Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos and Efthimis Fil­ip­pou: ​‘It’s a con­stant relationship’

Back in 2009, two Greek writ­ers caused quite a stir with their dis­turb­ing fea­ture debut, Dog­tooth, which focused on three teenagers iso­lat­ed by their con­trol­ling father, push­ing against the lim­its of his con­trol. Since then, Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos and Efthimis Fil­ip­pou have col­lab­o­rat­ed on a fur­ther three films: Alps, The Lob­ster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer – each a dev­il­ish­ly dark trea­tise on the human con­di­tion. Their lat­est, Kinds of Kind­ness, sees them change struc­ture a lit­tle, cre­at­ing a trip­tych of loose­ly con­nect­ed sto­ries, each star­ring the same small cast of actors in dif­fer­ent roles. As strange, bru­tal and abrupt as their pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tions, its mean­ing is slip­pery and shift­ing – and pre­dictably, Lan­thi­mos and Fil­ip­pou them­selves aren’t pro­vid­ing any easy answers.

LWLies: The actors in Kinds of Kind­ness give you their all, and it seems like a very impor­tant step to mak­ing sure the film achieves its full effect. How do you cast actors for the right roles? 

YL: This process is so impor­tant for the atmos­phere and work­ing with good peo­ple… it changes every­thing. So we do vet peo­ple. Like, you go like, ​‘Is this an ass­hole or what?’ So yeah, we’re both lucky, but we also do our home­work with the peo­ple that we haven’t worked with before.

I was curi­ous because you also bring in some new­com­ers this time and some return­ing faces. When you’re writ­ing the script togeth­er, do you have actors in mind? 

YL: Usu­al­ly we avoid it. Like, and also this script was such a long process and it changed so much from when we start­ed writ­ing it. But in the begin­ning, I only had Emma in mind for the last sto­ry. But at that point, I hadn’t decid­ed that it was going to be the three sto­ries with the same actors play­ing dif­fer­ent roles. So I think maybe I had her in mind and I think maybe prob­a­bly that’s why you called her Emi­ly in the script.

EF: And then we didn’t change it.

YL: It’s just because I have this very spe­cial rela­tion­ship with her, now maybe she comes into mind. But gen­er­al­ly, we just try to con­cen­trate on the story.

It’s been a long time since you guys have done a project togeth­er. What was it about this idea that sparked a reunion? 

EF: We always start writ­ing some­thing after we fin­ish the pre­vi­ous one. We both had oth­er things in between. I was mak­ing oth­er things in between. We have to take long breaks if either of us has some­thing else to work on.

YL: But it’s kind of a good thing as well because we revis­it­ed our orig­i­nal ideas and they all changed. We start­ed with one sto­ry, then we decid­ed that we want­ed to exper­i­ment with for­mat a lit­tle bit and make it three sto­ries. Then we start­ed think­ing about what those three sto­ries would be, and then there was the idea of using the same actors that made the struc­ture more spe­cif­ic. So, I think time gave us that advan­tage as well that we would revis­it it and think, ​‘Ah, you know, maybe we should also try this or that.’

EF: And also, as far as pro­duc­tions and films, of course, it’s most­ly up to Yor­gos. So there’s no plan in order, no, ​‘let’s work togeth­er.’ There are projects that are devel­oped through­out the years. And when the time is right, it’s done. So it doesn’t have to do with time apart and time togeth­er because there’s always some­thing there. And we’re friends now, so I’m always there in the sense that I know what he’s doing and we exchange ideas and things like that and to the stuff I am doing also. So it’s not like we were apart for four years and now we met again.

YL: Yeah, it’s a con­stant relationship.

How does that col­lab­o­ra­tion process work? Do you share drafts back and forth? 

EF: Well, he has a lit­tle red pen…

YL: Yes, I write notes with my red pen.

EF: There’s this lit­tle red pen that he owns and he uses it from time to time. We talk and we dis­cuss and then we come up with some­thing with an idea or envi­ron­ment and some char­ac­ters and then there are these back-and-forths with those famous red notes.

YL: I think we work more togeth­er when we’re com­ing up with the sto­ry, the ideas, the char­ac­ters, scenes and things, then Efthimis writes. He does the dia­logue and the scenes and then we come togeth­er and we decide which scenes work, which scene doesn’t, spe­cif­ic things about dia­logue. We come up with oth­er scenes or some­times we have to change it dra­mat­i­cal­ly. It’s a back-and-forth after that. But in the begin­ning, com­ing up with a sto­ry struc­ture and what the ideas are and the char­ac­ters are that’s when we sit togeth­er and dis­cuss and decide and then he goes and writes, and then we meet again and work togeth­er again. He goes and writes, and then…

Even­tu­al­ly you have a baby. 

YL: And then there’s a baby after all these try outs. A lit­tle baby.

