Special Report: The Serpent's Skin (2025)

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It in that tattoo. If you like those things and inside of me, my whole life, some things are okay. Side of me starts to start. Calm. Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.

I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with Alice Mayo McKay all about her film The Serpent's Skin. The film opens in New York on March twenty seventh in Los Angeles April third. After that is expanding out to several theaters across the US. Check your local listings.

And I hope you enjoy this interview. Can you tell me a little bit more about you and how you got interested in filmmaking. I guess I was like always interested in telling stories, just like writing, and then I was like, uh, I was just readA when I was younger, and then I was like also involved in like theat like I was like a little bit of like a theater kids. So I guess storytelling in like different films is like always like part of my life. But then I think I started like the stories I was writing, I was like envisioning in like film, And then I guess like pop culture was always just like very in my life.

I had like access to a really good like public library when I was younger, so like a lot of the things I would see would be like not what like the kids I knew watching, Like I watched Jerry Lewis and like DeMont and like the Marx Brothers, a lot of British sitcoms like all You Being Sobved and like keeping up appearances, and then the monsters like The Adams Family, and then like I assume kind of like discovered like horror adjacent like nineties soaps like Buffy and nine or two one hour and Chommed, and I guess, yeah, I just became enveloped in like that wild. What motivated you to finally pick up a camera? I think that was actually like a silent film festival, and I was like doing like lego stop motion at that time, like just by myself, like really like basic, like shitty kind of stuff, just because I was like, I want to start projecting like what I'm seeing in my head to something that is like feasible and that you can do by yourself, like nothing around.

You mentioned horror, and I'm curious what attracts you to horror? What do you like about that genre? Grew up, I wasn't like a big like horror family. I loved like horror adjacent things, but I wasn't like intensely into being scared. I remember discovering like the Scream TV show, like on MTV, and that was like the first more mature like fifteen plus kind of thing that I watched, and I was like, I loved it, but I wasn't really watching it for the goal, and I found myself watching these like horror properties like for the characters or like for the relationships and the more like melodramatic elements.

So for me, horror has been just like a way, like a device to for the the like relationships between characters and like take things to like the next level. Like I think, and some of my earlier works, like it's a lot of trans final girl like bashing back at like Vigilante and things like that. And I think if it was just like a hangout film without the horror elements and fused, it would just be like sad and like dreary, Whereas like having being under like the guys of the genre, it allows me to take it to the next level and allow characters like to get cathasis and. Things like that. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the people that you've worked with over the years.

I've been like working with the same dop and like costume designer for quite a long time Aaron and Iris, and I'm really grateful for them with Grown is like this hive mind together. But then you have recently, like on my last two films, I've worked with Vera Drew did like The People's Joker as an editor, and she's just really amazing. Like I was a fan before I was a friend. I remember we like both met the first time in person at out first was shooting a scene for Louise Wade, who produced this film how Like Film, And that's kind of like how we met when it was really cool to work with someone you looked up with and she's just so incredible and like really helps reshape the film through like my vision.

And then Jesse Dunravenelli, who is like a great filmmaker as well. She did so pretty which should bow in a few years ago. She did like the color grade on this film. It's just like really cool being like fans of like a lot of people's work and then utilizing the like special elements to work together on something. With Serpent Skin?

Is that kind of an updating to Serpent's Nest that you did back in twenty twenty one. Honestly, the only connection was the names similar, but like maybe like the heart of it is a little same, but honestly it's a complete, like different world. Like you don't need to watch that film to watch this film. And like Vipers, so I feel like that film's kind of like darker and it's set in like the seventies. It's like just taking like elements I really just wanted to revisit like the witchiness and like the love story and like codependence, but like in a new kind of form.

Can you tell me about your co writer on that and Serpent Skin Benjamin Paul Robinson. We've been working together since since the very beginning, like even before like so abound my first feature. We were like doing shots together and we were just like introduced, like I was doing work experience on this like TV show where I lived, and then he was like friends with the DP, but he had just moved out of the country, so I never met him, but like we both wonded a like Clive Barker and like eighties genre stuff and like Doctor Who and like all these cool things. Yeah, we've just been working together ever since, and like we've still never met to this day, but we just have such a really good like working relationship.

Wow, I thought for sure you would have met your co writer. I know, yeah, we haven't even spoken on zoom. It's all just like long emails and like occasionally a voice message. Tell me, how did Serpent Skin come about? I think I just wanted to do something that was like a departure from my other work.

Like it still has the campy elements and some times it's a little comedic, but I knew that I wanted to delve away from doing something so political, like I think a lot of my films are about like trans people, like living in the world and like dealing with outside problems, which is like I've told those stories for now that I wanted to explore within that. So I wanted to do something a little more kin to like I grew up in, like the supernatural, like Romance Boom, like Twilight, and like beautiful creatures like modal instruments that was very big, even like True Blood. I watched like Way Too Young and I read the books and I love that a lot. So I think I just wanted to do something about rather than the out of demons, like your inner demons and how like transposing those onto others, and like unresolved trauma and ultimately also trans love being like a superpower, like being like the magic.

We shut it in two six day weeks in Alte, Australia, Like we don't have a lot of money, So I think that kind of comes back to working with some of the people from the very beginning, like Aaron and Iris, like we really are on the same page from the beginning. And I think with a film like this, like a lot of it it's like pre production and like post production because like we're so limited to what we can shoot on the days, Like everyone has to be like so like on the same page beforehand, like really having the actors like understand the tone and things like that. It's like so important. Tell me about your cast. Your actors are fantastic.

