‘There’s No Serial Killer In That’: 'Longlegs’' Director Asked His Cast And Crew To Watch Some Pretty Unexpected Movies, But It Worked

Interview with writer / director Oz Perkins and Actor Maika Monroe

Transcript

00:00The first thing I want to discuss with you is just the atmosphere of the film, because that's

00:04really just what won't leave me. It is just so unrelenting. I'm curious about the process of

00:11both establishing that atmosphere on set and during post-production, and just the influences

00:17that you kind of took in the making of it. I like very much the vibe from The Shining in there,

00:23for sure. I think that what ends up happening when I'm writing something, when I'm putting out,

00:29when it's time for me to be in output mode, is that what could possibly be happening besides

00:35everything that's been input has been sort of churned through my experience, through my feelings,

00:41my sensibilities, my taste, my good, my bad, my shadow, my light, and it comes out as this other

00:50thing, and my job is just to sort of curate that so it makes sense to somebody else besides myself.

00:56And so, you know, whatever's in me is coming out onto the page, hopefully. I mean, if I'm in a good

01:05limber day, and it's a good writing day, then the stuff is flowing through the channel. And so,

01:11you know, any project just becomes a sampling of things about me. And so, you know, do I ever

01:21deliberately say, it has to be just like this? Sometimes, you know, like, in the case of this

01:25movie, like, the setup had to be like Silence of the Lambs. Like, that, we knew that much going in,

01:32that that was going to be a rule that we were going to follow. But, you know, for the most part,

01:37I'm pulling very disparate comps and inspirations and influences and things. And I'm saying lots of

01:46really oblique things to people and having them watch movies that have nothing to do with what

01:49we're doing. Because you can't go straight at something, right? You kind of have to come at

01:54it from a side. Oh, I guess from that question, Micah, what did you watch? What did you watch?

01:59I don't know. Like, I don't, I don't know. I watched. Like, I think I said, I think I said to

02:04Mike, I don't know if you watched, but I said, like, a woman under the influence really early on. I was

02:08like, I don't know. There's no serial killers in that. There's no anything in that. But,

02:12like, it's just a fucking perfect thing. Yeah. Right? So, I want to feel good about

02:16something else that's been made that's been perfect. I told the DP, my, my director of

02:20photography, we looked at a lot of Gus Van Zandt movies just for, there's, there's a,

02:24I mean, talk about good taste, right? So, it's just like, you want to, you want to,

02:27like, let's have an adventure in good taste. Watch Last Days or watch My Own Private Idaho.

02:34Just have, like, a moment of good taste and let's try to copy it.