Panos Cos­matos: ​‘Nico­las Cage is a very spe­cial creature’

It’s hard to know how Panos Cos­matos broke into the cut-throat world of moviemak­ing. He is a gen­tle giant – soft­ly spo­ken, thought­ful, and pep­pers each decla­ma­tion with an ​‘I can’t believe I’m here’ gig­gle. We met the Cana­di­an direc­tor in antic­i­pa­tion of his sec­ond fea­ture, Mandy, a trea­cle-slow dream dirge into revenge genre which stars Nico­las Cage with the dials turn up beyond 11.

Set in the ear­ly 1980s, the film sees Cage’s char­ac­ter liv­ing an idyl­lic exis­tence in Utah’s Crys­tal Lake moun­tains, his lov­ing part­ner Mandy (Andrea Rise­bor­ough) by his side. When a minibus full of fun­da­men­tal­ist chris­tians roll by, may­hem ensues. Actu­al­ly, may­hem is nei­ther a strong nor vis­cer­al enough word for what happens.

LWLies: When you have an idea, for a moment or an image, how do you remem­ber that?

Cos­matos: I write it down. Cause I have a mem­o­ry like a sieve. If I don’t write it down, it’s gone forever.

Mandy is such a visu­al film, it’s hard to imag­ine what the descrip­tions would read like.

My way of mak­ing some­thing is like an iter­a­tive gath­er­ing process. I’ll start with a notion or a weird fetish – a need to make some­thing in a cer­tain man­ner. And then I’ll start pic­tur­ing the visu­al that I would want for it and then I’ll start gath­er­ing ref­er­ences and images. I’ll watch some films…

When you say images, are you talk­ing about film stills?

Both film stills and pho­tographs. Then I’ll put a playlist togeth­er of the vibe that I want and I’ll title it. It’s like the old Samuel Z Arkoff thing: make a movie from a poster. So not just writ­ing a sto­ry, but build­ing a real­i­ty and lan­guage, try­ing to inte­grate what­ev­er themes are in the back of your mind. As I say, it’s an iter­a­tive process. In the back of my mind I’m almost try­ing to keep a struc­ture togeth­er, a very sim­ple sto­ry. I’m not inter­est­ed in the com­e­dy or the ultra-com­plex plot. I’m inter­est­ed in a sim­ple sto­ry that allows all things to grow around it.

The film is dri­ven by a pri­mal notion of revenge. When did that idea come to you?

Late­ly I’ll watch every movie in a series and become fix­at­ed on that tem­plate. I wrote a slash­er film called Beyond the Black Rain­bow, and that came after I watched every sin­gle Fri­day the 13^th movie in a row. You become aware of pat­terns and pri­mal sim­plic­i­ties. And with this one I had watched all of the Death Wish films in a row. I like revenge films because it’s a very direct emo­tion­al jour­ney. The ​’80s glam­or­ised the act of revenge.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly the Death Wish movies.

Yeah. I’m a very lefty per­son, but I noticed around the time of hav­ing this idea that the revenge films com­ing out were extreme­ly moral­is­tic, almost apolo­getic for being revenge films. I want­ed to make a movie that rev­els in an almost Wild West-like act of revenge. And that’s when I start­ed mov­ing to the for­est and look­ing at fan­ta­sy films. What I want­ed was a bar­bar­ian reverie.

Do you have any inter­est in those GOR nov­els that have illus­tra­tions of bar­bar­ians hold­ing on to scant­i­ly clad women?

I love Robert E Howard and HP Love­craft. They had a friend­ship and it makes sense when you read their work. Both of them are able to invoke this high­ly sen­su­al atmos­phere, a mys­ti­cal con­cept, dif­fi­cult feel­ings and lands. But I like Robert E Howard a lot.

One detail that I found fas­ci­nat­ing – I guess this might glue back to the idea of this film being root­ed in bar­bar­ian myths – I loved the bat­tle axe. Could you talk a bit of the design of that?

It’s actu­al­ly a shape. A friend of mine called Jef­frey Hol­l­i­day designed it. He basi­cal­ly took the shape of the F from the Celtic Frost logo.

What’s Celtic Frost?

A met­al band. From the ​’80s. One of the oth­er lay­ers I want­ed to weave into these things is the idea that these are action fig­ures for some toy line that ever exist­ed. I feel like these almost look like sub-Mas­ters of the Uni­verse line. In Black Rain­bow, when we lived in Mex­i­co, we would go to the mar­ket and there would be like knock­off action fig­ures on the wall. I liked the idea of cre­at­ing this sort of naïve art ver­sion of clas­sic action figures.

Nico­las Cage report­ed­ly saw Black Rain­bow and then approached you and said, ​‘Let’s work’. How famil­iar were you with the Cage cor­pus before that?

Heav­i­ly. He is eas­i­ly one of my favourite actors in the world. I adore his act­ing. I think he’s a very spe­cial crea­ture. I think he under­stands films, pop cul­ture and his place in that as a sort of head key. He has this sort of wild spir­it to explore with­in his con­tract. And I think that’s real­ly exhil­a­rat­ing to work with. So once he was on board I rewrote some stuff to tai­lor it to him.

Did you revis­it any of his films pri­or after he signed up?

No. I want­ed to keep it fresh. But I just think he’s an incred­i­bly ver­sa­tile and pow­er­ful actor. I’m real­ly proud of his per­for­mance because I feel it runs the gamut of extremes.

There’s a sequence where he’s watch­ing TV with Andrea Rise­bor­ough and it’s one of the most ten­der scene I’ve ever seen him in.

I real­ly want­ed to build from a nat­ur­al place. A place that was much more expres­sion­is­tic, so to speak. In talk­ing with him we sort of designed this path, this ter­ri­to­ry which was: he starts as a nor­mal man, after death he enters this kind of pri­mal ani­mal mode, and then after he takes the drugs, the hal­lu­cino­genic, he enters this sort of mono­lith­ic head­space mod­elled on Jason Voorhees. I gave him Fri­day the 13^th Part VII to watch. That’s the one where it’s kind of like Car­rie meets Fri­day the 13^th. There’s a psy­chic girl in it.

With regards to Cage, you read sto­ries about the fact that he’s quite col­lab­o­ra­tive and cre­ative on set. Is that true?

I don’t think he watch­es me at all. I’ve heard sto­ries about him try­ing to do things with­out the direc­tor. But I feel that, in the con­text of this film, that we had enough of a rap­port for that not to hap­pen. He would dis­cuss things with me.

What about that wig out scene? Can you talk about how every­one prepped for that scene?

Nic is that kind of guy that when he comes on set will engage in what­ev­er the­atri­cal place you’re ready to go. I decid­ed I just want­ed to shoot it in a one-shot frame so it almost had a one-act play the­atre feeling.

The film opens with ​‘Star­less’ by King Crim­son – was that a result of the playlist?

Yeah I had thou­sands and thou­sands of songs. For me the lyrics are kind of about accept­ing your fate in a god­less world. Around the time that I start­ed writ­ing I made the con­scious deci­sion to reject all reli­gion and super­sti­tion in my life.

So you were reli­gious before?

Well, I wouldn’t describe myself as reli­gious. I would describe as hav­ing had cer­tain reli­gious con­cepts implant­ed in my brain at a very young age that I felt were detri­men­tal to me.

The Dev­il?

Yes, the Devil.

Mandy is released in UK cin­e­mas on 12 Octo­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.