persdossier - Remain In Light

REMAIN IN LIGHT PRESENTEERT
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
EEN FILM VAN JEMAINE CLEMENT & TAIKA WAITITI
PRAKTISCH
Publieksprijs, Toronto International Film Festival 2014 (Midnight Madness)
Publieksprijs & eervolle vermelding, Sitges International Film Festival 2014
RELEASEDATUM BELGIE:
TBC
DISTRIBUTIE BENELUX
REMAIN IN LIGHT
Lange Winkelhaakstraat 26
2060 Antwerpen
03 485 54 45
BOEKINGEN
Olivier Van den Broeck
[email protected]
0473 56 83 88
PERS
Kay Doms
[email protected]
0499 93 46 22
2 SYNOPSIS
Vampier zijn in de 21e eeuw is geen gemakkelijke opdracht. Dit ontdekken de
documentairemakers die een trio bloeddorstige huisgenoten volgen tijdens hun alledaagse
bezigheden in Wellington, Nieuw-Zeeland. Maar wanneer ze hipster Nick in een vampier
veranderen, worden de rollen omgedraaid. Het is niet de nieuweling die de knepen van het vak
moet aanleren, maar de onsterfelijken die worden ingewijd in de moderne wereld van
modetrends, Facebook en technologie. Integreren in de samenleving is nooit zo moeilijk
geweest voor een bloedzuiger.
De hilarische mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, geschreven en geregisseerd
door Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) en Taika Waititi (Eagle vs Shark), won de
publieksprijs op het Toronto International Film Festival, de publieksprijs en eervolle vermelding
op het Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival.
3 SPECIFICATIES
LAND:
Nieuw-Zeeland
JAAR:
2014
DUUR:
86 minuten
BIOSCOOPFORMAAT:
2.35 : 1
GELUID:
Dolby Digital
ORIGINELE VERSIE:
Engels
ONDERTITELING:
Nederlands & Frans
4 CAST
VLADISLAV
VIAGO
DEACON
PETYR
NICK
STU
JACKIE
Jemaine Clement
Taika Waititi
Jonathan Brugh
Ben Fransham
Cori Gonzalez-Macuer
Stuart Rutherford
Jackie van Beek
5 CREW
REGIE & SCENARIO Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi
PRODUCER Taika Waititi
Emanuel Michael
Chelsea Winstanley
CO-PRODUCERS Pamela Harvey-White
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Jemaine Clement
CINEMATOGRAFIE Richard Bluck
D.J. Stipsen
PRODUCTION DESIGN Ra Vincent
GELUID Plan 9
KOSTUUMS Samantha Morley
MONTAGE Tom Eagles
Yana Gorskaya
Jonathan Woodford-Robinson
CASTING Tina Cleary
MAKE-UP Amy McLennan
6 AN INTERVIEW WITH SOME VAMPIRES
Interview – “Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi: Bloody hilarious”
These two have been friends for years, and their latest film What We Do In The Shadows, which
they co-wrote, co-directed, and co-star in, is not just a grand celebration of ordinary vampires,
but of a fruitful creative relationship. They have made their names separately with Flight of the
Conchords and Boy, but some of their first steps in the entertainment world were made
together, at Victoria University in the 1990s.
"I don't remember the moment when we actually met, but I remember the moment I first saw
Jemaine," Waititi recalls. "It was in the library at Victoria University. I remember looking across
and going, 'Ugh. Man, look at that dick!' because he had this colourful Samoan shirt on, and I
remember thinking, 'Oh, he's probably one of those snooty arty types.'
"And that night there were auditions for a university show, and I saw him there and thought, 'Oh
no, not that guy again'."
Jemaine laughs: "I remember that same moment seeing Taika and thinking, 'What a dick!'
because he had a reggae hat on, one of those big red, yellow and green crocheted hats. So
both of us based our instant dislike on each other's clothes. Both of us were sending
misleading messages about our ethnicities!"
Fortunately, they both got through the auditions for the show, and started hanging out, which
quickly changed their initial judgments.
