Interviews
[SXSW Interview] Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto On ‘Don’t Breathe’ and the Current State of Horror!
Director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead) blew audiences away at SXSW with his latest film Don’t Breathe (read my review), which was the festival’s first Midnighter. I was lucky enough to sit down with the film’s stars Dylan Minnette (Goosebumps, Let Me In) and Daniel Zovatto (It Follows) and chat about the film. It’s definitely one of the more conversational interviews that I have done, aided by the fact that Zovatto and Minnette are friends in real life. Check out what they had to say! You can also check out my interview with Alvarez right here.
Bloody Disgusting: First thing’s first: I loved it. It was great.
Dylan Minnette: Awesome!
Daniel Zovatto: Great!
BD: What brought y’all onto the film. Did y’all audition or did you seek it out?
Dylan Minnette: We auditioned. We each met Fede and then read together with other people. We got it first, then read with a bunch of girls and then went to film the movie.
Daniel Zovatto: Yeah it was pretty standard but at the same time it was unique.
BD: It’s a pretty intense film. You both have had experience with intense films, but this is probably one of the more crazy ones. Did you have any reservations about doing it?
Daniel Zovatto: No.
Dylan Minnette: For me it’s not really a reason you would expect, but here’s my story: It was originally supposed to film in Toronto, and then they called me to tell me I got the part, but that the shoot had been moved to Budapest. It took me a week or so to come to terms with it and say “Yes. I want to do this movie.” But I was so afraid of leaving. I had my summer planned out
[Zovatto laughs]Dylan Minnette: I had my band and, you know.
Daniel Zovatto: I called him and went to one of his concerts and was like “Bro you have to do this.”
Dylan Minnette: But it’s Budapest!
Daniel Zovatto: Exactly!
Dylan Minnette: I knew I was going to do it. I think I was just stalling.
Daniel Zovatto: Yes, you were stalling. You were telling me “I’m gonna do it man. It’s just gonna take me a week.” [laughs]
Dylan Minnette: I just had to convince myself because I was excited about the movie but the idea of just going away for the summer was intimidating.
Daniel Zovatto: This was your first time outside of the States?
Dylan Minnette: It was my first time out of the States so I was just intimidated by the idea. I’m glad I did it though because it was one of the best experiences ever. I’m unbelievably proud of the movie and I’m excited to be a part of it. There was no world where I wasn’t going to do it. There was never a chance I was not going to do it.
Daniel Zovatto: Or I would have fuckin’ killed you.
Dylan Minnette: Exactly.
BD: So were y’all friends before?
Both: Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Zovatto: Well I moved to L.A. and we met because we both did an episode of Agents of Shield and we met there and…[looks at Minnette] you were sixteen. That’s crazy.
BD: Well I forgot you were in Scandal. I watch that shit and I was like “Oh shit he was in Scandal.”
Dylan Minnette: Yup!
BD: Well, not anymore.
Dylan Minnette: Yeah, in and out on Scandal.
BD: Anyway, was there a particular scene where you were…I don’t want to say ready to throw in the towel, but where you were like “Man, fuck this.”
Daniel Zovatto: Yes! There was a scene in a car. I couldn’t say a lint.
Dylan Minnette: Oh oh oh “The guy’s a shut-in!”
Daniel Zovatto: Yeah. I have to say “The guy’s a shut-in” and I would say “The guy’s a…” I don’t know.
Dylan Minnette: What were you saying?
Daniel Zovatto: I don’t know but it took me like eight takes and I couldn’t say it.
Dylan Minnette: I couldn’t stop laughing.
Daniel Zovatto: He took me aside after the takes and showed me the bloopers and by the last time I’m like “I can’t fucking do this!” I’m not American though, so there’s a lot of words that I really have to make sure that I say them right so I don’t sound like I’m Latino. There were a few lines where I just said “Fuck this shit! I can’t fucking do this!” Fede was in the back cheering me on though. “You can do this Danny! You can do this!” They were all laughing at me.
Dylan Minnette: But what were you saying?
Daniel Zovatto: I forget. I was saying something like “sha-da” or something. I don’t know. Anyway. That was a hard scene for me.
Daniel Zovatto and Dylan Minnette, ComingSoon.net
BD: The should just add the blooper reel to the credits. It would probably do wonders for the movie.
Dylan Minnette: It was amazing.
Daniel Zovatto: It was so horrible.
BD: Well you’ve each had a horror film come out in the past year, and yes I am counting Goosebumps as horror film even though it’s not a horror film.
Dylan Minnette: Okay. Yeah.
BD: So Dylan you did Goosebumps and Daniel, you did It Follows. Are you wanting to do more horror or is it something that just kind of fell into your lap?
