‘Backrooms’ Is the Future of Movies, With Kane Parsons!

22:05But, you know, I don't know whether the trip down that hallway was like the brand, you know, brand new thing to me. We're like on our direction and on the way we can see it. But clearly many people disagree because they watched all of the back rooms videos, which are just they're only the hallways. Very cool experience over the weekend. I mean, I think on I'm sure you guys you guys do do this and me and Andy do this on the watch. where we sort of bemoan the death of monoculture and the idea that there is like this thing that everyone is experiencing at the same time and having the same conversation about or different conversations, but a conversation about.

22:44And I was hanging out with my wife's best friend's daughters this weekend, and they were so excited for backrooms. Like they're all teenagers. And first of all, you look at the numbers on these videos and you're talking 15, 50 million, And, you know, like millions and millions of people have watched this. And they were so invested in it as an idea and were nervous about the movie part. When you say they were invested in it as an idea, like... Because I don't think they make a distinction between this and like, check out this like static shot of an abandoned pizza hut. Like, I think that there is like an appreciation or an interest in vibes, you know, and certain like motifs online that people just pass the time.

23:33And I didn't know that you can play backrooms on Roblox. I didn't know that there were so many like video games that take place in backrooms. And it really is kind of like an open source, like people can mess around with this. This is his iteration of it.

23:48Sean Fennessey:That's why I say it's like a fable. It's like anybody can adopt this. But they were like fully unaware of what the mythology of it was. Okay, so they're into backrooms, the universe. Yes. Okay. But I was like fascinated to be like, oh, you're not worried about whether or not like backrooms makes any sense. You're worried about whether Chiwetel Aljafor and Renata Rines would make any sense inside of your experience of backrooms, which and everyone will have a more or less different experience of it. And maybe if even if there is an accepted lore, you don't have, that's the other thing is just for anybody who's listening at home, who's just like, you guys keep talking about what 16 year olds want.

24:25Sean Fennessey:You don't have to know anything to enjoy the movie. You know, you don't have to have seen any of the YouTube videos. You don't have to know who made the movie. Like Amanda, I kind of wish I hadn't now. Because I think the experience of the film, the thing that they got so right is there is never really a moment where they're like, this is what this is. Yes. And this is how it works. They get right up to it and then he stops. Yes. He does it near the end of the movie. Yeah. We can talk about that later. um no I I think because I didn't know anything about the lore and I was and again so you do not have to know the lore and you do not have to like know you know and understand 16 year olds to go see and enjoy this movie but because of that I got to actually experience the the movie and the filmmaking as filmmaking rather and then and all of the aesthetic decisions and the world that he was creating and the vibe that you talk about, but not having to worry about whether it was faithful to whatever was on the internet before or what I had seen.

25:30So I guess in some ways, this is like the Gen Alpha version of a video game adaptation, but in the sense that it's like a lived world and medium that they're very familiar with that I don't have any familiarity with and then how will it translate into a new medium and what choices do you have

25:53Sean Fennessey:to make to get one fit into the other yeah i think it's it's a movie that's really easy for me to situate in the history of movie making because there are actually a lot of movies like this um that you know what you can call like liminal storytelling um and i'm always eager to be like, oh, it's like David Lynch, like any fucking nerdy cinephile. But like, it's not really like David Lynch. It has like maybe some hallmarks, but I mean, you'll hear Cain say like, he's just not a cinephile. He's seen a lot of movies, but he's not somebody who is pouring over the creative decisions. It actually, what it feels more like to me is a much more recent vintage of movie that I know you've seen a lot of these movies like Cube and Pulse and Session nine and Lake Mungo and triangle, which I just saw for the first time recently, where there are movies where characters enter worlds in which the unrealities kind of like becomes terrifying and starts to take over.

26:48Sean Fennessey:And that's a, a pretty common horror construct. The movie, those movies I think are often very reliant on how, how good or not good they are communicating like why something is happening. and the ones that don't explain it tend to work better than the ones that do explain it. Yeah, there's also been over the last 10 years like a bunch of found footage movies that are like, wouldn't it be cool if these influencers went to Chernobyl or would it be cool if these influencers went to an abandoned casino? But they're all like essentially a bad version of the Halloween movie that was set in a reality Big Brother house.

27:26Oh, yeah. Like the Busta Rhymes one. Like they're all kind of around, And they're being made by like 50 year olds, you know, and like they're not. This definitely felt like. Those are products what you're describing. It's close to like, again, I don't want to glaze this guy too much, but it reminds me of when Tarantino came on the scene and he was like, my set of influences are completely broken. This is exactly what I wrote about.

27:48Sean Fennessey:This is exactly what I wrote about today in the newsletter. I was like, it's like when you're watching Kill Bill and he's showing you all this stuff, but I don't know the name of the actress who stars in Lady Snowblood. And then you see Lady Snowblood 20 years later and you're like, oh. Yeah. But the way that maybe these filmmakers, and this goes for Curry too, I think. He was like, I was inspired by the Treehouse of Horror Simpsons episode that had the monkey's paw. It was like the monkey's paw was written in the 1800s. But he didn't read the monkey's paw. He saw an episode of The Simpsons. And so it's this downstream effect where maybe Kane Parsons has seen Mulholland Drive.

28:18Sean Fennessey:Maybe he hasn't. But the vibe, that dread-laden sound design, where you're like, why is there a humming noise throughout this entire movie? He's got that. he figured that and maybe he heard it in the video game portal maybe he didn't hear it in a david lynch movie but the guy who made portal probably saw moholland drive and was like you know what you got to do is you got to create this sense of doom by applying these tools so to me like all this kind of mixed up influence is really exciting and fun and i like to pull it apart and maybe you can over read it by doing that but well we get pretty like maybe over reliant on being like this is like if jagged edge was met like this you know or like it's like paul mazurski meets you know, West Craven.

29:01And it's like, I'm very ready, I think, now for someone to be like, it's actually old VHS footage of this abandoned mall and maybe a little bit of Mall Hall and Driver, maybe a Simpsons episode or whatever it is. But the integers are really interesting. Like, I really like whatever the equation is. I like the sort of numbers he's playing with.

29:26Sean Fennessey:How does it feel that Skin of Meringk, one of the origin points of one of CR's best voice adaptations, is now kind of secretly a monumental movie? In a way, it's like a little bit of the velvet underground of movies right now to me where it launched a thousand ships. And there's been a bunch of movies like this recently. Like Outwaters was like this. My beloved Nighthouse, which I watched the night my daughter was born. Very normal in the chair. We're all going to the World's Fair. and Jane Schoenbrunn's work. Yeah. I thought a lot about I Saw the TV Glow while watching this for the recreations of 80s, 90s media within and the media within the media.

30:07Sean Fennessey:Yes. And also seemingly media that is outside the generational reference point of the filmmaker making it. Yes. Which is fascinating. Yeah. And I mean, Kane is so young, even younger than Jane. And so he, let's talk about 1990 and like why that's the time when this is set and what it means. And there's something about the visual signifiers from that period in our lives. We were live at that time. We saw this stuff in real time. We were in those furniture stores. We were in those empty parking lots. Why is it set at that time? Is it an effective period piece in that way? I mean, I think that there's lower answers for that.

30:42But from an aesthetic point of view, I think it's just a time when handheld media was available to a mass audience and they could take, you know, It's not uncommon to go to parties and go to hang out with your friends and if somebody had a camcorder going. But also necessarily before cell phones were the handheld media in question and also could call someone from the other side to just be like, hey, can you check out what's going on here? Yeah. Let me pin my location so I remember where I parked and how I get back. You're actually definitely in a different dimension.

31:16Sean Fennessey:This film has an answering machine that is utilized, which is a very different form of communication. I think it's an interesting choice. Um, I didn't, I haven't read about specifically the lore answers for this, but it's interesting. Something very significant happens during the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. Right. Something is opened. It opens it up, right? It opens it up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, it fires it up. Yeah. Oh, it was there, but it fires it up? Yeah, this guy, Ivan, has been working on it for a while with some magnetic stuff, but the earthquake... So it's existed forever, but the portal...

