{"id":3603,"date":"2018-06-23T20:13:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-23T20:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commarts.pleather.us\/2018\/06\/23\/kumiko-directors-david-and-nathan-zellner-got-offered-horror-movies-but-they-made-a-feminist-western-instead\/"},"modified":"2018-06-23T20:13:33","modified_gmt":"2018-06-23T20:13:33","slug":"kumiko-directors-david-and-nathan-zellner-got-offered-horror-movies-but-they-made-a-feminist-western-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/2018\/06\/23\/kumiko-directors-david-and-nathan-zellner-got-offered-horror-movies-but-they-made-a-feminist-western-instead\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Kumiko\u2019 Directors David and Nathan Zellner Got Offered Horror Movies, But They Made a Feminist Western Instead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">David and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/t\/nathan-zellner\/\" id=\"auto-tag_nathan-zellner\">Nathan Zellner<\/a> had been making oddball shorts and features out of Austin, Texas for more than 15 years when their 2014 Sundance-winning \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/t\/kumiko\/\" id=\"auto-tag_kumiko\">Kumiko<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/t\/the-treasure-hunter\/\" id=\"auto-tag_the-treasure-hunter\">the Treasure Hunter<\/a>\u201d became an unexpected cult hit, grossing over half a million dollars in limited release and generating a new international fan base for the brothers over the course of a year. It wasn\u2019t your obvious breakout: the story of a Japanese woman (Rinko Kikuchi) who believes the story of \u201cFargo\u201d was real and journeys around the world with her pet bunny to find the hidden briefcase of cash from that 1994 film.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">But the outrageous premise meshed with a surprisingly poignant tone that caught audiences by surprise. Suddenly a pair of filmmakers known mostly on the festival circuit and around the Austin film scene was getting offers for more work \u2014 just not the kind they wanted.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pmc-related-link read-more\">\n\t\t\t<strong class=\"pmc-related-type\">Read More:<\/strong><a target=\"_self\" href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/2018\/06\/robert-pattinson-interview-damsel-mia-wasichowska-1201977644\/\" title=\"Robert Pattinson on the Male Gaze, Playing a Psychopath, and the Status of His Many Upcoming Arthouse Movies\">Robert Pattinson on the Male Gaze, Playing a Psychopath, and the Status of His Many Upcoming Arthouse Movies<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cWe were very quick to turn stuff down,\u201d said David, the chattier of the two, in a joint interview. \u201cThe stuff that was coming our way wasn\u2019t anything that was interesting to us.\u201d He added that the bulk of the offers were horror movies and cyber thrillers. Instead, they pressed ahead with \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/t\/damsel\/\" id=\"auto-tag_damsel\">Damsel<\/a>,\u201d a loopy feminist western less like \u201cKumiko\u201d than the surreal blend of cartoonish pastiche and surrealism found in the Zellners\u2019 other work. Released in theaters this weekend with Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasichowska leading its cast, it marks the biggest platform for pure, unbridled Zellnerian storytelling to date.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1201933023\" style=\"width: 790px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1201933023 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/damsel-sundance.jpg?w=780\" alt=\"Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson appear in &lt;i&gt;Damsel&lt;\/i&gt; by David Zellner and Nathan Zellner, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Adam Stone. All photos are copyrighted and may be used by press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage of Sundance Institute programs. Photos must be accompanied by a credit to the photographer and\/or 'Courtesy of Sundance Institute.' Unauthorized use, alteration, reproduction or sale of logos and\/or photos is strictly prohibited.\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Damsel&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">There\u2019s a lot of it. They made their first feature, \u201cPlastic Utopia,\u201d in 1997; it played at a few festivals but never got released, and the brothers later distanced themselves from it. Instead of trying to make more commercial work, they went deeper into an emerging aesthetic of weirdness. Their second effort, 2001\u2019s \u201cFrontier,\u201d was shot in a made-up language. Then came the shorts. The Zellners cranked them out, directing five between 2004 and 2007, when they made \u201cGoliath.\u201d Their third feature, the anarchic tale of a recently divorced man losing his mind in the suburbs, took them to Sundance. They continued to make shorts.