Every year there are movies I miss at Sundance, so I follow them around to other film festivals or maybe not until they are eventually released. In the case of Frank, I’m glad I had to wait until South by Southwest to see it because SXSW plays a big role in the film. Frank stars Michael Fassbender as a musician who wears a mask over his entire head. Domhnall Gleeson plays an aspiring musician, Jon, who thinks he can take Frank’s band (including Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scoot McNairy) to the big time. At one point, they do play the SXSW music festival, so better I saw Frank in Austin in March than Park City in January.
Now everyone can see Frank when it opens this weekend. I interviewed director Lenny Abrahmson at SXSW.
CraveOnline: Can you prove to me that was Michael Fassbender under there? I don’t believe you.
Lenny Abrahmson: You genuinely don’t believe me?
No, I’m messing with you but I think it’s funny to approach the possibility.
Okay, well, I would say that looking from the outside, you read the script or you hear the description of the movie, hard to know how you could know it’s Fassbender. See the movie and I challenge anybody to doubt that it was. So that would be my answer. There’s so much Fassbender-ness coming off the performance that there’s no room to doubt. And from a production standpoint, it was a rule we made right at the beginning and that Michael made that whenever you saw Frank, it’s Michael.
Did you design the head before or after he was attached to the film?
Through both phases, so [we] started to think about the head quite early. And then the second phases and prototypes and back and forth about whether we thought it was working or not included him. So he had a big say in it right up to the end.
What were some considerations Fassbender thought didn’t work, and what led to the round, oblong shape?
I think there was no conflict there in that we all felt that that way was working. We shot some tests actually before he came onboard with a few heads and that led us towards the round version. We had one other head which I thought would work which was much more sculpted, looked much more like a very large, grotesque person. Whereas what we’ve got is slightly cartoony in its round wide-eyedness. We felt that was working much better and Michael agreed so we just all fell very neatly into that channel.
He had eyelashes at one point and Michael didn’t feel that worked, and he was right I think. Much better without. Some of the mechanics we talked a lot about. At one point, because the eyes are wider apart than human eyes, you can’t look out both eyes. The eyes are tiny as well and they’re covered in gauze, so really the visibility is bad enough but you can only look out one eye at a time.
We did have a design for parascopic spectacles that you could wear under the head, which would effectively bring the two eyes closer together. But, I think he felt that his constraints should be the same as the character. And it affects how he looks at people. He quite often looks slightly side on so that he can directly place one eye between him and the person. It just helped with the overall movement.
Did you have any “Bane” issues with the sound?
Yes, we ended up having to quite carefully sound-treat the inside of the head so that you wouldn’t just get terrible echoey, boomy sound. And then we had a mic hidden inside, so he’s radio mic’ed from the inside but he’s also on a boom outside. The funny thing is his sound was so good, the sound guys were saying, “Can we please have everybody in a head from now on in every film we do?” But we usually have to mess his sound up a little bit just to make it feel less studio-y and more in the room.
Would he keep the head on between takes?
No, usually took it off. Sometimes he’d wear it for a while just to get in the zone, but it’s hot. Although we filmed in Albuquerque in the winter, so it was bloody cold, and we filmed in Ireland which is cold. Quite often it wasn’t too unpleasant but interiors, yeah, he would take it off. He wore it a lot I think in advance, but shoots are pretty mechanical and he certainly wasn’t doing a method thing, wearing it home at night.
How heavy was the head?
Quite light actually. It’s modeled originally in paper mache but it’s made out of a very light plastic. Yeah, it was wearable. We all tried it.
How did all the SXSW stuff play at Sundance?
It played really well. It got a big cheer and a laugh the first time SXSW was mentioned, and then I think people really enjoyed our slightly exaggerated take on the flavor of the place and the type of people who I suppose are a caricature of people who would be likely to attend.
There must have been a lot of people in that audience who attend both festivals.
Oh yeah. There would have been a lot of people who would go to SXSW and I think people have a real sense of what SXSW is like. I was pleased that people who’ve been to SXSW asked me what it was like to shoot at SXSW so they obviously believed I did. A lot goes down to our designer, Richard Bullock, who just did a very, very thorough job in researching SXSW.
