Interviews
[SXSW Interview] Patrick Fugit and Adam Wingard Talk ‘Outcast!’
Cinemax’s new series Outcast, based on the Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) graphic novel of the same name, had its world premiere at the 30th annual SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Conferences and Festivals. While I wasn’t able to catch the premiere due to scheduling issues (I chose to interview James Caan instead), I was able to interview Adam Wingard, who directed the pilot and actor Patrick Fugit. The interview took place at a press roundtable with me, Daily Dead writer Heather Wixson and Pajiba writer Kristy Puchko. We all took turns asking questions about the series and here is what Wingard and Fugit had to say!
Robert was talking about the casting of the series and they were saying that you had some interesting stories about the audition process.
Patrick Fugit: As far as I know we only met with one kid. I got the part and then Phil Glenister got the part and they said they needed to cast who would eventually be Wren Schmidt. Then they were looking for this little boy. We came into the casting director’s office one day and Gabriel comes walking in. He’s small for a 10-year-old at the time. He’s still pretty small but he has an insanely large personality and he’s very clever. He comes into the room and basically just owns the room. He comes in, he introduces himself, he shakes everybody’s hands.
Adam Wingard: He’s got a handshake, yeah!
Fugit: So his mom is like “Cool, you do your thing” and she takes off. Then he just sits down in the chair and I can see him sizing me up.
Wingard: And he’s not nervous at all, or at least he doesn’t appear to be.
Fugit: No, he was ready for something like that.
Did he make you nervous?
Fugit: Yes. So he sits down and Adam’s like “Okay so, are you good? Do you have any questions?”
Wingard: Well I thought I had to talk to him like he was a kid. I’m trying to break everything down in very simple terms and he’s beyond that. I would say “Okay you’re going to go into scary mode right here.” But he’s not looking at it like that. He’s thinking about his motivation and stuff and he said something to that effect during the audition where he had this in-depth approach to it. We were all like “Uhhh…..yes?”
Fugit: So Adam says “Do you have any questions?” and Gabriel says “Nope. I’m ready.” Then we do a take which is us coming in and talking to him while he’s possessed and going back and forth between an innocent 10-year-old and a demon persona. And we walk in and he’s so in it and so committed that I couldn’t help but really just be in it with him. So we did the first take and I was like “I don’t see any other possibilities. This is the dude. I think I turned around and looked at Chris [Black, the showrunner] and was like [mouths “Oh my God”]. “Who is this guy?” So we did it a few times and Adam made some adjustments and what’s really impressive is when young actors can change and take direction because a lot of times kids are coached. So they memorize what to do but not really why they are doing it. Once Adam figured he could direct Gabriel with why he should do something and Gabriel could interpret that in his own way (like an actor is supposed to be able to do) he could just run with it.
Adam for you. Coming from a film world, what was the biggest change for you in terms of directing the pilot. Was there a big change for you in terms of story telling?
Wingard: There’s definitely a different kind of time constraint. You’re on a much more accelerated schedule than you are on a film so that in and of itself was kind of scary for me. The main thing that was different for me is that when you’re making a feature film you’re making something that exists as a singular event, unless you’re setting up sequels and stuff. With this, you know that you’re trying to set up at least one season worth of episodes so for me I was trying to make my decisions like picking locations and casting and designing the look and feel of it. I had to ask myself “Is this something that’s duplicatable?” One of the things that helped me out was working with someone like David Tattersall, our cinematographer, who also shot The Walking Dead pilot. He’s shot so many movies from Green Mile to Speed Racer and everything in between. And he really helped me look at how to get through something like this. On the flip side of that coin, the network and everyone who’s putting all of this money in still want it to look and feel like a motion picture and not like a network series so you have all of these pressures to make it look and feel like that. Except in this case you only have half the time to do it.
To follow up on that: When you’re directing a pilot you’re setting the tone for an entire series. Is there a certain kind of pressure that comes with that as well?
Wingard: Fortunately for me all I can do really is put what was on the page and Robert [Kirkman, the creator] was a great guide in that sense that he has a very distinctive idea of what the tone and everything was. I come from a more humorous horror background. A lot of the stuff I have has humor in it and the horror that I’ve done in the past has a lot of jump scares and things of that nature. So there’s actually a moment on the pilot where I was approaching a creepy scene where a character is sitting there and in the script this possessed woman comes up to this little boy and his smelling him and grabs his hair and pulls him out of the chair. Whenever I was blocking it out I thought it might be fun to do a jump scare version of that where it’s the same thing but instead of her kind of looming over him we creepily push in on the boy and a hand comes in and yanks him out. I was doing a couple of takes of that and was a good ways into it when Robert comes over and asks “Um, what are you doing right now?” And I said “Well I’m making a jump scare” and he’s responds with “Well why don’t you take another look at what’s on the page and just shoot that.” I pushed back a little and then he kind of reiterated that it’s not a show about jump scares or the moment of violence. It’s about the creeping dread of that moment. That was a big turning point for me, which was really the first scary scene we had filmed. This is a show that’s about the anticipation of the scare and not the actual scare.
