WHAT YOU WISH FOR: Writer/Director Nicholas Tomnay Chats About His Macabre Thriller

Cinema Scholars interviews writer/director Nicholas Tomnay about his new movie What You Wish For. The macabre thriller celebrates its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest 2023, which runs from September 21-28 in Austin, TX.

Introduction

Sometimes the title of a movie perfectly nails the essence of the story it labels. Only a few words linked together can indicate so much. Then that title takes on even greater meaning once the film is in your shaken hindsight. With Nicholas Tomnay’s new macabre thriller, What You Wish For, the moniker couldn’t be more on point with its promise of pitch-black irony. 

In What You Wish For, Ryan is a hard-working chef from Dallas visiting an old culinary school buddy at the far-flung locale of an exclusive, high-end culinary event. On top of the seemingly good-natured envy of his friend’s luck, it seems Ryan is in trouble back home over an unsettled debt. When his visit unexpectedly goes sideways, Ryan finds himself stuck in the middle of a ghastly situation that could be his ticket out of trouble. 

Cinema Scholars recently chatted with What You Wish For writer/director Nicholas Tomnay ahead of the dark thriller’s U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest 2023. From film inspiration, working with FX, and location, location, location, Tomnay opens up about making the twisted film, What You Wish For.

Interview

Rebecca Elliott:

Hi Nicholas! How are you today?

Nicholas Tomnay:

I’m really well, thank you.

Rebecca Elliott:

Good, because I’m super excited to talk about What You Wish For. I’m a huge genre fan, and this checks so many boxes. It’s dark and mysterious and then pretty gruesome. So, I have to know. Who hurt you as a child, and where did this story come from?

Nicholas Tomnay:

[laughing] Well, lots of people hurt me, but it’s not dedicated towards them. I think the film is like a combination of a lot of things. I’d been reading some Roald Dahl short stories months before I wrote it. He wrote some short stories for adults, and I really enjoy that style of storytelling. I’m also a big fan of Patricia Highsmith, particularly “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” And I also have always loved the movie Rope by Alfred Hitchcock. And so probably it’s some bastard child of all those things.

Rebecca Elliott:

That’s a really good, diplomatic answer. I’m glad your past trauma didn’t have to be worked out via film catharsis in What You Wish For. I’m curious though, are you a foodie? Are you inspired by that world? Because, of course, your film revolves around this super elite, high-end cuisine experience. And a lot of the film has those elements. This seems pretty accurate to me, not being a connoisseur of fine dining. Did you do a lot of research into the world of exclusive dining and the people that move in that world?

Nicholas Tomnay:

Yeah, a little bit. I don’t want to spoil the movie, but obviously, there’s an element of the food here that’s sort of unique. And that was an interesting research day. I was like, well, if you were going to do that…So, yeah, I did some research. And I figured I’d try to incorporate it into the region as well, which is Latin America. I’m actually not a particularly foodie person. I mean, I cook for my family. 

I’m the cook at home, and I have three kids, and I’m the chef. So anytime anyone cooks for me, I’m stoked. I’m so thrilled. I love going to restaurants. I love going to restaurants because restaurants are great, but also because I don’t have to cook. So I’m just thrilled to eat. But the restaurants I’m going to are not, like, upscale, amazing places. My mother made cookbooks, which she did for a living, so I always grew up around food. So I don’t know if I was directly thinking about that, but certainly, it’s in there somewhere. The food.

Rebecca Elliott:

That definitely informs your imagination, for sure. You mentioned the location, which is incredible. It’s almost like a character itself in What You Wish For. Obviously, because it’s a gorgeous locale. But also it provides a juxtaposition between this ultra high-end home and the impoverished areas where you shot. Tell me all about the location and what it was like shooting there.

Nicholas Tomnay:

Yeah, I agree with you. In terms of the main house being like another character, that was really important to me that we get the standard of the house being just beyond aspirational. Because it’s got to be sort of oh my God, wow. Right? Because as the audience, if we don’t think, oh, wow, then Ryan won’t think, oh, wow. And then he won’t covet it. We shot it in Colombia. The location is unnamed because I like the ambiguity of it happening in an unnamed Latin American place. But we actually shot it in Colombia in a little town like 3 hours south of Bogota.