What did Austin think of you setting up SXSW paraphernalia midyear?
They were really cool. We couldn’t have done it without their permission. The people of Albuquerque didn’t have a clue what was going on when they walked down the street and saw all these SXSW banners. They thought this was crazy, but the SXSW people were really great to allow us to do that. They allowed us to use all their artwork. They read the script. They totally liked it. They couldn’t have been more helpful.
Had you been to SXSW before writing it into the script?
Never. It was written by Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan, and I did a lot of work with them, but no, I’ve never been. This is my first time.
So you hadn’t been before designing that?
No, researched it heavily because it didn’t fit with your schedule basically. So not only couldn’t we shoot here because it was the wrong time of year and for whatever reasons, Texas lost its tax break, so we shot in Albuquerque, N.M. instead. So we didn’t have a chance to go so we just watched a lot of video, did a lot of research. There’s a couple of pickup shots in the film which are shot in Austin. Not at the right time of year, but with crowds on the streets and clever post to brand it.
Was there ever a version where you did not explain Frank?
Yes, there was. There were many versions of the ending and there were many versions of the script. There were some versions where Frank remained totally unexplained and where there were no hints as to what his real history was. But, we felt in order to complete Jon’s journey, to really have him face the truth about himself and about how silly his theorizing about Frank has been in the film, you needed to bring him face to face with the reality.
It’s not that we fully explain Frank in some kind of forensic way, but we take away the myth that Jon has built up about him because it’s a myth that helps Jon to feel better about himself. Jon basically thinks, “Well, the reason I’m not also wonderfully creative is that I didn’t have the extraordinary life that Frank must have had.” Jon has that naive idea that if you’ve suffered greatly, that’s going to lead to brilliant art. So Jon fantasizes about a really tough and dark history for Frank. It’s really important that we disillusion Jon and hence we wanted to know what Frank’s real story was.
Is Magnolia putting out a soundtrack for Frank?
Yeah, there’s going to be a soundtrack. The soundtrack is being worked on and gathered together. There might even be more than one because there is a big archive of stuff that was recorded, demoed by the band, our band, Frank and the gang, because all the actors are playing. There’s no trickery. What we’re hoping to do is we could release the full album that’s recorded in the film. But then there’s also the soundtrack, both written by Stephen Rennicks. There are various plans at the moment but the music will be available.
Do you think this band is going about their music the right way, being so obscure and with Jon putting it out on social media?
I think the band are going about their music in the right way in that I think, for better or worse, it’s the only way they’re capable of doing it. The way that I think when you’ve got something as eclectic and strange as this band, they function as a little community and it works for them. I think Jon is going about it the only way you could if you were trying to break a band like that a bit more widely. He’s doing what people teach you to do now. He’s going out in social media, trying to attract people, market them, do that self-promotion that people do. I think the point of the film is that this band are not really cut out for that world. That’s where the tension comes. I think just like some of the great outsider musicians of the past, they’re just for whatever reason not cut out for that kind of mainstream attention.
I just saw Supermensch and I thought I bet Shep Gordon could have promoted this band.
I think maybe he’s one of the few people who probably could’ve promoted them. That’s a good point.
I think there’s a way to sell the spectacle of Frank if not the music.
I think the point is could Frank handle it. There’s a great thing in the Daniel Johnston documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston where he comes close to really breaking quite big, but he just emotionally can’t really handle it. So I think we’re in the same territory.
Were the cast familiar with your previous films when you approached them?
Domhnall and Michael would have been. Both of them are Irish. Maggie no, so we just reached out to her when Frank came up. We met and got on pretty well, and that’s what persuaded her to do it. I would be pretty well known in the U.K. and Ireland pre-Frank, but Frank is the first film that’s really, I think, going to make an impression in the U.S.
It was already talked about since Sundance.
That’s right and people seem to be intrigued by it. Thankfully, so far the reviews have been very strong so I think it’s got a good chance.
What do you want to do next?
I’m working on a film which is an entirely U.S. based film, an adaptation of a novel called Room by Emma Donoghue. It was a best seller in the states about three or four years ago, so that’s the next project I hope to shoot later this year.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
