Interviews
[Interview] Carla Gugino & Bruce Greenwood on Handcuffs, Sexuality and That Damn Hand in ‘Gerald’s Game’
For 25 years, Stephen King‘s 1992 novel Gerald’s Game was considered unfilmable by nearly every filmmaker. Well, every filmmaker except Mike Flanagan. Flanagan read Gerald’s Game when he was 19 years old, and ever since he has been dying to give it a proper film adaptation. Cut to 2017 and we finally have that adaptation (my review) courtesy of Flanagan and Netflix. I was able to interview Flanagan and producer Trevor Macy before the film’s world premiere at Fantastic Fest (the former of which you can read here), but I also had the opportunity to speak with the lovely Carla Gugino (Watchmen, Spy Kids, San Andreas) and the extremely personable Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek, Double Jeopardy, Kingsman: The Golden Circle) about the making of the film.
The main that King’s novel was considered unfilmable is because the bulk of it takes place inside the lead character’s head while she is handcuffed to a bed. In portraying the role of Jessie, Gugino delivers a career-defining performance in what could not have been an easy filming experience. After all, things are bound to get uncomfortable when you’re handcuffed to a bed for three weeks. On the subject of those handcuffs, Gugino had this to say:
“They were very attentive to taking me out of them whenever we could but no matter what I was in them a lot and it was really uncomfortable and I would get bruised. It was definitely a very strange challenge because I’m a very physical person and [with this role] there’s a combination of being kind of sedentary physically while uncomfortable but emotionally extremely active so it was a really odd….But it allowed in terms of that sense of needing to escape oneself and the chatter in our minds and those voices that we can’t get away from and being forced to deal with them. The physical restriction is very helpful for that.”
Gugino commented on how great of a collaborator Flanagan is as a director, as he went above and beyond to make sure she was comfortable throughout the entire filming process. When speaking with Flanagan shortly after speaking with Gugino and when I brought up the handcuffs he had his own input on the subject:
“I’m not going to ask one of my actors to do something that I’m not willing to do so I said ‘Here I’ll do it!’ and in less than five minutes I was like ‘Goddammit this hurts!’ They pinch every nerve in your wrists. Just the weight of your own arm is the thing that gets you. There is nothing to rest your elbow on and just holding yourself up, because you start to shift your weight to try to compensate your wrist for the pain cause by your arm just dangling. Five minutes was all I could take and Carla was in them for three weeks.”
Having Gugino hancuffed to a bed leaves plenty of opportunities for her body to be objectified. In fact, the character is topless in King’s novel. In most films it is usually the woman who is (over-)sexualized. Just look at all of the gratuitous close-ups of the female posterior in any Fast and the Furious film or compare the instances of female nudity to the instances of male nudity (especially when it comes to full-frontal nudity). Some people may have expected Flanagan to be faithful to the novel in that regard, but instead he reverses the stereotypical gender roles, leaving Gugino in a slip and Greenwood in his underwear for the majority of the film’s runtime. So here we have a physically exposed male and a mentally exposed female. It’s a clever move on Flanagan’s part, but Greenwood was not without his reservations, saying:
“I wanted to get clothed earlier because I thought it might feel gratuitous, so I came up with a couple of ideas as to why I might be wearing clothes since it’s her projection of me. I mean you could dress him up like a clown if you wanted to. But I realized that my aim there was just to cover myself up and wasn’t a good enough reason. And Mike just said ‘Look, I hear you man but….you know…you’re not being very persuasive.’ And he was right so we chose the one moment that dovetails with the father to soften the transition. And it’s shocking as a consequence because you just don’t expect it.”
Gugino also added to Greenwood’s statement, chiming in:
“We couldn’t quite justify why she would [imagine him clothed] in a way that was good enough,” said Gugino, “and also that it would almost make it seem more gratuitous. By trying to hide it you’re actually calling [his bare skin] out more.”
Gugino may not have been physically exposed for the film like Greenwood was, but she did have to endure one of the most grueling scenes in the film (rivaled only by the bedroom conversation between young Jessie and her father, played by Chiara Aurelia and E.T.‘s Henry Thomas, respectively). Concluding the interview, I moved on to that scene: the de-gloving scene. In the film, Jessie realizes that the only way to escape the handcuffs is to slice her wrist open and pull her hand out of the cuff. Doing so lifts the skin off of her hand, as if pulling off a glove. On the difficulty of filming the scene and working with the fake hand, Gugino said:
It was technically challenging because when we wanted shots of my hand and face together, and there were quite a few of those, we had to have the cuff tight enough so that it didn’t look like it was easy to pull out of it. So we basically did it as tight as I could handle it which meant that it was really painful but could actually get through so it was a brutal sequence to perform. They did such an amazing job with that prosthetic. It was all completely worth it. I’m not interested in hurting myself or, you know, looking for abuse that I don’t need to go through, but also with something like this you can’t really be too soft on yourself. It was just about getting in there and really going for it and seeing what we could get away with and how much I could handle. There was a lot of sweat and blood in that whole section, but I think our hand stuff took maybe a day or two. I think I put it on twice.”
Gerald’s Game is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
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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