31:49Yeah. I mean, like, I am not in any way a PhD in this. I just was in my, I was funny because like you can do backrooms as just backrooms on YouTube. And then there is a whole industry of backroom backrooms explainers. So it's almost like Thrones where you can just watch Thrones or you can watch the three hour explainer about the episode you just saw. Yeah. I mean, it does have a little bit of this energy, even as you're watching it. It's like, okay, like my children are like really excited about something. And now they're telling me about their whole world. it's just done at such an aesthetically advanced level that you kind of have to that you're absolutely right you let you hand it hand it over and I will say again as a standalone movie before I learned all about the 1999 earthquake and the portals it it works as a movie you know and you aren't it isn't as borne down with the what did the portal exist forever but many science corners could be done

32:42Sean Fennessey:yeah I mean if you want to do an impromptu one I don't know is there anything specific that you want to explore about how it manifests you want to talk about fault lines yeah yeah So that's the theory that it's that furniture store is on a fault line. And so then it just, and that's, it had snared Juatel? Yeah, I mean, there's like... I mean, doesn't the text of the film suggest to us that he was ready, you know, and because he didn't have his life together. And so he had to go into the back rooms where he was ready praying. It was definitely his reason for not being like, oh shit, that seems dangerous.

33:14I'm not going back in there. I mean, he's like, I'm obsessed with this.

33:17Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think that explains maybe his decision making. But I think also the movie is very clearly like a snapshot of mental health too. Right. Where you're like, when you reach a kind of breaking point, when you cross a line in terms of what is real and unreal. So the movie is like kind of having its cake and eating it too. It is a very metaphorical movie about lost places and trying to go to those lost places and like the danger that is inside of those lost places in your mind. And then it's also a spooky movie about finding an invisible door that takes you to another land. And there are a lot of movies like that.

33:47Sean Fennessey:a lot of like kids movies that are about going to ride a unicorn somewhere and this is about manifesting your worst trauma and having it eat you in a way like if you were to go into the back rooms oh my god i was waiting for this what would be well first of all how how would you do how would i do so do the back rooms look like that are are back rooms customizable uh there are many different like my favorite part of back rooms that i've watched is red city like when this person comes across basically like a red illuminated city that's out a window and is just like holy shit but for the most part they are that kind of 90s abandoned office park no windows yeah but but decorated sure designed in part by like your manifestations of your own visual experiences right like the things that are the things that appear in those spaces so like is this mom's house at Christmas time in Georgia in 1993.

34:48Sean Fennessey:You know, like that's the kind of, like what comes up, what or what sinks below in the backroom of your mind, but also in the real backroom. Is there an option where there's just nothing? Where like the backroom is like a wall? Is there an option where it's Tuscany?

35:05Sean Fennessey:I don't know. I don't totally know the mechanics. If it was the Mediterranean, everybody would go to the backrooms. The point is. but what if there's what if can back rooms be void can back rooms just be like nothing what what if there's nothing below the surface this is the reason that i'm asking you and i want to ask you and i want to hear about the wachovia center and everything that you see there but i what if it's nothing but you are trying to turn it off but this place won't let you turn it off this is i don't know it wouldn't let you tell turn it off okay like maybe i'm stronger that's well that that That is an interesting question too.

35:43Sean Fennessey:Can it be resisted? We don't know. We only see really four characters enter this space. Yeah, and it's a question as to whether or not she is equally at a breaking point and equally open to the idea that there is something out there. This coming from a therapist who wrote a book called The Window Within, I believe. Sure, but also who has some tough mommy issues of her own and carries around a cement block. But seemingly of her handprint, not her mother's. Just based on the size, you think that was hers? and is that meant to represent her holding on to her childhood or to never forget what was inflicted upon her it's weighing her down but she can't let it go until she utilizes it yes yeah yeah see what they did there did you think that there was any chance that her mom had seen the back rooms I think there's an indication yeah that she's trapped can we can we move into spoiler territory a little bit so you've already mentioned that Mark Duplass is in the film Mark Duplass shows up and he like works at the company that's like.

36:43Async, yeah. Sure, of course, async, yeah. And they're researching. Yeah.

36:49Sean Fennessey:Well, they're an MRI company who has stumbled upon this space. And so they're exploring it. Okay. But so he says that he went to the back rooms and then made it out and is now exploring it. So that would suggest, which I thought was the weakest part. And I was sort of annoyed. but again that is just kind of you need a conventional narrative arc in a movie and some sort of explanation anyway it seemed like he was maybe slightly resistant to what? to the back rooms to the at least that he could remove himself and then operate in a research capacity he's a scientist right? he's trying to stay in the real world whereas both Renata Reinsva and Chihutal Ejifor their characters are more vulnerable Chihutal Ejifor goes in and out yeah but he's able and he's able to kind of exist inside that space for an extended period of time in a way that we don't see other characters do it and he's not wearing a hazmat suit or anything like the other that presumably the MRI scientists are doing.

37:46Right, right, right, right. But it like corrupts him over time.

37:48Sean Fennessey:Sure. Definitely. And like every time he comes out he's a little weaker. Yes. And it's slurping him in slowly. It is. I mean I agree with you that I think that that stuff just doesn't really work and I wish that there wasn't as much of it in there. I know why it's there and I think it will probably be a useful hand-holding device for the parents who are taking their teenagers to go see this movie. but I I think it'll yeah it'll be for the parents not for the teenagers that's what I mean the teens I think will probably bristle at some of that stuff but I'm the parent in this analogy and I also bristled at it I was like I don't yeah but you you like good art and like to me it felt like a producer note that's some of that stuff feels like a producer note maybe that would be where you go it's like a museum a never ending museum of great art but it haunts me by the way no shots at Mark Duplass my friend who I love like he's great and this is another example of like him signing on to like a young person just being like I'm just trying to like realize my vision it's more just like whatever they're trying to communicate there like you could have not done it I also thought that his vibe and his warmth is a nice wrong wrong foots the audience because it's supposed to be the scientist from ET or something and instead he's like I can't believe like you've had this experience please share with me what's been happening and then it has a sort of ambiguous ending.

39:06But I didn't mind it. I was aware of like the async thing going into it. Sure, yeah. In respect of it. I've learned, yeah. And those guys have a lot of, a lot of stuff happens to them over the course of the YouTube videos.

39:18Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I kind of just want to look at Kane and be like, keep going. Like, keep kind of breaking the paradigm of what a movie like this is supposed to be. And I will say, there are also a couple things that are more traditional that do work as well. Like, there are a couple of scares in the movie that I think are very effective that used traditional horror strategies. There were a couple of jump scares, startle scares used. I saw you get startled when you were watching the movie. I did. You got really shocked by something. And there's a scene in the movie where we're going kind of like into the third realm of the back rooms and we enter a red-lit room that is illuminated by a Christmas tree.

39:55Sean Fennessey:And it was at that moment in the movie where I was like, oh, okay. Like, he's done it. You know, like I've slipped into the movie and I'm scared and I'm excited and I can't wait to see what's around the corner. And what I wasn't asking myself was like, why is this happening? I was just letting it happen. Which is what I think what is the success of the movie ultimately is that I'm not too worried about like, why? At that exact moment, I thought to myself, another tough beat for Christmas, you know? But it did communicate to me that it was a tough beat for Christmas and I wasn't like, what does this have to say about the birth of baby Jesus?

40:30I was just like, uh-oh. My favorite holiday, damn bad. So much of the thrill of the YouTube videos is that they're found footage or that they're shot by the people who are walking around. They've brought a camera with them or something. And this film is like a real leap forward for him in terms of composition, in terms of how to pace a scene beyond just someone walking down a hallway endlessly, which I fucking love, but is like not going to be everybody's cup of tea, but to emerge on the Christmas scene and find the other characters there. And the stuff of... I think stuff sinking into the sand of the carpeting is a relatively new phenomenon.

41:11I didn't see a ton of it in the YouTube videos. So, you know, I just thought it would have been enough for him to just be like, here is a big screen version of a found footage of my paranormal activity or whatever. And instead, I think he... He's leveled up. He leveled up. Yeah. And the design, I think calling it a hallway is reductive because it's really more they're just a never-ending warren of rooms and the design effectively communicates to you where not where you are in relationship to things but this sense of space and your sense of confusion and there's something around this way and that it is very convoluted and that you don't understand where you're going but it's hard to communicate like that actuality totally especially when you are you're really physically building it yes yeah i mean there's stuff in there that's like it taps into a feeling of playing video games it taps into a feeling of like certain levels of video games where it's very puzzle oriented or the entire point is that you're lost in a maze but also taps into like a childlike thing where you're like that weird experience of like you're the amount of time it takes to get somewhere is always slower than the amount of time it takes to get back sometimes so you know what i mean like once you know the route, you're like, oh, it's not that bad.

