Episode 790: The Wild Boys (2017)

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Morning, madam. Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. To me once again is mister Kyler Fay. Hello, glad to be here again.

Also joining us as MS. Michelle Kissner, Hi, thanks for inviting me on. This week. We are discussing a Patreon request from our dear friend mister Faye bertrand Mendicos. The Wild Boys, released in twenty seventeen.

The film is a bit of a fable about five bad boys who rape and murder their literature teacher. They are all from well to do families, so they get away with their crime, but they are taken away at their families behasted by the Captain, a seafaring man, who takes them to a strange and mystical place called Dress Island, where they become women. We will be spoiling this film as we go along, so if you don't want anything ruined, turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen the film. We will still be here. Kyler.

Why did you pick The Wild Boys to discuss? I stumbled into this in kind of a cool way, in the sense that I went into its sight unseen. I had not heard of it, knew nothing about it, so I got to experience kind of the big reveal of it without any preconceptions. It was on Shutter for a while, I think it was probably two or three years ago, and I was kind of they had it in their kind of queer horror curation on there. So I'm clicking through that and I see queer horror Wild Boys.

Hell yeah, Press play, and then I was kind of hoping or wondering if it could possibly be some kind of adaptation of the William Burrows novel of the same title. It's not that, but it's not totally disconnected either, and we'll I'm sure we'll get to that if when we get to get to that point. Anyway, I thought it was fantastic. It was just really fascinating to look at. It's beautiful.

It's looked so handmade and not made by computers, and it's just so striking in so many ways, and it was just kind of mesmerizing. Like I sort of watched it maybe didn't really even understand it all that much as the first time through it, and then kind of wanted to see it again immediately. So yeah, when I had a chance to pick a movie for this, I'm like, yeah, let's do that. And Michelle, what's your history with this movie? First time I saw it, I blind bought it on Blu Ray.

It was released by Altered Innocence. I think it's had another separate release since then. But it just looked cool, it sounded cool. I love heavy stylized cinema, so as soon as I saw a trailer to it, I was I had to see, and then after I watched it, I was absolutely blown away by how beautiful it was and interesting. And then I just after that, anytime he had a new movie come out, I was there eating it up immediately.

Like everything I've seen, all of his short films I've seen, Mindo maccabro put out that to release with all his short films on it, and every film for me from him as a ten out of tent, so I absolutely love everything about his style. I was pretty unfamiliar with his work when I first went into this. I think I had seen maybe a poster for The Wild Boys. Really wasn't that familiar with it at all, So I really appreciate you Kyler kind of putting this on my radar. I had seen an image from After Blue in a film program and that just that one image alone was enough for me to be like, I need to see this.

I really have to check out whatever movie this image is from. I want to see this. I managed to get my hands on a copy. Didn't watch it, No, didn't watch it. When she and Conan came out, managed to track down a copy of that because it was playing at some festivals and it would have been one of those things where had I been able to speak with the director, then I would have watched it immediately.

Unfortunately that interview fell through. Hopefully the one for this show doesn't fall through. Fingers crossed. You'll find out later if it falls through or not. Since I didn't get to talk with him, I didn't watch that either.

So this was a perfect opportunity for me to be able to get to see Wild Boys as well as his other things. And yeah, I watch a lot of the shorts as well, and I am so glad that we are doing this because this is the kind of cinema that I really appreciate, where it feels so homemade, I guess in a way, just you can really feel the love for movies coming through when you watch this. I love what he does, especially when it comes to well, the artifice of the sets, the stuff that he's doing with switching formats from color to black and white and this kind of real gaudy, gauzy color that he's using. And we'll talk a little bit more about some of the influences later on. And yeah, it just it really works for me.

Thank you Kyler so much for bringing this one forward. Good. I'm glad you are excited. I am too, Yeah, and I love just that it is very much a fable, these five bad boys, and we start with a voiceover kind of telling us some things, and we start what would you say, like near the end of the movie, and then flash back and we have a voiceover from I'm not even sure who's giving us the voiceover, if it's one of the boys or somebody else. Yeah, it's like there's this narration that goes through that.

I it seems like it's often from the character Tan Ghee, the blonde boy, but sometimes it seems to also be like an like an omniscient narrator talking. But yeah, that initial that opening scene where he's on the you know, on the beach and is being assaulted by the sailors. You know, we learn later that that's kind of a look forward to an event, you know, very near the end of the story, you know, and then we kind of go back into their past to the kind of the inciting incident. But I it's a but yeah, that narration kind of throughout is it's interesting, and it's never yeah, I'm never really like one hundred percent who's talking to us, But it seems to be oriented kind of attached to him. Well, it makes a lot of sense to have this voiceover because we're being told a story.

We don't have the words once upon a time, but we might as well have those words. Like you said, it's a fable. It's a fairy tale. It's obviously meant to be taken more as as an allegory than something realistic happening, and the narration is more like just an omnipresent storyteller type of a vibe. I do find it interesting the way it opens up so dream like.

It's almost like it's setting the tone for the entire rest of the film that so you know that everything you see is going to be fantastical and to kind of get you ready for the vibe I guess of the rest of the film. Well, yeah, having that dog with the person's head on her, Tanky is an interesting character because she never fully transforms. He has something going on that's similar to the captain, and we'll talk about that. But taking us from that into like you said, the inciting incident, this thing where we see these five boys and they're all wearing these really creeptastic masks. It's so creepy.

Whenever you get school boys together, you know something bad is going to happen. If you're watching a movie, you know, like these kids they hang out with the kids from Funny Games, they hang out from what was that Ungo zeterring. I can't remember that one where it was like the school boys killed the teacher kind of thing. I'm guitering and zygo if only they had stopped at murdering very similar where it's just like, oh, hey, teach, we're gonna hang out with you in this big field where you're sitting in this beautiful tan chair, force you to drink this stuff, and then there's gonna be come spurting all over the camera lens. Yeah, wild, Yeah.

When I saw that, I'm like, what the hell is going on? But God, just every bit of the way that is staged and shot and I can't think of anything else quite like it. It's just incredible. And then that the horse and just so the weirdness of it too, how this or she's just kind of sitting in this chair somewhere, you know, smoking and watching them and they're kind of creeping up on her and they're doing the part of the witches chant from a Mecabeth at that point, and that'll come back again kind of at the very end, but really really weird, and it just kind of gets you, gets you ready for a lot more weirdness. I think it's a little bit a take on also the Burroughs story, which I don't think it's a direct adaptation of it, but it definitely I feel like is thematically like maybe like a parallel to it, adjacent to it.

But there's this idea that in The Wild Boys, that these are men that are railing against authority and society by doing all the things that they're told that they aren't supposed to do. And I feel like these five boys at the beginning or are doing something similar because their teacher is somewhere. They even talk about how they're enamored with her, but they also want to defile her and destroy her as well. And they're wearing masks, which the entire film is all about identities and hiding identities, hiding behind identities, hiding behind another identity, and they are constantly transforming. So I think that's their first layer, which is their evil boy personas, and that's the mask that's like this way that society tells men they have to behave in this certain way.

That's that mask they wear and anything that they anything soft that they enjoy, like literature, has to be destroyed, has to You can't have these feelings, you can't enjoy these things and be men, so they feel like they need to destroy it. So I think it's a really interesting opening. It's very much in your face and the entire I guess I don't want to be like crude, but BUKACKI seeing the entire film, is just obsessed with semen from beginning to end, their semen and pretty much every part of it. But I think it just gets you ready for that this film is going to have money shots in it, and in the shock you right at the beginning, get you used to the imagery that's going to be used throughout the entire film.

I think women and seamen don't mix. They kind of remind me of Alex Delarge with this whole thing of like how much they admire Shakespeare and literature. As the large is all about Beethoven, but these folks are just about Shakespeare. It's like, I can't say things are realistic at all in this movie, but they could be semi realistic until we get to their trial, where we have these half naked men with these long flowers and they're wearing fig leaves or a whole bunch of garland around their private parts. And that's what we're introduced to what Amandico likes to do with rear projection, this whole thing of them standing in front of a screen, but you don't know that they're standing in front of a screen, and he's got all this smoke that's on the screen, and it just adds this whole texture to things.

But then when you get the don't know if it's the prosecutor or the defense attorney, because he seems to be playing both sides, but when you get him behind them, and he just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it's like this looming, literal, looming authority figure over them. And even when it comes to the men that I was talking about, like they are so far forward that they are also very tall compared to these boys. I think, having all of these people that are bigger than them, and then also those reads that they attack their teacher in those are so much bigger than them. It makes them feel very small and makes them feel much younger than these people that are portraying these young boys are again super smart.

So that trial, well, the narrator calls it a I think a simulacrum of a trial. You know, they're not nothing too bad is necessarily going to happen to them because there are no other witnesses of their crime and has stated. They each get up and tell their various lie about you know, what happened. But then this this advocate, this attorney, what prosecutor whatever he is. You know, it's like, yep, we don't really have anything to contradict this, but that these kids are still bad news.

