MADELEINE SIMS-FEWER TALKS HONEY BUNCH
"All my life I have been told to pick a lane"
Daniel John
‘Honey Bunch’ is a film that gradually unveils something more venomous lying just beneath the surface. A surface you and Dusty Mancinelli usually don’t care to have when delving into uncomfortable truths. What made you go science fiction this time?
We are always interested in recontextualizing characters in our work, so what is beneath the surface hopefully reveals motivational complexity that you might have misjudged or misunderstood at first. After making 'Violation' we wanted to make something that was rewatchable! 'Violation' was so dark, and while we definitely both share a dark and twisted sensibility we also have a sense of humour and we wanted to show our romantic side as well. 'Honey Bunch' is really a gothic romantic horror and the sci-fi elements were born out of the best way we felt we should tell this particular story of "how far are you willing to go for the person you love?"
Tackling truths we rather not look at could be at odds with people going to see a film. Do you think bathing difficult subjects in “genre” can be a way of luring an audience into these tougher topics?
For us it is never that cynical! Honestly, we are both genre-lovers and that’s a way in which we naturally tell stories. The very first stories I wrote as a child were horror and fantasy stories, though one thing that ends up happening in our work is the blending of genres. We don’t go out to intentionally create a mashup but it just happens! I recently listened to an interview with Ryan Coogler where he talked about his distaste for the term "genre film" because, essentially everything is just drama, which I totally agreed with. That being said there is something we love about the way in which you can cloak deeper ideas and questions in a horror or science fiction film that has the potential to open the audience up to deeper discussions about a topic.
To further that thought, what are your thoughts on franchises. Would you ever approach them, would that leave a lot of room for retaining something actually meaningful?
We would love to do a franchise. There are some wonderful continuing stories that we’re big fans of! What is interesting about a franchise is that, as a director, you are adding your voice and point of view to a rich tapestry of existing characters and lore. There is something really appealing about that. It is a different beast. Because you have to consider what came before. Sometimes creative restrictions like that can lead to the best work.
Franchises that come to mind, that I think would be fun and up our alley would be something like 'Hocus Pocus', 'Willow', and 'Scream'.
If you’re gonna have a surface, production-design and visual-language as stunning as here certainly does not hurt. It’s very anachronistic?
Dusty and I are both very perfectionistic and we see one of our central jobs as directors as building the world of the film. To that end we’re both incredibly detail oriented when it comes to production design, locations and costumes. We spent many months looking for the perfect locations and then stitching them together to create the geography of the film. Our production designer Joshua Howard Turpin really transformed the spaces we found in a way that is quite shocking if you saw them before! He is a genius. Every detail is not only appropriate to the time period and the world but also building tone, mood, and metaphor. Every detail helps create these layers that hopefully make 'Honey Bunch' a complex, lived-in world that people want to revisit.
What’s the earliest you recall seeing yourself as a filmmaker?
I was writing stories and acting out plays from as young as I can remember and in my final year at high school my drama teacher let me direct the junior play 'The Lottery', by Shirley Jackson. I loved that experience so much, but was always drawn to film more than theatre. After that I started to read screenplays by Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese, Jane Campion, Kathryn Bigelow, and really let myself believe I could one day do that. I don’t remember the single moment that it clicked into place that I could combine my love of acting, music, theatrics, horror all into one medium. But I remember my final year of high school, just being consumed with learning as much as I could about directing and getting into film school. It’s worth mentioning that film school was a really tough experience for me. I’m not a technical person and I was suddenly surrounded by film buffs who knew all this stuff about lighting and cameras and computer programs, and I just wanted to make stuff more intuitively and with really good acting. I had no female professors, though I did have a wonderful female professor when I went back later to do my Masters in film production. No one cared about acting. So when I graduated I had all but given up on being a director. I went to the Drama Centre in London, and in was in the acting program there that I rediscovered my love for film, there was so much freedom and no one gave a shit about things being perfect, it was all trial and error and just capturing truth. I loved every minute of that and credit that school with reigniting my passion.
When along this path did you and Dusty duo up as directors?
Funnily enough Dusty and I went to the same film school, but he was a year above me and we never met. We had many of the same friends and I remember hearing his name in passing, but we didn’t meet until 2015 when we were both part of the Toronto International Film Festival Director’s Lab. We met on the first day and it’s no exaggeration to say that we were instantly friends. We spent the entire festival sharing ideas and inspiration and the next year we went back to do our Masters at the same film school we had both attended at eighteen. There, we took a class called Directing New Narratives with wonderful Romanian filmmaker Tereza Barta, and it was in that class that we directed our first two shorts as a team, 'Slap Happy' and 'Woman in Stall'.
Usually being both in front and behind the camera, what led you to stay behind it only for 'Honey Bunch'?
Although we had directed shorts where I acted and one, 'Chubby', where I did not, we found after 'Violation' that some people found it hard to accept that I was an equal director, and assumed Dusty was the lead director. In reality we both worked really hard to balance my directing and acting, and make sure we both had ownership and control over every scene while at the same time creating space for me to disappear into character and rely on Dusty in those moments. My acting is a tool that we like to use as directors, and we continue to use in creative ways even when I am not a character in the film, but it was important that our second feature not have me in it. This allows us to grow in new ways as directors. We are always developing projects that I will be in as well as an equal number that I will not be in!
Have you ever felt you had to stay in one lane, or did you never see such boundaries?
All my life I have been told to pick a lane and I suppose the rebellious child in me has strongly resisted that. In a way I always feel stuck between two worlds, England and Canada, acting and directing. There is a constant push and pull, but I think that motivates me. Maybe it is the Gemini in me. Who knows. I think that women who act and direct are seen as narcissistic or self-aggrandizing, often mores than men, and I reject that idea! I don’t like it. I have something to say as an actor and as a director, but I also have those days of self-loathing, where I wake up and think, “Jesus, I’m just absolutely rubbish at everything.” I think I’m weird, I am "acquired", I know my taste is not for everyone. But I also remember discovering films that deeply affected me as a kid that other people hated and feeling like, I don’t know, a glimmer of camaraderie with the filmmaker or actor, like I did when watching Charlie Chaplin, Werner Herzog, Sebastian Silva.
