Title: 'Strange Darling' Flips the Serial Killer Script

Kousha Navidar: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. I'm in for Alison Stewart today. In their review of the new movie Strange Darling, the New York Times writes, "A movie that's best experienced stone cold, Strange Darling is so dependent on its surprises, one head snapping twist with several judiciously spaced lesser shocks, that to reveal any one of them would be crazy critical malpractice." Indiewire says, "Until now, almost everything the public has heard about this magnificent slasher deconstruction was an intentional and ingenious misdirect. Audiences going in with the least knowledge of what you could call a gut-wrenching date night will have the best crack at enjoying this movie in theaters."

Even Stephen King got in on the action, posting on X, "I wish I could say more about Strange Darling, but it's one of those films that's too clever to spoil, so best to say nothing." We, here at All Of It, are presented with a unique challenge. We are going to talk about a movie that everyone encourages you not to talk about beforehand, and we're going to do it without spoilers. Let's see how we thread this needle. What we can say is that Strange Darling is a film about a first date gone horribly wrong. A date that ends in a murder spree.

We open with a terrifying car chase between a man and a woman. The woman has a bloody ear. The man has a shotgun. Things devolved from there. In this movie, nothing is what it seems. Strange Darling is written and directed by JT Mollner and shot on a beautiful 35 millimeter film by Giovanni Ribisi. A celebrated actor with a decades-long career, Giovanni makes his feature film cinematography debut with Strange Darling, which is in theaters today. With that, JT, Giovanni, so great to have you here. Welcome to All Of It.

Giovanni Ribisi: Thanks for having us.

JT Mollner: Great to be here.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. JT, let's get this out of the way first. This is a movie that is hard to talk about because it's better to go in knowing nothing to discuss the plot. How has that posed a challenge for you, in the process of getting this movie made, getting it out there to audiences?

JT Mollner: It hasn't been quite as hard as you'd think because, excuse me, I've been talking a lot the last few days since the movie premiered.

Kousha Navidar: I imagine. We appreciate your time coming here.

JT Mollner: Yes, no, no, but sorry about my voice. Yes, it's been interesting because the film, we wanted to make sure that even though there are shocks and surprises in the movie for some people, that if the surprises happen, there are a number of them, and the biggest ones happen in the middle, so you can live in the reality of the movie and really go along for the ride of the movie in earnest for a good portion of it. Even though I love the-- highly influenced by the works of Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock and those great twisty movies, the early Shyamalan films that really have great-- films like the others, that have these great twists at the end.

Since that's been done so well before by so many great filmmakers and writers, we didn't want to attempt to go up against those sort of movies. We wanted to make sure this was about these two characters, what they're going through and the ride they take you on. If you're surprised by the narrative, the jarring narrative twists, then that's an extra added bonus. We're hoping that, and it seems so far that the movie doesn't-- Those don't have to surprise you for the enjoyment to still be there. I'll be able to talk about the film with people like you and talk about this Final Girl archetype that I wanted to sort of deconstruct and find a different angle, a different approach to give her more nuance and just see a different perspective of her than I'd seen in some of my favorite classic horror films over the years.

Kousha Navidar: Giovanni, you shot this movie on 35 millimeter film and the movie begins. I thought it was interesting with a giant message advertising that fact. Why that big message right at the top? [laughter] Why is it getting a laugh?

Giovanni Ribisi: Well, no. 35, you know, celluloid and film were, I think, the first thing that JT and I bonded on when we first met each other. We met in the context of the ASC awards and the president of Kodak at the time, Steve Bellamy, introduced us. I think that was about, I think, five or six years ago or I don't know when it was. Yes, we go back and forth. Yes, it's just something that, for us, and with this story specifically, but really kind of overall, there's just no other option.

There's just something that over the last 150 years, we got right with film and celluloid, and it's just something that we're drawn to. That's not to say that great movies haven't been made on digital formats. It's just for this, that was just part of the whole, the fabric of the movie, really.

Kousha Navidar: What is it, about 35 mm--? Yes, go ahead.

JT Mollner: Could I just add one thing there? I think obviously, Giovanni did just beautiful work and the visuals were so clearly realized. I think I'm just incredibly impressed with what he was able to achieve, obviously. I wanted to just mention that card at the beginning of the movie. I think nowadays there are some people-- It's actually not for-- A lot of people think that announcement of 35 millimeter is for cinephiles, people who appreciate celluloid. The goal of it was to-- It was for people who are more casual movie watchers. Relatives of mine back east who like to go to movies but aren't obsessed with movies 24 hours a day, like Vani and I are.