Dylan Minnette: If I’m going to do horror I only want to do horror that’s good. So reading the script and knowing that Fede is making it I knew that it was quality stuff.
BD: But what if it’s not Fede? What if it’s written by someone else?
Dylan Minnette: If it’s a script that I like then yeah, totally. It has to be something that is different from the last character I played. I don’t want to repeat myself and I don’t want to make a trend.
BD: Yeah and you were the bully in Let Me In, so you’re doing a pretty good job in changing it up.
Dylan Minnette: Yeah.
Daniel Zovatto: I did a few horror movies but I’ve been really fortunate to work with three genius directors. Larry Fessenden (Beneath) is a genius and David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) and Fede are as well. Those are three very different movies and I’ve been given three very different roles. I did get the whole “Are you sure you want to do another horror movie?” questions from people and I said “Uh, yeah I want to do this one.” It was unique, different and the character was completely someone else who was so far removed from who I am.
BD: Is that something that you feel is looked down on in Hollywood? Taking a horror role?
Daniel Zovatto: No, but that fact of doing two in a row-
Dylan Minnette: And a lot of people get their start in horror movies so it’s kind of inevitable. It’s not frowned upon. It’s kind of like a rite of passage. It’s going to happen at some point.
BD: This is sort of related but it’s like how it used to be looked down upon for film actors to do TV shows. Now, a lot of film actors are doing TV shows. So my dream is for actors to go back to horror.
Daniel Zovatto: Well you know what I think it will happen because there’s a resurgence with how films are being made. I think we went through 10 years of shit horror but that in the past couple of years it’s changing. The Witch is a great film
BD: Oh I love it. Not everyone loves it, but I love it.
Dylan Minnette: I really liked it
Daniel Zovatto: The Babadook was great. Cloverfield is supposed to be good.
BD: Cloverfield is good. I saw it two nights ago.
Dylan Minnette: I want to see it.
Daniel Zovatto: But I really thing things are changing. I’m dying to see another The Shining-level of film.
Dylan Minnette: Well for me the best horror movie I had seen in a long time was the Evil Dead remake when it came out.
Daniel Zovatto: It’s so different.
Dylan Minnette: It is so different and then I saw It Follows and was just so impressed.
BD: Well that’s another thing. It Follows, The Babadook and The Witch are films that the festival circuit really loved but then when they got a wide release the mainstream was like “NO. What the fuck is this?”
Daniel Zovatto: Because they want to see Transformers.
BD: Exactly. Some people just want jump scares every two seconds and don’t really know how to handle “smart” horror.
Dylan Minnette: But audiences are becoming smarter.
BD: That is true.
Dylan Minnette: I feel like the movie has to be marketed properly though. Like with our movie we had all this secrecy and I think that really helps audience reception.
BD: I completely agree. All three of those movies I just mention had a lot of hype, and hopefully that doesn’t happen with this one. Well, I’m certainly not helping matters. I gave it a 5 out of 5 so…whoops.
Dylan Minnette: Oh thank you!
Daniel Zovatto: Yeah man, thank you!
BD: Anyway, I’m getting the wrap-up here, but it was great talking to both of you.
Dylan Minnette: You as well!
Daniel Zovatto: Same to you.
Check out Don’t Breathe when it hits theaters on August 26, 2016!
Interviews
Paul Tremblay on Fighting AI with Horror in New Novel ‘Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep’
Paul Tremblay didn’t start his writing career believing he’d be battling machines over the sanctity of his job, but like so many writers of his generation, the battle found him. In the years since Large Language Models (LLMs) and neural networks started gaining traction as an advertised shortcut to creativity, Tremblay has been active in lawsuits to prevent the use of his works in training AI models, and he’s found that, with each new project, he has to consider the possibility that some LLM, somewhere, is going to latch on to what he’s creating.
“Now I feel like I’m thinking about, ‘Man, how am I going to write things that would be really hard or impossible for an AI to replicate?’,” Tremblay told me, speaking by Zoom from his home in Massachusetts. “Maybe some of that is ego. I’m sure every writer thinks, ‘Oh, an AI could never write what I write.’ Yes, I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of the thought process.”
While that’s something Tremblay might consider with any new work at this point in his career, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts, The Cabin at the End of the World, and many other novels and short stories tackled it in a more direct way with his latest book. Inspired by Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and the quirky humor of the Coen Brothers, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is Tremblay’s attempt at a sci-fi-horror mash-up that’s both darkly funny and existentially nightmarish. It’s also, in his own words, a screed against the movement by AI companies to supplant human artists.
