A dark slice of Minnesota hits Cork screen in I am Not a Serial Killer
A PRODUCER who also works as a director on other films; an ungranted rider (a celeb backstage request) from an actor of several decades’ standing; and a teenage lead actor who made suggestions about how a scene should be played.
You might assume the film I Am Not A Serial Killer was born from diva-esque tantrums, on-set scuffles and blazing rows over creative differences.
Well, the producer has nothing but praise for the director; the director says he worked with a great bunch of people; the actors are hailed as great fun and very professional — or even shy.
Director, Billy O’Brien, says Christopher Lloyd did have one ‘demand’ for the duration of the filming in northern Minnesota: “He wanted it in his contract that he gets to go to a gym every day. He’s no prima donna but he’s 78 now and very physical and he needs to hang onto his fitness.”
However, even this modest request couldn’t be granted: “We were filming in the midwest in a town equivalent to Buttevant (where O’Brien is from) so there wasn’t one.”
The film, which is based on Dan Wells’ book of the same name, stars Max Records as John, a clinically-diagnosed sociopath teen who is genuinely worried he might turn out to hurt someone.
Producer, Nick Ryan, who’s originally from Dublin, has plenty of praise for Records, who caught his eye with his role as a 10-year-old in Where the Wild Things Are: “He’s a brilliant kid. He was always our first choice. And luckily by the time this film was ready he was the right age for this,” says Ryan.
O’Brien notes that Max had a quiet confidence and he even made well- received suggestions to Christopher Lloyd about how to play certain scenes.
Lloyd is perhaps best known for his roles as Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, and he also played Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1991).
As in Back to the Future he plays the role of older, odd guy who befriends a teenager but in a much darker film here. Lloyd’s Crowley is John’s neighbour and friend in a bleak, snow-filled town where bad things happen.
O’Brien laughs that there’s a Coen Brothers feel to the setting: “It’s soaked in Americana — there’s a Fargo feel to it — as if the Coen Brothers made a supernatural thriller.”
There’s plenty dark humour in the film, which has been well-received elsewhere — when we spoke, O’Brien was just off the plane from Trieste where it screened at the Science+ Fiction Film Festival. The film premiered in the US in March and began touring Europe from July: “I watched it with 750 people and guest of honour Rutger Hauer so that was fun. Though I reckon I could never be in a band on tour — it’s exhausting.”
O’Brien is looking forward to showing it to an Irish audience at Cork Film Festival — but his own children, Brendan and Ebba, aged 9 and nearly 6, who already help him out with some camerawork, will have to wait a few years to see it.
Actress, Laura Fraser, who played a blacksmith who tends to Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale, earned much praise for her role as the extremely jittery, chamomile tea-drinking Lydia Rodarte-Quayle in Breaking Bad — in this film she runs the town’s funeral home.
“Lydia is great — she’s so good that you get a surprise when you ‘cut’ and she switches back to her pure Glaswegian accent,” notes O’Brien.
Both O’Brien and Ryan are looking forward to catching up with family and friends while they’re at the Film Festival in Cork but they’ve both got an eye on plenty future projects too.
O’Brien is already planning a movie involving puppets and Irish myths and legends, as well as a musical film featuring cannibals.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