"I think when I saw Taika do his audition bits, he was actually one of the few people who made
me laugh."
They went on to form comedy acts, So You're A Man (which included Bret McKenzie), and The
Humourbeasts, and have since collaborated on episodes of Flight of the Conchords, and
Radiradirah, as well as Eagle vs Shark - Waititi's first feature in which he had Clement as the
lead.
But pretty much throughout their entire relationship, they've been thinking of making a vampire
7 movie together - they've both been keen on the genre since they were young.
"I've loved vampires since I was a kid, or loved a lot of the vampire movies that I saw. Anything
with sharp teeth really," Waititi explains. "I remember you could get those fake vampire teeth,
and I remember just keeping them in all the time."
"Me too! They were these plastic ones with hinges," Clement adds.
"They were the classic ones," Waititi agrees, "and they made your gums bleed because they
were quite sharp."
Clement even started a gang of 10-year-old schoolboys called The Vampires.
"The only rule was that everyone had to wear those fake teeth. And then we would ride around
the streets of Masterton on bikes, yelling out to girls: 'I vant to drink your blood!'"
They didn't actually ever give the blood-drinking thing a go though.
"No, we were only 10! We'd stay on the bikes."
Waititi completed his fang-teeth look with a coat his mum found.
"I was a big fan of The Lost Boys, and I asked my mum to help me get a trenchcoat like the one
Corey Haim wears. I think it was a women's one 'cos it had these big shoulder pads."
They remember first creating vampire characters together as part of a skit they did for a
fundraising show in 2000.
"I think that's where it started," Clement muses.
"Did we do a song?" Waititi wonders.
"Yeah, I think we did a song. And me, you, and Bret did a song about being werewolves too."
"Vampires singing a song about werewolves? Oh man."
That was obviously a prescient performance though, as six years later, they decided to test out
the idea of making a vampire mockumentary together, and created a short film centred around
a bunch of vampire flatmates in Wellington. It was part funding application, part testing the
water, part distillation of ideas.
They asked friends and family if they wanted to be involved, and shot a bunch of documentarystyle interviews with whoever turned up.
"We didn't plan any of the characters, who they would be, or what they would be like," Waititi
explains. "I wanted to try out the obsession with cleanliness, and whatever we tried out back
then, we just kind of stuck with it really, so cleanliness became one of Viago's traits as an 18thcentury dandy. Johnny Brugh, who plays Deacon, was really sick at the time, and he just spent
his whole interview lying down on the couch, so that became the thing that Deacon did - he's
always lying around, being the lazy, cool, vampire who didn't give a shit."
Their Eastern European accents were a given though - the pair wanted their vampire characters
to have an air of being quite foreign, and old school.
"One of the things we were hoping that would come through thematically was xenophobia - the
idea that these guys were still very foreign in New Zealand, and the idea that they've been
8 chased right round the world down to Wellington, so they've had this life of constantly running,
kind of in exile," Clement nods. His character Vladislav seems to have had a particularly tough
time in centuries gone past, and has become a bit of a pervert as a consequence - a
benevolent pervert though.
The short film/pitch turned out well, so they decided to go for the feature length version, and
then, well, they both got busy.
"We're actually pretty embarrassed, because we must've been mentioning this movie in
interviews for about seven years," Clement laughs.
"I found these old emails between us from 2007 saying things like, "We've gotta make this
vampire movie man! We've gotta stop messing around and do it."
"And it was five years before we got around to it," Waititi adds.
Needless to say, the vampire craze found a whole new level of crazy in that period - Blade, and
Underworld had been and gone, but Twilight rose up in their place, not to mention Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Byzantium, Let The Right One In, 30 Days Of Night, and countless
others. It did give them pause for thought.
"I was always scared that people would have reached the point of going 'I never want to see
another vampire movie again' by now," Waititi explains.
But the recent obsession with the genre has made it ripe for mocking in many ways, and
reviewers have been very quick to understand that WWDITS is a fresh, Wellington-inspired
version of the well-trodden storylines, and mostly harks back to old school vampire mythology.