We need to bust up this gang somehow because they have done all these other things in the past, all this blaspheming and visiting brothels and fighting and you know, and all this, and you know, it's like, we can't we can't pin this crime on them, but there's there's we need to do something about this. And then, you know, and then we go to the the very weird meeting of the parents sitting there, you know, considering the proposition of sending them to see and the parents are just strange too. They seem like a very like a real caricature of some kind of bourgeois, upper class people. That checkerboard floor that they have. Of course, that reminds me a lot of David Lynch with his black and white that he has.

But yeah, they don't feel like real parents, and it feels like, well, these are wild boys. They go off and they do whatever. It just feels like the parents are so helpless. I'm so surprised that they actually enlist the help of the captain. And the captain shows up with his daughter question Mark, and then this little boy who is wearing a collar and sings like an angel, and it seems like he's already gone to the island.

And one of the interesting things too, is that I've already given away the spoiler as far as these people turning into women, But we should probably say that all of the boys are portrayed by women actors, So throughout this whole thing, they are shot to look very boyish at first, and then as time goes on you see them becoming more and more feminine. Some are more feminine at the beginning, like Tanky, who looks very very firm, but as you move along, like you go, oh okay, I can see what's going on here. I mean, once the breast pop out, then you're no doubt in your mind. But it's just like, oh, they do a good job of obfuscating the gender of our characters. Though at first, Yeah, they all do a fantastic job of just portraying men, and specifically young men.

I guess I just really like the idea of women playing men that are then turned into women. A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, ridiculous. It's preposterous. In fact, it's so preposterous no one would ever believe it. It's so gradual the way it happens.

Just like you said, they don't wear makeup in the beginning, and they just the way to carry themselves is very it's almost hyper masculine. I would say, it's not even just like regular masculine. It's parody of masculinity. And I don't know if they really talk about it right at the beginning, but there's like this entity that seems to be influencing them to do these acts, and they call him Trevor, which is like the most funny name for a god of evil, I guess, a god of masculinity, of toxic masculinity. But that's kind of a thing that they do in these movies where they'll have like just kind of a funny name that's like in in Dirty Paradise, it's like Kate Busch, you know, like they just like always have like a kind of like little funny kind of a side like that.

And I think maybe even the dog with a man face could possibly also be a version of Trevor. But I feel like Trevor represents like masculinity, toxic masculinity, this this kind of like force that makes men have to do these things. And I hope anybody listening to his podcasts, I guess doesn't think I'm a massandrist, but I'm just discussing masculinity. I could talk about toxic femininity too, if they want to make it equal. But I feel like this film is very much critiquing men in general, so it's just to sound that way, I guess.

But I just like that there's kind of this ghostly form of masculinity that's in the background surrounding them the entire film. Yeah, I think that this Trevor construct. Well, the first time I saw it, I wondered, wow, is this going to be like, you know, maybe some kind of literal supernatural intervention that's going to keep happening in this or I think what you're saying about it being this kind of you know, the sort of embodiment of this toxicity is right on. It's also a way for it seems more like a like a shared fantasy that these boys have put together to excuse themselves and each other in their terrible behavior. You know, because when something, you know, when they're planning, is something really bad, you know, or they want something really bad to be going on, you know, they're they're you know, they're like, oh, Trevor, will Trevor will come and this will happen.

And then much and very deep into the film, when they're on the island, Jean Louis, their ringleader, declares himself to be Trevor at one point he tells them, which is which I thought was really interesting because he's kind of that one character seems to kind of be the insider of, you know, a lot of what they're doing. Yeah, you're talking about the way that they act as boys, and I love their body language. And when they are accosting the one of the people that the captain brings with them, the one who is coded as a boy who sings like a girl. When they're accosting that person, it's like they're acting talk first, like literally like one of them is thrusting their crotch at this person, just like you know, like, hey, I am intimidating you with what I've got in my pants.

Talking some more about Trevor, you get that imagery of like the the skull, the bedazzled skull that comes in sometimes and I kept thinking, is that Trevor. But then you also get I think they're starting to eat that horribly disgusting fruit with all the hair on its, which is just so gross. And at one point they're going back in to eat some of that fruit, and you cut to this image it's Tangie again is eating the fruit. And you cut to an image of this person on a swing and there's flowers all along the ropes of the swing, and it almost, I don't know, it almost seems like an almost like an Indian god, but it feels like that that head from the dog is on this creature and it's coming in like again, crotch first, going right into Tongi's mouth basically as they're swinging on there.

And I like how the camera is set up for the first swing forward where it's coming right towards us as the audience and getting whatever this crotch is. And it's almost like, is that where the fruit is coming from? It's like, you know, the idea of nature and the violation of nature is going to come up so much in this movie, and I find it very interesting that it's the fruit that really starts the process for me. The interesting thing about the fruit to me, besides a it just really does gross me out to watch it because I just think about if I'm ever eating anything, you get like one tiny hair, you don't want to eat the entire rest of the thing you're eating. But of course I feel like it's obviously supposed to be a metaphor for conalingis like eating a vagina with hair on it, because it's like, you know what they open up.

I don't know what kind of fruit is specifically, I couldn't tell if it was like a peach or if it was a plum, but there's I also feel like that's the first step of emasculating them, because eating someone out like knolingus is very much you're only doing it for the other person's pleasure. You're getting nothing out of it yourself. Theoretically, of course, there are some people that like it, but that just feels like the first step to emasculating the boys and forcing them to do something they find somewhat distasteful. And that's the only food that they are given on the boat ride there. Honestly, the only food you ever see them eating is sexual.

It's either they're eating the you know, the vagina plums, or they're eating the penis plant def squirt go or everything they eat is genitalia shaped. But that food especially is just it really grosses me out because it's so hairy. Yeah, it's super gross. It's like a real life thing like the When you see the inside of it, it's almost like a like a lot, like a passion for kind of I think it might be what they're getting at. But it's interesting how that starts right away, you know, before they've even gotten the boat.

They're still at home or you know, before they've taken off with the captain. And and then that that weirdness with the kid that the captain brings to them straight how he makes these boys docile, and then that little scene that you mentioned, Mike, where they're kind of harassing him, and then it gets like even a little bit worse where they make him lick the shoe like you know which, which at that point I'm thinking that it's kind of like clockwork orange flavored almost. I'm thinking like like Ludovico technique, Like this kid has been conditioned to where he's like so docile that he can't even fight back at all. And there's this great shot that you actually see a lot in stills with like articles about this movie, where it's the five kids kind of looking down, you know, the camera's point of view is from the ground, and they're all looking down with this look of just disgust and horror, like like what the hell, what the hell has happened to you?

And and then you have to think it's like are they wondering, is this what to happen to us if we go on this boat ride? But they're so arrogance, I don't think they would probably be able to have that level of self reflection. You know. It seems like in the at least the first half of the film, it's exploring the idea of feminization being punishment of some sort. It would be considered punishment to them, even though Obviously being a woman or a fem isn't a bad thing, but to them it is.

To them, being forced to inhabit that role is punishment. And it's telling that the boy that is brought with the captain that theoretically could have eaten that fruit and been feminized, because they don't really go into other than the voice, right, They don't really go into is that a girl now? Or are they a boy? Is like on a leash, and they also leash the boys on the boat as well. They have those nooses around their neck.

So it seems like this forced feminization, which is also not to be rude, but its entire movies cruise so it doesn't matter. But forced feminization is a fetish for sure. There are if you go on Internet that's that's a type of like pornography and titillation for people is forced feminization stories That plays into this film a little bit. I do believe that is feticized in this movie, on top of being a deconstruction of it. But I do think that in these films there's a kind of like tongue in cheek.

Don't take it completely serious, because I have some people say that these films are pretentious, and I don't think they are at all. I think it's more like just they want to do creative, fun stuff in movies and do whatever they want to do. It's not necessarily every single thing in the film is done to be like a super deep, you know, dissertation on something. Sometimes they just do things to be funny or creative, you know, as well. I love the artifice.

I absolutely love the artifice of a movie like this. I mean it reminds me of like guy Men's work, this kind of black and white that looks so stunningly gorgeous. Also the idea of playing with gender. I mean, one of my favorite guy men in shorts is Sissy Boys Slat Party. I was just thinking of that too.

It's like that could happen on that island where they are almost too. And then of course, like the color stuff reminds me a lot of movie that we talked about a long time ago. I think also from Altered Image, Pink Narcissus. If some of it is so lurid, it reminds me of kinneth Anger stuff. So all of this like crewer coded filmmaking.

But then you know, I'm trying to think, like even things like, well, we're talking about this idea of them going to the island as punishment. It so reminds me too like Pinocchio, and I guess that's part of the fable part of it, where it's just like when they get taken to their island, they get turned into donkeys. Ever been the Pleasure Island? Neither, But they say it's a swell. Drin no school.