Alex is a great actress from America. I've seen how like work on an HBO show before she transitioned, and so this was like her first feature role since transitioning. So it's kind of like really special to create this role with her. And then Avalon is like a fantastic filmmaker. They just put out camp, which is like doing festivals at the moment, and they just we like hung out a little bit, just like sharing the same festival circuit and just being in the film community.

And then she was like, I'd love to like audition and start acting if you have anything, So like that just came about that, and then like who plays a sister and like Scott who played like the record store manager. They like both actors from neighbors, like a soap opera in Australia. So I was just like a fan watching that, Like that was like a compas show, like during the pandemic, especially a mix of being fans of people's work, being like inspired and just kind of having the right people for the right film. I was really taken with your score. Can you talk about your composer.

I've worked with Alexander Taylor for a while and he's really great, and he brought along a co composer, Ed bought it as well for this one, so like they do it all like the kind of like beautiful score, like the homage like Psycho and things like that in the beginning. And then I was also really fortunate work with the Adams family. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that work, but I used a lot of their like music. They're like a family who like made like horror films together, and they kind of was the right mix of poety and probatry and like death and like gloom and like love in their music. So it was like a mix between yeah, Alex's work and Edward his work and then this really cool band.

And I know again making movies aren't easy and you talked about the budget being pretty low. What were some of your other challenges making this? Honestly, the prosthetic stuff was like challenging. It's not like super prominent in the film, but like when it does, you can't really do it quickly, so that's a big issue. And then like Danny, he's just like a completely different person in real life, which is like great and so fun to be able to have an actor who was so willing to transform, like he dyed his hair, had all the faked headoes.

But in doing that, like it doesn't not take a long time to get that already each day. Can you tell me a little bit about the post process and like working with VIRAA and getting this edited. Yeah, so I was honestly the time zone power because we were shooting the Australian time and then quit upload like the dailies Louise Uprodus would have a kind of like an assembly cut pretty much like at the end of the beginning of each morning when we woke up, So that was kind of helpful to see what we were shooting like going forward each day, and then yeah, I got like the footage and then yeah, she's like really good at like recrafting the footage like through my vision, like I've worked with editors before, where she's like amazing and it's like very kind of like stuck standard, Whereas if you're like really understands like the inner workings of the film and like what I'm hoping to accomplish and see, especially like with the dreamyek dreamish like nightmare kind of visions, especially like during the montages and like the overlays, she adds a new perspective that maybe wouldn't be there without that.

When you have your first cut of it, do you start showing it around friends or are you just like, no, this is good. I don't need any feedback. I think it's tough. Like I feel like I'm very like nervous like showing like rough cuts to like people. Honestly, it was just a lot of back and forth with Beer and I and like Louis the producer, like she's really good for notes, like she provided a lot of like Holp like sharing the script process as well.

But I think, yeah, I think Very and I just kind of trust each other that we were like doing the right thing. Yeah, just like sticking true to like our original vision without like too much interference. When do you get to see this with an audience for the first time? Actually this is the last leg of the festival run before the film comes out Friday, the twenty seventh. Yeah, I think so.

I did like my last festival British Film Institute like last week, and then the first time I saw it with an audience was in Fantasia in Canada last year in like July, which was really cool. I'd been like lucky to like play a little international festivals, but I haven't always had the opportunity to travel there, especially at the beginning and like COVID and things like that. So the Sebistance is kind of the first time I'm like traveling like properly around with a film, like during the beginning of it. It's like run like t Bookers, I played like MoMA two years after it came out and I was like great seeing it with an audience, but like during its like first initial run, I was just like, I don't know, like what the vibe is.

I haven't seen it like in the theater with anyone yet. So it's been really special, just like following the film in country to country and seeing it during it's like roll out. So what's next for you? I go to film and post production at the moment, which is kind of like a different vibe entirely, and then like I am, I'm writing something else that I'm like hoping to get like a bigger budget ball, And that's the vibe at the moment. Is there a good place for people to keep up with you in Serpent skin.

Get I'm on Instagram, Twitter, well x and like Blue Sky, just like Alice may the Cave. Alice, thank you so much for your time this morning. I really do appreciate this. Yeah, clause, thank you so much. I'm gonna get on the block with my head made of rock and I ain't got no bloody.

I'm a state of the Yark. I gotta bring all the cop it's the famits crowd. I ain't one of the crowd. I ain't one of the guys. They's just appoid me.

They running they hide. Oh my girl, right, my eye set you by. My little cod burn and turn and I'm a team. It's ringing Stein, the local food, the twisted my I'm a. Team raking Stein.

He s ain't my I sady say same. My got a spit and face. He's got some scars and a brace, my so up and blood. And I walk in there to night and faint at the sight. I don't kill it.

I can't walking today. I was walking to night. I staying in the shafts, stay out of it, like all my stores. Du by these my hands dollars. I sent my old lout of bird and st.

Cot a tea and Frank at Steinn the local break with a twisted mine. I'm a tea Frank and Steinn. D say my say slay same time. No, I ain't one of the crown, one of the guys. They just a board because they're grown in.

They hide all my girls ride my said why, I said, my b and. Turn hom my team's frightenance style. But don't for friend, I listen to stand my apa team. It's frightening. Start xy fine, says say my opa.

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