Plus, it's funny as hell.
"We did want to film the character of Nick, who is the new guy who's excited about becoming a
vampire, we wanted to have him see the poster for Twilight Breaking Dawn Part II being pulled
down, just as a message to say, 'Sorry bro, it's not cool any more, nobody cares'. But we
didn't manage to pull that off," Clement laughs. "Otherwise most of the genre references are
pretty old. Our vampires are pretty traditional - they burst into flames rather than sparkle. They
turn into bats, which I'm pretty sure modern vampires don't do."
"I guess they thought it wasn't all that cool anymore," Waititi smiles. "It's like turning into a big
black butterfly."
The pair wrote the script together, initially going back and forward via email, sending each other
scenes, and ideas for twists, or jokes.
Then they got together for three days in a house to fill in all the holes, and finally took it in turns
doing re-writes. By the time they were finished, they had 150 pages of polished, precise
material. And then they took the unusual route of not showing it to anyone - that's right, the
crew and the cast didn't get to see the script.
"Basically we were trying to keep things spontaneous, and for the actors to be surprised when
things happened," Clement explains.
"Actors are terrible at overthinking things before they turn up to work, and they decide on a way
they're going to do it and then it's hard to break them out of it," Waititi adds.
"It was also about getting a documentary feel - you want people to say things their own way,
naturally, and for it to look like they're thinking of it right then."
9 So the film was largely improvised, with Clement and Waititi pointing cast and crew in the right
direction when they turned up each day, gently nudging the action along through their own
characters as well as from the directors' chairs.
"We were doing a lot of improvising, but a lot of the time, for Jemaine and myself, we were
saying lines we'd written into the script because we'd want to make sure someone else would
respond in a certain way - we were trying to direct the story while also making stuff up," Waititi
explains.
"That was interesting sometimes because people would be riffing off each other, and maybe
going down a totally different path, and we'd be standing there going "Yeeeeessss, but what
about the spaghetti?'"
(The importance of the spaghetti will become clear once you see the film.)
"Sometimes they assumed because they hadn't seen a story or a script that we were totally
making it up, and they would go off on completely different tangents, and then keep pushing
them."
The unconventional shooting style had its challenges (including creating more than 150 hours of
footage which took 15 months to edit), but it clearly brought out the best in the cast, too - aside
from the wonderful banter between the core vampire crew, look out particularly for the excellent
scenes with the cops, the werewolf encounters, and Jackie Van Beek playing Jackie, a mum
who's slightly obsessed with the idea of becoming a vampire herself.
It's a unique film - one injected with plenty of zany humour, physical and spoken, and a general
penchant for preposterous situations, but also a poignancy and heart that allows some more
philosophical contemplations to peek through occasionally.
"We just thought there hadn't really been anything like this before, about vampires being very
normal, geeky, uncool. And just how boring it is. It's interesting to think about what you would
do if you could live forever, and realising there's so many exciting things you could do, but
you'd probably just be lazy. A few people would do the exciting stuff, but most would just be
like, 'Ah well, maybe I'll learn to play the violin tomorrow'," Waititi explains.
"It's probably good that we waited this long to make the film, because we're older," Clement
laughs, "because you always think you're going to be more mature when you're older, but then
when you're older but you don't feel any different. And what if that was multiplied by 20 or 30 or
whatever it takes to get to 800 years. Would you be any wiser? You assume so, but maybe not.
Maybe you'd still have the same issues."
It seems that even if you get to live eternally, there's a good possibility you'll still end up flatting
with a bunch of people who sometimes annoy you, having arguments about dishes, or cleaning
up blood splatter in the living room, wondering how to capture the attention of the object of
your affection, trying to figure out where you belong, and protecting your friends from being
attacked by werewolves.
