A Conversation with Antonio Campos
By Joey Ally, AFI FEST Now
Before anything else, in the interest of journalistic integrity I should admit to the following: I am absolutely Antonio Campos’s #1 fanboy (or, in this case, girl). I first became aware of Campos’s work five years ago when — still a New Yorker and still (kinda/sorta/sometimes on Wednesdays) trying to make acting my main jam — my scene study teacher was plucked for a role in AFTERSCHOOL (AFI FEST 2008). The work since produced by his film company — Borderline Films, comprised of Campos (writer/director: AFTERSCHOOL, SIMON KILLER), Sean Durkin (writer/director: MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE), and Josh Mond (producer of all three, in addition to numerous others), who met during their time in undergrad film school at NYU — has been nothing short of incendiary, engendering discourse and (gasp!) even agreement throughout the independent film world. Everyone digs these dudes.
Yet sitting down with Campos on Tuesday in Beverly Hills, it was immediately apparent that in spite of the Hollywood-hoover-cloud swirling just above him, Campos possesses one of the most calming demeanors I’ve yet to come across this go round the sun. The lull of his voice, the minimalism of his motions, and the intention behind his eye-contact — as though saying “yes, I’m here with you” — make it apparent why he is able to command such delicately tremendous performances. Actors trust him because he’s a guy you trust, plain and simple.
For 40 minutes, we chatted about SIMON KILLER, AFTERSCHOOL, the New York from which Campos draws his inspiration, and why existentialism shakes his cage, among many other things (such as why the choice of handle for the titular character in SIMON KILLER is not, in fact, a reference to the game “Simon says”….though if you’re reading, Antonio, I maintain that the hypothesis was not totally unfounded).
Here’s some of that conversation.
AFN: First of all, I just want to say thank you for meeting with me. I’ve actually been following you, and Borderline Films, since the casting stage of AFTERSCHOOL because I was in Alexandra Neil’s scene study at the time.
AC: Oh I’m so happy to hear that — I really like Alex. I had it in my head that Alex Neil’s character was sort of connecting the AFTERSCHOOL universe and SIMON KILLER. We were gonna put Brady (Corbet, who portrays the eponymous “Simon”) in a “Brighton Academy” (the fictitious school that serves as the backdrop for AFTERSCHOOL) sweatshirt, like he was the brother to the twins that died or something, but it was too much.
AFN: So you do envision him as a very New York, uppercrust dude of that world? Because there isn’t a lot of backstory offered.
AC: Yeah.
AFN: Is that something you decided beforehand for the actors, or that you mapped out together when co-writing the script?
AC: The story we developed together the whole way through, and then discovered more through the process of making the film. Imagine writing a script with the actors and the camera there, so you’d find devices; or that you’d set something up in one scene, and then find other places to play things off, like where we could bring the fox pin [a keepsake from Simon’s mother referenced frequently throughout SIMON KILLER] back in. The fundamentals of it were all set up. Simon has a certain physicality and quality of voice — like the moaning. I brought it up, then Brady played with it and we would discuss which scenes were moan scenes, what kind of moan it should be, like is it high or low? [Here, he mimicked several moans, ranging from gravelly to screeching — as much as could be considered appropriate on the patio at the Four Seasons.]
There was a lot of working outside, too, trying to find the physical reality of the scene. For example, I would lie on the floor where Mati [Diop, who plays “Victoria”] would be and try to find her exact position, so she as an actor would be uncomfortable enough to work with that, with it also being distorted enough for the camera. Sometimes I would walk around the room to see what they would be doing, where they would be, how they would be moving, and try to understand that. If I found something physically, I’d work with them to replicate it.
AFN: So basically you did a lot of finding the script through the portal of improvisation.
AC: Yeah, there was a lot of improv to find the script. There was some that we did before — we had a month and a half of prep — and then as we cast the actors for the other roles we would do a few rehearsals. A lot of it was done on the day.