42:25But like the first time you make a walk through the park, you're like, did I make a wrong turn somewhere here or whatever? And it gets at some like really innate kind of childlike wonder at these things and childlike fears too, I think. No, it's all amygdala,

42:42Sean Fennessey:as they say, you know? Like everything that's happening there is not about like logic and problem solving. It's about the sensation that is created when you're seeing the things that are in that space. And I think that I genuinely kind of don't know how they did a lot of this too, which is something that usually impresses me where just like designing those spaces, like were they using one set and then striking it every time to shoot into a new room? Were they building like these entire, you know, use the word Warren, like is this like an office building or at large? It does also have that experience to the 1990 period piece idea of like being in one of those office buildings, which all had that kind of yellowing quality and that kind of rickety furniture.

43:26Sean Fennessey:You know, there's the particle board line when Ejie Ford like breaks the chair early in the movie where everything kind of felt like it was made of that, you know, breakable, disruptable material. Like pure one kind of vibe. Yeah, where it's like, it looks nice and then you touch it and you're like, this is fake. And I'm just kind of bowled over by it. You know, like even in its, in its failures or its weaknesses, I'm like, very few movies get me in the headspace that this movie got me in. So I'm just delighted. I'm just delighted. Yeah, College Freshman Dorm was brought to you exclusively by the West Lebanon, New Hampshire, Pier One.

44:05Sean Fennessey:Wow. Yeah. What did you have in there? I think my mom dropped me off and then was upset with the sparseness of the room. So, you know, and we'd bought like the usual sheets and everything that was on the list, but a lot of throw pillows, you know, like a lamp. No, that wasn't the vibe they were going for that season at Pier 1. Fall 2003 was more of like a Moroccan vibe, you know? What about like a ship's wheel? Did you have a ship's wheel in there? No, again, I would say we're a different coastal reference point that season. It's Marrakesh Bazaar. It's the smell of spices in the air. Why aren't you listening to her?

44:44Sean Fennessey:Well, now I know what's in your background. I'm glad we asked. What's in your back room? I think it looks like a pizza hut. Okay. Yeah, I really find the lighting in those to be really pleasing. There's a bar in Boston called Anchovies that mimics it. Sure. I've been there with you. Yeah. But is it, so is back rooms, is it supposed to be a happy memory? No, I think it's supposed to be. That's why I said we'll call you a center. Like I personally, I'm trying to think of the. That's where the Sixers play. I like abandoned mall stuff. Can we have a Sixers intervention later? What are you talking about?

45:17The patient's dead. Okay, good. I know, but can we... Let's not do it again next year, you know? Oh, like not watch the team? Yeah. Let's say... Let's set ourselves free. There's plenty of room on the bandwagon. That won't be happening. I assure you. I'm not taking sides. I want your happiness. Welcome all comers. But your bandwagon is too full, let me assure you. Oh, okay. Just think about it. Okay. I'll think about not watching the Sixers. Because I just, I can't do another February of this shit. That's what I'm saying is like in years is, you know, Embiid jerseys.

45:51Sean Fennessey:You know, like there's like, there's. I mean, mine too is just like 18 Embiids in different states of injury. At different heights. Yeah. In different positions. It's a little palsy Embiid. Exactly. Exactly. How do you feel like, okay, so the movie is going to be a huge success, right? It's already tracking for well over$50 million. This might be like a$75 million movie this weekend, which is pretty crazy. It will instantaneously become the biggest A24 movie of all time. It feels like a big generational change where 16-year-olds are powering this. And we are latching onto the bandwagon in many ways.

46:22Sean Fennessey:Do you think that this is a profound change that we are at the forefront of? Or is this just a blip born of a handful of kind of coincidences in like a three or four year window? To quote Tracy Letts, I reject the tyranny of your question. Can it be somewhere in the middle? I think that it is part of, I don't, I guess it's profound, the change, but it does seem like we are seeing a new wave of generational filmmakers focused specifically on horror. But, you know, they all learned on the internet. It is connecting with new audiences. It changes the way that we're making movies and that many audiences are seeing movies.

47:06So I think it is historically significant.

47:09Sean Fennessey:Can I add one person to that list that somewhat complicates this? Ava Victor is also a part of this wave as like a primarily online content creator. Yeah, reductress. Who then went into the world of narrative filmmaking. And I think Ava is also kind of instructive for like the ways that you can use the medium and the tools. And like the other thing we haven't talked about is looking at feedback, like what people are saying about what you're making and then iterating on that and not being as precious about your creation. that I think is also really interesting. Kane talked about the Discord server, his Discord server, and what is happening there, and how people are iterating what he makes.

47:49Sean Fennessey:Well, he didn't say anything negative about it, but he was like... Oh, they're like, I'm taking what you made, and here's my version of it. Yes. Which is a whole other level of like... So this is the thing that fills me with so much optimism, which is not in any way really different than the five years after Reservoir Dogs where everybody was like, what if my friends wore suits and pointed guns at each other? Like, that was amongst friends, and all the movies that kind of came out after that, in some ways, just like riffing on a core text. But, you know, the thing that I think I was most nervous about over the last couple of years when I would watch specifically TV, but I think it was starting to invade movies, like I would even not, I enjoyed this movie, but Anyone But You is like a good example of this, where it's like drone shot, scene doesn't last more than 90 seconds, like five needle drops every two minutes.

48:33It's like there is like a ADHD style of filmmaking that I was like, I just don't know if I'm going to be able to hang with this. And I saw it a lot in TV. You're seeing a lot of like if something doesn't happen in the first three pages of a script, it gets thrown in the trash. It again, stuff to the gills with music. Scenes don't last that long. and I was really worried that the sort of language and the almost the grammar of movies was getting broken over the course of like people watching all this short form video stuff and so to come across somebody who and to come across teenagers who are like I actually like watching 40 minutes of a foggy highway while a screwed and chopped version of Brian Adams' Run to You plays I'm like you're watching fucking Stan Brakhage like this is incredible I wrote down Man Ray in here.

49:24Sean Fennessey:I'm like, we're in a kind of surrealist territory with the filmmaking. And some of that is actually also in the mix. If we can introduce some real wrenches in the works of... Yeah, challenging durational stuff that makes you really either pay attention or just give yourself over, where you're not even intellectualizing anymore. You're just letting a piece of art wash over you, which is very powerful. And it's indirect contrast to obsession, which to me is like Anyone But You but made by somebody who knows how to do it. Anyone But You is an older filmmaker trying to use contemporary methods to appeal to young people.

49:59Sean Fennessey:I like Will Gluck. It's no shot at him but that movie feels like it's trying to address the short attention span as opposed to Curry Barker who's like I am of the short attention span. I've been making things that are catching people in the first three seconds for five years. I know how to catch someone and even though Obsession to me doesn't feel sloppy or haphazard and it's editing. It's tight. Like every sequence, you're like, this sequence has an intention. It's trying to get you to a certain place with these two characters and what's going on between them and it's going to get there in under five minutes and then we're going to move on to the next incident.

50:32Sean Fennessey:And they're two sides of the same coin. You know, it's so convenient that these two movies are both coming out in May because they represent like two different paradigms, both of which feel like they are, in a lot of ways, the future. Like I really do think that it's not going to change whether Dune Part 3 is good. you know like that level of filmmaking is probably always going to exist are you excited for Dune Part 3 I am yeah it'd be really that'd be crazy if you had like an Arrakis back rooms Arrakis yeah I don't know if that would be the planet that or is that yeah Arrakis is the desert isn't it what's the water one where where is Timmy from originally you know where Oscar Isaac is where Atreides is from yeah I forget the name yeah yeah Jack was into that Camden New Jersey is it Colodan Caladan?

51:20Is that correct? I think that's right. You pronounced it wrong so you could pretend like you didn't immediately know. Yeah, like you've been charting Frank Herbert's progress through these stories. Sort of a Pacific Northwest vibe there.

51:29Sean Fennessey:It does. It does. A little foggy. A little mist off the ocean. Did you know about one in three people with plaque psoriasis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away.

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53:32Sean Fennessey:Copycat potential? I feel like maybe the downside of this is they're going to see a lot of stuff like this, right? when this movie takes off. Yeah, I'm sure every other studio producer is just, is in, you know, watching the YouTube reaction videos, looking for other stuff, seeing what they can Xerox and rush out as quickly as possibly. I mean, like, people were joking about it online over the last couple of days, but I'm sure that folks will start looking at creepypasta to see, like, what's another, like, kind of... I don't even know what the IP rules are for stuff like this. No, this one is such an interesting test case.

