Interviews
‘They/Them’ Director John Logan on Slashers, Kevin Bacon, and Putting Characters First [Interview]
They/Them, pronounced “They-slash-Them,” is a slasher horror film set at an LGBTQIA+ conversion camp executive produced, written, and directed by John Logan (“Penny Dreadful”).
The slasher will debut on Peacock on Friday, August 5.
Ahead of the release, Bloody Disgusting chatted with Logan about the film’s emphasis on characters, the research that went into the setting, and the filmmaker’s love of slashers.
Logan’s “Penny Dreadful” puts its characters first, creating gothic horror and drama from them. When asked if this is his main entry point into creating a narrative, Logan answered, “Exactly, right. Also, with characters, because if you start with the story, you end up writing stick figures to satisfy your plot. But if you start with characters, the characters can give you the plot. They can suggest what the conflicts are supposed to be.
“I always start with characters. For this movie, I started with the seven campers. I just started with those characters I fell in love with and thought, how can I challenge them and put them in different situations?“
They/Them also challenges the notion of a slasher as it puts psychological horror at the forefront. Logan explains how he took his love of the subgenre and used it to create a subversion that doubles as a love letter to slasher cinema.
Logan states, “It was certainly a combination of a celebration of the slasher movie because I am unapologetic in my affection for slasher movies. Nothing makes me happier, so I love that genre. But also a chance to subvert it in a loving way. So yeah, as you know, we have a camp in the woods, we have a mass killer, we have various murder weapons being used, so all those wonderful things from slasher movies, we’re able to use them for the purpose of the angels, if you will, which is to celebrate these queer kids.”
Logan also details how the character-driven focus and specificity of his protagonists led to a lengthy casting process. “It was long and difficult because I knew those seven campers were the movie. They were the beating heart of the movie. I wanted queer actors who were comfortable and confident about their identity because it’s a movie about the horror of trying to take people’s identities away. We only looked at LGBTQ+ actors for those roles, which took a while because they’re very bespoke. I wanted actors who could educate me as well.
“Because I’m not trans, I’m not non-binary, I needed to know. I’m also 60. I’m also not 20. I needed actors I could work with who would help me, and that’s what we found. The great lightning strike moment was Theo Germaine because the movie opens with Jordan’s face and ends with Jordan’s face. They are the beating heart of the movie, the Hamlet of this play. I met Theo; they were just so engaging, involved in the process, and willing to be open with me about their experience. We could help create Jordan together. I’m very pleased and proud of all those actors.”
THEY/THEM — Pictured: — (Photo by: Josh Stringer/Blumhouse)
While Logan may have had a considerable undertaking in casting his campers, finding the right actor to play camp owner, Owen Whistler, was far easier than expected. Not only was Kevin Bacon the only choice for the role, but his experience set the tone during production.
“It’s one of those rare cases where I wrote with an actor in mind, which normally I don’t. I started writing, and Kevin just came into my head. I’ve known Kevin for years. We’ve always wanted to work together. But I kept writing; I kept saying, ‘Oh my God, this is Kevin Bacon.’ Because, as you know, he can be so charming one moment and then turn and be so icy and villainous at the next moment. Very few actors can do that with total authenticity on both sides of that equation. I wrote it, and I called Jason Blum and said, ‘It’s got to be Kevin Bacon. I’ve got to talk to Kevin about this.’ He loved that idea. Thankfully, Kevin was flattered. Kevin is just the ultimate professional, too.
“The first thing we shot in the entire movie was his opening speech. The first time any of those actors saw him was walking through the stairs as Owen Whistler giving a five-page speech. It was a lesson in professionalism and told everyone, ‘You need to up your game to match this man.'”
Logan may have created a fictional horror movie, but he researched heavily and drew from authentic, harrowing experiences.
THEY/THEM — Pictured: — (Photo by: Josh Stringer/Blumhouse)
The filmmaker explained, “I had met some people who’ve gone through conversion therapy, and they were very generous with their stories. What they told me was harrowing because it’s this witch’s brew combination of physical torment. Things like sleep deprivation, forced marches, food deprivation, and even more insidious psychological assault, where their very identity is being questioned and assaulted day, after day, after day. Those stories really stayed with me. So, in the movie, you see a good combination of both those things. Carrie Preston‘s character has this very long scene in the movie, this psychological trying to take Theo Germaine’s character apart, just with words. The sort of psychological gamesmanship that exists in these so-called conversion therapy camps.
“Then there’s the physical brutality, which, ours is a horror movie, so we extrapolate certain elements of that, but it’s also based on reality. I had some researchers put together a huge research document on conversion camp therapy, and it’s terrifying. And it’s terrifying, as we sit and speak, that it’s legal in half the United States. At a moment where queer people’s basic liberties and human dignity are being threatened and challenged, I think it’s very important we get a chance to tell stories like this. That’s why I’m eternally thankful to Peacock and Blumhouse for giving us a chance to tell a story that presents queer people as heroic.”
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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