New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

I think you always have to ask yourself the same question, or at least I do in my films. And that is “Is it true or is it not true?” Is that authentic the way it is, and if you start getting out of that place, then you have to be careful. So the nice thing about Meredith is that she’s the audience’s perspective. She’s the one person who starts off in the film being somewhat accepting, because honestly, what is the big deal about putting a puppet on your hand? She embraces that pretty quickly and as time goes on, she starts seeing the impact on him, that maybe it’s not such a good thing, questioning herself and seeing the dangerous, darker side, having to leave him. Then coming back in a naturalistic way in the end of the film, when the film has a completely different tone. The Beaver is no longer narrating and functioning as Walter’s alter ego.

Did Mel have to go to puppet school?

JF: He works the puppeteer. I kept saying to him, “Look, the guy doesn’t know how to be a puppeteer, so you don’t have to work him so hard.” But Mel likes to hold on to things like that work ethic in order to get into character. He’s very good at puppeteering and it was left hand puppeteering! Most puppeteers use their right hand, their dominant hand.

But it adds into the creepiness factor that it is so well done.

JF: I think it’s an interesting thing to keep track of what the audience is paying attention to. On purpose by using anamorphic lenses, I tried to keep Mel framed and keep focus on him at all times towards the beginning of the movie so you really have a sense that this is happening to him. This is a man who’s struggling and losing his mind, but you are seeing his face move, his expressions. You are not paying so much attention to the puppet in the beginning. You are able to do that with shifting focus, the depth of field, and keeping him in a certain frame, but as time goes on, that starts changing and they become more equal in a way. And then once the beaver takes over, which is a very short period of time actually, then you are allowed to give a little bit more visual absurdity and have those close-ups. Once we take the beaver out of the picture, it’s an entirely different, much more naturalistic feeling.

By keeping the focus on the beaver, the background with Mel was blurry, which some filmmakers don’t like doing.

JF: Well that’s right, and that was a conscious decision. There’s a lot that happens when you choose an anamorphic format and some of it doesn’t make people happy. But I love it. I think it makes it so much more prosaic. It has an awkward, well awkward is the wrong word – it has formality. You would never associate that to a movie with a puppet. It has a formal, European coldness to it in terms of the colors and how that’s used. There are a lot of choices that are very un-comedic choices.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5       6