54:06Sean Fennessey:I mean, they tried this already. Like, we did get a Slenderman movie, but it was just kind of made in the traditional modes of a Hollywood horror movie. It didn't give you the sensation of sitting in your room alone, reading something, and feeling freaked out. That's, like, what Jane Schoenbrun was trying to do in We're All Going to the World's Fair. Like, that's the closest iteration we've seen to that kind of experience. But that movie isn't traditionally commercial. You know, like, it's going to be, it would be hard to get a lot of people to go out and see that. So, kind of what's the middle ground?

54:33Sean Fennessey:Like, can anybody replicate what Parsons is doing? I think it's gonna be really hard. It's more like how he made it and what he was using to make things before he started making Hollywood movies. That to me feels like the shift, you know, where it's like you use Blender. I think Blender is the same software that was used for Flow, the animated film that came out a couple of years ago that was nominated for some Academy Awards. The cat film, yeah. And so it's just like a... I saw it. It's just like a shrinking down of the production process for movies. It's like it is reducing the barriers. So it's really cool.

55:08Do you want to see more stuff set in this world?

55:14Sean Fennessey:Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not the kind, I'm not like I need the TV show now and I need all the lore and I want to see a hundred more iterations. Like I do like this as an individual movie and that's still my favorite thing. Yes. So, and it's going to be impossible for him to not make Backrooms too. Like they're just, they're going to throw so much fucking money at him to make it because this movie is going to make so much money. But I, I would love to see like a side door. I definitely don't want to see Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renato Reinsman, in the movie again. No shots to them. I love them too. But it's like take, go.

55:47Do you want to speak at all about their individual arcs and or performances?

55:52Sean Fennessey:I think he's like one of the great living actors and it's cool to see him do something like this. And I think he's been a little underserved in the last 10 years, but he always takes on really challenging parts. This is a hard part. I think he gives the movie a tremendous amount of credibility because... He also just gives it like, you have to bleed through a wall and then be like, I believe this. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And not make it look hokey. Yeah. Her, you know, we love her on the show. We were just talking about how great she is in Fjord. I think she's a slightly miscast in the movie and there's something confusing about her accent that took me out of it a little bit.

56:23Sean Fennessey:She does get to run though. She does get to run. I mean, she's a great screen presence, but like, I think also some of the weaknesses of the screenplay are revealed in her performance, especially where like, she's playing a therapist who is escaping her own trauma and has created like this kind of idea system to navigate but also self-help but like And she didn't seem like a real person to me, I'll say. Ejiofor's character seemed like a real guy who was having a really hard time. Yeah, well, some of that is just because you spend more time in the back rooms of his own mind. So his character is fleshed out.

57:02I thought the construct of the therapist and the architect patient as like a send-up of therapy culture was kind of funny. I don't know if that was the intention, though, or I don't know whether that was just kind of the execution. of the script and a Renata Rindsby performance where I was like, oh, this is, that's not how they talked in therapy in 1990. You know, that at least was a very, very modern and anachronistic. It's a very good point. But that's okay. And I, as someone who thinks there's too much therapy in movies, I thought it was funny. But I agree that it was maybe not intentional.

57:33I liked the ad for her book on tape.

57:36Sean Fennessey:You know, I read that that was all, all that stuff was a very late ad to the movie. That that whole notion of her like having this like self-help kind of text and all that was not a part of the original script. And that's the other interesting thing is like he invented this world which is inspired by something that previously existed but then worked with screenwriters to shape the story and give it some of that traditional shape. And that's really the stuff that I was bumping on. I'm just glad they allowed some of like the loose threads to dangle there. Like I like Finn Bennett and Lakita Maxwell I don't have a ton to do in this movie but there's a moment are we doing details?

58:14we can say a detail there's a moment where Finn Bette is exploring the back rooms and comes across his own clothes which is never really interrogated very much his end apartheid t-shirt

58:27Sean Fennessey:yes and I just love shit like that like you do not have to cross every T agreed I wanted to just make a quick note on A24 because now turning it around like they just did yeah Like they kind of just did it. Now, here's what I'm afraid of. There was news last week that IMAX was up for sale and it's up for sale because IMAX has been killing it for the last five years because everybody only wants to put their movies on IMAX. So now it's like, well, we better sell. The iron's hot. I really hope A24 doesn't sell because now when you look at the drama and you look at Marty Supreme and you look at Civil War and you look at what was the other Thessalonians song film?

59:12Sean Fennessey:Materialists. Materialists. Like, they have figured something out that no other studio really knows how to do. And they don't make$500 million movies, but they make$150 million movies now, which seemed impossible five years ago that they could consistently make movies like this. But this movie is probably going to$150 million, if not more. And that is like the robust health of the middle class of movies that we actually are like have whinged about for a long time. Now, they have the A24 flavor, right? Well, if you had to guess, of that$150 million box office, how much of it comes from people who self-identify as A24 fans?

59:54Versus how many people self-identify as Backrooms fans? Or as Zendaya fans.

59:59Sean Fennessey:Or as Civil War fans. I don't think it's an A24 thing, this movie. I think that I think that people who have been raised by A24 and consider themselves the A24 boys will really know about Backrooms and aren't going to go see it because they're committed to their project but I think more of it is because you know this is A24's version of a franchise movie right? Like they figured out IP and they have the fan base to come with it Yeah and I think that's super savvy and it's honestly the same thing as But also they let it be good which you know or they let it be good and they managed to make it good.

1:00:35They're so good at marketing. I was watching the trailer for this this morning and I was like, oh, they cut this like an alien movie and it really isn't.

1:00:41Sean Fennessey:No. But that's something they keep doing is they keep wrong footing your expectations into movies, but they're not making people mad. They might be frustrated that the Celine song film is not When Harry Met Sally 2. And you think about the tightrope walk that was required from the drama and trying to promote that movie. It's the craziest thing that's happened this year. Let everyone know, like, you actually do have to come see this right now because otherwise your friends are going to be talking about it. We ran into somebody on the streets at Cannes who was talking about how they did not ultimately participate in the drama and what the kind of sense around that movie was in the industry and how difficult it would be to sell it to an audience because school shooting in quotation marks.

1:01:23Sean Fennessey:And that's just like that is a taboo that cannot be crossed and cannot be addressed in a widely released piece of culture. and not only did they do it but they made it like their third biggest movie ever and obviously you have huge stars and this really savvy marketing machine but I'm bringing this up around back rooms because this is now they did the thing that we did discuss two years ago they are actually starting to be able to accomplish and I'm very impressed you know I traditionally really liked the studio and what they've been making but the fact that they're now mainstreaming with their own brand of stuff Right is also a fascinating turning point.

1:02:00Right, because they tried to kind of open up the tent and start making different variations of what a quote-unquote A24 movie is. And frankly, like a bigger, more expensive A24 movies. And it took a minute, but now they've figured out. And so the drama is an A24 rom-com. I mean, it is. It's pretty structurally a rom-com, and this is their IP horror movie. But they are also both very weird, idiosyncratic, and potentially alienating movies that they somehow managed to sell to billions of people.

1:02:32Sean Fennessey:Marty Supreme is their sports drama. Yeah. You know, like their traditional modes. Elder Ring is their Lord of the Rings. Yes. Yeah. And their video game adaptation. Anyway. It's interesting that Obsession comes through the Blumhouse. It doesn't. It doesn't. Independently financed. Oh. And acquired out of a festival. Okay. And this movie is also... Wait, what? is Jason an exec producer on Session? Only because they acquired it. I see. And Blum is also involved in this film, along with a cadre of other figures. Peter Turner. Yeah, exactly. Like, a lot of people, a lot of very experienced, successful people, got in on the ground of this and helped to make it so, which does, I mean, is necessary sometimes, you know?

1:03:16Sean Fennessey:Like, that's also true of Star Wars. Like, you just kind of do, do you need these kind of benefactors to come through and allow for something to scale up in this way? The question is always like how much do they get in the middle of the creativity. And this feels like it doesn't feel trampled upon, which is part of what's so cool about it. Closing thoughts? Is your favorite sequence in this film? I mean, it's hard to separate them because they take place in such a kind of similar world. I think the moment when he goes into the basement after the lights turn off while he's watching television and he sees the thin shaft of light that reveals that there is something there that he can walk into is a very sophisticated piece of sci-fi filmmaking.

