It’s official. Fantastic Fest is just like Cannes now. Just. Like. Cannes. The prestigious Cannes Film Festival coincides with the Cannes market where independent filmmakers make deals for worldwide distribution and funding. So Austin’s Fantastic Fest opened a Fantastic Market along with their film festival.
Adrian Garcia Bogliano has been a regular of Fantastic Fest with films like Here Comes the Devil and Penumbra. I discovered his work when Fantastic Fest presented Cold Sweat at SXSW. His next film will be Scherzo Diabolico, which only wrapped filming a month ago. Bogliano showed 15 minutes to the market, and then spoke with us about what we can expect when the film is ready.
CraveOnline: Is this your first market presentation for Scherzo Diabolico?
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: Yes, yes, we finished shooting the film a month ago. It’s really out in the open as they say. It was an interesting thing to try to have something to show here. It was 15 minutes that we showed, because it’s a strange movie. We wanted to know what the reaction was to it, to the tone of the film, to see how people reacted to that. The reaction was really good, really encouraging to pull the rest of it together and see what happens.
Have you done this for any of your other films, like at Cannes market or American Film Market?
Yes, we have done that. For Cannes we did it with Here Comes the Devil and the response was actually really, really good. We showed even less, like five, six minutes and it was a very strong response to that.
Which six minutes of Here Comes the Devil did you show?
To me, those are the best. The sequence between the mother and the babysitter, the story that the babysitter tells about all these demented, dream-like scenes. So it was something that didn’t explain anything about the movie really but it was a preview and it worked well.
Would you tell our readers about Scherzo Diabolico?
Yeah, it’s a movie that has a bunch of twists and different things that happen in the plot. It’s not very straightforward, like, “Oh, it’s about this.” The movie has to do with a man who’s got a very boring life. He has problems in his work. Things are not going well with his wife and he decides to change things and to do something he thinks is going to help, and that’s kidnapping a teenager girl. Things don’t work really.
What is the English translation of the title?
There are a couple different translations. It’s Italian and it would be “Diabolical Joke.” It has a lot to do with the fact that the movie is some sort of black comedy.
How did the market go for distributors?
It went really well. We’re not really shopping the film around yet because we’re still trying to put it together, put the pieces together, but it went really well. It had a very strong reaction from the people that were there. That’s exciting of course.
Each of your films has a different aesthetic, but a very defined aesthetic. Cold Sweat was a slow chase movie, Here Comes the Devil was about sex and sexuality, Penumbra had the Satanic tone. Is there an easy way you can describe the tone of Scherzo Diabolico?
That’s something I was saying before. You need to have a dialogue with a film after you shoot it. You have some expectations of what it was going to be like, and then when you actually have the film, it’s like you have to try to understand what the film is. One thing was what you wanted it to be, but a different thing is what the film is. We’re actually trying to figure that out.
I think it’s a very dark thriller. It’s more of a thriller than your typical horror movie. It’s got a bunch of horror elements of course, but I would say that it’s more of a thriller inspired by some European thrillers and also by some of the things I’ve been seeing in Korean thrillers. I love the way they build their plots in a very interesting way where you think that you’ve figured things out, and then not only were you totally wrong, but they actually saw that and the movie changes, like it starts again. So I wanted to try that kind of structure.
As we were making this film, with some executive producers that are very supportive and trust a lot in my work, it gave me a chance to actually write and have a script that is not so conventional in terms of structure. I think it’s going to work well but it’s pretty different. It’s not your type of thing where you have the scary scene at the beginning. It’s not that. It’s something completely different.
When you write your scripts, do you have a plot outline, or just see where it takes you as you’re going?
Usually I have a very specific idea of where it starts and where it ends. It’s just connecting the dots. Usually it’s that way. It’s like a concept, a genre concept that I’m interested in. Like, I want this character that’s going to start here and end here, and I want the tone to be like a Korean thriller. Then I work around that.
Are there any big set pieces that were part of the presentation, or some that you’re saving?
No, I saved a lot of things. In Here Comes the Devil, we were more advanced in our work by the time we had to show that scene. Here, we just shot a month ago, so it was more like what can we show that don’t need CG or anything, that works as a sequence? It’s a full sequence, instead of just taking scenes from different parts. We wanted to bring one sequence and show that. The only sequence that worked very well in our opinion without any CG or any complex post-production process was this. It was interesting. We thought it was going to be interesting and it doesn’t reveal a lot because it’s right in the beginning.
Are there going to be a lot of CGI needs?
Well, it’s just little details on things. It’s actually very small things. There’s a lot of characters talking on the phone, so you see the screen. It’s actually more than complex CG that you could actually explain. It’s annoying things at this point because you see an empty screen or green, stuff like that. You don’t want to show that.
What are your favorite Korean thrillers?
I would love to see more than I’ve been able to but I would say The Chaser and Memories of Murder are really very strong movies of course. I Saw the Devil is also a very strong film but if I had to choose one, I would say The Chaser. The Chaser is so good and has this structure that blows your mind. If somebody has to start watching that kind of movie, there’s lots of things like Bedevilled, but The Chaser to me reflects all the craft that they have now.
Have you been working really fast, a movie a year?
Sometimes two. Yes, we don’t feel like it’s so fast in our life because it takes forever actually. We work on this. We keep doing this every day, so the thing is it’s so difficult sometimes to find the funds for movies, that it takes sometimes a lot of time for directors. So that’s why we’re used to seeing a movie every three or four years. So it’s kind of weird that we are making one a year, but at the same time I can tell you that if a lot of other directors have that possibility, they could do it. To me, the example is Woody Allen but I don’t think he must be working all the time or running around, and he still makes a movie a year easily. And he has time to play clarinet every week.
I was able to see some of your older movies, Watch ‘Em Die on DVD and Amazon had Rooms for Tourists streaming. Are there any plans for your other older films?
That’s the idea. We had three films that Synapse has. Of course, they’re not a huge company that releases things all the time, so we’re on the line there for the release of three of my previous films.
The more your movies come out, you’d think there’d be demand to see your previous work.
I don’t know. The thing with those are some of them are so small. I find people that are really fans of some in different parts of the world. That’s a very nice thing but I don’t think that much about my older films. Once it’s done and it’s out there, actually it’s available there, I’m done.
You don’t think about them anymore, but we’ve never seen them in the States!
I know. I know.
Do you already know what you want to do next?
I have a project that I’m working on and we’re trying to see if it happens. It’s a big project, the biggest thing I would have made so far by far. I’m excited about that. Let’s see if it happens. If it doesn’t happen, there’s a ton of other projects.
What genre would it be if it does?
I would say, and it’s a bit pretentious to say that, but it would be a bit like Pan’s Labyrinth, something like that. It’s a very complex film with a lot of designs and a lot of work that I haven’t made so far, so it’s exciting. It’s something completely new for me.
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.