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-vimeo\" style=\"text-align: center\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">Much of the Zellners&#8217; work felt like the product of deranged home movies made by hyperactive children from another planet. \u201cSasquatch Birth Journal 2\u201d is exactly what it sounds like. The three-part \u201cFiddlestixx\u201d translates the qualities of a cheesy \u201850s sci-fi movie into psychedelic variety show. \u201cFlotsam\/Jetsam\u201d spends an interminable amount of time watching a shipwrecked man drift around before abruptly destroying him with a shark. They kept the Zellners on the frontline of the festival scene, mingling with filmmakers and programmers on a regular basis. \u201cYou don&#8217;t ever want to take those relationships for granted, but you kind of forget that&#8217;s what you&#8217;re doing,\u201d Nathan said. \u201cIt&#8217;s still work, but you&#8217;re going to show your stuff. And there&#8217;s always a pay off, and a community that you&#8217;re building that&#8217;s not in the town where you work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">None of these shorts would make a reasonable case for the directors\u2019 potential to handle a complex, bigger-budget project. Collectively, however, they allowed the Zellners to gain confidence in their creativity while stabilizing their lives with day jobs. In the meantime, they were writing a lot of scripts. \u201cDamsel,\u201d which starts out as a traditional western with a masculine hero trying to rescue his kidnapped gal before flipping that premise around, seemed like a natural step for the brothers: another refashioning of movie tropes that toyed with audience expectations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">But they kept struggling to put it together. \u201cThere were so many occasions where we almost made it, and then the financing fell through,\u201d David said. Two years before production on \u201cKumiko,\u201d the two were on location in Minnesota, ready to shoot \u201cDamsel\u201d with a different cast. Then the financing fell apart. \u201cIt was so many fits and starts,\u201d David said. \u201cIt was just heartbreaking. We had to pull stakes and regroup.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">They went back to doing what they knew how to do: working fast and loose. Producing the shoestring \u201cKid-Thing\u201d \u2014an eerie, enigmatic story of a young girl who discovers a mysterious voice emanating from the well near her house \u2014 back on their home turf proved cathartic. \u201cWe\u2019ve never had the luxury of controlling the order we do things,\u201d David said. \u201cKid-Thing\u201d went to Sundance, showcasing a gentler side to the brothers\u2019 work than \u201cGoliath,\u201d and rejuvenated interest in supporting their work. That led to \u201cKumiko,\u201d and finally they quit their day jobs. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just a leap of faith,\u201d David said. \u201cIt was many, many years of gearing up to that and being ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1201978010\" style=\"width: 790px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1201978010 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/kumiko.jpg?w=780\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cKumiko\u201d brought them the resources \u2014 and the interest from name actors \u2014 to make \u201cDamsel.\u201d In the movie, Pattinson\u2019s character isn\u2019t the only one pining for Wasichowska\u2019s affections. The movie is a playful treatise on the male gaze. \u201cEvery new guy objectifies her in a different way, projecting his desire,\u201d David said. \u201cI think the western is the most American genre, in terms of manliness.\u201d The Zellners are among the few contemporary directors who excel at poking holes in American mythology. \u201cIn the 1800s, the country was growing so fast,\u201d Zellner said. \u201cThere was this idea that everything was going to be life-changing and positive, but in reality, nobody had a good time. It was stumbling on top of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">They\u2019re now dead-set on increasing their scale each time out, though they haven\u2019t finalized any plans. \u201cWe want to keep going bigger and bigger,\u201d David said. \u201cWe&#8217;ll always write our own stuff, the stuff we want to do.\u201d The pair is repped by ICM, and the agency regularly sends them scripts, including some studio projects. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how much IP is floating around, and how little of it makes it to the screen,\u201d Nathan said. \u201cHopefully, we can control our own destinies, because you can always do the stuff you want to do if you created it, because you know it\u2019s a match.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>\u201cDamsel\u201d is now playing in New York and Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Source: IndieWire film<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David and Nathan Zellner had been making oddball shorts and features out of Austin, Texas for more than 15 years when&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-3603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-careering"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paqOTj-W7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}