1:04:01When she goes into the very vertical room with the vertical, you know, stairs and it's just a wholly different version of scale. And you're just, and a real like, how did you do that? And it looks amazing. And I mean, you know. It was very Gondry. Exactly. Very cool. I loved a bunch of them. I actually thought the execution of the monster was fantastic and legitimately terrifying. And practical. Also, he's done videos that you can see him kind of like are his blueprint for that monster. They're not actually Backroom's videos, I don't think. They're just like him messing around or doing something about a giant.

1:04:39And it really works. but I love when he first brings the kids into the world and is just like, there's a pool. Like, you know, there's this, there's that. I kind of was like, this could go on for 20 minutes. Like, I just want to see all these different places.

1:04:55Sean Fennessey:And his performance is so good because you don't know, is he actually trying to do the research to prove that he's not crazy? Is he actually treating them more like bait for this world? You know, like, what is his intention? Yeah, it's weird that he's like, you have to go down there because you have the camera. Right, right. What kind of knot is this? And it's like, did the backrooms tell him to do that? And like how much of this is malevolence versus him kind of losing a grip on his own sanity? Cool stuff. All right. Well, we got one, guys. Yeah. Let's go now to my conversation with Cain Parsons.

1:05:31Sean Fennessey:Well, Cain Parsons is here. Here to talk about backrooms. And I'm very excited to chat with you. I wanted to start with this, Cain. In addition to congratulations, I've been thinking about what is the first thing that you can remember seeing that made you want to create, not make a movie necessarily, but that made you say, I want to make something of my own.

1:05:52It would be incredible if I could give you a specific material example. I think it's a tendency that traces back farther than my memory will really carry me. uh i i think realistically it's sort of a tendency that did not get shut down in the early years of my life like in the you know first three years somehow some driver there that i i don't have my head around kicked off into gear and and i've kept been like trying to find versions of that over and over again at different points in my life and i think i can look to early examples of things i suppose and and i guess in that i would say uh uh it was sort of i wasn't really into like i i would watch movies growing up like we had a dvd collection and like we'd go camping and i would like i didn't really understand what i was watching overly because i was a tiny little is it does it make sense for me to be going this far back in time it gets really abstract yes i want you to go wherever you can go yeah i mean like uh we had all the early seasons of The Simpsons on DVD, and I think those got in my brain.

1:07:06I mean, Star Wars, everything that was out at the time in 2007, I ingested... Although I wouldn't... I think those had a... I wouldn't consider myself a long-standing huge, huge Star Wars fan, but growing up, I think that definitely was probably one of the early influences of science fiction. um like materially i start getting like really outwardly excited about stuff like i i started a trend of like i guess i've actually had this my whole life but but i get really obsessed about specific things like i find a thing i latch on to it and then it's my thing for like x amount of time and then now at this point like when i was younger it was like phases and i would grow out of them but now it's just like anything i get obsessed about i kind of just hold on to it indefinitely and they just build into a big pile so i know portal was kind of like uh when i when i played that for the first time because i wasn't like i wouldn't consider myself a big gamer i i wasn't growing up but like partially just because i wasn't i mean i was restricted in what i was what i had access to but i know everyone my age it was like a rite of passage to be playing minecraft and so that was like kind of a baseline a luxury i couldn't afford exactly like i didn't have any devices and so I would have to go to friends houses and stuff for that and eventually I did get it I had a PlayStation 3 that one of our family friends gave us and then I got a little big planet and then I got portal because I played it at a friend's house one time I got portal 2 and that that's what sort of I think drove me absolutely insane and that's I'm gonna just keep citing portal and portal 2 is the thing because I love it so much and in terms of childhood it was a big focal point.

1:08:49Sean Fennessey:But did those things when you were consuming them from the Simpsons to Portal 2, did they make you think that you could make things or were they just things that you slipped into and fell into their worlds? Yeah, I kind of beat around the bush there on the question. I think I started understanding or at least processing with more clarity that I could make things. Shit, I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to give like an honest, not like salesman answer about it because I want to say that it was something like oh when I started using YouTube um I would watch all these YouTube channels and they would show you the behind the scenes and stuff and that made it seem all so so viable and whatnot but at the same time like years before I had any YouTube access when I was like three or like four I guess like four or five is probably more accurate to say I was technically picking up a family camera and obsessively running around the house with it i still have the the files like we i found the sd cards and put them on a drive just like a couple months ago um and so and not all of it's unwatchable it's not like filmmaking in a in a true or like meaningful sense but but like i was i guess my already assuming things could be made and so like there was kind of two vectors moving i like i think there was just like a um i think i've always really liked just experience curation outside of like the context of any one medium i think that's kind of what it is i i would do like theater growing up i you know was the kind of person who who would generally just try to you know a bit of an annoying kid in that i would like try to do like silly like magic tricks or like prank things or like set up an elaborate like uh scooby-doo trap or something like like rube goldberg machine things like i really liked schemes and stuff like that um and all for the effect of like getting some kind of reaction from people.

1:10:40And so I think that mutated to like a really distilled version. So I would like, I loved the, I, for a long time, I was like, I just want to make like haunted houses or just like walk, like walking through experiences, stuff like that. Like that was really compelling. Um, and then film kind of just started to take shape, I think, cause I would like, I was getting into editing, uh, a little bit because I would like edit little trailers and music videos and stuff from just random things that I was into. and edit little memes and whatnot. And then I just started slowly filming my own little clips and it just kind of started turning into like YouTube shit posts, which turned into little short films.

1:11:19And then it drifted further and further until I was just like applying all of my, like without like a, I think I find a humor in everything I do, but like I tried to do it a little more seriously, probably around the time I was 10 or so.

1:11:32Sean Fennessey:Do you find that you are historically a very quick study that you can master something quickly? I don't know about master. I think I can get excited about something. And I think what I've found with everything I've done in any field, because I like to jump around to a few different mediums just because I enjoy it personally. It's not too much about the result for me. I find that I've had a hard time getting discouraged and I don't know what I would really, I think it's probably a blend of a million different things. Again, like that's the boring answer. It's like probably stuff that I got from my parents because they're lovely people and probably stuff that I got from just my general upbringing subconsciously.

1:12:12And maybe some of it's beyond that. But like I generally have sort of I think growing up, I wrote a curve of like every time I would learn something objectively. Now I can look back and recognize it as pretty like if I did a short film, it doesn't look great. The VFX don't look great. But at the time it was like pretty mind blowing and really satisfying. I would kind of just always be riding the curve where I'm never self-aware and self-critical enough of the thing I'm making to actually be, I guess, dismissive of it to a degree that makes me want to shut the whole thing down and give it up. So it was like always constantly fun and satisfying.

1:12:48I think I've only just now started to, that curve kind of plateaus. And now there's like such an extreme degree of like being technically meticulous over it that you have to live with one thing for so long that it, you know, you start to feel what it's like to stay with a project for an uncomfortable amount of time.

1:13:05Sean Fennessey:I have some questions for you about that because it's just like your amazing prolific nature as a young person and then entering a system that is so deliberate and takes so much time that it must have felt somewhat like creative whiplash to be transitioning to that style of creation. not well not really because i i think that for me that transition started more in around 2021 or like when i started the backroom series on youtube i think i think i was kind of unfortunate it's not the right word just because it was you know a deliberate movement but i coming from like you know a lot of my influences did come from youtube and whatnot and i spent a lot of time in my teenage years or after the...

1:13:53When I started getting internet access, my influences were very much derived from people who were making these indie projects online that are very meticulous, a lot of attention to detail, lots of things to dig into, lots of channels who are maybe just even hallucinating information out of something that was never meant to be dug into. And so all of that kind of created this mindset of like, okay, if you're going to do an indie project, especially if it's mystery or horror or sci-fi, which are, you know, all what I want to be doing, you've got to be prepared to give people detail at every single level, and they're going to dig into everything, and they're going to take the entire series, play it forwards, and then play it entirely backwards in reverse, and they're going to overlap, and then at these exact moments, events need to line up and create a second message, sort of like the stuff people go crazy with, with the you know dissecting the shining and stuff just applied to everything um and and and so i think that i just got into a habit of really trying to bring that level of meticulous art direction to what i was doing on youtube and and so when we are you know scaling to to this film um again that was a gradual process of for all of like the grandiose spectacle around like the way this could be described or is being described in the media and whatnot it's like it from my perspective, I've been doing this thing pretty solo for a while online.

