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Michael Reich: I mean, the initial seed money that started it. I've been doubling as a Daft Punk robot. I did Electroma, and I double for them in a variety of different facets. So the money I got from that, I just put into a fund that I wanted to do something cool with someday and that was this movie eventually. I think they'll dig this movie.
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Yeah. Working on Electroma the movie was a really cool experience. That was super inspiring because they were essentially just friends making a movie together. That was the first real indie movie set that I was on. They weren't doing it for commercial reasons, they were doing it because they like weird cult, midnight movies. That totally trickled down into the inspiration for this, where I just want to make a weird midnight movie because I love cult midnight movies. I like commercial movies, but I love midnight movies.You've always worked together, but how did you come together to make this film?
Mike Pinkney: We co-direct music videos and short films, and he wanted to make this feature that is very personal for him, and he approached me in an In-N-Out burger in like 2010: "Hey, I think you should act in this." I'm like, very uncomfortable with that idea because I've always collaborated with him behind the camera. But he's like, "I'll pay you to do acting classes." And I thought, Sure, you know if I knew more about acting, it would serve me more as an actor and director. We took them for two years while the script was being polished.
Reich: We tested out scenes in the class.
Pinkney: That's where we met Sonja in the acting class.
Reich: Just happenstance. It was cool, I was like, "Wow, Kinski—that's a cool name." And she's like, "That's my grandfather."
Pinkney: And Natassja Kinski's your mom.
Reich: You look just like her.
Pinkney: And we both love Cat People so much.
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Reich: This feature was kinda spawned from a music video by this band Yuck, for the song "Rubber." And it was written as a short film to be part of a bigger feature, then for a music video, then back to a short film. Then that short film premiered at SXSW in 2013. It started as a music video, that was all the dog grooming.
Pinkney: Part of it was, the budgets keep shrinking on these music videos. So to give it this stylistic edge, sometimes embracing a low-fi quality, rather than a high glitz, we kinda kept more and more leaning into that direction to kind of differentiate our style as directors and it just kinda evolved. A lot of people can't go down this path because the equipment that we're using is so archaic.You guys have a passion for public access as well.
I love cable access because there is something—like it's bad art, but it's not intentionally bad. You can laugh with and laugh at it. There is a kind of small-time feel to it, so it felt local. It was just people in your small town, and it was endearing but also crappy.
Reich: And that's lost now. I think someone like Honey, my landlord, who appears in the film, he performed on Hollywood public access in the 80s and 90s and shit. And now that form is gone, and he tries to do stuff on YouTube, but you just get lost out there.
Pinkney: There was this show, The Three Geniuses, it's not very accessible, but it's like the look and feel feels so raw, and it's like cable-access puke, but it's great.
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Carrie is just this good—you can't decide if it's a good movie or a bad movie. We used to pitch this idea as a music video to bands, and this idea of puppeteering cats. But for obvious reasons, it's very logistically difficult.
Reich: That's why it was never made. Bands would also say it was too weird.
Pinkney: I wanted to make little fur oven mitts and put it under their armpits and just puppeteer these docile cats and put varsity jackets on them.
Reich: But cats are just extremely hard to work with.In the movie, you have the scene where they're clipping the dog's nails, and it's bleeding all over. Was that based on a real event?
I did a bad job clipping a dog's nails once. There was just blood everywhere, and it was a Weimaraner. Clipping a dog's nails is actually kind of hard, especially if the dog has dark nails. You're typically not supposed to take people into the room when you clip their dog's nails, because dogs tend to freak out more if their owner is there. It was one of my first times, and I was like, "Come on in, no problem." I was trying to make small talk. I wasn't attracted to the woman, I was just trying to cut the nails, and there was just blood everywhere. It was really bad. I cut them way too short—it was probably painful, and the dog was crying. There was so much blood. She kept on saying, "Is that supposed to happen?" And I was like, "Ya, ya, it is." But it wasn't.
Pinkney: You're lucky you had a dog grooming job after.Tell us about the Video Thing project. There are a few clips on YouTube, but the website is down.
Reich: I actually lost the domain name while working on this movie because I was so busy that I forgot to pay it. But Video Thing, I did for like six years. And it was so fun, and it's not available right now. I want to eventually put it online again, but I kinda like the idea that they're not really available, and people ask me about them because that's how—I mean, I traveled around the world documenting all these different bands doing Video Thing, and then I just wanted to make something bigger. I tried to make a Video Thing movie, I shot it, but it just never went anywhere. I actively stopped doing Video Thing, because it took so much time and effort, and energy that I wanted to shift into doing the feature. I want to make it obscure, and I'll open the vault [eventually]. I made like 400 videos.Are you going to continue to make movies?
Pinkney: We're actually working on a script right now, a Bar Mitzvah horror story.
Reich: It's set in 1994. It's called Bar Mitzvah 94.Follow Justine Smith Twitter.