No you compare to join a part and nobody says a boid loaf around Lenny dat Lanny drink and it's all free. Boy, that's the place I get hardly wait. Here is just a little bit different where they get turned into women, but it's all punishment for these boys being you know, smoking, drinking, those kind of things. And these boys definitely would fit in with those animals from Pleasure Island or whatever they call it in Pinocchio. And then of course I was seeing you know we talked last year, I think, Kyle, were you on the episode about poison.

Yeah, yeah, it reminded me a lot of poison and the whole Jean Janet thing that we talked about last year, And yeah, it just fits right in with that. And I noticed, sorry to jump ahead, but watching she as Conan, one of the characters having a jacket, this is Rainer on it, I'm just like, Okay, it's making major nods to Brain or Fastpender. And I know Fastpender also adapted Jane with Querrel, So yeah, I can really see that the other film. Ryan or the Dog Creature, and that's gotta be Fastpender. It was like, yeah, yeah, the.

Other movie this reminded me of it was Singapore Sling, the Greek film that we talked about quite a few years ago. This kind of quasi sequel to Laura, but it's got that dirtiness and also that artifice to it as well. And yeah, I just love this thing, like where they're on a ship and I don't think they're anywhere near water at all, but it looks so good. The use of the weird projection. I love when well I don't love when the one kid kills the dog, but when he throws the body of the dog and you get the splash that comes up and you're just like, there's a guy down there with a bucket of water that just threw that up, you know.

But I just love how artificial all this stuff is. The big storm they're in whether they kill the captain or send him overboard, and they're heading back. That just looks so great. It's like it's terrifying, you know. And there's this shot where I'm like, I'm sure that's just like some little boat, like a miniature in some little tank or something, but it just looks horrifying, and it's like because it's so like exaggerated and enhanced, and it's just it's so much better than you know, some kind of CGI effect.

And Mendiko he started this. It's a policy I guess that he has for his films. It's called Incoherence Maifesto, and it's basically almost kind of like dog Me nine to five. Like it's like a list of things that he wants to have in his films. And one of the things that he wants in his films is diy sets.

Everything has to be He wants people to use things that they can just get on hand from like their stores or anywhere around they can find. And another thing that he wants is mixing two genres together. Every movie has to have at least two genres in it minimum, and then more if they can add more. So I think a lot of the stylized look and the use of your projection, which is another homemade Basically, they want to do a lot of in camera effects as much as possible. And I love that there's a it's like a you can go online and look it up to for people that are listening, and it's a list of like ten or fifteen things that they want they strive for when they create their films, and it just gives his films a look that many films don't have, especially nowadays when everything's CGI and it's not even good CGI because they rush the CGI artists, so it looks CGI now doesn't look as good a CGI in early two thousands for some reason.

But in a world of those kind of films with the flat netflix lighting and all that kind of stuff, these films are so unique and gorgeous looking and sumptuous and the and sensual. Even just the. Idea of things being organically there in the space in front of the camera that they're filming. It just feels sexy to that. You know, it's just it's actual filmmaking.

Yeah, it just seems so taxile because the wild boys in the other films too, there's so much there's all this like gross dirt and stuff all over the place that you know, you can kind of you almost feel like you can touch it, you know, and like look a wild boys and there on the beach, like you know, they got this all this dirt on their faces and they're rolling around it, and it just seems it just feels very just like really taxile in that sense that you're not gonna get from you know, some zeros and ones in a computer. You know, even little things like on the boat by where the captain is, he's got that little porthole and stuff. Right in front of that, there's a giant hand like carving that's just kind of on the wall.

And then there's these little round glass things that are kind of tied together with ropes, and all the ropes on the ship are frayed. And then the freaking sails have hair on them. It's very gross and very tactile. And yeah, and then you get all of the prosthetics when it comes to things like the captain and his huge prosthetic penis that is got tattoos on it and stuff. And at one point he's just like, oh, yeah, if you need something to read, you can come read my cock basically because he throws out all of their books.

He takes away everything from them that they hold deer. So yeah, he's taking away that, and then eventually he's. Gonna it also has a map on it. I'm like, how big is this Dude's wiener you get? Yeah, I think it says welcome to Jamaica, have a nice day, or.

No, is that the coordinates to the island? I yeah, that is so weird. You know, he's showing this kid is this little kid, like, hey, check this out. But yeah, and then he's got them all like, you know, with ropes around their Nextican but instead of roped into the mechanism of the boat, you know, he's gonna levers and pulleys and it's yeah, it's it's really sick. Yeah, and you keep getting that creature I was talking about before, the creature whose face looks like the face that's on the dog again, possibly Trevor, not sure, because that creature shows up again I think before the dog dies, and in that he almost looks like somebody from Michael Man's The Keep, because he's got these red glowing eyes and he's looking down over the boys and everything.

At first I thought that that mask that he's wearing, I almost thought that was the captain and I was thinking, like, when you see the dog wearing it reminded me of Invasion of the Body Snatchers seventy eight, where you've got the old man who kind of half the homeless man who half transforms into a dog, and him from the pod pod creatures. You know. But I love that look, and I love what they're doing with this, And again I think they're shooting it in slow motion you get that extra creepiness. The music and the sound effects that work with this are so great as well, and there's moments where you get like regular song songs and they work so well. There's that one I can't remember where it's at, but the woman ends up just basically screeching at the end of it.

It's not even like a musical note. Seems like a scream and it really reflects what's going on on screen. Yeah, when you said that, I'm thinking to the sound. Yeah, the music is just a sound design of that. So the sequence on the beach when this is after they've returned to the island, they've kind of washed up on shore.

Also, is this like an only in movies? Thing where people are kind of washed up on a beach and they're somehow still alive and then they kind of all wake up at the same time like that. I mean, I'm quite sure that if I were in some kind of shipwreck, I would just drown and be dead. But anyway, glad they made it funny. I just went to see send help today, and that happens several times.

So they get there and then awesome they find all this booze and then that incredible sequence, this sort of making out fighting orgy with the feathers and the music and the sound and the color. Yeah, because this is one of the color sequences again, and it's just like incredible because these actors they're also beautiful to look at, and the way they're shot, the way the colors, the way the light is, it's just incredible. And then these just you know, and then these for some reason, these feathers are just like falling and falling like in like an ever increasing profusion until they're just kind of like there's some kind of coded and feathers And for some reason, I like feathers like flying around a lot, do you know.

Michaylay Swab's film State there's a sequence in that where it's in like sound stage and there's this there's this scene where there's an impossibly like large number of feathers like kind of descending from a height, as if somebody is up above, like busting open, like fifty pillows or something. But maybe that's where I get that from. That sounds like a Tony Scott film. That scene is really beautiful because it comes after they've been on the island a little bit and they've enjoyed I guess the penis cactus. They look like cactus and you pull up the little penises and goo comes out of them and they and essentially that goo kind of gets them a little drunkish, kind of on pleasure.

I love the scene after they're drinking out of the penis plants, one of them gets so turned on they essentially start having sex with the ground. But the ground also has legs, like grass legs, and it wraps around them. But later when they have the orgy with each other, it's just there they feel free. In the beginning of the film, taking them to the island is framed as a punishment, but it turns out that it's not a punishment. It's an enlightenment because the captain essentially thinks that if everybody was female, there would be no war.

There would be no strife because women have empathy. Not to say that men don't, but women were brought up to have empathy, and we're allowed to feel feelings publicly and express them and not be ridiculed for it or shunned. And I think all that is kind of the beginnings of their transformation into women is the emotional aspect of it, the empathy with each other and the love and the intimacy and wanting to because the orgy doesn't feel like pure raw sex, right. It feels like they're connecting with each other more and it just happens to be kind of turning into sex. But I love that scene.

It's beautiful. The feathers, I think also kind of maybe a visual representation of them being softer, perhaps more delicate, you know, in contrast with the rough fan too like this. I'm sure the sand's rough that they're on, but they're love for each other and the intimacy is softening everything around them, hence the feathers. But I absolutely adore that scene, and you're right, everybody is very gorgeous. They're gorgeous when they look like boys.

They're gorgeous when they look like girls. Like I'm jealous that somebody can pull off being hot as two different genders, Like, like, what, that's a superpower if you ask me. And that is the like you said, the second time they go to the island, because they go there initially, and I think that's when they lose Hubert. He goes his own way, and I believe it's Hubert that's talking to the captain checking out the captain's massive member, and Hubert kind of goes off on his own and he's the one that meets Severen, who's a character that we haven't talked about yet, who's played by what is it Elena Lowenstein who or Loans who is in almost all of Mandico's stuff. I mostly remember her from amateur way back when when that movie was out?

Was that hal Hartley I think did that one. It was like. Ninety four or something like that. But she's in all of these movies, and she's this kind of almost like a like a Colonel Kurtz or a doctor Moreau, just this like mad scientist type character who is hanging out on this island, who originally was a man came to this island I don't know how many years ago and ended up turning into a woman. And she seems to really embrace it, especially with all the rings and the jewelry.