AFN: Did you have a locked script at any point?
AC: No, we had pieces of script. There was eventually a full script, but as we went along it was just discovering.
JA: Is that a way you’ve discovered you prefer to work?
AC: No. I never want to do it again. I just didn’t sleep for two months. Because some filmmakers just go and shoot, shoot, shoot — but I’m very anal about the way something is being shot, the way it’s being performed, so if it’s too loose I get uncomfortable. If you’re shooting something formal you want to shoot it formally all the way through. I like to find it, and let the actors find it themselves, but using the improv required a lot of work on my part to know exactly what we had shot the day before, what we needed to shoot, where else in my schedule I could reshoot if I was unhappy with the dialogue in a particular scene…it was a constant jigsaw puzzle, because there was no script, there was just structure. I had a schedule of how many days I had in each location — the cousin’s apartment was the most flexible one because some of us were living there, the brothel in Pigalle was tricky to get to so we had to be very specific on those days.
AFN: To shift a bit, I’m just curious about this: did the idea of “Simon Says” affect the naming of the titular character?
AC: No, it was more a direct reference to George Siminon, the author who was the inspiration for the project, and Simon was a derivation of Siminon. But then people have this other thing where they instinctually say “SIMON KILLER, Qu’est-ce que c’est?” [referencing The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est”]. We were aware of it in the sense of we knew people might read it like that, but that’s not where it came from. It also comes from this thing I used to do as a kid which was give names to people — like “Tony Cowboy” or something. So I had this “Simon Killer.” Just the idea of the name and then the thing that they are. I don’t know where that came from.
AFN: The case has been made that Simon is a sociopath, but being from New York he seems familiar to me, like so many guys I knew who were a fresh out of NYU or what-have-you and a little lost; guys you would have known. Do you feel you modeled him on your peers?
AC: I wasn’t modeling him on anyone specifically, I think Brady and I were both trying to create a very dark, dark version of the man we don’t want to be. We both knew guys like this — these kind of mass-manipulators, incredibly needy but incredibly scary figures, and we were looking at the dark recesses of being a young man and sort of pushing that bit by bit. There’s a lot of stuff that Simon does that you’ll as a viewer will be complicit with, but what you realize is that if it’s unchallenged long enough it leads to something dangerous. Up until a certain point you’re kind of with him, and then he turns a corner.
AFN: Do you feel it’s possible to still be with him at the end of the film? Is that something you wanted?
AC: I don’t think it’s possible for you to side with him, I think it’s possible for you to feel bad for him because of how lost he is. We set out to make an amoral tale, and that’s what we did. We sort of said, “Simon is doing something bad, and we’re not gonna pass judgment — Simon is just doing something bad.” And as we were writing, it was like, “Oh shit, Simon’s gonna do this?” He was getting ahead of us, almost like he was writing himself. And that’s interesting, to create something and then for it to have it’s own life — and that’s sort of scary.
Simon’s not scary because he’s a sociopath or a psychopath or a serial killer, but he is someone who is capable of murder, and that’s something very specific. It’s someone who’s gotten to the point in his head where if, to save his own life, he can go there. It’s the birth of someone who’s capable of killing, not the birth of a serial killer.
AFN: The only story Simon tells the same way throughout the course of the film is his thesis on the connection between the eyes and the brain — interesting especially because Simon’s every action seems bent on seeking sufficiently heightened circumstances to break through his detachment, sort of the way a director manipulates story and form to evoke particular emotions. Do you feel this is also a film about filmmaking?
AC: Yeah, I mean he’s definitely trying to write a certain narrative, like, “I’m going to do this, and then I’m going to save this person, and then she’s going to be grateful because I took care of her when she needed help, and then she’ll take care of me and coddle me and be like my mom.” But then it doesn’t work, so he gets out of it and tries to retell the same story and get someplace else.
