Cinema Scholars interviews JT Mollner, director of the edgy thriller Strange Darling, along with songwriter Z Berg. The film stars Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Ed Begley Jr., and Barbara Hershey. Magenta Light Studios is releasing Strange Darling on August 23, 2024.
Introduction
It’s rare these days for a movie to surprise. But just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes an original story that manages to defy convention and delight the most jaded cinephile. Even more rare is a film that does so with artistic flare and integrity. The new arthouse shocker, Strange Darling achieves both to create a freaky fresh take with a vintage vibe.
It’s nearly impossible to talk about JT Mollner’s twisted thriller Strange Darling without giving away the goods. But let’s just say, the film seems like one thing at first and then turns into something completely different.
About The Film
Told in non-linear chapters, the film takes place amid a murder spree by an elusive serial killer in the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, a man and woman contemplate a kinky one-night stand, but end up getting a much different night than either of them bargained for.
Shot on gorgeous 35mm film by actor-turned-cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, Strange Darling is a creative tour de force. Mollner’s eye for rich, vibrant color paired with Ribisi’s mastery of the anamorphic lens feels reminiscent without being overtly throwback.
Original music by artist Z Berg punctuates each scene with bespoke accompaniment that subtly frames the disturbing themes explored in the film. Think of George Roy Hill and Burt Bacharach vibes in a much darker context.
Performances
The real meat and potatoes of Strange Darling are, no doubt, the knock-out performances by leads Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner. Fitzgerald’s ambidextrous performance is captivating. As her cool-chick demeanor gives way to unexpected levels of ferocity, it’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off Fitzgerald as she commands every frame.
Kyle Gallner’s equally stellar portrayal cycles through convincing sweetness, frustration, and downright scariness. Not at all in that order. His versatility, charisma, and chemistry with Fitzgerald are what ultimately bind the fragmented narrative.
In addition, cheerful supporting performances from screen legends Barbara Hershey and Ed Begley Jr. lend additional credibility and much-needed levity to Mollner’s ambitious sophomore effort.
Additional Thoughts
While the story is decidedly pitch black, the non-linear timeline sets an ironically playful feel throughout the film. Non-sequential chapter markers not only promise further explanation, but they also serve to pause and reset the high drama at just the right moments.
Many filmmakers have tried and failed to make a cohesive film with a boldly original, out-of-order storyline. But Mollner perfectly choreographs the mayhem until the last puzzle piece reveals the full, messed-up picture.
Strange Darling celebrated its world premiere last year at Fantastic Fest with writer/director JT Mollner and songwriter Z Berg in attendance. Cinema Scholar’s Rebecca Elliott was on hand to interview the creative duo the following day. Here’s what they had to say.
Interview
Rebecca Elliott:
Hey guys! How are you feeling after last night’s Fantastic Fest screening?
JT Mollner:
We were celebrating last night for sure.
Z Berg:
Our energy yesterday…I saw you right before the film, and both of us were just like, “Oh, yeah. Are you so nervous? We’re good? I’m totally good, too. Everything’s fine.”
JT Mollner:
I asked Tim [Leauge, CEO of Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest], “Can you just introduce the film? I’m shaking. I can’t get up there.” It’s a big deal. Ready to unveil our child.
Working With 35mm Film In A Digital World
Rebecca Elliott:
It IS a big deal. What a great screening, too. It had an awesome reception. There’s nothing like a Fantastic Fest crowd. But, how do we talk about Strange Darling without spoiling all the fun? I guess what I’ve boiled it down to is that you think it’s one thing, and then it’s something different.
First, I want to talk about the fact that you shoot everything on 35mm film. Can you talk about the decision to shoot on 35 in this digital world? And working with newly minted DP, Giovanni Ribisi? Tell me how that collaboration came about and how you worked together to craft Strange Darling.