And then she's got the gun, but the gun is inside of her stomach. It's like, is this supposed to represent her womb? And that maybe at the heart of it, she still carries so much violence because yeah, this whole idea of oh yeah, women are soft and they're nice, and there are all these things. I mean, that's why we can't have a woman president, right, We just can't have somebody that emotional, because we know that male presidents never given to their emotions, especially spite. We briefly mentioned Burrows.

But there's another piece of literature that's in the kind of the infrastructure. This thing is vern and I'm thinking of two years of vacation. Have either of you read this that I did a couple of weeks ago, just because this came up when I was kind of reading up on the film. I regret to report that it sucks. It is boring as fuck.

I mean, if you can imagine Lord of the Rings, except nothing much happens for one hundred pages, except the kids getting along just fine. Lord of the Rings are Lord, Yeah, Lord of the Flies. Sorry, yeah, imagine that, except everything's kind of it goes okay. Then then toward the end of the story, they get invaded by some pirates, but they solve that problem in about two pages, and then then they get on a boat and go home and everything's cool. But no, I could see something like that though, being like this kind of boy's adventure story, like maybe being a kind of a touchstone for something like this, And I could see it maybe being entertaining for you know, some kid in the late nineteenth early twentieth century or whatever.

But it's not a very long book, so it has that going for it. I was reminded a little bit of Rampos Horrors of Malformed Men, which we talked about a few years ago. Just this kind of twisted island, you know. I mean, there's so many of these stories that we were talking about take place on deserted islands where nature has taken over or there's something different about the nature of the island itself, where you know, the trees come alive, those kind of things, And yeah, just that. I that also came to mind when I was reading the Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice, where it's just this suicide island that where Blofeld lives, and it's like all of these dangerous plants, dangerous animals, anything that could kill you is on this island and.

This one it is. It feels like it should be dangerous. But like you're saying, everything is there to well, I can't say everything. I mean things are there to give you pleasure. Like that cactus with the the com basically coming out of it.

I love how when they're drinking from that, one kid is basically at crotch level with one of the other kids. And then you come to the I guess it's like spider webs, which put me in mind of you said Lord of the Rings by mistake, but it reminded me of she Lov with the big spider webs that only get dissolved by urinating on it. And when the kids get caught the second time that they come to the island and Hubert peas on them and Bear is just full female at that point, I'm just like, somebody is getting off on this right now, Not me, but somebody is. Yeah, that is absolutely somebody's jam totally that there's like somebody watching that part over and over again, probably, But I feel. Like Hubert is the most effeminate of the boys even before the feminization begins, and he seems to be the most empathetic already, and the captain even kind of points that out.

I believe he says, like, you're the least corrupted of the boys because he's the closest to femininity out of all of them, and it seems like he's the one doesn't he change. First, he separates from the rest of them because he's really into the captain. He goes off to like try to figure out where the captain went, and so he kind of spies on the captain when he meets with Severin. And here's the conversation between the captain and Severen where Severin corrects the captain on the gender of the name Severin versus Severen. The character prefers the masculine pronunciation of that.

And if you don't know anything about what's going to happen going forward, that's the first indication that there's going to be some gender fluidity thing going on. But Hubert's sort of with them at that point and does not get back with the other the other kids and doesn't leave with them, you know when they go back to the boat. Yeah, he's fully transformed, like well before the others and is it seems to be very comfortable with it. And also he's the one that the captain doesn't blindfold, because he leads the boys through the island wearing blindfolds, but he lets Hubert keep his eyes and basically follows up to make sure that they're going along the right path. Yeah, which almost seems to cause a a rift a little bit in the group because Jean Louis like during that sequence calls him a traitor, like he's like because they start, the others detect this favoritism that the captain has toward him at that point, and.

They mentioned when Savareen and the captain meet, she mentions his breast, and I think that's the first glimpse that we get that he has one breast and they I don't know if she's actually mad at him or not, because they end up like choking each other and there's this whole scene that goes on underwater. I don't know if that's love play or if she's actually genuinely wants to murder him. I have no idea what that scene is. Their whole conversation, and then when it goes to the water thing. I don't know how many times I've watched this now I really do not understand what the hell is going on there, but it's like interesting.

I think it's a conflation of sex and violence, because often those two things are inner, and I think that they have a contentious relationship, perhaps competitive, but also there is a kind of weird, you know, enemies to lovers type kind of thing going on, because they go between flirting and then there's hostility, and in the middle of the hostility it turns sexual. But she rebukes it, but she. It seems like she's. Attracted to him. I do find it interesting the way Mendico in all his films he has middle aged women and older which a lot of films they don't care I guess about middle aged women.

As a middle aged woman, there's a thing that happens once you hit math thirty five. He started becoming invisible to society because you know, it's not purposely for us, but women are only acknowledged a lot if men find us attractive. A man doesn't find you attractive, you might as well not exist to him at all, not even just like as a person if a man doesn't a straight man doesn't find you attractive. And I feel like she is menopausal and and when you're going into menopause, you kind of start losing some of the things that make you feel specifically feminine from a traditional gender perspective. You lose your period, your estrogen is all over the place, and eventually you're over start making less and less estrogen, and you might have to take HRT, Like I take HRT I'm perimenopausal, but you know, an HRT is also something that trans people can also take for to you know, transition to a female.

And I also kind of think about, like how instead of a womb, she has a gun, because like, if she's a menopause, then she can't have kids anymore, so what does she have left? Instead of giving life, she's taking it. I just love the way that they are strong women and are interesting and they're feral sometimes because like you are feral when you're perimenoposal, because your mind's got your hormones drew all over the place. It's almost like a second puberty, which is Also, I feel like these boys are going through a second puberty as women. They're becoming women, they're having they're changing, right, They're all of a sudden, sudden discovering they have breasts and all the things that women go through when they're going through puberty, to include all the crazy emotional changes.

And I just like that, Like contrast between older women, younger women, and these young boys becoming young women and how they all intermingle with each other. That's really interesting and it sort of answers I think a question I was thinking of earlier. I read a little criticism in a couple of places in this movie where I think some viewers have found it to be have criticized this as being maybe too gender esensialists like too much males are like this, females are like that, sort of Severin's premise that maybe a more feminized world is going to be a better world automatically because of that, though, we don't get to spend a lot of time with the characters after the transformation is complete.

But I don't know have they necessarily have their personalities that are ethics of their morality really been changed either. I mean, Jean Louis still seems to be like kind of an asshole. Like after the transformation, you wonder whether the whether severing's concepted, you know that there's really that much, whether it's that straightforward or not. And I kind of think the no, it's not that simple. But I just was thinking of that because I had read one review and I think listen to another podcast where this kind of criticism was that this was too gender essentialist, and I don't think I agree.

No, that's the fun of this movie. And talking about that scene with the captain and Severen, I mean after they have the fight in the water, they're up on shore and he starts licking her face and she brings up a gun and puts it first in his ear and then in his mouth. I mean, we've talked about phallic symbols of guns before. And when they start making out, she lifts up her gun and it blows off and it's just this big stream of white smoke coming out of it, and I'm just like, Okay, she just got her gun off, as I say, And yeah, that's when they're like, oh, we've been watched by Hubert. But they don't seem too overly bothered by it.

And I think that's when she decides that, Okay, you know, these boys are going to have to leave now, because she seems like she's done with this game. You know, when he brings in this jewelry, she's just like, I'm tired of this. You know, it's just it's not working kind of thing. And though she is the one that finds Hubert again and tells him all about how to dissolve those webs, those real cummy cummy cummy webs. I mean, it's like when they talk about shooting ropes.

I mean, that's what it looks like he's trapped in. Yeah, it's so gross. They're just kind of hanging in that and then yeah. Oh and then to see the way that the that stuff interacts with him peeing his pants and just the smoke that starts coming up and everything. But yeah, he gets that it kind of a game.

Verminds me almost like the Winter Witch from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and he's you know, getting turkish the light until he turns into a woman. Oh okay, tell me. Do you have brothers and sisters? One brother, two sisters, one sister. Lucy has been here too.

Lucy's been here in metaphone. Your sister has been here in Naania, you say, and has met up. On just that type of like almost a traitor to the cause because it's like, Okay, we're taking these other boys off of this island, but Hubert, you get to stay here. Nothing needs to make sense, and I don't really want it to, but it did. Maybe wonder what is their economic system with all these jewels and all this stuff where it's like, what's Severing doing with all that just hanging hanging out on that island with it.

They have so many jewels that there are jewels hanging from the boat. When he came in and he pulled out those jewels. This is ten key I'm talking about. Because he shows up late to the boat before they leave and he pulls out that handful of jewels. I was like, oh, he stole those from his mother, like he like everybody else, probably paid cash and he stole those from his mother.

To be like, no, no, I need to join my friends. I can't be separated from this group. But no, to only to find out that's how they, like you said, that's their system of currency is We're going to hand you a full handful of jewels here you go, passage paid. But yeah, because it looks like that, yeah, Tangi is apparently stolen this stuff, but or it looks that way. But and then the captains like, okay, well you guys need to divide your rations up, like the four of you among five then because you're not supposed to be there.