So how did you choose to approach your character?
Fugit: One of the things that’s always interesting to me about character stories is duality. For me what’s interesting about Kyle is his story is dark and his circumstances are very dark, but I like to try to get across that Kyle’s a very bright person and has a very bright arc and has these circumstances that surround him in darkness. That’s what he succumbs to when we meet him in the first episode and any character that appears one way but inwardly is something else is interesting to me. I wanted to get that across. I didn’t want him to feel to dark or down or depressing or something like that.
It’s kind of hard to watch a character that is one-note and dark. But the way you’re talking about Kyle it sounds like he has something that will make people want to keep with him. Is that something you think about?
Fugit: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like if a character is portrayed in one way and carries that momentum throughout then whoever plays that has to be really good at that note. You know, there are actors who are really good at that one note but most actors need more texture or variety to keep interested. I always think that if there’s more going on or a motivation to the character that they don’t get to express until they’ve discovered more about themselves then it makes it more compelling for the viewer to watch. You feel more of a desire to root for them or keep going because if a character is just a victim of the circumstances then he’s kind of annoying. So somebody who wants to be proactive and not be subject to anything is more interesting than the other way around.
Did you have a scene or a sequence that you found particularly difficult to film? Like one that after so many takes you were just like “Screw it, let’s move on?”
Wingard: For me I was nervous because there’s so much action with child actors. We’ve touched on that a little bit here but there’s some pretty extreme stuff that happens with Gabriel that involves him levitating and getting knocked around and all this stuff, so even beyond the fear of working with kids for the first time and being able to direct them in a way that feels realistic, I had a lot of questions as to how we were going to achieve the physical aspect of it. Those fears immediately went away once we hired our stunt coordinator and the rest of the team because they had a great handle on it. Hiro [Koda], the stunt coordinator, has a great knack of finding the perfect stuntperson for a kid. He’ll find a full-grown adult that looks like a child from the right angle and who can act believably in that kind of way and he’s able to coach the kids to do as much on-screen as possible while keeping them safe the entire time. But there was a lot of fears going into it but once we got going it was more a fear of if we could get all this and less about the technical ability of doing it.
Fugit: Yeah and sequences where you have to express physical space and time can be difficult to storytell because if you’re sitting there and watching it your mind can track what’s going on but as soon as you have to start telling the story and tell it for the audience then it become much more complicated. Like he’s talking about but also form the actor’s perspective there’s a lot of things that have to happen with your emotional pitch. Especially if you’re looking at a sequence like what we filmed which took two and a half days.
Wingard: Well it was sort of several possession scenes spread out over the course of two and a half days. [laughs]
Fugit: So yeah two and a half days of pretty high-pitched physical exertion and portraying emotion on top of that and re-doing the makeup and hair and looking fake-sweaty again, getting blood off that may have happened. Add to that getting out of wire harnesses and stuff like that? It can be pretty exhausting. I think that going into that I kept wondering how Gabriel was going to handle it but the dude crushes everything so he crushed that too. He actually kept me going through a lot of it. I’d be like “What’s Wingard doing now?” But Gabriel is just 110% every take, all the time. He’s biting me and hitting me and jumping on me. That sort of thing.
Can you guys talk a little bit about the research you did with possessions and what you came into this with?
Wingard: Well I was already familiar with real-life possessions and a whole lot of different possession movies. The Exorcist is one of my favorite films. I sort of ironically but not really love The Exorcist II as well for different reasons. So for me I was really familiar with the idea but Robert’s approach to it was that he created this entirely new mythology to the way we were approaching the exorcisms and what I thought was fun was that you are watching characters who are looking at it the same way and playing by the rules that we know of it and then they’re kind of discovering that things are different and that this is the kind of thing that is a different reality than what we’re dealing with here. And that was also what drew me to the project to begin with. I didn’t want to do another Catholic exorcism movie or show. I want to tackle a lot of different sub-genres over the course of my career and exorcism is just one of those that is kind of lingering out there and if I’m going to do it it’s got to be something that’s really new and different and that’s what this is.
Before they send us off do you have anything you want to tease about the show?
Wingard: Um, that’s a good question. I don’t know.
Patrick is just hiding his face.
Wingard: [laughs] Um, well I think the pilot has a lot of surprises and mystery to it. That’s what makes it such a fun series. It doesn’t give you all the answers. I think it sets up the tone and feel and ha a lot of great moments but ultimately it leaves you wanting more and I think that’s what good TV does.
