By John Noonan
Directed by Jim Hoskins, The Greasy Strangler has been making waves through the film festival circuit due to its heady mixture of violence, comedy and unconventional storytelling. Centring on a serial killer father, Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels), and his put upon son, Big Brayden (Sky Elobar), The Greasy Strangler sees the two fighting over the affections of disco lover, Janet (Eastbound And Down’s Elizabeth De Razzo), while the bodies pile up around them. FilmInk sat down with Sky Elobar and Elizabeth De Razzo the morning after the Melbourne premiere of the film at this year’s Monster Fest to talk about this ready-made cult movie.
Sky, Jim Hosking has said that he wrote the part of Big Brayden with you in mind. Did you take that in a good way, or a bad way?
Sky: “I always take insults, or whatever, as, ‘Okay this is a way of flattering me’ [Laughs]. Jim thinks that he’s flattering me, but really he’s insulting me [Laughs]. When I auditioned for one of his short films, I was a really weird guy picking up transsexuals in an alley, and he thought that that was perfect for me (Laughs).”
And how did you get involved, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth: “I was working on television series, and my agent got this script and was like, ‘You have to read this, and I want you to go in for this. It’s like Napoleon Dynamite on steroids.’ I read through the script briefly, because I was working on this other show, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’”
When you both got the script, what were your first thoughts?
Sky: “I thought, ‘Is this a porno?’”
Elizabeth: “Yes!”
Sky: “I literally said to Jim, ‘If you cast this, you’re gonna have to get a porn actress to do this. You’ve gotta get rid of this stuff, man. You gotta get rid of it.’ He was like, [adopts offended tone] ‘Sky!’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ll shut up.’”
Elizabeth: “I read it and I was like, ‘Oh, hell no!’ [Laughs] Granted, I had done nudity and sex scenes in my previous show, but this was a lot. And I didn’t know if I wanted to take it on because – I don’t know what it was like for the guys – but for me, as a female, I felt self-conscious. It was all, ‘What are people going to think? What are my family going to think?’ It becomes all of that, but my agent was really pushing for me to do it and I trust him. And after having a talk with Jim, he really alleviated some of my fears. But then when I got to set, I was like, ‘Oh my god! What am I doing?’ [Laughs] In retrospect, after everything that has happened and how people are receiving it, it’s nothing like what I had expected. When I saw it on the big screen, at Sundance, that first time, I was like, ‘I get it.’ I didn’t get it when I first read it, because I couldn’t get beyond those descriptions.”
Sky: “Elizabeth mentioned Napoleon Dynamite…I’d worked with Jared Hess [on Don Verdean] and, when we were at Sundance, I called him up and said, ‘I want you to see this movie.’ He came out and I said, ‘Dude, tell me what you think. Is my career over?’ [Laughs]”
Elizabeth: [Gasps] “Did you really say that?”
Sky: “Yeah. I said, ‘Tell me, really. I’m really scared here.’ So, he came up to me and he said that he freakin’ loved it. He said, ‘This is freakin’ amazing.’ He wanted Jim’s email…he wants to work with Jim! He said, ‘Sky! This is genius.’”
Elizabeth: “Well, my friend who was in Napoleon Dynamite – he played Pedro, Efren Ramirez – saw it in LA. He’s like a big brother to me…he calls me Buttmunch. He said, ‘Buttmunch, this movie is amazing.’”
There is a similarity to Napoleon Dynamite in terms of your almost stilted performances. What was the direction that you were given?
Sky: “Well, it was written that way. The verbiage doesn’t flow.”
Elizabeth: “Yeah, I felt like the less we did, the more that Jim liked it. I don’t remember him wanting us to be very big. I just tried to keep it very straight, because I felt that Janet was a straight character compared to everyone else around her. Otherwise, it was all kind of written on the page.”
You previously mentioned the nudity in the film. How did you prepare for those scenes? What kind of rehearsals did you have?