And that character, he's always like a little bit, always a little bit on the outside of it though, like like his mom was going to keep him home and not send him, you know. And then he's kind of the one, he's the one left at the end, and you know, he's the one that didn't fully transform like the rest of them, and in that way kind of kind of serves as sort of an anchor I think, you know, through the whole you know, through the whole story. In an interesting way, is. The idea that they take the boys there and then once they're feminized, do they give them back to their families as girls. That's what it feels like.

Because it's obvious if they have all that drewy that it's just something that it's a thing they've been doing for a while, and nobody says anything about that, or yeah, what. Is the game here, is it sort of like turn boys into girls question mark step three profits I don't know, well, I got the impression maybe that that it wasn't supposed to be necessarily complete transformation like that all the time, But maybe too because there's a conversation where I guess Severing experienced like sort of miscalculated the dose, kind of took it too far, and then completely transformed in this way. And I'm not sure that that's always the intent. But I don't know what the middle ground is because that doesn't seem right either.

The middle ground seems to be kind of partially physically changing, but we don't need to be. Logical low Maybe there's some kind of mental component to the change too, like if you don't accept that you're changing, you can kind of stop it in some of the stages. Or is it more so like if you eat a certain amount of the vagina plums, you're just going to turn no matter what, because the captain just has the one breast and they don't all change completely. So it makes me wonder is it more about accepting yourself I guess changing and being okay with it because the boys all take the change kind of differently. I would say there's the part where two of them I believe are like might be three or trapped in the in the come webs and they and they start changing in the webs and they're like euphoric when they're changing.

I find it. Interesting that it explores the female experience in the way that we are sometimes subjugated by men. Because one of the boys changes in front of one of the other boys, they open their shirt and you're like, oh, man, I have rest, and then the other you know, and the other boy immediately tries to rape them. It's like, welcome to being a woman, because that's like one of our main things that we're scared of all the time. You know.

Yeah, that scene is rough they got because they're those two. That's a Jean Louis and roll Mold I probably pronounce cannot pronounce that name correctly, but anyway, those two Jean Louis Isn't seems to have lost it at that point because they're still on the beach. The four of them have split because the other two have gone off to try to find who bare you know, and then Roumald is like, yeah, well, you know, we need to find them, and then he's like, now they're dead. They must have been eating by the island. We can't ever leave the beach, and then he immediately goes into that RAPEI mode before even he's learned what's happened there.

I mean, he's like already antagonistic, and then when he finds out that his friend has changed physically like this, then it's just like straight to it. And you know, I don't I don't think I maligned the character too much by characterizing him as a sociopath. Really, yeah, it's really, it's really scary. Yeah, my wife was not very happy about that rape scene. I didn't point out to her that it was actually a woman raping a woman in real life, you know, but or you know, as far as the actresses go, yeah, that was rough.

And then you get all the dirt that's being thrown onto them at the same time, so it's just even like a growdy or scene. I almost said, poor Jean Louis, But yeah, he's an absolute monster. When his cock falls off, I'm just so happy about that, and he's just so horrified and has to pick up that, like the cock and balls are all just one big thing that he's holding and tries to like hold it against his crutch and be like, oh, it's just gonna. Go back to Can I reattach it if? Yeah?

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie it. Anytime their penises fell off, it was just hilarious to me because, like you said, it's just the one big piece and his plops on the ground and they're like nod, They're trying to like dust it off, and I'm like, bro, just leave it. It's gone. Surprised the dog didn't eat it. Yeah, Jean Louis is a real piece of shit.

Kind of reminded me, not that he's a piece to shit, but it looks wives reminded me of Romy Mallick every single time I saw him. They are also the most masculine looking one. To me, they look the most masculine and it seems like they have the strongest bad masculine urges and I think they transform last too. Yeah, that actor is so good. The whole time that character is on screen, you can't hardly look away.

I mean, it's like it's really really great. All they all are. I mean, they you know, just you know, coming up with you know, these five is very different personalities, even the two the first time I watched it. I had a little At first, I had a little bit of trouble distinguishing between Hugh Bear and Sloan because two kind of blondish boys of floppy hair kind of look about the same to me. But then yeah, then I sort of figured that out too, because they were so different in the way they were, you know, carried themselves.

You know, they're really really good at all of them. And then yeah, you were talking about can you stop the process as a mental versus all physical? Is it just the vagina fruit or something else? Because Tonkey does not make the transformation, and I don't think ever makes the transformation. And I'm trying to remember the end of the movie, doesn't Tnky get left behind?

Yeah, he stays, he doesn't want to go with them. He hides and the rest of them, including Severy, and they all leave, apparently after they've commandeered the boat that the sailors that came to the island that assaulted TANGI as I understand, Yeah, that's what happened, I guess, And then they they all leave and I guess go back to the ship where those sailors came from originally, and kind of bored that, and there's this kind of carell looking scene right at the end where you know, they're kind of presenting themselves with the sailors on the boat as girls, and they do the for some reason that Macbeth, which is Chance again. Talking again about Jean Louis and how bad that person is. They're the ones that reach inside of Severen and pull out the gun and pull the trigger, only to find out later that Severareen keeps the bullets in her belly as well.

But yeah, what a striking look when they're all there with their little caps on and their pants and their suspenders and their bare breasts just all out on that island, just like okay, yep, like after they've murdered those other sailors. And I'm so glad that they do, because we have just a whole bunch of rapist sailors that show up on this speech that then rejoin us from the beginning of this and that revenge is very sweet. In the deleted scenes, I remember that there's a little bit more of that where it shows the other four of them kind of presenting themselves to the rapist sailors that kind of lure them in. There's a little bit of an extension of that scene. They're sirens, Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, speaking of those or I guess I'm deleted.

It was like the behind the scenes footage. It was really striking to see how what the on location set sort of looked like, you know, just in this behind the scenes shot, how just sort of natural and normal kind of the islands that was versus what we see in the film. Because it's just incredible to me how an on location site is really made to almost convince us that it's as kind of soundstage, you know, with all the with all the all the artificial stuff applied to it. I just I kept thinking of that, like again and again, I'm like, oh yeah, that was like a real place. So again the alternate Innocence Blu Ray has behind the scenes and deleted scenes, and the way that I ripped the disc, it just all came together and it's like those deleted scenes.

It feels like he made a movie out of the deleted scenes. The way that it plays out and the way that it has a soundtrack to it and everything, And I'm just like, Okay, you took all of these little odds and ends, but yeah, you can kind of follow the narrative of the movie through those deleted scenes as well, and I can understand. There were a couple where I was like, eh, all right, and like I can just tell you're like testing things out. Like there's a sequence where Jean Louis I believe, is underwater and gets hit with the sword and you can kind of see the blood effect of the blood coming out under the water on the tip of the sword, and that happens a few times. So I'm just like, Okay, it looks like they're testing something out.

But then to your point, yeah, there are little bits where it's just like, yeah, them showing up almost as sirens to be like, hey sailor. You know, we were just talking about gay sailors a couple weeks ago with entertaining Mister Sloan's just like, yo, oh, how's it going with sailor kind of thing. I mean, just the whole idea of, you know, gay sex on a boat feels like the theme for this month and last month. Oh yeah, I was I was ordered if we were in a theme here with that. Well, apparently no theme this month, but next week we're talking about I saw the TV glow, so apparently we're in trans month this month.

I wasn't even aware of it. That might have been my alternate pick if you had hated the idea of doing Wild Boys. So yeah, I love that. I can't wait. Oh, that was the last time Louis Etienne was on the show.

They asked, oh can we do? I saw the TV glow sometime and I'm like, yeah, sure. So I didn't even know what this movie was about, obviously when we originally programmed this, when you asked, Kyler, can this be the movie? Didn't know what the hell was going on? And I put those two right back to back, and I'm like, how synchronicity is that?

All Right, We're going to take a break and we'll be back, hopefully with a interview with bertrand Mendico. Right after these brief messages, the horror sequel, audiences and critics are raving. About twenty eight years later, The Bone Temple Comes Home. See why it is certified Fresh and verified Hot via Rotten Tomato. Get it now on digital.

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I was able to find a translator. I don't think that he was very happy with the translator. So after we were done with the audio interview, he asked if he could answer the questions via email, So you will find those at Projection Booth podcast dot com. They'll be linked to the show notes for this episode. For those French speakers out there, I also have uploaded the raw interview, you know English translation where he kind of goes back and forth between English and French, but you'll hear all the French without any sort of translation.

That will also be a Projection Booth podcast dot com. All right, sit back, and I hope you enjoy this interview. How did you get interested in filmmaking? But he was interested by the by filmmaking. He was young and yeah, since then he told his parents that he wanted to be actor because so that an acto was the motto of you know, the filmmaker the film directions.

Then he started with so he started with doing animation and that's how he continued with with film direct. Yes, because in my family is as not cameras. It's impossible to me to make a film with with my family because I have not camera in my house. I dream to cinema with college with driving descent, and and after I go in a school of animation and I make my first movie in animation. It was but I don't want to make animation every time.