Bron:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11272046
10 OVER JEMAINE CLEMENT & TAIKA WAITITI
Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi – Regisseurs
Jemaine Clement en Taika Waititi leren elkaar kennen aan de Victoria University of Wellington
waar ze samen een dramaopleiding volgen. Het Nieuw-Zeelandse duo krijgt al snel naam als
up-and-coming komisch talent door hun opvoeringen met hun ensembles So You’re a Man en
The Humourbeasts, waarmee ze op eigen bodem heel populair zijn en in 1999 zelfs een Billy T
James Award in ontvangst mogen nemen.
Hoewel het duo sindsdien steeds opnieuw samenwerkingen aangaat, maken Clement en Waititi
toch in eerste instantie apart naam voor zichzelf. Clement richt zich daarbij voornamelijk tot het
acteren en het schrijven. Na een aantal verschijningen in kortfilms en televisieafleveringen
bedenkt hij samen met Bret McKenzie, eveneens een lid van het So You’re a Man-ensemble, de
Amerikaanse komische televisiereeks Flight of the Conchords (2007-2009) voor HBO. De serie
vertelt het verhaal van het dagelijkse leven van enkele wannabe muzikanten, in feite fictionele
versies van de makers zelf, die het tot een groot folk duo in de Verenigde Staten proberen te
schoppen.
Na zich initieel te richten op een acteer carrière houdt Waititi zich daarentegen het laatste
decennium hoofdzakelijk bezig met regisseren en schrijven. Al met zijn tweede kortfilm Two
Cars, One Night (2004) maakt hij snel succes als regisseur. De film sleept maar liefst 9 prijzen in
de wacht, waaronder de Short Award op het AFI Film Festival, de Panorama Short Film Award
aan het International Film Festival in Berlijn, de Short Film Competition Award aan het Seattle
International Film Festival en kan hij in 2005 zelfs scoren met een Oscarnominatie. Met zijn
tweede langspeelfilm, het coming-of-age-drama Boy (2010), valt Waititi terug herhaaldelijke
keren in de prijzen, waaronder de Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk Grand Prix voor Beste
Langspeelfilm aan het International Film Festival in Berlijn, de Award voor Meest Populaire
Langspeelfilm aan het International Film Festival in Melbourne en de Audience Award voor Beste
Langspeelfilm aan het Sydney Film Festival.
Hun collaboratie zetten Clement en Waititi voort met Clements populaire HBO serie, waarvoor
Waititi een aantal afleveringen regisseert. Clement verschijnt op zijn beurt in een aantal episodes
van de komische sketchreeks Radiradirah (2010), waarin Waititi een vaste rol heeft, alsook
neemt hij de hoofdrol voor zijn rekening in diens langspeelfilmdebuut Eagle vs. Shark (2007).
11 Maar vrijwel doorheen hun hele vriendschap houdt het duo steeds het idee voor een
vampierenfilm in gedachten. Beiden zijn sinds hun jeugd immers grote fans van het genre. Hun
eerste pogingen tot het ontwikkelen van de vampieren personages maken daarbij onderdeel uit
van een sketch dat de komieken in 2000 voor een liefdadigheidsvoorstelling opvoeren.
Voor What We Do In the Shadows (2014) neemt het duo niet alleen de rol van coregisseur voor
hun rekening, ze spelen ook allebei in de film en hebben hem eveneens samen geschreven.
Terwijl ze elk in een gemeenschappelijke woning vertoeven, komt het stel op het idee voor een
vampieren mockumentary, in hun eigen woorden een soort van Gotisch bovennatuurlijk versie
van He Died With a Falafel In His Hand van Richard Lowenstein. Beïnvloed door een aantal
succesvolle horrorfilms van de jaren 80 – The Lost Boys, Fright Night, American Werewolf in
London, The Thing – en hun voorliefde voor komedie besluiten ze de twee in een
vampierenparodie te verenigen. Uitgaande van het idee ‘heeft het leven meer zin als het
eindeloos zou duren?’ werd bewust gekozen voor een mockumentary, net om te vermijden dat
het verhaal teveel naar het paranormale of naar het niveau van het ongeloofwaardige zou
neigen. En toch duurt het nog zeven jaar vooraleer het project als langspeelfilm gerealiseerd
wordt.