“I didn’t want to make it too didactic, but no, I playfully described this book as an anti-AI screed,” he said. “This book, in particular, was driven by anger and frustration, for sure. Not every book is going to be driven that way.“
Despite the emotions that fueled it, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep does not read like a screed. Instead, wielding offbeat humor and tech concepts that feel both lived-in and frighteningly tactile, the book lays out tandem narratives all building to the same conclusion, each of them exploring our relationship to machine learning in a different way. One of these narratives belongs to Julia, a former gaming streamer looking for a new challenge in life, who gets a call from a California tech company with an interesting offer.
Paul Tremblay in documentary series “First Word on Horror”
The company has, it seems, implanted some new technology in a brain-dead middle-aged man which will, in theory, allow them to pilot the man’s body through a rudimentary, still-developing system of controls. Julia, with her gaming background, would be the pilot, in her own way just as much a test subject as the human vegetable she’s controlling.
Julia is a Gen Z streamer with an omnivorous pop culture appetite, inspired by Tremblay’s own adult children, who riffs on The Big Lebowski constantly and calls her strange new meat puppet “Bernie” in reference to Weekend at Bernie’s. Her wide frame of reference, and her interest in art and stories far beyond video games, is in part informed by Tremblay’s own experiences with Gen Z, and in part a response to AI companies who scrape art and culture as a means of consuming it for reference without really experiencing a story.
“I know that one of the arguments that OpenAI and other tech companies are trying to make is like, ‘Hey, you writers, you artists, you take pop culture, you take your influences, and you create something. That’s just the same thing that the bots are doing.’ And it’s just not,” Tremblay said. “I wanted to have Julia have her outlook informed by all this pop culture, and I wanted to make that feel really human as a way to show how inhuman the AI is.”
The other side of the story belongs to “Bernie,” who’s addressed in his point-of-view chapters as “You.” In these chapters, the technology in Bernie’s body starts to flicker images through his seemingly dead brain, delivering half-remembered imagery and perspective in a nod to the “hallucinations” of an AI model groping for understanding it can never reach. These chapters in particular show off Tremblay’s flair for formalist shake-ups, and echo the kind of hyperstimulated writing that Dick and Ellison made so influential.
“I think it was more just the general Philip K. Dick feeling of ‘The world is so strange,'” Tremblay said. “He’s a lot funnier, I think, than maybe a lot of people credit him. That’s definitely what I was thinking of when writing the book.“
Bernie’s chapters embody the strangeness of Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, presenting imagery that’s at times puzzling, at times eerily filmic, and always unnerving. They also mirror Julia’s own journey in fascinating ways as the odd couple – the Gen Z gamer and the middle-aged vegetable – traverse the United States, and the tech in Bernie’s body wakes up to the possibilities of using his flesh for its own purposes. It’s a compelling narrative technique, but it presented some new writing challenges for Tremblay.
“I quickly realized I couldn’t write this book the same way I have in the past,” he said. “By that, I mean all my other novels I had written in the order in which it was presented, even things that are nonlinear, which is most of them. I knew I couldn’t do that in this book. It’s not a spoiler, but hopefully the readers figure out pretty early that the Bernie chapters are a little bit of a preview of the next chapter from Julia, what’s actually happening with Julia. It’s all refracted from him.”
Mary Roach’s Stiff
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep began with a simple image, inspired by Tremblay’s reading of Mary Roach‘s book chronicling the history of our treatment of corpses, Stiff. As he read, Tremblay imagined a body sitting on an airplane, remote-controlled by someone else. At the time, it was a “silly what-if” concept, filed away in his head. Years later, when he became an author suing a tech company to keep AI from scraping his work for ideas, it started to feel frighteningly plausible, taking the “silly what-if” into the territory of a high-concept horror show about what happens when we try to exploit and commodify uniquely human aspects of consciousness.
“It stuck with me,” Tremblay said of that what-if imagery. “And then a few years later, when I was a part of the case suing OpenAI on behalf of writers, that what-if suddenly didn’t seem as silly. The more I learned about how that corporation operates and without really any sort of ethical thought to anything, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to play with that. That’s actually happening.”
So, what if someone actually in favor of generative AI picks up Tremblay’s self-described “anti-AI screed?” He hopes that, at the very least, he’s made the ride enjoyable in a distinctly human way that might begin to reshape the conversation.
“I think that was another reason why I wanted to have the humor,” Tremblay said. “If people are reading this book who aren’t on the side of like, ‘Hey, LLMs taking authors’ books is bad,’ maybe if they read something that’s cut with some humor, that maybe they’ll be more easily swayed.”
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is now in bookstores everywhere.
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