It was one aap for my for my work, and I think the artificiality in my work it's because I i in the beginning, I make animation film with a lot of effect with animation films. Sorry, I speak very bad in English, but for me, but for me, it's important to make precision. Yeah. Now, I was going to ask maybe if you want to try your English and then are like and kind of fill in if there are words that you're struggling with. Does that work for you?

Yes, it's okay, Arlett. You complaint on Glass. I know you're a fan of v check and your filmmaking reminds me a little bit of his as well. When I was in the school of animation, there is a. When he was.

He usually had this. He was only focused on on everything related to film. Yes, story of animation, story of cinema. My professor showed me a lot of film. I discover.

Borrow of check and it was very important for me because borrow of check in the beginning, make animation film, a lot of expert mountation with animation film influence to surrealism and after about fack, make movies in live action, very stronge movies in live action. And make short movie every time. And it's for me, it's an example. It's very important for me because the influence of the surrealism, the liberty with a short movie and the theatures movie live action, erotic, soialist, very beautiful, minimalist and very ambitious. It was a big.

It's like a big, big model for me. Where did the idea for the Wild Boys come from? In the first time? I want to make a. Theature film, independent but with entertainment, idea of avanteer movie in the past with a boat with a tompest and I imagine to make a film of Avanteer like Julverne's story, but with erotism.

And I want to work to the. The question of the sexual identity and and to have a modern approach of this question. In a in a film of in a classic film of Avanteer. Was that I was the idea to cast women to play these male roles. Yes, it was very important for me because it's like a politic id because it's it's it's for me.

It's important to give to actress character a roller. Male character. Okay, so it was very important for him to give two women a character that they don't usually give. To them. All in habitually.

I love the aggressiveness of the women when they are in the male role. Was fun for them to swagger and act with their crutches. For actresses, very interesting to make a bad bad boy and the bad bad characters is very exciting and for the for the actress, it's very exciting to make bad boys. It's like exaucism because the actress. Play the character and the play with the pleasure of fabrication of character.

But it was like exhaustism because lest with fraud. So yeah, he said that for actress, the actress that he chose had that experience for abusive men. So it was it was also a way for them to hear from that from both bad experiences. Yeah, so he got to know that during filming this. Is to have among deficily the abusive exhaust to sound.

How did you pullent the influence from William Burrows? Willian Burrows. It's it's like underground influence and like river under the film the movie, because the universe of Willian Burrows is a big influence for me, like the cut up, the vision, the dark vision, the organic vision, sexual vision, and. The novel The Wild Boys was the very interesting for me for the energy and image on this book. And I take image, I take the energy and I put this energy, this image in an adventure novel like Julvern.

Julvert meets Yan Burrows. I imagine the movie like Fusion with Yan Burrows. Auvern. The character Elena Laurenstein portrays reminds me a little of Doctor Morrow as well. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I think to Doctor Morrow like the art and the white classes.

And it's it was too influence because when I give a character to the actress or actor, I give two two reference and the four Elely Night was a Charlotton doctor Morrow and cross Kinsky in FITZGERALDO and uh and I imagine you mix this two character and it's for help to to compose the character of. When did you first meet miss Lowenstein and what's that relationship? Ben like? Over the years? I know the work to Elena with alertle Flem Naja Song, Philip Gonrie and I proposed to Elena to work with me for a short movie living Still Life and I shoot in the same time another movie Borrow in the Box and I said to Elena you you want to play to to this film too, And we make a too two short movie, too short movie.

Uh in the same time. And it was a a big meeting for me. Uh. And we make. She come in a lot of.

She plays with him almost all films or movies. How much does she add to your work? I mean does she come up with ideas as well? And what does that kind of working relationship you have. It's a long complicity.

It's a very interesting I say in the beginning, you want in the past to. Be an actor or actress. I don't know. When I was a boy, I don't know. I love to be a actress or actress, and she she is.

She represents what he wanted to be because he wanted to play. Actress, don't you Elena. She doesn't intervene in the script writing. She's most like giving his direction when when it comes to the dialogue. The direction that can put usual.

But in my in my new fiature film Romastica, I am in post production, she doesn't play in this. In this film, all right, it's Marion Courtier. Yes, Marion, Marion Cotire, Marlonella Muti, a lot of people. Yeah, it would be so nice to see her. Nell Mouti again, we by male.

He doesn't play too much. And with him he was. She was very confident with him, but usually she doesn't. Great person and very funny. Going back to the Wild Boys, the color versus the black and white, and I'm curious when you made those decisions what was going to be color and what was going to be black and white?

For me, the film it's in black and white. It's more easy to imagine the black and white because economic and artistic decision. It's more easy to have a shooting in studio, shooting in automatic lands and I can mix the different section of shooting and with the black and white is one interesting. Unity for the film, and it's more easy with the money to make a film ambitious. But for me, it's important to have colors in this film like pullus of energy.

I imagine this movie like a three a tree, an arbor, a tree with the fruit the free. So he said, he imagined the movie Naky Tree, lucky tree, black and white tree, but with colors. So it's like when. In the tree we go high, the same way the movie, the colored movie, we just arise. So the color reflects the tension in the movie.

So the moretension is then the color arise. It reminds me a little of like Guy Madden and uh and careful. I don't know if you've seen that one, but yeah, I just love that that bright color that you use. Yes, like a guy imagin't care ful. It's it's a color.

It's a reference I think to the the first film in color with the pure color Technicolor effect. But when I work the color, I con traveled the color and on his film, when. He worked with colors, he choose them wisely. For example, if it decides, you know, many blue and orange, he will just go those two color. Thest so yeah, that's how he rang the.

Film too, skinner blue or orange dos and young scond because I see the color. And I and and I shoot my my. My morism on film with pedicules superssi. It's like for the texture of the colors. It's very important.

I read that you do all of your audio post production. Is that true? It's economic two be when I shoot the film, it's a very short time and and I want to have the concentration for the image. And uh. And I shoot in a landscape very very hard for the sound with with the c I don't know.

And and I I shoot very fast and and very fast, yes fast, and I I have the camera on my on my hand and and I speak during the shooting and uh. And for me it's impossible to take the sound. To have the time for the sound. I have a very bad sound for the for the the editing and after the actress actor in the studio sound and makes the post. With a voice and the sound of the of the closes, and I make a britation and and the music.

And for me, it's a part very very important and very long in post production. It's not the image because we make uh, the editing very fast, but a very long time. It's a too to make the sound like like animation movie. And and I work with the musician. Uh, and it's it's a very very big, big work.

First off, I loved After Blue. I want to let you know it maintains a lot of that same spirit from the Wild Boys. But you know, it's it's obviously a different story and it feels much like a larger world. And I was curious what challenges you you had making a bigger picture like that. A lost the film.

The difficulty for After Blue it's it's a science fiction film and it's like a mixed to the Western antient fiction mix science fiction film. Sorry, And for me it was important to to to shooting in automtic landscape in France and make intervention to to create extra terrest planet. And and it's the difficulty for this film. It's the. Walk on the landscape and the choice of the landscape and the anti funation with this landscape.

It's very difficult because the film it's shooting in a transaminemetrin a scope. And uh, it's not after effect, I should. What you see on the screen is what he just shoot. He doesn't it doesn't on the on on what he shoots. Yeah, and it was very difficult because this film we're shooting in winter and there is a.

Lot of tomb pests in France. Wind uh, And it was very very hard to make this film and a lot of decor set on the landscape was destroyed by the wind. But it was an ambitious film and it's a difficult to to to to to make to make this film. Are you a fan of Kate Bush? Yes, yes, it's import to me to to to imagine a character with the name of Cat Bush if I am not a fun to Kate.

But but after after Blue there is Stranger Things and Kate Bush, who is very famous artist. But after Strangers Things, it's incredible and wonderful for Cat Bush. She is Conan film. Are you a big fan of the Conan books of Roberty Howard? I like, but I am not a big fan of And for me it's important.

It's it was important to to brack the the image of mal Alpha with and it's important to to to give to to to to actress. To so for him it was very important to treat. Of Kona and to give to give the word Tom actor do. You think that masculinity is just a state of mind for. For him, his relatives.

So he thinks, he thinks that masculinity is is strongly a man, a man mind of speed. Consequence of that is a society is a society. What would think? Who made the man? I think that I think of those steps of step of mind.

He has a non binary vision of things. He doesn't want to take into borderus sexuality, his non binal revision and sexuality seruidity is something that is on progression in the society. And yeah, he's his very comfortable with that. So we'll Claire. I love the way that you manipulate and play with masculinity and femininity and these roles.

And that's one of the things that I love the most about your work. Yes, and then for me it wasn't and it's it's this vision of fredity. It was present in my in my first theater fature of them the Wild Boys and the Math first. But it's not theatr of film. It's boring, the box, it's a long format.

