XX – Karyn Kusama Exclusive Interview
Staci Layne Wilson
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Filmmakers Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin and Karyn Kusama present four horrific tales of terror in XX – one of the few horror anthologies focusing on female filmmakers and characters. In Kusama’s story, “Her Only Living Son,” a mother (Christina Kirk) must deal with the child from hell… literally.
We caught up with her just prior to her May 23 appearance at the Arclight Santa Monica as part of the theater’s “Women in Film” initiative.
Dread Central: We know you’ve done a bit of TV and one other short, but your forte has been in long-form. Was it a challenge, or just plain fun, to be part of an anthology of horror?
Karyn Kusama: Yeah, that’s such a good question. I think short films are a really interesting format to work in. It’s very challenging because you really have to distill your ideas and work in a really kind of decisive way. The story really needs to be kind of quite crystalized in terms of the narrative concerns, so for me, I find it really refreshing actually to have that challenge. It’s not easy; I really admire the people who can make short things that sort of have a narrative muscularity. I think it’s a really amazing skill. I can’t say I know it’s my skill but it’s definitely a different medium. And honestly, I found it really interesting to get the opportunity to write and direct something so quickly. Granted, it was for a very small amount of money but it allowed me a kind of freedom to experiment and it allowed me to explore a story that I probably wouldn’t have made into a full feature. It just gave me a little bit of an interesting creative challenge.
DC: The stories aren’t interconnected, but were you given some guidelines anyway?
KK: The only criteria was, and this criteria interested me in a fundamental way, the only criteria was that we have a lead female character and a female director. And ideally a female writer; I believe that was also part of the mandate.
DC: Your cast is great, especially the mom of the teenager “from hell.”
KK: Well thank you. Christina Kirk is a good friend of mine and I’ve actually wanted to work with her for a long time. I’ve seen most of her work onstage; she’s a wonderful accomplished stage actor and I knew there was fragility to her and a vulnerability that she could make really interesting for this role. Kyle Allen, who plays her son, I found through a series of auditions; and I thought he had an interesting, kind of tormented naturalism, and I really did love getting the chance to work with him. Mike Doyle I worked with on The Invitation, and so it was just kind of nice collection of people I’ve already worked with; some people were new to me but everyone was really quite lovely.
DC: For hardcore horror fans who might think these stories are softer because they’re made my women, what do you say?
KK: I guess to be perfectly honest, I don’t really make movies with an audience in mind, in terms of what they say back to me. I’m really trying to work from a place of: ‘What am I trying to say with the material and the story?’ While I think that there’s a place for those anthologies that are quite gory and sort of heavy on the shock appeal, to be honest it’s just not my thing. I guess to those fans I would say this might not be the anthology for them… or it might actually be a refreshing change of pace.
Synopsis:
XX is a female-driven horror anthology with each director given full creative license to tell any story they choose revolving around a female protagonist. While the directors have been given free creative rein within budget and time constraints, all of the segments themselves involve the horror genre.
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