When comedy writer Lorin Kahn first tried out in horror, a friend told her to write about the thing that scared her the most. She chose a date. After all, what could be more terrifying than relying on blind faith and a few Google searches to determine if a complete stranger is a fool, a narcissist, or, worse, a charming sociopath?
The 39-year-old Khan is now a married mother of two, but can easily remember the days of loneliness (“It was a long time,” she said with a laugh) and still struggles with the fear women carry as they go through life. you are.
“I wanted to touch on this unspoken, subconscious way of assessing danger. “Do I have my phone?” Where did I park? ”She said. “Even when I walk my dog at night, my husband will tell me to go on and I will say, ‘I don’t want to.’ No matter who’s behind me, it’s scary. “
Her anxiety is taken to the extreme in the new film “Fresh”, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Normal People”) as Noah, a bachelor exhausted by the modern dating scene who finds the shocking IRL romance with the seemingly perfect Steve (in the spicy-tasting role of Sebastian Stan, who recently starred in Hulu’s Pam and Tommy). He turns out to be anything but. Telling more will ruin the film, but writing for The New York Times, critic Amy Nicholson called it an “evilly funny cannibal romance.”
This is similar to what Kahn, who began her career as an assistant to director Adam McKay (“Don’t Look Up”), had in mind when she began writing the screenplay three years ago. “I wanted it to start as a romantic drama, to become a horror film, and then to become a Quentin Tarantino film.
None of this would have been possible if Mimi Cave, 38, had not signed on as a director. “Fresh” is her official arrival in Hollywood, a directorial debut so confident that The Times called it “dazzling.”
Producers McKay and Kevin Messick, who also watched The Legacy and the upcoming HBO series Winning Time, spent months searching for the right director. They made the conscious decision, together with Cannes, the film’s executive producer, to interview only female directors. This is a move that feels both appropriate to the material and cleverly defensive, a kind of insurance policy against what can so easily go off the rails.
When you look at the “wrong way” to make a movie like Fresh, Messic said in an interview, “people can point to some movies made over the years that have been directed by boys.” He will not name specific films, but said he was aware that in an attempt to cross the line between horror and comedy, Fresh creators will also have to make sure they are not exploitative while trying to comment, for example. , the screaming burden of women.
Updated
March 4, 2022, 11:52 am ET
“Why go the same way?” he added.
For Cave, who is single, digging into this world was not an easy task. It took her months to finish reading the script, which she couldn’t help but describe when she described Steve’s embarrassing fetish. “There are some scenes that are quite upsetting, so I had to leave him and then go back to him,” she said. “I was horrified by that.”
She also understood it at a basic level, especially the coded language that Kahn inserted for viewers, which is not required with men, such as when Noah walks to his car with keys in his hand for protection or when Steve tells her: “Stop being so dramatic.”
These details continued to bite her. The script was both personal and scary, walking on a tightrope that would succeed or fail, depending on how she handled the material. Cave’s point, Kahn said, relies heavily on sound and music, not visual elements. It was a strategy that ultimately increased the fear factor without repelling the audience with blood. It also puts viewers directly in Noah’s perspective.
“Some of the scenes were about knowing what was going on or imagining what was going on, but you didn’t really see it, so then you could get a little bit into people’s psychology,” Cave said. “Then the audience imagined what their worst fear was, instead of telling them.
And just when things get unbearable – when toxic masculinity reaches its peak – Cave and Kahn intervene in a comedy to save viewers from the darkness.
“I knew it would be the hardest thing, the balance. “There are only a handful of other films that make this kind of comedy horror that doesn’t go too far in the camp,” Cave said, citing American Psycho and Get Out as examples.
It was a risky strategy, Messic said, and he and his fellow producers had already faced several obstacles on their way to making the film. “People were scared of the script when we tried to sell it,” he said. “People were afraid of the movie when we were looking for a distributor.”
After all, performance is what saves Fresh from its lower trends. This comes from Cave, whose confidence and aspiration contradict her soft nature. She has spent the last decade working on music videos and commercials, using her training as a dancer and choreographer to fight for jobs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, all the while keeping an eye on the ultimate goal of directing a film. Now the offers are invading. Cave has committed to a new unannounced project that is in the same moderate budget range as Fresh, and she’s trying not to be overwhelmed by all this newfound attention.
Khan has been working in Hollywood since he was 20. The screenwriter, with a strong New Jersey focus and a sociable personality, began working for McKay just as he and Will Ferrell launched their website for comedy short films, Funny or Die. Kahn wrote, directed and starred in some of these parts, but it became a sensation in 2011 when Fox 2000 bought her script for a $ 1 million specification.
“Suddenly she was no longer an assistant,” Messic said.
Khan went on to write the 2018 travel comedy Ibiza for Netflix before turning to Fresh. She is now writing about other people’s projects and moving closer to her own original idea for a limited series.
How do Cave and Hahn feel about Hollywood’s attitude toward women directors?
“Before Covid, people kept saying it was a great time for women, and I said to myself, ‘Show me the money,’ because nothing has changed in my life.” I was still pushing as hard as I always did, “Cave said. “But with that last year, I think things changed during the pandemic, and I have a feeling the locks are a little open.”
She cites figures from this year’s Sundance, where 55 percent of the festival’s roles are directed by women. “I really know that all these women have been working for years. And it’s like, “Oh, finally someone noticed.”