Fugit: Yeah. There’s always parts of the story that has a discovery period. Those are always really exciting to me. That’s what this first season involves. Establishing the rules of this world and sort of seeking out answers and things like that that I find really fun.
Were either of you superstitious about making a show about demons?
Wingard: I’m trying to think if I ever had any moments like that. I mean we were shooting in a real church and I didn’t want to be disrespectful to the people actually running the church. Even though the first thing we did is I think everybody was swearing like normal, but you’ve got to check yourself because at the end of the day you don’t want to be disrespectful. I mean it’s not my belief system but you still don’t want to disrespect.
Fugit: We had people put up signs up on garages on the street that said ‘Outcast’ is going to bring the devil to South Carolina.
Check out Outcast when it premieres on Cinemax on June 3, 2016!
Of all the places to find a coven of witches, the attic above a Christian youth camp is probably the last place you’d think to look. But that’s just what we find in Camp, a surrealist nightmare of feminist empowerment from Canadian filmmaker Avalon Fast.
Emily (Zola Grimmer) is still reckoning with her involvement in a horrific tragedy when she accidentally contributes to the death of her best friend, Charlie (Giselle Morison). Unable to move on, the traumatized teen takes a job at a rural summer camp, hoping to forget her own sorrows by looking after at-risk kids. She quickly connects with a counselor named Clara (Alice Wordsworth) and finds comfort in her close-knit group of female friends. But a mysterious whisper from deep in the woods warns that they may be leading her down a darker path.
Fast burst onto the scene in 2022 with Honeycomb, a psychological horror film that follows a burgeoning matriarchy. Known for their focus on “Girl Horror” stories, the talented young filmmaker tackles similar themes in Camp as Emily leaves the modern world behind to embrace a dark vision of self-discovery through magic.
Ahead of the film’s U.S. release on June 26, Bloody Disgusting sat down with Fast to chat about the nebulous nature of good vs. evil and the intoxicating power of female-driven horror.
Bloody Disgusting: What inspired this unique story? Did you go to religious summer camps when you were young?
Avalon Fast: I did. I went to lots of different summer camps, but all of them were primarily Bible camps. The memory I have of camp is kind of strange. I was very homesick as a kid, and I didn’t necessarily enjoy all my time there. I definitely remember meeting some interesting girls at camp and having that presence of religion hovering around the whole experience.
BD: I really love the film’s gorgeous natural setting. Camp is the kind of surrealist nightmare that you don’t just watch. You feel it too. How did you approach creating this world?
AF: Well, a huge part of it was working with my cinematographer Eily Sprungman, who’s a very close friend. We spent years prepping, shot listing, storyboarding, and mood boarding. She’d had a similar experience to mine. We grew up around the same place, and so we understood each other’s visions from the get-go. But there are so many other pieces that came together. The costuming, the art, and the animated sequences were done by Sofiya Iurkevych. One of our producers, Taylor Nodrick, was obsessed with shooting on Super 8 film. I’ve always wanted to as well, so all the memory sequences were shot on Super 8. It was just a lot of people with an understanding and a vision for what this project was. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
To the extent that you’re comfortable sharing, what’s your relationship to witchcraft, and what does Camp have to say about modern witches?
Well, that’s the question of Camp. It’s not that I don’t resonate with any of these things, but I specifically wanted Camp to be a little bit ambiguous around what witchcraft looks like. Is this witchcraft? Are these girls witches? Emily explicitly asks if that’s what’s happening here, and the answer isn’t yes. The film isn’t going to answer that question for you. My relationship to magic and witchcraft? It’s tough. I feel like there’s so much magic, connection, and spirituality that comes from these friendships, the closeness of these women, and what’s happening around them. A lot of what Camp is trying to say or show is just that magic can come out of friendship.
I loved watching these female friendships develop. And you’re right. No one ever says the word “coven,” but you can feel that connection, and you can see a change in Emily as those relationships grow. I’m also really fascinated with the way Camp plays with the idea of good and evil. At one point, Clara says, “Maybe God drew us to the devil,” which stopped me in my tracks. How do you view witchcraft or the magic these girls are experiencing in regard to good and evil?
That was such a huge part of the script’s construction. The story is really trying to keep a balance between those two things. I like asking people if they think these girls are good or bad, because I feel like a lot of people come out of the film thinking one or the other. They’ll say things like “thank God Emily found her people” or “God, I really wish she’d gone home.” I just don’t think there’s ever an answer. I wanted to explore the idea of going down the wrong path, especially coming out of grief. What makes you a bad person, and does healing mean you’re looking to become a better person? I don’t have an answer, but I do feel like that’s a huge part of what Camp is asking. What is good? What is bad? Why did God bring me to the devil?