JT Mollner:
Yeah, I don’t discriminate. I’ve shot 16 and 35mm. But I thought 35 was perfect for this one because we wanted that candy coating. It’s just fucking begging for it. It felt right. It was anamorphic. But with Giovanni, it was interesting. We met at the ASC [American Society of Cinematographers] Awards through this guy named Steve Bellamy, who runs Kodak. I’m obsessed with film. I have been since way before I met the guy who runs Kodak.
But even when I started making short films, everybody was shooting digitally. It was the late 2000s, and early 2010s, and it was like everybody was shooting digital shorts. I was like, “No, I’d rather raise $30,000 to shoot it on film.” Everybody else was making a short film every month, but I would make a short film every three years. The quality was always more important to me than quantity. And it also is just part of… It’s like a painter uses paint. I just feel like, for me, as a filmmaker, it’s about using film. It’s part of the process.
Rebecca Elliott:
It’s just feeling it, smelling it (laughs).
Recruiting Actor-Turned-Cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi
JT Mollner:
It exists. There’s a reverence on set when you’re shooting it. It seems like the crew and the cast, everybody takes things a little more seriously. I like people to come in like they’ve rehearsed for a play because I like to do long takes. And so It just serves. It keeps me disciplined to shoot film and it serves more than just the look of the movie.
But Giovanni feels the exact same way. We started talking about this at the ASC Awards event, and we like the same movies. Both of us like movies from the same era, which is far before our time or Z’s or anybody. We like a lot of new movies, too. But we kept talking about making movies like people used to make movies.
I want to make movies without the shitty environment or the abuse on set. The misogyny and all the stuff. We want to make movies like people used to make movies, from a mechanical and a process standpoint. And a ceremonial standpoint, and just give it that reference.
So Giovanni told me, “Well, I’m actually a DP.” I said, “Well, I want you to be in one of my movies. I love you as an actor.” He’s like, “I’m not really interested in doing that, but I’d like to shoot maybe one of your movies someday.” It blew my mind, and I thought, with this guy, you can’t be that good at that whole thing. Because he’s a brilliant actor.
Z Berg:
Yeah, I was like, “How can you be that good at two things?”
An Unlikely Enthusiast
JT Mollner:
He had to be an amazing actor and also a great DP. He invited me to his studio. I thought it was a hobby, but it was much more than that. He has more film cameras than most equipment rental houses! Plus film scanners, a movie theater, 35 mm projectors, and all this stuff. He said, “Look at all this. We shoot commercials. I’ve shot music videos for all these big names.” And I didn’t know it.
Rebecca Elliott:
Nerds with big paychecks get all the good toys!
JT Mollner:
No, it was just amazing that he’d been working as a DP for so long. Just not in the feature world. I was like, wow, you’ve done music videos for Beck and other big stars. All these cool things. And he said, “I really want to shoot a feature, and I’m looking for the right thing.”
I sent him probably four or five movies over the course of a few years. He was like, “I love it. This just isn’t the one.” Then I sent him Strange Darling, which at the time was called One Night With You. And he said, “This is the one.”
Rebecca Elliott:
Bingo!
JT Mollner:
It was initially going to be a very small production. You could shoot it for $100 grand if you needed to. We were going to do it for whatever money could be scraped up from maybe some contacts he had and his infrastructure.
Then I sent it to my agent, and my agent was like, “No, we can get more for that. I think this might be a thing.” It all happened really, really fast. And he stayed on as DP, and the rest is history.
Rebecca Elliott:
The rest is history!
JT Mollner:
He’s very talented.
Visual Inspiration
Rebecca Elliott:
It’s like, SURE, you’re a DP. Okay. And then, oh my God, he delivers. It’s beautiful. And it does harken back to a different era. I was getting a late ’60s, early ’70s vibe. It’s gorgeous.
JT Mollner:
For color, we were watching a lot of Dead Ringers and Blue Velvet and stuff from the ’80s. I think what we really got sucked into was The Devils. And others from that from that era with those bright, saturated colors. But also the grain and texture at the same time. So there’s an idea.