One of the things that I love about Kinds of Kind­ness is the con­cept of using the same cast of actors in dif­fer­ent roles. It feels like a com­pa­ny of actors in a the­atre, where in the old­en days they would trav­el around and rotate parts. Was the the­atre some­thing that you guys had in your mind when you were work­ing on it? 

YL: Don’t ask me. You’re the playwright!

EF: Yeah, but you’re the director.

YL: We debat­ed whether it was a good idea or a bad idea to use the same actors and how that would affect the script. I didn’t think so much of the­atre, but I think the­atre maybe helped to lib­er­ate me about the idea, because I had done the­atre and it’s not a big deal there, but in cin­e­ma it is.

Peo­ple get quite stuck on it sometimes. 

YL: Yeah, in the­atre it’s just so nor­mal to have the same actor wear­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent and play­ing a dif­fer­ent part and I think hav­ing that expe­ri­ence helped me to make it seem not such a big deal. But at the same time, I like that it’s a big deal, because it brings a cer­tain qual­i­ty to the three sto­ries that adds to the com­plex­i­ty of the film and to the com­plex­i­ty of the char­ac­ters. Even though the con­nec­tions between the dif­fer­ent roles that the same actor plays are not lit­er­al and you can’t trace them in con­ven­tion­al terms, you still can’t help but car­ry things from one sto­ry to the next when you see the same actor play­ing a dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter. And, of course, then there’s the fact that I’m work­ing with some of the same actors over dif­fer­ent films, which is also some­thing I believe is ben­e­fi­cial – as we start­ed talk­ing in the begin­ning about work­ing with good peo­ple, peo­ple who have the best inter­ests of the film and what we’re try­ing to cre­ate in mind. These are peo­ple that just get along in sim­ple terms and that’s I think that’s very important.

In the film there is one char­ac­ter who is the same in every sto­ry, known as R.M.F, played by Yor­gos Ste­fanakos, who is your part­ner, Efthimis. How did you pitch that to him? 

EF: I didn’t pitch it. [ges­tures to Yor­gos] He did. But then we realised R.M.F was in Poor Things as well. He’s the Greek client in the brothel.

I did not realise that. He’s a mem­ber of the company!

YL: Yeah he’s part of the company.

EF: He’s not a pro­fes­sion­al actor so he just helps out.

What does R.M.F stand for? 

EF: Wow, that’s fan­tas­tic – in the cor­ri­dor before this inter­view, there was this dis­cus­sion, and I was like, ​‘It doesn’t stand for any­thing.’ And that girl told me that at the office they all say that it stands for ​‘Ran­dom Moth­er­fuck­er’. Which is good.

We were think­ing ​‘Real­ist Moth­er­fuck­er.’ But then in the first sto­ry Ray­mond, Rita and Robert have the same ini­tials as R.M.F too…

YL: It’s just a thing. Uni­for­mi­ty. But only in the first one. We ran out of R.F ini­tials so we thought we couldn’t keep doing his.

How much do you think about your pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tions togeth­er, or the cre­ation of a the­mat­ic through-line in the work you make? 

YL: We don’t think about it ini­tial­ly but when we start with an idea I think we some­times realise ​‘Oh, this is a lit­tle bit too much like what we did there.’ So we find a dif­fer­ent idea. I think we’re con­scious of it when we start, and we just try to avoid it just for our­selves as well so we don’t get bored. It’s bor­ing stuff. ​‘Oh, haven’t we done this a lit­tle bit there? Could we find a dif­fer­ent way of doing things?’ And I think even the trip­tych struc­ture came out of that need. Should we try some­thing dif­fer­ent with the form? Then we start­ed com­ing up with our ideas, show­ing each oth­er ideas about oth­er sto­ries and select­ed a cou­ple to make it into a triptych.

EF: Yeah, we had a big list of pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios… but we don’t know where that is.

Act­ing, writ­ing and direct­ing is a form of pow­er and con­trol. Do you con­sid­er your­selves benev­o­lent over­lords when you’re mak­ing a film like this? 

YL: I think over the years I’ve become more and more col­lab­o­ra­tive with the actors so I don’t have that sense at all. I do car­ry the respon­si­bil­i­ty more than con­trol over what­ev­er it needs to be. I car­ry the respon­si­bil­i­ty of this work­ing out in what­ev­er way it works out and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the deci­sions. But then when it comes to mak­ing it and putting it togeth­er, I do try to allow for a lot of shared respon­si­bil­i­ty with the actors and being very col­lab­o­ra­tive and open to things that I’ve nev­er thought of before, that they might bring in. The god that we had in mind in Kinds of Kind­ness is not very col­lab­o­ra­tive, but the fact that we work with the same peo­ple again and again, there’s a sense of doing it all togeth­er and shar­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty. Just at the end of it all, I take the blame if every­one hates it. I’m hap­py to do that.