I’m always thinking about filmmaking — even AFTERSCHOOL was very much a film about filmmaking. I figured it out doi AFTERSCHOOL when I realized Robert would be doing a video for his filmmaking class. With Simon, when I realized he studied the eyes and the brain that was a way in for me, because it’s all about the way he looks at the world. He’s got a lot in him that’s like a filmmaker. He’s looking for something in his life to make it interesting, and a filmmaker looks for stories to make life interesting. And it’s also about the way we perceive our world, and the people around us. What we see has been processed by our brain, and how that’s sometimes deceptive.
AFN: Do you think he’s seeking love, or pity?
AC: I think he’s seeking purpose. I don’t think he knows exactly what love is, as cheesy as that sounds. His definition of love is very different than what I would say love is. It’s a very selfish kind of love.
AFN: I loved what you and Alexandra Neil did with the flatness and directness of tone, because you could see the love was there, but that’s just how a mother would be in that socioeconomic class in that part of the world, and it lent a lot of insight into why Simon is searching for this epic emotional experience. Can you talk a little about crafting that?
AC: Yeah, when you get a sense of the world that he comes from, you see why his moral compass is sort of broken. You can tell in that relationship that she loves him as a mother but she’s also very complicit and does that thing mothers do where they inherently support you in whatever you’re doing, which is dangerous if the person can’t see that they’re wrong. There’s also something about that conversation (over video chat) that we were going for, where she’s distracted as she’s giving him advice, she’s not really there. He’s right there in front of her and he’s sort of playing with this knife blatantly and she doesn’t see that.
AFN: Let’s just talk about how you came up with this particular project in the first place.
AC: I was trying to figure out what to do next, having worked on MARTHA, and then Josh encouraged me to follow this idea that I had. The timing all worked out — Matt Palmieri was keen on the idea and was willing to put up the money without a formal script. I was in a really dark place, and I wanted to do something with Brady, and I wanted to do something that was not the way I had done AFTERSCHOOL — I just wanted to go and do something — and that year both Brady and I had very hard breakups. So essentially, SIMON KILLER is the darkest breakup movie you can imagine. Brady started going through the breakup while we were doing it, which compounded it to this darker journey.
Beyond that, after AFTERSCHOOL one of my professors — Dick Tannis — at NYU recommended a writer, George Simenon, and I fell in love his work and with the characters he was creating. I didn’t want to adapt anything, and there’s no direct relationship storywise, but I do think Simon is a very Simenon character. So essentially it was me trying to make a Simenon film without making a Simenon film, and one of the ways I can be creative is if I consume a lot of one author or filmmaker, it puts me in a certain mindset. Or a certain genre. I’m obsessed with noir and true crime as well. So when I figured out a story I wanted to tell, and a character I wanted to write, I could use all this stuff that I’d been wanting to do from the writers I loved. Jim Thompson is another writer whom I love. The Simenon books are very minimalist, existentialist noir; a lot of AFTERSCHOOL came out of Camus and Sartre, and this came out of Simenon and Thompson. And the cinema we’ve always been attracted to as a group, ‘70s loner cinema. All of that combined with a state of mind, and knowing Brady was going to play the main character, is how we came up with SIMON.
AFN: I loved the sequences of following Simon — it really allowed us to project onto the character and determine what he was thinking without being told. Was that something you mapped out in advance or found as you went?
AC: We shot a lot of him walking, we could have made an entire movie of him walking. Then it was a matter of figuring out which moments were the best, because there’s acting and there’s “backting,” which we used a lot of in AFTERSCHOOL, because I like this idea of characters being watched. AFTERSCHOOL has a moment where the character literally realizes he’s being watched. And I think watching characters walk tells you a lot about them, especially with the music carrying the scenes as well.
AFN: I thought the use of music was the most genius device in the whole film — that point when he’s outside of the hotel and the music changes because he’s about to go on the hunt and he changes it himself, on his iPod.