They'll go to a film and they'll feel something. The look will make them feel something, and it'll make them feel something special. I want them to know why, because we love film so much. Like Vani said, I totally respect and admire. There's so many great movies that I've liked over the last couple decades that were shot digitally. However, there's just something so special about film on so many levels. If there's other people who have a similar sensibility and it gives them a good feeling, a comforting feeling when they're watching the film, I'd love them to know why and what the difference is and what sort of paint we used. I just think it's a nice thing.

[crosstalk]

Kousha Navidar: Is that-- Go ahead, Giovanni. Yes, go ahead.

Giovanni Ribisi: Also, there's also just something to be said that there's something that's really not, in the context of the digital filmmaking environment, but also just maybe perhaps the general zeitgeist. There's something about shooting film that's not convenient and it's a little bit more challenging, and you have to put a little bit more thought into the creative process. I think that's something that we respond to. You can see that there's a sort of desperation there in the fabric of the film. I don't know, it's just. Again, it's just there really wasn't another option for us.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. We're going to take a quick break. We're talking with JT Mollner, the writer and director, and Giovanni Ribisi, the cinematographer from the new movie Strange Darling, which is in theaters today. When we come back from the break, we're going to go into more of the archetypes that you were talking about, JT, and also what it's like to be an actor turned director of photography for you, Giovanni. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, and we are talking about the new film Strange Darling, which is out in theaters today. We're talking with the writer and director, JT Mollner, and Giovanni Ribisi, who is the cinematographer. Before the break, JT, we had talked about archetypes that you were trying to play with, and actually, during the break, we got a call, which we're not going to take. I want to avoid spoilers here, but the caller was touching on some of the archetypes on the female lead that you had mentioned. Questions about race, questions about assumptions, which we're not going to go into. I think it's a great tee up for you to talk a little bit more about the archetypes you wanted to play with in a serial killer film, as much as you can. Can you go into that a little bit more?

JT Mollner: Sure. Sure. Yes. It felt like, in a way, fertile ground. I had this image that came to me very early on, before any of the story came, and it was a woman in distress running through the woods. I could hear music, saw it in slow motion in hospital scrubs. She just was the-- She was a trope, essentially, that entire-- She was the quintessential Final Girl. Laurie Strode from Halloween. I was wondering why this image was so compelling, and it kept coming back to me because I thought, well, that's traditional.

What is there to this image that's going to be interesting? Why should I write this? As it continued to develop, I realized that what if there's another angle? Because, once again, there's almost no reason to do-- there have been so many great horror films and why try and go up against those movies and do the same thing? The same reason I probably would never make a gangster movie, because Goodfellas is sitting right there. With this, I didn't really become obsessed with writing it until the rest of the story came to me. I realized, wow, what if there's more to our version of the Final Girl? What if we start creating an exercise in subverting expectations and playing with people's assumptions and stereotypes?

Kousha Navidar: You-- sorry, finish your thought.

JT Mollner: No. Then it became really fun to create these characters that seemed like they were one thing in these situations that seem like they're one thing, but then there's so much more to them, when we go back and see what got them there. That became very compelling to me. I felt like it was a-- It's hard to find sometimes, but I felt like it was a fresh angle to show very familiar, very familiar scenarios from. If you can find a fresh angle and a new vantage point, then to me, it's worth telling the story. It's been a great joy telling the story.

Kousha Navidar: You mentioned music being key to the movie. We have the clip of the cover of Love Hurts to open the film, which is what you're referring to. Let's take a listen to that cover from Z. Berg and Keith Carradine made specifically for this film.

[music - Keith Carradine: Love Hurts]

Kousha Navidar: JT, why that song?

JT Mollner: When I'm working on a screenplay and it's going well-- and by the way, I don't mean going well like the audiences or critics are going to like it. I just mean it going well for me in that vacuum, when it feels like it's going well and it's working, it's because I'm going by instinct and feeling, because it's much more important for me to convey a feeling to an audience than some message or deliberate, you know, deliberate narrative point. With this, everything was about a feeling. I was listening to a lot of Chopin during the process and it just invoked the feeling of what I was trying to get across in those gear shifts between chapters.

Then for some reason, this song that, the original Emmylou Harris version, I think, is a beautiful song. Gram Parsons and Emmylou. It's not necessarily my favorite song. I think I was just hiking one day and thinking about this story and it just started playing. I had earphones in and I knew that it meant so much to the narrative. Like this narrative that was developing that had a lot to do with relationships. I also knew that Z. Berg was going to be key. She was going to be kind of the life's blood of our movie. Her vocal sound, her songwriting. The goal was to have Z. Berg do a single artist soundtrack for this and write original songs for the movie.