1:15:12People reach out. I start talking to them over Zoom. I never meet them in person. We're just talking like usually once a week or so or every now and then. Some scripts start getting made. I start talking with a writer, have like a couple hour phone calls every couple weeks. We try a few different versions. We try working with another writer. Same process, like stay on the phone for a couple hours and then we're building it goes off writes a script we get a draft phone call notes another draft people like that we want to start green lighting it um when i go to vancouver it's just me i mean that's a big move i'm like i i uh am physically going there and it's just a bunch of people who have been able to text with a little bit so far but it's like eight main people i mean there's a lot of people, but it's like, you know, really just like a single small ish room full of people who are just, uh, kind of on a similar wavelength to what I was already doing.

1:16:11So I just walk into the room and we just talk about things and we just talk about what we want to do with the film, not in like a, just in like a literal context, we're able to jump to it right away. And, and I think it became a very, when I say it's, I've said it's seamless in other interviews and stuff. And I guess I really do mean that it was just me. The biggest transition point was just taking what is usually nonverbal work and then just verbalizing it to other people and trusting or putting the right level of trust in certain parts of that. And so again, I think I wanted to make sure I had every piece of, if I can picture the final thing perfectly, I just have to be able to articulate how we can get there to the right people.

1:16:51And then they apply themselves And they did a great job.

1:16:56Sean Fennessey:So I want to ask you more about the production and the conception of the film. But one last thing about, you know, your more early days. I was curious if you could remember the moment when you decided you wanted to start uploading the things that you were doing, because that feels like kind of a critical decision to make, even if you were 10 years old when you started doing it. But just this idea of how much of it is driven by the need for attention, like a sense of pride, you know, just trying to have a test experience to see what it would be like. Like, can you kind of communicate like where that came from and then how that becomes ultimately like, I think, a turning point for a lot of young artists now?

1:17:38Yeah, I mean, for me, again, it was April of 2015, I believe. and that's when I created my YouTube channel. And the first material sort of version of a short film that I was doing repeatedly at the time, like the thing I was into was like Lego stop motion. And so that's what I first posted on YouTube. There's technically a first video on my channel now, but that's not true whatsoever. That was, I guess, actually it feels like forever. That was 2017. That feels like a million years apart from 2015. But there's like, I think 200 privated videos before that one. I posted a lot in that time. And the early stuff was just very short little snippets, no audio because I didn't know how to edit.

1:18:24I didn't know how to do anything other than just use I think I used this software called Huey Animation or something on either the family computer. I don't know if I had a laptop at that time. And I didn't have a phone or a tablet or anything yet at that point. So I think I was just using a family computer. And I think it was probably like I had watched, YouTube was like the main thing I chose to watch when I had the time. And I think it was just an aspect of, I don't know what it was at that point. I'm sure an element of what I do comes out of wanting, like it's seeking some form of validation socially, of course.

1:19:11um i it's not like in a very clear way like you don't look at art and and or you know i i don't think what i've been doing really has that has that appearance overly uh like it's being done for attention but i i think that like you know that's kind of the social contract that i made in my childhood with like okay if i'm a bit of a indoorsy person who is not like the most socially interactive or is not in the most, uh, on the same wavelength as a lot of my peers. Like I will make up for that by, by, uh, you know, over-relying on these technical trades that I can then exercise to an impressive degree, hopefully.

1:19:49And then, and then the conversation can just be about that rather than anything else. Um, and I, I think that's kind of worked out. Um, but, but, but I think if I had to guess, that's kind of subconsciously what like the deeper psychology there was to a certain degree. But I also just, I found it really satisfying. It was just kind of like a really high dopamine reward from doing it. Like I, more of making the thing. I think the uploading was just either part of what I just said or a desire to

1:20:24I'm sure there's more to it. I woke up early. So I'm still low.

1:20:28Sean Fennessey:It's insightful and I'm really curious about it because they're, you know, you're part of a generation of filmmakers now, which I'm sure you're being told over and over again in these last three months of your life, but like that are, they're having, they're exposing their ideas in different ways than what was the previous dogma, the previous methodology. And so the fact that there is all of this extant work that you have made before a certain age that is publicly available is so interesting. And like you, I really like how you explained how you knew going into the making of this movie and even in the web series that like people would watch it backwards and forwards and they would be looking for hidden meanings and secret truths.

1:21:09Sean Fennessey:And I'm curious like what that process was like when you were working with the writers on the scripts. Like were those the things that you were hunting for? How do you know that the story is the right story that you want to tell when you're working in that way?

1:21:24I think it's a, it was a mixture of like, because because what was what i had on youtube was something that it's the same like narrative engine like it's or at least the world is still there it's like the film is all ended up in a place where it's the same canon and that was always the hope so i think it was you know finding finding like what is a interesting like like genuinely compelling not just for people who have already followed the project but like what is a like a eyebrow raising just intro film to that concept that does not like entrench the viewer in all of this, this either feeling of being alienated by a mythology that's been going on for years.

1:22:05And it's like, how can we make sure that like, you're not going into the film. And then when you don't get it, people are hounding you with the criticism that like it's for the fans or you were supposed to have watched the whole series first. And I just, I personally don't really enjoy that. I like being able to, especially because backrooms, the way I've constructed it is usually a little bit of an anthology type. It's told out of order and it's more of putting together a broader shape of a tree rather than... Or that's how I've been constructing it so far. I'd love to do a TV series. I think as soon as you're picking an episode, and I consider this film an episode, then you can tell that in order and make sure you're completing that story.

1:22:47But I don't think each individual piece needs to be lined up in this one precise way. And so the hope was always, this is a branch on the tree. It is not like the fundamental thread that ties the whole thing together. And it's not the ending. It's not even the beginning. It's just a piece in the middle that is hopefully going to be so focused on the fundamental sort of physical details that overwhelm a character with finding this place that there's not even time in the movie to get entrenched in like the more underlying, who is this mysterious individual? Who is the vice director of this research institute and what does he have going on in his life and what happened in 1972 and whatnot.

1:23:28It's like all that stuff is in the YouTube series. But, you know, so I guess to answer the question, it was sort of as simple as finding a compelling, I think a less is more sort of mundane approach to letting a character interact with the mechanic of the backrooms in a way that really just foregrounds a simple relationship there because I would love to, you know, I'd love to go harder with a lot of things in future projects. But I do think that to a certain extent, I'm trying to be careful with my own ability to scale properly. Like there's such a thing as moving too fast. And this has already been moving at light speed.

1:24:06So I wanted to at least work on something that I think would be manageable. And I didn't want the worst thing that I would be afraid of doing is like jumping the shark, I suppose. So I wanted to make sure that we could have a stable, viable version of a film that is not going to, you know, risk falling into a bit of an insane, contrived or convoluted territory.

1:24:29Sean Fennessey:I'm curious about the three tracks of the movie, the way that I see it. The one is just the pure narrative storytelling of the characters that you're portraying. The second is the sort of lore and mythology that you've explored in the web series and that you're obviously very conversant in as an idea. And then the third is thematic. And I feel like thematically the movie is very rich and, but I haven't heard you talk about it as much. And I don't know how much you are even thinking about your storytelling in that specific way. I think it's easy to over rely on symbolism and, um, you know, the thematics of a project.

1:25:06I do it immensely. So the quick answer is yes, I have a version of it. The great thing about thematics is that people are probably going to have many, many different interpretations of it. And so that's why that's actually the bit I like to speak to the least probably. I mean, you can probably just, if you were to comb over all the interviews, all the press I've done, you could probably get a flavor of the way I think about this project. But I do think that that's the least interesting thing I could prescribe to people. like i if it was up to me i i like i like trying to in a perfect world i i guess i mainly i'm just fatigued with seeing creators you know after their project ends or you know after the project ends like going on and talking about what it all means in a way that is somehow like if it's not clear in the product then i don't know you could try again or like i want it to be on the screen and and this film is not supposed to be like you're not supposed to get like a hard read out of it exactly in terms of like, this is precisely what it means in very exact explicit terms.

1:26:08But it is there and I'm seeing enough people arriving to the same sort of conversational talking points that I was hoping they would, that obviously aren't mentioned in the film anywhere. So I feel like that works. I feel good with the work that was done there. Yeah, I try not to verbalize exactly what it should be though.