Usually, people either lean into Mccabe & Mrs. Miller’s dirty, grainy, desaturated look. Or it’s the colors popping. Like Neon Demon, everything’s crisp. But we wanted to find the mix of both that was indicative of a certain technicolor. And we were also looking at movies like The Red Shoes. Our dream is to bring technicolor back. I was always about leaning into the color.
Original Songs
Rebecca Elliott:
Nice. Z, you wrote all the original songs for Strange Darling! How did you come on board, and what was your inspiration? Especially… Oh my God. “Better The Devil You Know Than The Devil You Don’t.” I could not get that song out of my head last night! So, tell me about how you came to the project and your process in creating the original songs for the film.
Z Berg:
Well, it’s funny. There’s a bit of a common theme in this production of the experience JT had with Giovanni and with me. It’s a lot of just trusting your gut because we met in such a fucking random way. We met on a hike.
Rebecca Elliott:
I love that!
Z Berg:
In normal life, that does not amount to anything because we just gabbed about movies and music. And then two years later, all of a sudden, we’re making this movie. Similar to him and Giovanni, we clearly shared a taste thing that was just like, “This is right. We’re just going to do this. We’re going to trust each other.”
Initially, he just had a few of my older songs in the movie. Honestly, at that point, I was in the middle of that pandemic malaise where I was like, “I don’t know if I want to write music ever again. Fuck all of this.” And then after reading the script, it was every day. I just couldn’t stop. Yeah, it was a crazy thing. I just kept sending him songs as they were shooting.
Rebecca Elliott:
So it was throughout the process rather than after. You were seeing dailies or something, or seeing sequences?
Z Berg:
I wasn’t seeing anything!
Rebecca Elliott:
You were seeing nothing?
Z Berg:
Yeah. It makes no sense.
A Natural Collaboration
Rebecca Elliott:
But that’s great. It’s like true, mutual inspiration.
JT Mollner:
We were sharing the same mind.
Rebecca Elliott:
Yeah, you were mind-melding!
JT Mollner:
She knew exactly how I wanted the movie to feel, and she wanted it to feel the same way. So she would send me a song every few days.
Rebecca Elliott:
You were just working step by step along with the production.
Z Berg:
There was a little bit of… He initially had a couple of songs by other people written into the script, and I was like, “No. Let me write a better one.”
JT Mollner:
I wasn’t sure, and I was like, “No, that song’s perfect for it.” Then she’d send me one and be like, “This is better. No, that’s the one. So let’s toss it all out.”
Z Berg:
I work really well with an assignment. Left to my own devices, I will watch 100 hours of Grey’s Anatomy. If I have something I need to do, I am demon-possessed. Yes. But something like, “Better the Devil” I changed it a bit, but that was an older song.
Rebecca Elliott:
Was it? I was curious about that.
Mutual Inspiration
Z Berg:
That was the first thing when I read the script. Also, when I read it, it was called I See Devils.
JT Mollner:
Oh, yeah. No, it started as I See Devils. Yeah.
Z Berg:
That was the name of the script when I read it, and I was like, I think I have a song for this. Once I saw these songs in the movie, too, I was just like, “What the fuck? What psychic shit is going on here?”
Rebecca Elliott:
Whoa!
JT Mollner:
I was listening to that song as I was writing that scene, and I was like, “That song has to be in the scene.” So I remember when I contacted her, I was like, “Listen, even if you don’t like the script, even if you don’t want to write a bunch of songs, can I please have this one song?” I thought maybe I’d get that, and maybe she wouldn’t have time. I don’t know.
Working In Sync
Z Berg:
Yeah. But this is also… We’re not exactly two people who play well with others, generally, I think. It’s not a normal thing for me to meet someone and fucking agree on it.
Rebecca Elliott:
It’s exciting to find someone who matches your collaborative energy.
Z Berg:
I’ve also never had someone respond that well every time I sent them something. Even one of the last things I sent you, I wrote the acapella Strange Darling tag. That’s the first thing I wrote. And then I was so embarrassed that I didn’t send it to him until the end. I’m like, “This is so stupid. He’s going to think I’m so stupid.” Then I finally sent it. He’s like, “Why would you hide this?”