And I saw a whole bunch of location pictures before I went over there. And the houses I was seeing were nice and everything, but it wasn’t that kind of wow factor. We found one place that had it, but it was logistically just impossible to make work. And then we saw this place. Just the manicured gardens alone as we drove up to it. I was like, oh my God. It also, just in terms of the style and architecture of the house, reminded me a little bit of Sexy Beast by Jonathan Glazer. And I love that movie. So I was like, wow, this looks like the Sexy Beast house. 

So that was also a big thing for me. So just speaking about the house and the visual aspect of the movie, I wanted to create a sort of seductive feel. Very seductive for the audience, just like it is for the characters. So as Ryan walks into this environment and sees his friend and he’s cooking in this amazing place, he covets it with envy. I also wanted the audience to be thinking, oh, wow, yes, I want to be in this space. I’m quite happy to be sitting here watching this film, and I want to be here. And of course, that turns. And that’s what the pleasure is, hopefully. But yeah, the whole thing is they’re all connected.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yeah, it definitely works in two different ways there. Yes, it’s dazzling. It’s amazing. And then you remember, oh, wait, that’s right. This is how the rest of us live when you show the unglamorous parts of town. The locations represent that disparity too. So you also have this gorgeous but intense, string-heavy score by composers Jeff Russo and Tracie Turnbull. And I saw a violinist specifically noted Natalia Goldstein. And the score is just incredible. As you wrote the script, is that the score that you heard as you were writing? Or even directing this film? Did you give a lot of input or did you just let them do their thing?

Nicholas Tomnay:

No, it’s so interesting. I think the score for What You Wish For was tricky because I cut the film and I used a lot of temp music. And that was actually one of the more revealing parts of the film. Because I think in the editing, one of the main differences between the writing and the shooting, besides the logistical aspect of editing, was how I was trying to cultivate tone and find the tone of the film. It’s an unusual tone and not straight ahead. And the music was really useful to inform that tone. And so I was pulling from lots of different places. I had Philip Glass music in there. I had Bernard Herrmann. I had all these different things and it was like, what is the tone? Then I sent that to Jeff and Tracie. And Jeff was like, god, this temp is a mess! And I’m like, I know it is! Because I just trying to find the tone. And then he was sending me stuff and I kept saying, look, the movie is like a wicked tale. It’s a wicked tale. That’s what we’re trying to elicit in terms of the feeling of it.

And I was like, it’s kind of like The Witches of Eastwick. But not as arch as that. That’s too much, that’s too big. But it’s got that slightly wicked tone thing. And so that was tricky. And then Tracie and Jeff sent a few cues and they sent one cue that was just exactly on the money. And I was like, this is where we should go. So that was really great because we found that and then they would record queues and send them to me. I would make notes and then they would revise them. And we kept back and forth like that for each queue until we were there. And it was actually a pretty incredible experience. It was all done completely through emails.

 I was on vacation with my family over last year in the summer and I was, like, doing stuff with my family. And in the nighttime, I’d come back and listen to all these queues and write emails and the next morning they’ve been utilized. It was terrific. But obviously all credit to them, to Tracie and Jeff, who are just magnificently talented people. And it was a pleasure working with them, particularly Tracie. I think this is Tracie’s first credited film as a composer. She’s been an orchestrator for a long time, so she was very excited to do this. And I had a great time working with Tracie in particular.

Rebecca Elliott:

Wow, that’s really cool. So it was a true collaboration. I don’t want to get into spoilers, but let’s just say people die in What You Wish For and things do get a little gory. What kind of conversations did you have with your effects supervisor Gustavo Herrera as far as not going overboard? But making things terrible and also realistic.

Nicholas Tomnay:

I think the practical effects are almost always so much more real for me as an audience member. When I’m watching something and it’s all CGI, it just doesn’t have the visceral punch. And also, it’s cheaper to do practical effects. So it was really clearly the way to go. My whole feeling about the horror, I guess these are the horror elements. I think this movie is probably a noir filled with horror elements. And the horror elements, I always wanted them to be very graphic and very brief. Because I feel like it’s giving you the shock and the impact. But we don’t need to linger on it because it doesn’t need to be gratuitous because it’s information that we’re getting. Right. Yeah. There’s probably maybe, I don’t know, a handful of these moments in the movie. And I wanted them to be graphic and brief. And so that was what we decided to do. And then in terms of achieving it, it was just old-fashioned filmmaking. We were using makeup, latex, and blood.