Once the specific-- but I knew there was this specific idea to have Love Hurts over this run. I said, how does that fit in with the flavor we're going to create? I called Z and I was like, I know how this works. You know, we need to have Love Hurts in this movie. Hopefully, Miramax will pay for it, but why don't you cover it? Then she had the idea to bring in Keith Carradine, who had done a movie for Robert Altman's Nashville or done a song for Robert Altman's Nashville last time he did a song for a movie, and they just did this beautiful cover, and it really, really worked for the movie. My opinion.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking to JT Mollner and Giovanni Ribisi from Strange Darling. It's a new film that's out in theaters today. Giovanni, the use of color and contrast in this film really stuck out to me, and I'd love to talk about that a little bit. Let's talk about this pivotal scene in the movie between our two leads, before things have gone south, where they're smoking and flirting in the car outside a motel, and the whole scene is bathed in the blue light from this motel sign. It's very gripping. How did you and JT decide that that blue would be the best color for that scene?

Giovanni Ribisi: Well, JT and I had conversations for, I think, four or five months leading up to production, and it was just so incredible. It was just such a great creative period for me because we were in our own bubble, talking about the film, watching movies, talking about logistics and establishing concepts that became a foundation or an M.O. that would inform every other creative decision. One of the things that was really important for us was to try to create a world that felt more or less like the darker recesses of a fairy tale.

We had our mission statement, as JT has said before, was blood on the flowerbed. Then there was a third factor there for us that I think was really important, which is just like the notion of trying to look away from what the current creative zeitgeist or whatever that is, whatever's going on that's been generated out of streaming. Again, like digital psychologies where filmmaking, really, there's a certain, I guess, resulting in homogeny or something that we know. I mean, and so we, again, not that it's all bad or wrong, it's just we just wanted to kind of do something different and really use that as a creative impetus to just, even if it's wrong, just do that, right?

I think that the idea of taking a scene and putting these two people in what originally the purpose was making them feel like they were in these black holes with a focal point of blue in this dark truck. The idea of doing that, bathing them in blue light for this eight page scene or something to that effect in the script, just resonated with us. It almost felt irreverent.

JT Mollner: Yes, we really. We were watching. There was just a feeling at the time, too, and both of us were feeling this way, for whatever reason, inspired by a lot of the films that had weaponized color, movies like Cries and Whispers, Bergman, and Blue Velvet and The Devils. We knew we wanted to use color as weaponry here, and we wanted to use primary colors and really push certain emotional beats and character beats with those different primary colors throughout the film. That scene had to be blue, and we're going to get some [unintelligible 00:19:08] for it.

Giovanni Ribisi: I mean, it could have been a completely different scene. Same lights, same camera, same lenses, same form. Everything had it, but the performances and the editing and the direction from JT really made it sing. That's something that could go really off the rails.

Kousha Navidar: Well, Giovanni, when you're describing the ways in which you were thinking about having, like, for instance, two characters, each stuck in their own black holes, their own voids, there's such a clear connection between the visual choices you're making and the performance choices, and you live on both sides of that in your career. When you were going into production, was there anything specific you knew you wanted to do as a cinematographer to support the actors that maybe a cinematographer did for you in another project when you were an actor?

Giovanni Ribisi: Wow. Yes. I mean, it's so grateful, for, I mean, really, truly any cinematographer and what they do for an actor, because it becomes so important, I think, over the last 15 years, you really realize the difference that a 25 millimeter lens can do to somebody's performance, as opposed to a 75. Also, you know, editing is. I think films are made in the editing room, and that's such an understated factor in filmmaking. For me, the difference, I mean, and I don't want to say that because I'm an actor, but even just as a fan of movies, I'm watching A Hero's Journey, and that's an individual, and this becomes the focal point.

Usually, if there's a person in a movie that we're following their story. Everything comes down to that. As a result, as an offshoot, as far as the image is concerned with that, there really becomes only one place to put a camera. I think part of what's so fascinating about photography is trying to discover that and understand what that is. I've been saying this to people where from acting, you start from a subjective perspective, and you're building the character, really, from the inside out. And cinematography is the inversion of that, where it's more of an objective thing, and you're trying to bring it back down to a subjective, experiential feeling.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, it's interesting because I hear this idea of subversion in some ways that's percolating throughout all of the different ways that we're talking about this movie, which has been so lovely. Unfortunately, we've got to put a pin in it there, but suffice to say, this is a movie with a lot going on. It's Strange Darling, it's in theaters today. We've been talking to JT Mollner, who's the writer and director, and Giovanni Ribisi, the cinematographer. Thank you both so much for your work and for joining us today.

JT Mollner: Thank you so much for having us.

Giovanni Ribisi: Thank you.

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