on, we see more of the spirited believer in him, and the transformation that come from being socially conscious and aware of other people.”

Also returning to a well-loved role is Jeri Ryan as Voyager’s Seven of Nine. Similarly to her co-star’s initial reaction, Ryan thought her character’s story was done. “The most interesting part of her, I thought, was her exploration of becoming human again,” states the actress,“and we did that. So I hadn’t given the idea of returning a lot of thought… But when the idea was first broached with me two years ago, once they started explaining where they saw her being twenty years on, I was very intrigued! It was all too interesting to pass up, because she’s been through a lot; she’s seen a lot of really dark, bad stuff over the last two decades, and she’s kind of hardened, she’s a bit more cynical. She’s been working with an independent law and order group, trying to keep some semblance of order in a galaxy that has gone to hell in a handbasket, something for which she holds Starfleet and the Federation very much responsible, and Picard as an extension of that.”

Picard will also reunite with another Borg alum, Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco). Del Arco hints that these last twenty years have not been easy for his character either and that Hugh “has had to make some difficult choices. He’s doing the best he can under the circumstances to keep his people safe and alive. But with that comes some really hard compromises for him that eat at him. He’s in a tough position, trying to figure out how to balance doing the most good at the worst time.”

Alongside Star Trek old-timers comes a slate of new characters, bringing new life and youthful optimism to the somewhat jaded returning characters. As mentioned, Isa Briones plays Dahj, “a really cool young woman who is wonderfully empathetic and caring for other people. She’s starting a new chapter in her life and everything is going great for her, until a tragic incident occurs. And suddenly, she has no idea who she can trust or even if she can trust herself.”

Fans will also meet Elnor, “a young Romulan boy who’s an expert in hand to hand combat,” says Evan Evagora. “He’s pretty good with the sword as well, and he was raised in an all-female sect of warrior nuns.” Harry Treadaway plays another Romulan, though one “from a very, very wealthy family, who is now living on the Borg cube and conducting research there. All is not what it seems,” Treadaway warns, cautious not to let slip too much. Though Star Trek has in the past been accused of embracing a monoculture approach to different species, this is far from the case with these two very different Romulans. “I think trying to apply normality and reality to a show which is intergalactic and bends time and space is a really important thing to do,” Treadaway muses. “Otherwise you lose all anchors. And so everyone’s character, no matter which species they come from, their lives are their own.”

Rounding off the cast of newcomers is Michelle Hurd, who plays Raffi. “She’s a security analyst and a hacking genius. She has a very complicated relationship with the Federation and she worked with Picard back in the day, after Next Gen, and they had a bit of a falling out. She’s haunted by decisions that she’s made in the past and has crutches and vices that she leans on to get through the day.”

Picard’s cast was not short on praise for leading man Patrick Stewart, expressing that although joining such an influential franchise was intimidating, Stewart had made them all feel instantly welcome. Del Arco recalls that Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg (who has been invited to return to her role in Season 2) were “like Mum and Dad on the set of Next Gen. They could not have been lovelier, kinder, more gracious or more supportive. Patrick is still that to the cast today. We’re very, very lucky.”

“I would say that when you’re on any kind of production,” says Hurd, “number one basically sets the tone for the entire set. And that man, Patrick Stewart, is just like Picard when he walks on set. He is our leader, and he is a fearless leader. He’s a brave leader. He’s a kind leader. He’s a generous one. He is obsessed and focused on ensemble, he’s playful and self-deprecating, and cheeky and sassy. And sexy, I’m just gonna say it,” she laughs.

If Jean-Luc Picard is still sexy, surely Star Trek: Picard cannot be a complete tonal break from what came before? Some fans have expressed concern that Picard, in reflecting the current socio-political context, will succumb to cynicism and abandon the optimism that defined earlier series. Jeri Ryan reassures that “Star Trek has always reflected the society of its time. This series is continuing in a fine tradition.” Evagora echoes this, stating that “it’s always been Gene Roddenberry’s vision to hold a mirror up to our society through every iteration of Star Trek. That’s what it’s always been, and we just continue that legacy.”

“We can’t help but be influenced by what’s happening in our present day, from paintings to dance, to music and acting,” Hurd explains. “So we are absolutely tackling the discord and divisiveness, and the discomfort that we all feel in our respective countries right now. It’s incredible that it’s ever-present, that it’s happening to all of us. What I love about our writers is that we’re not preaching it; it’s not like sitting down and getting a lesson, but you absolutely are going to see a mirror being held up. And what’s great about our story is that we’re seeking a solution. We’re trying to inject hope, optimism, and emphasising the sanctity, the vulnerability and the preciousness of life and love, and humanity.”

At the end of the day, all anyone appears to want is to preserve Star Trek’s legacy. As co-creator and executive producer Alex Kurtzman puts it, “What I learned from making the first film (Star Trek, 2009) is that the voices of the fans are essential to being a writer on Star Trek, and that processing and metabolising the information that they’re giving us is critical. It’s often uncomfortable, but I think the price of that is worth it. At the end of the day, the fans have kept this show alive for fifty-four years. It doesn’t really belong to anyone except for the fans – and Gene Roddenberry.

“And of course, it’s hard sometimes. But I also think that in equal measure, there’s so much love for it and so much joy and so much ‘thank you for doing this’. I will get letters from people, or people come up to me and they will say ‘Star Trek literally saved my life. This thing that you did saved my life. I was alone. I didn’t have anybody, and I happened to turn on the TV on the one night that I was thinking of killing myself. And it saved my life.’ And when you know that that’s also happening, that any flack you get is really irrelevant because the legacy of the show goes so far beyond me! I’m just a piece of it along the way. This show not only changed people’s lives for the better, but it’s changed history itself. I’ve met astronauts who became astronauts because they love Star Trek, and artists and scientists and writers. This is so much bigger than any one of us. It’s so much bigger. I think we all feel that our job is to protect it to the best of our ability.”

STAR TREK: PICARD airs from January 23rd in the UK on Amazon Prime Video, and CBS All Access in the States. For our review of episodes 1 – 3, read HERE.