Hun samenwerking werd mooi verdeeld doordat Waititi zich voornamelijk focuste op de
technische kant terwijl Clement zich meer met de acteurs bezighield. “I’ve obviously got more
experience as a director, just through my stuff,” aldus Waititi, “but we’ve obviously both been on
sets of various things. He knows exactly what’s going on, and knows what he wants. (…) So it
was quite good working that way”.
De eigenlijke opnamen konden in een vijftal weken geklaard worden, wat gezien de
vooropgestelde improvisatie-aanpak meer dan 130 uur aan materiaal opleverde. Een pluspunt
daarbij was dat er o.a. beroep kon gedaan worden op de crew van filmmaker en collega Peter
Jackson. Maar het nadeel was dat er door het overaanbod aan ruw materiaal de reconstructie
van het verhaal tijdens de montage zo’n extra 14 maanden opeiste.
FILMOGRAFIE JEMAINE CLEMENT:
o 2014
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS van Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi MUPPETS MOST WANTED van James Bobin
RIO 2 van Carlos Saldanha
o 2012
MEN IN BLACK 3 van Barry Sonnenfield o 2011
RIO van Carlos Saldanha o 2010
PREDICAMENT van Jason Stutter DINNER FOR SCHUCKS van Jay Roach
DESPICABLE ME van Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
o 2009
DIAGNOSIS: DEATH van Jason Stutter GENTLEMEN BRONCOS van Jared Hess o 2007
EAGLE VS SHARK van Taika Waititi o 2005
FIRE BALL van Toon Wang o 2004
FUTILE ATTRACTION van Mark Prebble o 2002
TONGAN NINJA van Jason Stutter FILMOGRAFIE TAIKA WAITITI:
o What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
o Boy (2010)
o 42 One Dream Rush (2009)
o Eagle vs Shark (2007)
o Tama Tu (2005) (short)
o Heinous Crime (2004) (short)
o Two Cars, One Night (2004) (short)
12 OVER JONATHAN BRUGH
Jonathan Brugh - DEACON
De Nieuw-Zeelandse komiek Jonathan Brugh heeft al meer dan vijftien jaar ervaring met zijn
unieke benadering van theaterkomedies. Aanvankelijk treedt hij op als helft van het
tragikomische duo Sugar & Spice dat met zijn absurde humor door critici in zowel NieuwZeeland als Australië gelauwerd wordt. In 1996 wordt de Chapman Tripp Award voor Best
Comic Performance aan het duo toegekend, een appreciatie die twee jaar later met de BILLY T
Award wordt aangevuld.
In 2001 schrijft Brugh zich terug in aan de universiteit om zijn opleiding Art and Design af te
maken. Zijn studies geven hem de gelegenheid om naast zijn job als professionele fotograaf
zich eveneens vanuit de fotografie te concentreren op het explorerend vertellen van het verhaal
van Madame Lucy Tuesday, een idee dat hij later verwerkt tot een solo show. Twee jaar later, in
2003, schrijft Brugh zijn onemanshow The Fall and Rise Or the Rise and Fall of Dinky Jon, die hij
eveneens solo op het podium met de stunts van een echte superheld uitvoert. Na zijn volgend
project My Brother and I Are Porn Stars wordt opnieuw uitgepakt met een solo show die de titel
The Legend of Madam Lucy Tuesday draagt. Daaropvolgend creëert hij als entertainer het
karakter T-RETZ, een stand-up typetje, een bas spelend mutant clown die denkt dat hij Robert
Smith van de muziekgroep The Cure is.