Rebecca Elliott:

I love it. Well, the practical effects were great and very effective. And I do like the less is more approach. Because, like you said, when you take it away really fast, it’s still stuck up here in our heads. Like, you don’t even have to show it. We’re playing it out in our heads again. You give us that visual cue and our imaginations go wild.

Nicholas Tomnay:

There’s a moment when Nick, comes out of the basement and he’s covered in blood and you know what he’s had to do. But you don’t see what he has to do. But you just see his reaction to it. I think it’s so much more interesting to see his reaction to what he’d just done, rather than seeing what he did.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yeah, no doubt. Speaking of Nick, he is terrific in this. I mean, he just nails that low-key desperation. But also you wonder, like, what else does he have going on? And then I loved his chemistry with Brian Groh as Jack. He’s so chill and laid back. Can you talk about finding your lead for What You Wish For and anything surprising they may have brought to the project that you weren’t expecting?

Nicholas Tomnay:

Yeah, so I was watching some of Nick Stahl’s more recent work. I found him to be a completely compelling noir hero in the sense that he plays darkness comfortably and is able to portray flawed characters. But also, you never lose empathy with him. You sort of always feel aligned with him. And I thought that’s what this needed. So when I was watching his more recent work, I was just like, wow, I think he’s going to be great in this. There are a lot of sort of outlandish things that happen in this movie. The whole film is art directed to a certain level and it’s slightly arch, but he kept the whole thing grounded and just wouldn’t move from it. 

And even when I was trying to suggest that he’d have more levity with whatever, we’d have these long discussions and he’d be like, but I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t. And I was like, no, you’re right. And that was really all him, the way that he decided to play it. What I realized was that actually, because he was doing that, I could make things a little bit more insane around him. And that would be more fun as well because he’s so grounded all the way through it. So that was an interesting process that we discovered. And with all the actors, I think it was just about experimenting with the earlier stuff. Usually in their first scene and find the tone of what they are doing. And often it was more about what they shouldn’t do. 

So Juan Carlos Messier, who plays Maurice, came into the wardrobe fitting. He was such a lovely guy and he’s so personable and open and he’s great. And then we started rehearsing and he started playing it with like a villain. And I was like, no, man. Be like you really are. And so he was like, really? And I was like, yeah, try that. So we did that and we both thought that worked. And so that’s what he does. The actor is actually very similar to the character. He’s just not a sociopath like the character. It was probably a little bit of a conversation at the beginning and some early takes and finding out what was not working rather than what was working. But I have to give credit to all the actors. I mean, they just owned these roles. They just did it.

Rebecca Elliott:

I love that story about Maurice! Because he is kind of like the friendly psychopath. Which just makes you even more afraid, for sure. It’s a little bit more menacing. Well, I probably only have time for one more quick one, but is this your jam? Are you going to continue with this dark, thriller sort of genre, or are you going to do a nice palate cleanser with a romantic comedy or something? 

Nicholas Tomnay:

I have a lot of things that are different, actually, so I would say something different next time. Yeah. I have two projects that I’ve got that I want to make that are budget-friendly, and one of them is actually gentle. Not gentle, but more of a comedy, and the other one is more of a dramatic thriller. So they’re quite different. I don’t know. Who can say? But I’m not planning a sequel for this type of tone. I have other things that are a bit different.

Rebecca Elliott:

All right. Because you did set up What You Wish For perfectly for a sequel. So I was curious. Well, thank you so much for taking in time to talk with me today about your film. I loved it. It’s going to play like crazy at Fantastic Fest, so I’m really excited to see how the crowds like it there.

Nicholas Tomnay:

Thanks so much. It was great talking to you as well.

What You Wish For screens one more time at Fantastic Fest on Monday, September 25th. No word yet on the film’s release.

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