JT Mollner:
We share a love for Rosemary’s Baby. When she sent that over, I was ready to be critical because that’s my job. I’m ready to be like, “No, this isn’t going to work.”
Rebecca Elliott:
Because you’re making decisions on everything all day.
JT Mollner:
Every department head is going to be better at what they do than I could ever be. But if I don’t push my will onto them, then it won’t be a movie that has any shred of me in it. I’ve got to try to communicate that at all times.
I was fully prepared to have this long collaboration, but the collaboration with Z was like a conversation. We both read the script, talked about what movies inspired it. Then she started writing and everything she sent me, I was like, “Oh, good. Oh, good. Put it in.”
Casting
Rebecca Elliott:
So clearly, we have to talk about your incredible cast. Your leads Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald. Then you also have Barbara Hershey and Ed Begley Jr. So cool. And on a side note, I love how independent horror/thrillers, in particular, embrace veteran actors.
I love seeing legendary actors having the opportunity to shine in incredibly interesting roles like in Strange Darling. Versus the roles are usually available to them. But I digress…tell me about putting the cast together and what it was like working with them.
JT Mollner:
I could talk for five hours about the cast, I know. Willa and Kyle are just so good. Christy Hall, this great agent at Paradigm, introduced them both to me. I hadn’t heard of either of them, but I should have! They’ve done tons of stuff. I remember her from The Goldfinch, which I love. And she had not a huge role in it, but she stood out to me.
So I watched all her stuff and all Kyle’s stuff, and they were so good. And then when we met, both of them just had… I knew they could do the job. But when we talked, they both had real compassion for their characters and the character’s point of view. Neither one of them told me, “This character is an asshole.”
Because it was all about how they related to their character. No matter how nefarious or whatever was going on, they related. I wanted that and I wanted there to be compassion and a gray area for both characters. They really saw that, and I knew they’d bring humanity to those roles.
Rebecca Elliott:
And boy did they.
Working With Your Heroes
JT Mollner:
Then Barbara Hershey. First of all, I think she’s one of the greatest living actors. I’ve been obsessed with working with her since I mean, I was a little kid. And I remember seeing Hannah and Her Sisters, and I was just madly in love with her. I thought she was just the most amazing actress. Then I kept watching her over the years, The Last Temptation of Christ, and then Black Swan.
I always wanted to work with her. When we made her an offer, I was scared that she was going to pass. We didn’t hear anything for a few days. I did something really weird. I’m very not into social media, but I followed her on Twitter and commented on something. She followed me back, and I was like, oh, now I can send her a private message. It was just weird. I screwed the agent, sorry, agent.
So I sent her a private message and said, “I made you an offer, please don’t turn it down without a meeting.” She wrote me and said, “I’m going to read with an open heart.” So she read it, we met. Initially, she’s like, “I don’t really want to do a horror movie.” I said, “Well, this is more like, we’re going in the Taxi Driver direction.” Then she got interested. We talked about it, and we had a great meeting. She signed on.
A Very Good Offer
Then I knew Ed a little bit because my aunt, who passed away a few years ago, was very close to him. We met a couple of times, and I wanted Ed to do the movie, but I was also afraid he’d turn me down. I had his number. After Barbara said yes, I texted Ed and said, “How would you like to spend a week in September playing Barbara Hershey’s biker husband? And he said, “Send me this script. That’s a very good offer.”
It was great. They were there for the first week of shooting. And I fully believe that I wouldn’t have made it through the shoot if they hadn’t been. No kidding. Barbara became my mentor and just talked me through a lot of hard times. It was so cool.
Rebecca Elliott:
That’s amazing! Oh, you guys. I have so many more questions. But unfortunately, I have to wrap this up. Congratulations on an awesomely twisted film.
Z Berg:
Thank you.
JT Mollner:
Thank you so much. See you around the fest.
Magenta Light Studios is releasing Strange Darling on August 23, 2024.