1:26:28Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think I'm just curious about how much time you spend on it because I find that with a lot of projects like this, the lore tends to overwhelm the other components. And I don't see that in this case at all, but it's helpful. And, you know, there's been a lot of allusions to David Lynch with your work and, you know, he very famously sort of refused to explore any of his thematic intents. I'm not encouraging you to do that in either direction. Whatever you want to do, you should do. I'm probably going to keep up doing it this way. But yeah, I mean, I think I think there's a lot that people can look at and I like to when I work and I've been doing this for years now in backrooms and any other projects I I kind of don't do anything else so I think a lot of it kind of comes from like a very forced sort of just drowning in a mindset or a set of ideas that just become I guess it's just like the way the way subconsciously a culture can sort of encode so much, just the way information is transmitted and the way it's framed in little ways that sometimes you're not even aware of.

1:27:34I think most of those thematic choices, I'm kind of trusting my subconscious to do a lot of that work after I've kind of fed it so much stuff for so long. And that kind of has seemed to be the case so far.

1:27:45Sean Fennessey:What about the mechanics of horror movies? That's something I'm quite interested in because you do have some moments in the movie that are like classical scares, you know, that have like some of the traditional strategies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so is that something that you studied and thought about? Is that something that you knew was necessary in a work of art, in a commercial work of art like this? How much did you think about that? I think, I mean, I've never like looked at it from a technical or clinical standpoint. I think mostly through osmosis. I haven't watched a lot of horror movies.

1:28:19I think it also can't be understated, the role in which Greg, our editor, had on the project. I wish people talked about Greg more because he's a wizard and he did, you know. Speak about it. It was lovely working with him for so long. You know, and I think that like, I think there's a few places in the film where you're right. There's definitely a reliance on the sort of, you know, build up release of a, I don't want to say jump scare. I don't personally, I don't think anyone is too sentimental about jump scares. So so I don't think I need to run the risk of sounding like a like a jump scare supporter.

1:28:55But there's certainly a few moments where we startle the viewer. I think. I'm willing to live with those. I think I think I stand by them to like a 90 percent degree. And I would say that, like. I think I think those are just we're wanting to set a very specific cadence where we are like showing that we can you know we can bring up the tension we can bring up the the uh you know the sudden surge of noise or adrenaline or whatever we're looking for there there can be things do happen here um but then the longer we go without something happening and then when we sort of like are able to subvert that sort of I think it you know kind of breaks that language a little bit uh and you know leaves us kind of brings the tempo way down for like a long period before it very subtle you get like a silent jump scare just like the shadow moves um and you get a you know a slightly different kind of release so I don't have it in academic terms that's actually something I think I rely more on intuition for than anything else um I'm sure what I'm planning on doing this summer is watching a whole lot of stuff and trying to do just that because it's been about two years working on this film.

1:30:15That's a lot of time for someone who still has a developing brain and wants to be trying to feed it more stuff. And during that whole time I haven't really been able to consume anything so I am dying to actually get a better academic handle on this stuff.

1:30:29Sean Fennessey:That's funny. I mean, you know, you should definitely do what you want to do but one of the things that I really, really admired about the movie is while it does have some of those core components of a scary movie, which is a genre that I really, really care about and have spent a lot of time watching a lot of movies like that and studied them to whatever extent that matters. The movie is working best for me when it is not only subverting, but sort of like ignoring the orthodoxy of narrative feature film. And I hear you when you say that that's intuitive, but there's something very precise about your willingness to sit in moments and to not explain.

1:31:06Sean Fennessey:and my instinct as an older person than you is to tell you like, well, that must be coming from YouTube and whatever you've consumed there that allows you to reject these traditional modes. But I don't actually know. Like I'm actually very genuinely curious. And did you find that you had to like fight for those kinds of moments in the film or to allow for that? We did. It wasn't like vicious fights. They're very manageable, but there are certainly conversations, I guess I can say. I think I would say that like that stuff mostly comes from the same place where I derive pretty much all of my excitement for projects, which is this is cliche and this is cheesy and this is technically where all of art is sourced from because there's nowhere else to source art from, but just, you know, nonfiction, the real world, my life.

1:31:51I think I never had a moment growing up where I went to the theater and, you know, suddenly fell in love with movies because I was at the theater and and it was so profound and beautiful and it really got to me um i think if anything i've sort of you know i i think i like to think of a better i have a better way of looking at it now but like when i was younger i had like an admittedly kind of like pretentious view of it which was like i don't really want to be making films about my perception of reality as prescribed by someone else making a film uh like already it's like it feels like it's like you're diluting reality further and further if your inspirations are only nonfiction.

1:32:33And I was just like, I don't really want to do that. I want to experience as much of life as possible. Like if I were to have like a dream career would be equal parts trying to just see as much of life as possible and trying to actually like meet people and talk to people from different, like as many different walks of life as possible and just have lived experience that I can actually draw from personally on a personal level, coded with my own life experience and emotion and tonality. And then, you know, I mean, that's a sprawling, that's the entirety of life, like that, that accounts for everything.

1:33:05And then just use film as a way to process that and sort of summarize, basically, here's what I learned in the form of a weird, bizarre, fictional, you know, anything, it could be a movie, it could be a game, it could be a TV show, it could be music. But like, I think that's kind of the way that I framed making stuff when I was younger. And I, you know, maybe that's not that pretentious. I mean, I think there's a very healthy way to do that. I think that's, you know, it's what I'm doing now. It's what I enjoy. So, yeah.

1:33:32Sean Fennessey:You did mention that you like to jump around mediums. I mean, do you see yourself working in the mode as a filmmaker for a long stretch of time? Is that what you're going to be doing? I think, I don't know where things will settle like 40 years from now. But I do, you know, currently very much desire to just keep doing the kind of, I would say that the balance I have currently is the one I would like to keep. There might be all sorts of strange, bizarre economic hallucinations with the industry and like, you know, strange new trends starts. And, you know, there'll be a few new technologies in the coming decades that will certainly derail or change or open up new avenues.

1:34:13is and I think you know I'm that that's why I kind of broadly I'm interested in the the whole sort of width of what it can be um but I uh with the caveat that I I personally have no desire to lean on generative AI for any of my art just have to say that um thank you for saying that but I I you know I I think that I just really enjoy the experience of like I said it's experience curation That's what I like. I like sort of taking the things that feel potent from lived reality and then just kind of cranking them up to 10 in a way that you can sort of repeat the emotion sort of in an easily samplable way.

1:34:53So hopefully you can, you know, gain something from an experience you didn't live yourself. So, you know.

1:34:58Sean Fennessey:Do you find that you encountered any genuine limitations to working in like a traditional film production style as opposed to like software? uh yeah i think i think there's limitations in what you can ask of people uh reasonably um like the level of obsession that can be required for like there's an example would be on on my discord server there are many many people who are on there all the time and they are probably around my age some some of them even on the younger side and they are far more sophisticated at like blender than I possibly could be. And they work at it constantly. And for a piece of fan art, like after a trailer from the film comes out, they go and they model every single thing in the trailer with full degree.

1:35:45Like they find the props, the exact props from the exact prop shops and they model those objects. And they even like on the underside of tables and ottomans, they include the little manufacturing label in full 4K resolution and it's all there. And then they just share those assets around and then they remake everything one for one. So it's like this feeling of like, If that could be leveraged, that's incredible. And there's like such an intense focus and it's so maybe not professional in etiquette, but so incredibly meticulous and professional in the production quality. And I see that constantly.

1:36:18But like, that's not something that you can just kind of inject by asking for it. It's something that kind of has to grow incidentally. And so maybe there'll be a way to, you know, lean on some of that in the future. I really enjoy working with people who are obsessed with what they do. And we did have a lot of that on this film. But I think, you know, it is such a diversified project that, you know, there's certainly places where it is hard. I'm working on this, this, and this. And so this one thing maybe doesn't get the same level of like obsessive detail baked into it. And on YouTube, that would be fine because I can just take as much time as I need and I can go do that.

1:36:59And I think it's partially the time factor that I run up against on this film. And then I'd say also the, you know, the, the way in the, I guess the two other things would be the script, like the way, uh, you know, I was 16 when the script was, well, when this project started and then, um, you know, it was a couple of years of making, but like, I don't think that I had the most creative leverage at the very start of this project. And I think it grew with time. um so i think there's certainly ways in which uh i i i wish there like i i i think i think there are choices that i wish we could have spent more time deliberating over in the early phases before we just wanted to try to uh you know it was greenlit i think i think at a time when could have benefited from a bit more like analysis and going back and forth a bit more um which is all stuff we did while we were in prep and while we were going through the film so I think it was that and then I would say it's just generally and this isn't a restraint this is actually liberating in some ways but like the difference between YouTube as the medium or as the place where people are going to go view it and then going to a theater and viewing it on a projector screen is going to obviously change so much of how people are perceiving it the fact that this is a large budget production versus something that they just clicked on a YouTube channel to find is mentally doing a lot of lifting in different directions for people.

