JAKE MYERS TALKS KOMBUCHA

Behind the Coastline

You are reading an independently published interview-series published and carefully curated by Swedish pop-culture journalist Daniel John. Ever since its start in 2015, the core curiosity remains the same, surfing the creative currents of music, film, fashion and everything else on the pop-radar, catching the waves of

Culture Coast TalksDaniel John

A struggling artist is forced into office life, where the readily available kombucha keeps the corporate machine running. What made kombucha the perfect symbol for this horror?

A lot of startups are including wellness related perks like “free-yoga” and “kombucha on tap” as a recruiting tool. I also think about the William S. Burroughs quote, “What does the money-machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity”. The process of fermentation felt like a nice metaphor in this instance. The SCOBY transforms sweet tea into sour kombucha. I think a lot of young, creative people have a hopeful and sweet disposition but financial precarity or a grueling day job slowly sours most of us.

Before becoming a feature, this story first began fermenting as a short film. How far back does this original idea go, and what did it take to let it bubble into a bigger thing?

Geoff Bakken came to me with the original feature-length script and I thought “This is a brilliant and timely satire”. I also thought no one will fund this idea unless we show some kind of proof of concept. So, we wrote a short version of this story together and showed it to John Condne of Take Care productions. I told him we can film it in one day if he can help with the gear and crew. He liked the idea and the short ended up having a great festival run. Once we had that kind of momentum we were able to get some investors on board and scale this story up to a feature.

With your background as an animator I imagine you had some ideas for the creature design, how was it creating that physical representation of what grind does to mind and body?

From the start, I told my SFX fabricators and VFX team that I wanted a Cthulhu SCOBY. SCOBYs are fleshy, stringy, and grotesque as is but I wanted it to feel like a big, powerful, inexplicable monster. We had an on-set prop that was the right size but we didn’t quite nail the texture or the movement of a tentacled monstrosity. So I reached out to my former employers, Kyle Delso and Brandon Grode of Third Beacon for help. They took my rough Blender concepts and created the slimy, bubbly, gross “Mother” you see in the film. Luke Jenn helped with the tentacle movement and I spent months compositing with the live action footage. It was a tiny team and a shoestring budget but I’m really proud of what ended up on screen.

It can be risky to mix horror and comedy, but 'Kombucha' finds its humor, perhaps because while being over the top and horrific, the reality of nine-to-five is all too relatable. How central was that mix for it to hit exactly as you wanted to?

I was listening to an interview with Jordan Peele and he said that every horror film needs some kind of relatable fear. He said that most people have some anxiety before they meet their partner’s parents for the first time, and that was the point of entry for audiences in 'Get Out'. 'Get Out' to me is the gold standard for mixing horror and comedy and I think the key to mixing both is anxiety. Anxiety can make you feel afraid, uneasy, or sometimes you feel compelled to laugh to relieve that tension. I also like to cast comedic actors because I feel like they seem to be able to access the absurdity and unpredictability of life that makes things scary or funny.

What kinda cinema possessed your love for film and altered your mind to what the medium could be?

We did not have cable TV when I was a little kid but I remember watching 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?' while visiting my grandma. I asked her to record episodes so I could watch them when I came to visit. I think that’s what made me first fall in love with the horror genre. From middle school until today, I’ve loved almost everything Mike Judge created. 'Beavis and Butthead', 'King of the Hill', 'Office Space', and 'Silicon Valley' are all brilliant because they find absurdity in banal and relatable situations. David Cronenberg’s 'The Fly', Mary Harron’s 'American Psycho', and Jordan Peele’s 'Get Out' are films that make me fall in love with film every time that I rewatch them. The stories expose uncomfortable truths about humanity but also manage to do so in a way that avoids being didactic because they are disgusting or hilarious.

What did the desire and exploration of making your own movies look like?

For thirty years I’ve been watching horror movies, making videos, and collaborating with my childhood friend, Joe Sepka. We would go to the local video store and rent horror films ranging in quality from 'The Fly' to 'Hellraiser' to 'Bobo the Clown' which was locally produced for a few hundred dollars. We loved watching the weirdest ones we could find and then borrowed our parent’s VHS cameras to make our own weird films. It was fun learning in-camera special effects or going to the local park to try our own 'Jackass' style stunts. We just wanted to make our friends laugh and or squirm. We both took filmmaking classes in high school and I remember helping Joe with a mockumentary called 'The Mult' about a hairy cryptid roaming the forest surrounding our neighborhood. I played the hairy monster. I made an action film about a mischievous robot that went around putting glue on everyone. We loved the process of shooting, collaborating, and editing. Joe was one of the composers for 'Kombucha' and I feel really lucky to have such a talented collaborator and friend. Ten years ago, I met my wife, Liz Kaar, who is also a brilliant filmmaker and editor. We’ve worked on at least eight different features together and she is an amazing collaborator that inspires me to keep going. She edited 'Kombucha' and has a level of discernment that I think elevated the film a lot.

I’ve already heard 'Kombucha 2' being thrown around. How much of a vision is there for that, making sure it has its own reason for being, beyond simply keeping the audience employed. What’s actually brewing?

We have a “Kombucha 2”-script, we went through the process of auditioning the cast, and we already scouted locations. It follows sisters who go to an isolated alternative treatment center that claims their kombucha treatment protocol heals people at the cellular level. I’m really excited to film this next summer. But this summer I’m working with Cricket Arrison on a feature film called 'Sheila'. The film follows a woman with a terminal medical diagnosis, frontal lobe damage, and no ability to control her actions. The results are terrifying, funny, and weirdly tender at times.

Are there any franchises you feel have the right culture for you to do something big with?

I grew up watching Godzilla-movies as well and I have an outline for a 'Godzilla' prequel that feels like the culmination of all of my past projects. I don’t want to go into too much detail but I think about this story at least once a day and it feels like it has the potential to grow into something big.