Elizabeth: “There was no rehearsing. We would block it, so that we had an idea. We would never do it fully naked. It was just more like, ‘You sit here and then we do this.’ But never in the sense of like we were rehearsing. We just did it. I was mentioning to someone yesterday that some of the sex scenes with Michael were difficult because he’s very, very thin and very wide. I’m a short person, so they had to prop me up on pillows in order to properly be on top of him. [Laughs] I was also afraid that I would break him! I was like, ‘I didn’t want to kill Michael.’”
Were there any other scenes that pushed you as actors?
Elizabeth: [Laughs, looking at Sky, who is shaking his head] “When I was bent over and you were…you know! [Makes a gesture with her fingers] And I was thinking, ‘C’mon! What am I doing? What’s happening? When did my life take a turn?’”
Sky: “Depends, man. Jim and I worked together for six years. He had something lined up for us for a feature film in Austin, Texas, but the funding fell through, and it was the biggest downer. He was like, ‘Don’t worry, Sky. We’re going to make this movie.’ And so I was kind of hooked in. Look, there comes a point in your career where you can say, ‘I don’t really want to do that’ or you can pass on things. But lead roles in films don’t come up often. I’ve auditioned for a couple. So, you just gotta go for it.”
And what’s it like knowing that you have the backing of Ben Wheatley and Elijah Wood on the film as producers?
Sky: “Ben Wheatley is one of my favourites. I like High-Rise, and I like Free Fire. That’s freaking hilarious. It’s like Reservoir Dogs on meth. It’s funny. Reservoir Dogs wasn’t funny, but this is funny. And that’s hard to do and have it really funny.”
There’s a fine balance between comedy and horror too, isn’t there?
Sky: “It’s hard to do a comedy and horror, and have people accept it. Because people want a full-on assault with no comedy! You know what’s funny? This whole thing reminds me of the music industry when I was in a band way back. And how the bands that couldn’t be categorised never really got signed. They never really got pushed. ‘What are they? We can’t put them in a thing.’ That’s exactly what [The Greasy Strangler] is. And Jim is the same way with music. If you talk to him about music, he likes all the great, really uncategorised types of artist. He’s not straight down the middle of the road. He’s not this or that. He’s really into the great eclectic stuff. It’s the same with filmmaking. If you can’t categorise a film, it’s like suddenly not profitable: ‘We can’t fucking market it.’”
As a filmmaker, Jim seems like someone who likes to push buttons. What’s been the reaction to the film when you’ve been at screenings?
Elizabeth: “In the first two screening at Sundance, we had a couple of walkouts. But the guys just take that as a badge of honour. I was in Austin for Fantastic Fest, and there were these two girls who were really excited. They were saying, ‘We’ve heard great things about this movie.’ They were sitting next to Michael and I, and asking Michael, ‘What do you do?’ They had no idea that he was The Greasy Strangler! [Laughs] They spent literally half an hour talking to him, and then when he does the fart thing in the film, they walked out. Right in front of us, and I was like, ‘Wow! Okay.’ I also had someone sat next to me once. There was a guy and girl discussing it and I don’t think they knew that I was in it. Afterwards, he was like, ‘Nah, I don’t need to see that again.’ And she was saying, ‘I guess I can appreciate it but…’ and she went on this massive rant. And I just sat there with my phone going [makes an evil giggle sound]. It’s for some people and not others.”
So, it’s definitely a polarising film?
Elizabeth: “Yes, but you’ll remember it because it’s polarising. Because either you hate it, or you love it. But you don’t feel ‘meh’ about it. [Smiles] It’s like a fine wine.”
The Greasy Strangler will screen at the A Night Of Horror Film Festival on December 4 at 7:00pm, followed by a Q&A session with Sky Elobar and Elizabeth De Razzo. For all information, head to the official website. Sky Elobar and Elizabeth De Razzo will also be touring with The Greasy Strangler to Ballarat (November 30), Hobart (December 1) and Brisbane (December 3).