But it was present in this film, in the in the in the beginning of the Midisa and no, it's very present in the society and uh, And for me it is very great because I am in Nosmos with the movement of the society, and this idea of the the fridity is UH is very. Important. On't in the creation and when you imagine characters for for your films. Nepathetically, somebody tomorrow gives you one hundred and twenty million dollars, do you make one huge film? Do you make the ultimate mendical film?

Or do you just say thank you? I will continue to make small films for the rest of my life. So said, he will make bigger film than what he usually now, but not a bigger one. Yeah, it beats bigger, more bigger than what he's making now. But do you make them?

Do you make many of them? For example, we use tools or each each of those films movie he will pay more to act took to him than what he usually than what he's doing now. I know you said that post production takes a long time for your films, and that you're in post for the new one. Do you have a date when you think that'll be ready? I think, Uh, it's a finish in April.

Well, I look forward to seeing it. Yes, yes, it's a it's a it's a new experience for me because my new feature film, Roma Lestica is more classical, classical story because it's a film in the eighties in Roma with actress lost in uh in the city, esoteric city and cinematic city. And yes it's it's more classical, but that's trange movie. Well, Micheur, thank you so much for your time. This was wonderful talking with you.

Thank you, thank you for for for you meeting and the story. For my English, it's thank you Arlette for the for translate. Sometimes I want to speak in English because I say it's more to make a precision. But it's difficult for me. I have not a vocally vocabulary to to explain because I think the question of the tridity, the sexuality, it's not.

I a not very well. My expectation is not very very good. I think it's my expectation. But it was a confusion I think with my my my word in English. Sorry, you did great, you did great.

Yes, thank you very very very much. Mike. All right, we're back and we were talking about wild Boys, and I really want to talk about some of the other themes that we've seen in Mendico's work. I thought the Wild Boys was impressive, and then continuing on into After Blue and She is conan. I mean, it's just he's got such style.

I think I like the story of Wild Boys better than the other ones, but I really am just very impressed with what he's able to do with a camera. Oh totally. Yeah. They're all just just amazing just to look at, and they seem like like they would have to be like so much more expensive than they probably were too. I mean just all these these constructed sets and all these props, and it's just in every you can tell that every single shot is considered as to what's in it, what it's going to look like, how it's framed, what color it is going to be.

It's just so much fun, you know, to see work like that that's that detailed. He just has a lot of women in his films, and they revolve around women specifically, especially After a Blue, Dirty Paradise. I mean, that's literally about a world where there's no men, Like men aren't around and it's just women surviving, you know, and they are using artificial insemination, and like what kind of society. He could almost think of it maybe as like a spiritual sequel to wild Boys, maybe everybody ate the Fruit and it's just all women, you know, in all of his films, Like he's just very interested in the female experience. I just feel like it with queer people and women and even sis women, we're all kind of more on one side than the other because society is kind of subjugating us in different ways, so we're kind of like an alliance, you could say.

So I just feel like he is very interested in people that could be victimized or are society, you know, subjugates them in some way, and in both After Blue and then She is ConA, and it's about women progressing through their lives, how they navigate through the challenges of being a woman in all the different forms they can take. Especially She is Conan and that one is fantastic going through all the different stages of a woman's life, and not only just in a forward motion way, but he uses each stage as a way. It's almost like each stage of her life is a different short film, almost like it's in an anthology style without being an anthology specifically. But that's one of the things I just noticed in all his work is he's really great at writing fantastic women.

Yeah, and I can definitely see After Blue being that spiritual sequel. And I'm trying to remember if it uses the black and white, but I do remember the color is just again lurid, and just those images that you get at the beginning of almost like outer space imagery and everything, just gorgeous stuff. But then, like you know, you can see all of these different colored lights hitting your characters, and it's great having the blonde as your main character because that white hair really picks up when he's using like a red light over here, a blue light over here, just you know, really brings out that kind of garishness that just makes this movie hum along so well. And yeah, again, all the sets and just to see this artificiality.

You know, you talked about the feathers flying in the air. We don't get necessarily as many feathers here, but there are usually things floating around in the air. Yeah, there's always like kind of junk floating around all the time. But the light is so good. After Blue is just gorgeous, and it's also it's really funny too.

A lot of the times. There's a lot of good just visual gags in it that are like pretty cool. The one male character, the Android that apparently is some kind of tentacle monster. Also with the sex organs, it's just like, what the what the hell is going on? But yeah, it's so good.

It also feels kind of high fashion, at least after Blue, because they have guns that are named after fashion designers. It feels like, really cunty. All the films have fantastic outfits and they feel just rich and sumptuous, and I know, and you know what, and honestly, they're probably not spending a lot of money on these sets. They're just they just have fantastic set designers and probably going to thrift stores, fabric shops, borrowing stuff from friends, if you know. But it's a lot of the the look is in the post processing and in the lighting it looks like it just you can tell that they have an eye for artistic looks.

And it did the films feel expensive, but they're I'm sure they're problemly pretty low budget comparatively to other types of things. The whole idea of them having these guns named after designers, for whatever reason, it reminded me a lot of something that godhar would do. It just felt very like his sixties period where he was really down on capitalism even more than usual when he was really embracing the communist period. It just feels like, oh, yeah, we'll just name a gun after a fashion designer or a brand name. Yeah.

I absolutely love that. And the one filmmaker that I didn't mention before that I know Mandico likes a lot is Barravchek, and I think he even did a short film as part of a Barovchek collection, I want to say, and I can see that when I think about you know, obviously, with the title go to Island of Love, I mean this whole idea of again, this island community. And even when it comes to After Blue, it's not set out an island, but it feels very insular, and I like that. It's kind of a road trippy movie. But it just again because it's so artificial, it feels like they're just going from one set to the other, which is great because these sets are just brilliant.

And again the artificiality and not showing us anything in nature is wonderful for me. It kind of reminds me also a little bit of the Fifth Element in the way that it combines sci fi and fashion and incredible craft and heavily stylized looks and the way it uses music to all his movies are very much musical, not like a musical, but music's an important part of like the atmosphere he's trying to build. It's so funny that there's a character named Kate Bush and there's like no indication of like why. He just wants the people to say Kate Bush and English, like just be like, you know, somebody's talking. He's like Kate de Bosch, you know.

And it's just the way they purpose say your name so much, and it would be a great drinking game, like every time you hear Kate Bush, take a shot because you like die from alcohol poisoning. Yeah, because they say it like a hundred times or. Yeah, yeah, you would not be running up any hills after that. And they also even the title of the film because I think after Blue might be the place that they're in, because it keeps saying after Blue in English as well, but it's not nearly as funny as Keith Bush. I think after Blue maybe is kind of saying after Earth because like it's called the blue planet, right, is that what we call Earth?

I'm just spitballing here, big Blue Marvel. Yeah, I think that's what they're calling the planets. And then oh, the Kate Bush thing. When that first comes up, there's this little bit of dialogue where they say that it's like a shortening of like a Polish name, like there's like a longer name that's condensed to that. And then somebody makes this comment about just what how hardcore the poles are and you got to be really careful, and I'm like, what is going on again?

A lovely, lovely film? And then yeah, well She Is Conan. I was just like, as soon as I heard the title, I was like, Okay, big Conan fan, am I gonna have to check this one out? And I don't think Robert Howard fans would be very into this. I don't think they would think that is very faithful adaptation.

But again, just another just treat for the senses. Now, I could see some letterbox review or something where some like you know Conan, you know Robert Howard fan is going on there with a very straight faced condemnation of it for missing you know, the whole source material or you know or whatever. But yeah, whatever, I love. The idea in She Is Conan of the way that they progress from each period of her life is that she like kills herself basically like the other version of kills the previous version. So I, as you know, I don't want this to be too much about me being middle aged, but I guess I'm having middle aged crisis right now, mid life crisis.

But every period of your life, and I'm sure it's supplies of ment too, every period in your life, it's like you're a completely different person, right, So like essentially that person it no longer exists and it's dead. So they just take it literally that you could just kill the previous version to become the next version. And I, like I talked about before, I like that each kind of little time period is its own style, kind of its own thing. And like, yeah, I was also when I heard about the film, I was like, Mandico's doing Conan, Hell yeah, And I was like, oh, he just it's it's like somebody's shouting Conan from a different room and you can kind of hear it a little bit. It's like the look, it's like Lacroix.

It's like Conan flavored Lacroix, Like you know the hints there, but you know you're not getting the full thing. But I actually think it's cooler than him just redoing Conan with like a woman, you know, Like it's like a way more intriguing concept than doing it. And I also think he tends to use kind of like elements like American elements and just other elements as like more of a window dressing kind of just a flavor as a tasting note, if you will, like in a wine, as opposed to like exploring it specifically as a theme in the film. He just uses it more like he would hang a drapery in the background. It's more like just something interesting to flavor the movie, instead of actually making any effort to explore that specifically.