Yes, because this is all happening at “God camp” in Emily’s words. So how can both of those things exist at the same time? Along those lines, I’m also fascinated by the voice Emily hears in the woods. Without spoiling too much, what is this voice asking, and what is required in return?
Emily comes to camp with a shout into the void, asking can anyone hear me? Does anyone want to? And it’s answered so clearly by these girls, specifically responding only with love, care, support, and trust. It’s like her prayers were answered. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to be alright, but Emily is looking for peace. She’s looking for a moment where she feels pure good. And I think, even at its surface level, she does get that experience.
Personally, I don’t really think people are good or bad. I think we all exist somewhere in the middle. Camp centers traditionally villainized characters, but that’s where Emily seems to find her peace, however you choose to define it.
I also wanted to show the experience of having decided that you are a bad person, you’ve made mistakes, and you feel cursed. Then when you meet other people who have done things that you would consider worse, you can actually feel good in their presence. You feel like less of a bad person. I think that’s a huge part of the story as well. Emily’s finding her version of other fucked up people, and she feels less fucked up around them. I’ve found that in my own life. It’s a cool thing. I don’t think it’s bad.
I don’t think it’s bad either. It’s finding your home, your people. We meet Emily in the aftermath of unthinkable trauma. Is this a story about mental health and healing?
Witnessing it myself. witnessing other people experience tragedy and then move through grief, you hear a lot of talk about healing or coming out the other side. There’s so much conversation around what that looks like, with self-care and showing up for yourself. I always felt really averse to it. It annoyed me. I think the beginning of the film speaks to that. The therapeutic version of what getting help looks like is obviously very different from what Camp is showing. And again, I don’t have an answer for what you’re supposed to do. But I think that’s another question I was asking: how do you heal? Do you heal at all? Is that the end goal, or are we just trying to get better? It’s something I experienced in my own grief. And the answer, for me, at least now, is just that I’m not looking to get better. So I felt like I hadn’t. I found it hard to find people to have those conversations with. And I think that’s what I ultimately wanted to make a film about.
I love that unanswered question. In my own experience, I’ve had to reframe what healing actually looks like. There’s not really an endpoint. It’s just finding a way to keep going. There’s also an element of sacrifice in this story, particularly regarding another counselor named Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith). What role does she play in Emily’s journey?
For me, Jo is this human embodiment of Charlie, Emily’s friend. As Jo, she had a life at this camp before meeting Emily, and then was kind of taken over by Charlie’s spirit. I think a lot of people view Emily’s final choice as horrendous and tragic. In a way it is, but for me, if Jo becomes her angel, it’s almost like a self-sacrifice. Jo knows that by sacrificing herself, she’ll be giving Emily power to move forward. In the original script, the girls were supposed to bring out another counselor, JB (Aidan Laudersmith), and burn his body. But I just thought, there’s no way sacrificing this guy could give the girls enough power. There’s just no way, right? Logically, that just didn’t line up for me.
I’m glad you mentioned JB, because he has his own tragic arc. How do men factor into the world of Camp?
The way men factor into my world is so bizarre. I have such little respect for them in my films, which is something I’ve been called on. I think I have to challenge myself in the future to make a movie about a boy because, these boys … It’s not that the men in my films aren’t redeemable, but there’s no depth to these characters. They’re just treated with such disrespect. I don’t know why I do that, actually. That’s something for me to look into. It was the same with Honeycomb. They’re just such peripheral characters. I’ve had people ask about Kayne (Henri Gillespi), the scary guy at the fire, what happens to him? I just think, I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s not the point of the story.
Well, I can say after a lifetime of watching women on the periphery of the story, the course correction feels nice. In a similar vein, I’m in love with your homepage, avalonfast.com. There’s an image of girls on a film set and then a still from Honeycomb in which a blood-covered girl is screaming at the sky. And in the middle, it just says Girl Horror. It’s a really powerful statement that gives me chills. How do you define Girl Horror, and what draws you to these types of stories?
I was obsessed with the term when I started making my movies. It was something I’d come up with to kind of brand myself and describe what I was doing. Then I went through a period where I felt like it was a bit gender exclusive and didn’t interest me as much. But now I’ve come full circle on the term. I think it’s a bit of a commentary on youth and the horror of growing up female. But I think everybody can relate to that experience. I don’t want it to feel like this exclusive thing, that I make movies exclusively for girls, because I don’t think I do. I’m interested in exploring what Girl Horror means. Originally, it was just a title, something I came up with, and now it’s become something that resonates with people. You said it gave you chills. That’s cool for me to hear because there’s obviously some depth there.
Are you working on anything new?
Yes. I am actually making a movie about a boy. That’s the next thing.
That’s exciting! The more I think about feminism, the more I end up coming back to men and boys, because they have a place in the world of Girl Horror too.
Absolutely. It’s all just part of being human.
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