The filmmakers behind the upcoming apocalyptic horror comedy film Rumours revealed how they balanced the movie’s comedy, and if they were inspired by any real-life political figures.
The upcoming movie, which stars Cate Blanchett (who recently starred in the not-so-well-received Borderlands film), gallows the seven leaders of world’s wealthiest democracies as they attend the annual G7 summit where they are drafting a big statement regarding a vague global crisis.
The situation gets even worse when all signs point to an apocalyptic event having occurred while they were off in isolation figuring out what to tell the world.
Rumours Directors on Movie's G7 Summit Influences & Message
In an exclusive interview with The Direct’s Russ Milheim, the directors of Rumours spoke about how they were able to nail the satire comedy of their latest film and revealed if they had any real-life inspirations.
“We like to feel our strength is tone shifting,” Guy Maddin noted, while adding that they often told the actors “to just play it straight” which allowed the performers to “find the richness in the lines:”
"There's a lot in the writing stage getting in the right balance... And if you feel like you're taking yourself too seriously for a page and a half, it's just a matter of shifting tones. So, we like to feel our strength is tone shifting or being on top of tone shifting a little bit. It's like improvising on a recipe in the kitchen or something like that. When you're actually on the set directing actors, it's a little bit simpler. You tell them to just play it straight. And then they find the richness in the lines, and they reveal to us, even though we created the story and Evan wrote the script, they reveal us richnesses that we perhaps never suspected existed."
Evan Johnson, who also wrote the film on top of his directing duties, admitted that they were “not basing any of the characters on real life political figures,” even if it may seem like they were:
"We were definitely not basing any of the characters on real life political figures. It sometimes seems like we were, but that's usually a matter of there being a coincidence, something that happened on screen and something in some real life character. I think we wanted to avoid direct satire. In that way, we had the generic inspiration, like watching a lot of G7 summits, looking at a lot of photographs of G7 leaders over the years, and just finding the things in common that they did, or that the kind of movements they made."
As for what messages may be behind the film, director Galen Johnson described the movie as a “transcription of our inability to create a message:”
"The movie, in a way, is sort of transcription of our inability to create a message. It's a self-canceling message [and mirrors leader's] inability to write a statement."
When asked what he was most excited for audiences to see, Maddin admitted he is anticipating the bafflement of viewers at the fact that the movie exists in the first place:
"The wonder of, you know, they made that? What was it I just saw? Before it premiered at Cannes, I remember not being sure what the movie was even and the audience sort of helped me feel that maybe it was more one thing than I suspected. But I was very pleased that people are engaged with it. I think it's a bit of a whatnot, but there's still plenty of stuff where you don't have to worry about what it is. You just sit back and enjoy."
Nearly all of the movie is hoisted up by the performers in front of the camera, with the entire plot unfolding through their conversations.
On how they worked to keep it all engaging within their conversations on screen, Roy Duplis, who plays Maxime Laplace, explained that the script was strong enough that it did lots of the heavy lifting, further describing it as “almost like a theater play:”
"The script was already very well written. It's the kind of script--It's almost like a theater play. You don't change a word without discussing it and everything. Basically you just have to be true to the words you have to say. The script is holding you in a certain way. You don't need to try to support it. It actually supports you… You just needed to be true to what you were saying and living, and that's pretty much it. It was already weird enough to play weird. That's what I mean, in a certain way."
Nikki Amuka-Bird, the woman behind Cardosa Dewindt, added how the cast had “a week’s rehearsal” where they “all sat around the table and kind of fleshed it out:”
"We had a week's rehearsal and we all sat around the table and kind of fleshed it out... Research wise, there is a lot to kind of get your head around. This is a world that I wasn't used to being in. But then we have the added bonus of the shoot... most of us being there every day together in the woods in the cold, late at night. So we had a lot of time to really get to know each other and that chemistry between us was very natural, which then sort of translates onto the characters as well."
Rumours lands in theaters in October 18.
