Full disclosure: the filmmakers behind Playdurizm are friends of mine. That doesn’t make this wildly neon full-on weirdo any less fun. I immediately thought of Sion Sono’s Antiporno while watching it. I guess for the color scheme, but also the space (much more on that below), and the performance (performative, I think) style.
Playdurizm also isn’t just a quick bit of fun. It’s got something more on its mind, and though writer/director Gem Deger revels in absolute camp at times (the film within the film is exactly that, and it’s also one of my favorite parts), the camp is always tamped down by something lingering just outside the brain. It’s not really the typical narrative questions that do that – why is Gem’s Demir here? Where is here? What the %*&! is going on? – but rather that too many things seem amiss about the world to ever find comfort in the camp.
I’ve got an interview with producers Steve Reverand and Martin Raiman at the end of this post. There are SPOILERS in that interview and in the rest of the post below, so I strongly recommend you watch Playdurizm before continuing.
SPOILERS to follow.
I’m interested in how different filmmakers conceive of and lay out the space. Steve and Martin give some great answers about this in the interview. Most of Playdurizm takes place in one apartment. It has, to my eye, four or five doors (I can’t quite tell if there’s a fifth one next to the Demir’s room), and a narrow hallway leading to a main kitchen/living room area. As a concept it seems to me pretty simple: everything pushes down that hallway. There are so many scenes where we follow characters from the back of the hallway into the open room or vice-versa. It’s like, if you’ll forgive the on-the-nose image, a neck leading to a brain.
It must be that, when designing the space, Deger, DoP Cédric Larvoire, and production designer Jitka Sivrova, thought of the advantages of that narrow space: the ability to isolate characters, a perfect nook for voyeurism. It also rings of classic comedy. I think of it as door-comedy. Lubitsch and Étaix come to mind right away. The sheer motion of doors constantly opening and closing becomes the gag. Playdurizm never reaches that exact level, but it’s designed for it, and in the moments when it’s funny, some of that implicitly comes from the space (what exactly is behind that door immediately opposite Demir’s? What’s outside of the apartment, for that matter?).
It seems to me that there are two broad ways to treat space in a film. 1) Space is where the story exists, but layout can be interchangeable; 2) Space dictates narrative. For the latter, think of something like Rear Window. You need that view out of the window – that proximity. Playdurizm is the former. The rooms could be mixed and matched and the story would remain the same. Still, the visualization of it, the blocking within it, is a challenge.
Here’s a look at an early sequence. Demir wakes up in some, very odd room. A pig on the bed, balloons at his feet. This is also a nice view of the all-encompassing, thoughtful color design of the movie:
Demir gets up and looks bottom frame left. Eyeline match/POV to some Warhol-styled images of Andrew (Austin Chunn). Then to a wide (a true: where the hell are we?), and back to that MCU as we follow Demir, handheld, past the wall of Francis Bacon-looking images, and to the door. Sidenote: I love that yellow light popping out from the crack in the door. Nice way to separate it, to hint at something “beyond,” and to keep the palette varied:
Demir stops at the mirror to look at himself. Cut outside the room and operate with him, revealing the hallway and the room beyond. This is our first space-establisher and it really does the trick. Simple stuff. Wide behind Demir and we get it…sort of.
I also love the design in the hallway. Those zebra stripes are disorienting. The lights hang a bit too low. It’s fun…but claustrophobic. It’s like a funhouse mirror: kind of sickening. The pale open room beyond looks (intentionally) like a refuge in comparison:
Demir looks frame left and sees Drew (Issy Stewart), then back to his MCU as he looks frame right and sees, via POV, Andrew (I don’t quite know about the similarity of those names…I’ve got an idea, but it’s plot-heavy). He retreats:
So we’ve got Demir’s room at the end of the hallway, on the right (if looking from the living room), and then a spacious living room with a kitchen attached.
Later in the film, Andrew walks straight down the hallway and we follow him straight back into the master bedroom, revealing more of the layout:
At another point, after Demir is puking in the bathroom (which I think is somehow attached to his room), Andrew comes out of the mystery room – directly opposite Demir’s:
That small blocking bit above, of Andrew checking on Demir through the closed door, just adds to our reassurance that everything is where we’ve been told it is.
When Jeremy (Christopher Hugh James Adamson in a wacky performance – more on performance in the interview) arrives later, we see directly behind Demir. and we’re looking at a door. Is that Demir’s room? I thought the mystery room was opposite Demir’s. This is the front door, which I think is on the same side as the mystery room, just closer to the living room. So what’s that other door behind Demir? Am I over-reading? Maybe the door is just a door.
Anyway, we can extrapolate some practical images of the set. I imagine that the bathroom, not pictured here, is a totally separate space and we’re sold on its location through sound and the edit; I’d guess that there’s actually nothing in that mystery room and it wasn’t designed; and I’d guess that the hallway where Jeremy stands also doesn’t really exist.
What does all of this matter? Well, for one, Playdurizm is very much a “space of the mind” and the slight disorientation details, from design elements through, yes, doors, matter. They add up. It’s kind of a “What’s behind door #1?” feeling. When we’re in the bathroom with Demir I start to wonder – how large is this place? It’s not exactly cavernous or labyrinthine, but it also doesn’t seem to be as small as a narrow hallway, a main room, and two medium sized bedrooms let on.