AC: Yeah, there’s something about the characters themselves being a major factor in designing the films — the way the films look and feel as a reflection of the way the characters are, and how they feel. In AFTERSCHOOL, it’s Ezra either shooting the scene or the way Ezra might shoot the scene, and here it’s that the music and the score is really controlled by Simon, Simon’s controlling what you hear in this world, and the way you see this world is very specific to way he’s constructed it.
AFN: It’s like instead of it being voyeurism, Simon’s saying “come follow me, I”ll show you how it is.”
AC: Yeah, exactly.
AFN: How much was Mati Diop (who plays Victoria) involved in the writing of the film? And how did you find her?
AC: We found Mati through Melody Roscher, the co-producer on the film. Melody’s a friend of ours, she worked on MARTHA, and we went to film school together. She was having a drink with a friend of a friend, who was Mati, and Brady and I automatically knew who she was from 35 SHOTS OF RUM and were big fans, so we said to please tell her about the film. She’d always dreamt about playing a prostitute since she was a little kid, she used to dress up like a prostitute, so she was fascinated by the character and we met her and loved her.
She’s a filmmaker herself — like Brady — a very good one. She’s had two shorts at Rotterdam [International Film Festival], won prizes, she’s had a mini-retrospective in London of her shorts, and she’s really talented. She’s got a really strong personality, and a really strong way of looking at movies and life, but she was also willing to compromise for this role — she had to put herself in very compromising positions, literally. And that was very hard for her at times, but she did it for the film. Which is a very difficult thing for me as a director, because I feel very guilty sometimes.
AFN: Guilty in what way?
AC: Asking actors to do certain things, I can only do it if I really believe in it. To get as emotional/physical as they do, it’s a lot to ask. A lot of the time, all I really want an actor to do is reveal themselves on-screen, just be in front of the camera, go through something, and we can go through it together. That’s some of the most special stuff you get on film.
AFN: How do you work with actors? Is there a lot of talking involved? When and where does that take place?
AC: A lot of it is having very long conversations up front. I talk less and less as a director. Ever since I was a kid, the one thing I’ve learned is to shut up a lot of the time. I also studied acting for several years, read a lot, did scene study, spent a lifetime acting, and with that I learned what I did and didn’t like, what was the most beneficial, and…when I realized actors should look at a scene the way a writer or director looks at a scene — where are you going, what are you doing — we’re all just working on it together.
So I try to be as clear and concise as possible, and also physical. Sometimes a hug can put someone in a certain mood, or speaking in a certain tone. The environment in which you shoot a scene needs to match the tone of the scnee, so if it’s intimate no one’s screaming “ACTION.” Sometimes no one says “action” at all. The world that you’re creating is having an effect on the person performing, so everything you can control you need to control, and anything you need to do to elicit a certain performance you do.
A lot of times I have little muffled conversations with an actor, or will touch them in a certain way — nothing offensive. In AFTERSCHOOL, I remember pushing in on Jeremy’s stomach, trying to create a knot in his stomach before shooting. Or I remember touching the back of Chelsea’s neck before we did a scene as a reminder of the awful things that had happened in the story before we shot the sex scene. I think directing is about bringing out the best in people, and creating an environment where they’re completely honest and comfortable, and the only thing I get upset about as a filmmaker is when I feel people aren’t listening, or are being fake. Or are creating an environment of contention instead of collaboration.
AFN: When Victoria tells Simon her big secret related to her scar, do you think he actually understands her (she is speaking in French) and feigns ignorance?
AC: No. I think he doesn’t get it, and doesn’t care enough to ask her to explain.
AFN: The scenes without Simon are so few — how did you decide which to allow?
A.C.: When Mati came on board we decided we needed to see some of her without him there, because it’s very different. You know, when he’s not there it’s a totally different energy. Simon kind of sucks the air out of her.
J.A.: Thank you so much!
A.C.: Yeah, of course!
Joey Ally is a writer and actor who comes from New York City, lives in Silver Lake, and can be found on Twitter at @joellenally.