1:38:25And I actually find that to be like one of the most interesting sort of paintbrushes available to like choose the medium. And I, I think you have to pick, I think back rooms was tricky because it took a lot of work to bend certain elements to make sure it was constantly working for this other direction for a 90 minute film. I think a television series is always where it's kind of made the most sense to drift to um that's i mean i've said that from the beginning but i i think that um that's so

1:38:54Sean Fennessey:interesting that you say that medium like because i feel like one of the things that is so effective about the movie and i realize you're not a person who's sort of raised in the deep glow of the big screen but you know i've still watched i've watched a good amount but but you know there's something about being captured in a dark room that is so effective for this story and that you can't get up and pause it and you can't you know look at your phone and there's something very specific like in the dna of the creation that makes it effective in that space and maybe not for the story that you want to tell but i don't know you know i'm not i don't it's not a happy accident of course i think it's more effective i think it's more effective for that um i think what i'm speaking to is maybe a distinction between a project like this and there's some projects I've done on YouTube where episodes of this, of a given series might be like 10 minute long screen recordings from a video game that was made in 2003.

1:39:54And you're, it's like kind of compressed and it's supposed to feel like you're just viewing messy files and you have the freedom to click around and download files from the description. And there's like metadata in the file. So like ARG stuff really. And so it's just a medium switch there where I think things are framed a little bit better there. And if you tried to throw those onto a theater screen, I think honestly, maybe, I don't know, maybe this is just somewhat uncharted territory. And maybe the next thing I should do is literally just try to see how scalable some of those things that seem unscalable are.

1:40:22Because if they're not, I mean, or if they are scalable, then that'd be pretty cool. There's some stuff to be done with that, I think.

1:40:30Sean Fennessey:I mean, as an observer, I think it's just incredibly intriguing, the idea of just kind of breaking the form a little bit and delivering things in a slightly different way than we are used to receiving them. But I'm curious about if you are able to do this, take stock of this exact moment. I mean, we're speaking hours before the movie will be released widely. And there's obviously a big frenzy. And people have been watching your work en masse for a long period of time. But this is a scale, at least in terms of the way that the media communicates about something, that is very, very different. Like, how close do you feel to it?

1:41:10Sean Fennessey:How much do you feel like you understand it? um how are you feeling about it i feel i i feel close to it i don't feel particularly like well i guess i feel i feel very looped in um i am checking and and you know i i despise twitter i do not enjoy using twitter in the slightest i am checking twitter though and it's i could i am only more firm in my in my desire to never go back on there outside of this um but that's more for just like seeing what, what like stuff has leaked so far from the theater recordings and whatnot, just to, you know, just seeing what information is traveling where. Um, and I, so, so I feel like I've got a good finger on the pulse right now.

1:41:52I think most of, I mean, I've just come off like a pretty hefty press tour. So I'm a little mentally drained from talking about, which is why I appreciate this conversation, which is not about the normal talking points because, you know, I'm very thoroughly done with a lot of that personally. I've been trying to avoid them for your sake and mine. I enjoy, I've enjoyed the experience, but at a certain point, I think everything that I have to say has kind of been said. I think I always maybe do have more to say, but like, I think you need time to incubate and like find those new things. And when you're doing it back to back, you kind of run out of new options.

1:42:31So I think right now I'm kind of just, I mean, And I every now and then I do get a moment of like, I'm kind of done with this and I'll get a video on Instagram of myself just talking and I'll click the not interested button just so I don't have to get more clips of myself. It's a back room Z and move by you. Yeah, I you know, I it feels good. Like, again, like I we talked about it when I first got on the call. I just got back home to my childhood home where my family is. And my brother's wrapping up high school right now. He graduates next week. And I am just kind of going... I'm just letting my nervous system kind of reset to where it was before I did all this, I think, because it was very much I've been at home my whole life.

1:43:18And then I go to Vancouver. I do this film. Don't leave Vancouver the whole time. And then now I'm immediately coming back. And this kind of like everything that happened with this movie from beginning of prep to release it's just kind of an insulated event that I kind of want to be able to just keep going to different places and repeating. So although I do love Vancouver, I'll probably do more stuff there. But I don't know, it feels like it feels like I don't want it to turn into a whirlwind that never ends, because that would drive me completely insane. Like, you need the sort of, you know, the breaks to find what's actually meaningful to go towards next.

1:43:52So I'm trying to do that now. Welcome back to your life.

1:43:56Sean Fennessey:Cain, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Now, you said it's been hard for you to see things, but you also have this very wide-ranging sense of what is seen. It doesn't have to be a movie, but what is something that you've looked at that you loved? this is more of it this isn't like a firm like ip experience as much as it is a combination of being on the plane back to back with this press tour everywhere and you know uh just looking out the window and there's a mixture of like reading and and audiobook um just going through like all of ted cheng's short stories is what i'm i'm currently on a ted cheng ted cheng kick um and And so I don't know if this is an accepted answer, but I think it's just like, I'm really enjoying the headspace that that's put me in just going through tales of your life, or stories of your life and others and, and exhalation.

1:44:56And just looking out the window for hours and hours and hours and the sun rises and falls. And it's just like, that's kind of been like, you know, the mountains, the sea, everything, everything you see when you fly around the planet in a plane um i think it's just been all of those things have kind of just bled together into a single kind of hum just like a tone that i i think is less interesting to sort of describe in intellectual terms than it is to just kind of say that it's really peaceful and uh i think just it feels like a very like a place i just want to keep living in it feels like a comfortable sort of little bubble i guess it's a perfect answer uh

1:45:35Sean Fennessey:Cain, congratulations. This is a truly unique moment. I hope you are able to appreciate it back home. I'm enjoying it. All right. Thanks for doing the show. I'm going to go for a hike. See ya. Get outside.

1:45:50Sean Fennessey:Thanks to Cain. Thanks to CR. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for production support. We'll be back next week to talk about 10 movies we missed in May. 10. Yeah. Just about close to there. you know like what's on the list so Sheep Detectives you guys didn't do a Sheep Detective because it can because it can Billy Eilish hit me hard hit me soft live in 3D or whatever it's called we're gonna try to go see Pressure the World War 2 film I'm gonna try to see Passenger the horror movie that's out this weekend Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat 2 what else is on the list I Love Boosters I Love Boosters of course what else have you been watching anything you want to hear us address nothing movie wise that you guys have not have not either hit or are about to hit okay it's all TV stuff cool anything you want anyone to raise your hand for any last final movie something else that you want to add I was just googling it but I mean that's a lot anything I'm trying to think all the canned movies are listed AI is useless did you guys do Ready or Not 2 I watched that yes I did address it I didn't love it what did you think I didn't love it as much as the first one the first one is great yeah All right.

1:47:03Sean Fennessey:Well, hey, Chris, thanks for coming on this journey with us. Anytime I can contribute. It's always really a joy for me. Well, okay. Last licks here since Van just did this. Where are you at? Where's your head at with third chair? I think that it was interesting. You know, John Cornyn, a four-term senator in Texas, just lost his primary to Ken Paxton. I know. And that must have been so hard for you. And he immediately endorsed Paxton. And I just thought, I'd like to see that kind of commitment from you guys. You know? Commitment to party. commitment to and you putting yourself up for bidding and for auction and just be like I am just the watcher I can't you know I can't weigh in on this I think I made a fairly cogent defense of the work that you've done last time this was discussed so I'm on the record as being very pro CR but you said it was the friends we've made along the way what about the friends we've had for a long time you know no I I'm enjoying I'm enjoying the bands you know do you I'm almost caught up with all of the Tracy material that you recorded in May that ran while we were in Cannes it's good I took a couple shots that I did I'll wait and respond to it later mostly from you Tracy always comes to my defense so really my problem is with you interesting honestly if someone wants to come for first chair I welcome it because you want to have the gladiator fight or you're waiting for someone to kill you I'm looking for an opportunity to reveal what really goes into making this show.

1:48:32Sean Fennessey:That's what I want to be able to do. You know, looks easy, doesn't it? I didn't say that. I have to run my own shop. You know, I know what happens. No, you're safe here with us. You keep touching me in such a weird way. You're safe here. You want to hold second chair? Yeah, listen, people can try. But I just, it's really, it's a one of one situation. No one can do what I'm doing. I will not take that away from you, I promise. A mind palace all your own. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.

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