Buiten een populair komiek te zijn in eigen land richt Brugh zich daarnaast eveneens op film en
televisie. Twee in het oog springende televisie- en filmoptredens uit zijn beperkte acteer carrière
zijn zijn rol als gastheer in de komische televisiereeks The Jaquie Brown Diaries (2008-2009),
over een onzekere, status geobsedeerde reporter in een actualiteitsprogramma, en als dating
coach in de hilarische komedie How to Meet Girls From a Distance (2012). Voor die laatste
wordt Brugh in 2012 zelfs genomineerd voor een New Zealand Film and TV Award voor Beste
Bijrol. Zijn komisch talent en gelegenheid om uitvoerig te improviseren komt vervolgens goed
van pas om zijn personage, de ‘bad-boy’ Deacon, in What We Do in the Shadows (2014) het
juiste karakter mee te geven.
13 CITATEN INTERNATIONALE PERS
★★★★
‘Mark my words, there is something very funny going on here’
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
‘What We Do In The Shadows will make you laugh ‘til you bleed’
‘It’s just fantastic to see these hilarious filmmakers creating. If we can get more comedy out of
them, the world will be a much funnier (if perhaps slightly bloodier) place’
TW ITCH FILM
‘Despite the simple structure – and a crack at every obvious vampire gag in the book – the film
remains highly amusing from beginning to end’
‘Though Waititi and Clement are the clear standouts, special mention must go to another
Conchords regular, Rhys Darby, as the puritanical leader of the local werewolf pack’
NEW S AUSTRALIA
‘A very funny Kiwi take on vampire lore and its application to the modern world’
‘Ace writing and comic performances’
‘Anyone intending to hop on this particular subgenre bandwagon has a hard act to follow’
THE HOLLYW OOD REPORTER
‘What We Do In The Shadows is a fun spoof that piles on the laughs while keeping within the
macabre tones of classic vampire stories’
‘This will be one of the best comedies of the year’
FILM PULSE
‘You’d think the vampire genre had been sucked dry, filmmakers have struck a rich vein of lowkey, self-deprecating Kiwi humour’
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘It’s bloody hilarious’
‘What We Do In The Shadows is (...) so unrelentingly funny that you’ll miss half the jokes
through laughing’
FILM INK
‘The jokes come thick and fast, and the delivery by the cast is hilarious’
‘So cohesive is this troupe and their fresh bite at an over-chewed genre, one can only hope this
film’s success fosters further collaboration’
CANBERRA TIMES
‘Taika and Jemaine are so immensely charming as well as funny, and they surrounded
themselves with a great cast’
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
‘It’s charming and hilarious and brilliantly acted by every single member of the fantastic
ensemble cast’
‘What We Do In The Shadows is a comedy that should put New Zealand on the map, with a
share house everyone will want to spend time in’
SW ITCH
‘It is the anti-Twilight (and that's a compliment), as well as a reminder that Waititi and Clement
are capable of much more’
THE AGE
14 PRIJZEN EN FESTIVALS
PRIJZEN
Nominatie Crystal Bear – Berlin International Film Festival 2014
Winnaar Publieksprijs - Neuchâtel International Fantasy Film Festival 2014
Winnaar Publieksprijs en Eervolle vermelding - Sitges Catalonian International Film Festival 2014
Winnaar People’s Choice Award - Toronto International Film Festival 2014 (Midnight Madness)
FESTIVALS
Sundance Film Festival 2014
Berlin International Film Festival 2014
Toronto International Film Festival 2014
Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2014
AFI Fest 2014
Zurich Film Festival 2014
Athens Film Festival 2014
Bergen International Film Festival 2014
Sydney Film Festival 2014
Cornwall Film Festival 2014
Cork International Film Festival 2014
Leeds International Film Festival 2014
Virginia Film Festival 2014
Imagine Limited Edition 2014
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2014
Stanley Film Festival 2014
Fantasy Filmfest 2014
Lund Fantastisk Film Festival 2014
Mill Valley Film Festival 2014
Monsters of Film 2014
Warsaw Film Festival 2014
Night Visions Film Festival 2014
Abertoir Horror Festival 2014
Bath Film Festival 2014
Torino Film Festival 2014
Mar del Plata Film Festival 2014
Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival 2014
Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2014
MOOOV Horror Festival 2014
& more to be confirmed
15

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