And all his films, I feel like they have like themes to him, and it's exploring things, but it's less like I said, they're not pretentious films. He's literally just exploring. He's just experimenting with stuff and seeing what he can I don't say, get away with, but what can he do in a film with the resources he been given, you know. So it kind of reminds me yodor Roski and like that way where sometimes he's trying to say something deep, but other times he was just like, wouldn't it be funny if there was a lizard wearing a hat and I filmed it, and like that's all it means, you know. I think he's kind of like in that camp of surrealism and what's the word that ism?

Like it's kind of like absurdity just for the sake of absurdity sometimes, which is great. I think a lot of things need more absurdity in them. His short films are amazing too. You're talking about just like what he's able to do with like very little money. I don't know what the circumstances are around his twenty eighteen film After Apocalypse or Pocalypse After.

I should say that looks frickin' amazing, and it's like half an hour long. It feels like a sketch for a much longer film. I mean, it is interesting. You're talking before about this whole idea of like the deleted scenes and they feel like a short movie. I mean, there's another short film that's listed on IMDb after this one, which is Rainer A Vicious Dog in Skull Valley, And I'm like, okay, so this is this just outtakes of Rainer because it all comes out twenty twenty three.

He's got like one, two, three, four, five films, and I'm like, okay, how much of this is just kind of offshoots of shi is Conan? Is this just reusing parts or inspired by or whatever? Because there's you know, the I'm not going to try the French News Le Babar, the Last Cartoon, Rainer, the Vicious Dog Dog, and Skull Valley. Yeah, and there's one other histories Cortes la mission deja comments. I think, oh, that's that sounds like a tribute to did the film Begin, which was an old surrealist film from the want to say, the sixties.

So yeah, he definitely knows what he's doing when it comes to the history of surrealism and dada as I'm just talking about the Barravcheck and you know, talking about this film and Fastbender. He seems to definitely know whose shoulders he's standing on when it comes to these movies he's making. Yeah, that Apocalypse After was that's really cool. The look of it is, color wise or whatever. There's a lot of like after Blue with that, and it's just so weird and it would be really cool, you know, at feature length, except I don't know if you just if it's like, if it we need to make a little bit more sense to sustaining it for an hour and a half or not.

But yeah, I thought it was great and it just looked like so good. You can really see his style if you watch the shorts kind of in chronological order of when he made them, you can see him evolving it, playing around with ideas and getting enamored with them and coming back to them and finally cementing his style that he's known for now, which is the hyper style, a super colorful everything's got com and glitter on it style. Come Glitter, That's what I'm calling. It, Come and glitter, the Bernard Mendico story. If you interview me, should you know, tell him by it.

So maybe he'll make his next movie. I'll just speak, I'll come and glitter. And I ought to be there on the front row of that theater. So I don't know if this is happening or not. But he's listed on IMDb as having one called Roma Elastica as his next feature, and that's in post, so if I do talk with him, I'll ask him about that.

But that's got Marion Cotillard as the main character. A lot of names that I don't recognize, but I do recognize Ornella Mouti Princess Aura from Flash Gordon, and then of course Franco Nero in here as well, so that sounds pretty cool. I don't see Elena lonsoon though, because, like I said, she's kind of like his lucky charm. She's just in so many of these movies, it's wild. Yeah.

I had read that he had a project with her to make like I don't know, like twenty year twenty five short films like one a year over that period of years like that they were going to do together, and I think like a lot of those have been made. He's done a ton of shorts, so that I don't know if that project is complete or still ongoing, but yeah, that apparently was a kind of a plan that they had. She shows up in these and she is great. I love the mask that she's wearing as Rainer in She is Conan, such a good mask, and that you see her real eyes. It just adds so much to that character.

And yeah, whenever she shows up, it's just such a pleasure to see her and her Severen is equal parts menacing and also alluring at the same time. And I really it takes a lot for that to come through successfully. For me, I was thinking a lot about the idea of them being set within these kind of little pocket universes or snow globes or something that you can that are kind of contained within themselves that you can kind of look into. They're a little hard to enter. You have to be really open minded, which I can see why.

You know, something like this is not going to be mainstream popular, you know, like ever, probably I'm really glad. I'm really glad this kind of thing exists, like for the rest of us. And it also I think it's encouraging to creators, you know, whether they're filmmakers, writers, you know, any kind of artist. You know, it just says, you know, make the thing. Do you do your weird shit?

You know, life is only so long, and who cares if nobody's going to like it, you know, give it a try, you know, you you'll an audience is there. Probably at least the three of us loved all these mood All right. Well, we're going to take one more break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages. In this fun, high octane throw ride, one man turns a deadly game show and to the ultimate spectacle by outrunning hunters, dismantling the system, and becoming the hero of a nation addicted to chaos. The new The Running Man movie is now available to buy on four K DVD, Blu Ray, and digital.

I know this might sound crazy. I don't want to alarm you. Do you remember a TV show we. Used to watch together who was called. The pink of Eight.

Yeah? Do you watch? Each episode they help each other fight a new monster from across the county, But it's way too scary for most kids. We're gonna defeat him this time. We're gonna need to harness the full potential of our shared powers.

Sometimes the Pinko pick feels more. Real in real life. Maddie, it was a TV show. Are you sure that's all it was? I like girls?

You know that, right? Totally? That's fine. What about you? Do you like girls?

I think that I like TV shows. It's our destiny. Something's wrong. This is how I'm supposed to be. Tell me you know it's true, Maddy.

It's it's just the suburbs. It seems like you're always somewhere else, like. Mattie, disappeared without a trace. All they found was for a TV set burning in the backyard. I told myself, I made the right choice.

What if I really was someone else very far away on the other side of a television screen. As I mentioned before, we will be back next week with a look at I saw the TV glow. Until then, I want my co host Kyler and Michelle. So Kyler, how is that Vampire Circus project coming? The book has been out for a while, but I suck at ever, like promoting anything I'm doing or telling anybody about it.

And twenty twenty five was a lot. That novel came out a while back. I put it together also in a double you know, like the old Ace paperback, so there'd be like a one book and then you flip it over there's another one. We did a paperback version of it where I put another like another novella on the b side, which the title might amuse you. It's called a Faster Daniel Kill Kill.

It's the story is kind of a A faster pussycat meets the brain that wouldn't die kind of. But when I originally started it, I was tempted just to write it as a screenplay I didn't do that. Instead of chapter breaks, I put like scene breaks, like you know, interior, exterior, time of day, stuff like that, as if a camera is looking at it. But I stuck that on as like a sort of an extra feature for that that's going on. I have another book maybe later this summer and then and and I probably won't tell anybody about that one either, But no, I think that this this year is my goal to try to you know, try to get back into it a little bit more as far as my creative output.

I'm going to try to get a little less depressed about what shit the world is. And Michelle, what's keeping you busy these days? I did my first essay for Deaf Crocodile. I worked for Dead Mountaineers Hotel that's coming out. Oh yeah, is that movie's like really fine?

A pre order is coming out on February twentieth for that. Actually have another piece I'm working on for them now that should be getting announced here in a month or two. I have a essay in New Wave Video for Rubbers Lover and Strange Circus. They're an Australian company that's putting out niche Japanese films and films that people have been wanting on Blu Ray forever. And John Matthew's a guy that owen z it literally flies to Japan to get them to release the stuff.

So he's been getting some really good licenses that way, just doing it old fashioned way, you know, going over there. And I also have an essay I really love writing coming out for error four four four four and it's a Takashi Ishi set and it says Nami films that I I absolutely love writing about that that's got four of his Nami films on it. And that's basically the main stuff that's coming out, and I'm working on some a lot of other stuff that I can't really talk about, I guess, but there's a lot of good stuff coming out, Like it just it blows my mind how these boutique companies have so many releases come out every month. There's like ten from every company that's like, man like it's just a machine.

They're just pumpanies babies out. That's so great that that's going on, so that we can have these things and they can be preserved because the streaming services don't have everything, and then they take stuff away. So even when they do so it's just like it's just a really great time to be able to you know, see these things and keep your own copies and you know, learn about all this. It's literally a golden age I think right now for physical media maybe like the previous like a second golden age, because you know, like the eighties they had a lot of stuff coming out on vhs, but schmorgasborgas stuff coming out because crazy like stuff I never thought would see the light of day, as like a deluxe four case set with like five hours of extras.

It's like amazing. I actually canceled all my streaming like two years ago. I have zero streaming and I don't miss it one bit I thought I would. But I have physical media. You can and you don't have to be trapped in your algorithm, because I think algorithms are destroying society.

That's like a weird like offside name. But you're making your own algorithm. You're finding your own little bits and bobs and places instead of like a corporation deciding what you get to watch and what they want to license. Well, speaking of do you want to support physical media to get movies in the mail? Head on over to Scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rim by mail service, the largest publicly accessible collection in the world.

You'll find films. They are entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when you want it, without the scrolling, and yes, of course they have the Wild Boys. Thanks again, folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening.

If you want to hear more of metioning off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that. I work on. They are all available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit Patreon dot com slash Projection Booth.

Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world. What Bus, What Bus? What bus? What bus? And the Wild Boys they're calling on their way back from the spire an August moon, surrender to and just cloud on the lines, wild.

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