Some of these decisions might have been budget-dependent, but they’re sharp. It gets me thinking of the correct questions. I don’t question whether Demir’s bedroom is next to Andrew’s for narrative reasons, but I do question the realism of the architecture, which I’m certain is what the filmmakers want.
For a film that’s about entering into a maze, into the impossible, Playdurizm sure has a lot of trap doors and playful geography.
INTERVIEW WITH PRODUCERS STEVE REVERAND AND MARTIN RAIMAN
What was the workflow on-set with Gem directing and actors? Was Gem also directing other actors? How about blocking out and choreographing shots?
Steve: So there’s maybe a couple of key things to start with, that will give it some context. Playdurizm was a debut feature for Gem and for us producers. On top of working on a tight budget and schedule, we knew we would have a bigger chance at succeeding at what we wanted to do, if we prepared the shoot extremely well, and embraced the constraints. The ones easily identifiable are the location and small cast. We had Gem and the screenwriter Morris Stuttard work on a new draft of the story that was originally proposed to us, that would be more intimate focused. From the time we had the final draft, we basically had 6 months of pre-production only, including casting from scratch. First of all, we had an open discussion on who would play Demir (who was called Edward in the original draft). Gem wanted to originally focus his energy on directing. But it was clear that the protagonist was Gem’s alter ego, he’s had the premise of this story since he was seventeen, and we all might regret not having him as the main driving force of this project, both for the crew we motivated to work with us, and the audience that would need to identify to the young artist who created all of this. The second step was to do a sort of screen test. But it actually was used as a kind of rehearsal as well to see how things would work with performing and directing the other actors. From that, we managed to clarify a lot of things in terms of blocking, camera style, and pacing on set. We also agreed that we would need to rehearse the hell out of it in pre-production to lock-in the performances for all the scenes, and that we would bring Morris as an associate director to help supervise the process. Gem and him had been working on the script for so long, that there was a 100% trust in his judgement. We started with table reads but then scheduled two months of rehearsals with all the cast in a studio apartment, everything was recorded and played back so we could adjust blocking and performances. The cinematographer Cedric Larvoire even stopped by to assist with choreographing some of the most complex scenes (I’m thinking of not only some stunt scenes, but also the first kitchen scene). We even welcomed Joshua the pig for the last few days of rehearsals, so we could all get accustomed to each other. On set, we were very efficient. There was not a lot of improvisation. Morris was also present to watch the take live and discuss any adjustment with Gem before the next take. Gem would only play back the last take if he felt he needed to check a detail in the frame, because he got a quick sense of what was working or not working from the hours spent in rehearsals. There is only one scene he did not watch any frame of until he was shown the assembly edit, and that is the climax scene in the video store. It was extremely intense and draining psychologically for the actors, we did I think 2 or 3 takes, and we all were looking forward to a weekend break after that.
How did DOP and director worked together on this?
Steve: Gem and Cedric worked on the shot list together. We pushed for it to be minimized so we could have a chance to shoot all of it within the schedule (we had about 400 shots in total in 20 days), so some sacrifices were made, but it was also made up by how creative we could be with the set design and the lighting. Gem not only had digitally painted key scenes of the film during the development of the script, but he also shared visual references with Cedric (from the work of Benoit Debbie to Gucci look books and Francis Bacon paintings, which were even directly references in the film) and Cedric worked with there, along with the production designer Jitka Sivrova. The advantage of being on one set for the entire shoot was that it became their creative playground. But once again, everything was prepped before we started shooting and we rarely fully improvised on set. Only exceptions I remember were maybe Drew’s hallucination and the club scene where we just went with the flow a bit more. Cedric was his own camera operator and it was a small crew on set, so the communication was easy between Cedric, Morris, Gem and the other actors.
How was the external world conceived? I’m thinking of anytime they’re outside – outside the video store, a wide on the road, on the boat, at the drive-through place for food…was there a connecting thread to how that world should be perceived? An operating thesis about it? It seems to me to oscillate between a wide beauty (road, boat), and rough facades that are built or even largely unseen (video store, drive-through).
Martin: One main element that drove those exteriors came from the need to tie everything together with the studio and fitting it into the narrative that this is a B-movie from the US. Since the production was located in the Czech Republic it would have been nearly impossible to properly emulate the roads and facades of the US. But we are also fans of the CG aesthetic of the late 90s and it was tempting to use our resources to create these artificial fake environments. It works very well in combination with the fakeness of the studio. Ultimately it fuses with the idea that even the exterior is a concoction of Demir’s mind that is affected by what media he has consumed in the past. The exterior world feels to be limited further as to create small comfortable spaces where Demir feels safe. Of course we would have loved to expand on the exteriors and use much more but it is of course also always a financial question. I believe in the end we found a good balance with the CG/studio approach in fulfilling Gem’s vision of this world without sacrificing the integrity of the story.
Were there conversations about riding a line between camp and more delicate drama? I’m just thinking of the fact that the movie features bright green vomit while dealing with very traumatic, sensitive issues. I love how these elements fit together, though they’re an unlikely pair. Were they in the script? What were the design conversations like?
Steve: It was absolutely in the script, and that’s what attracted us in the first place. Playdurizm is escapism. In a similar way to Demir, Gem grew up devouring films during his entire childhood. He remembers watching Videodrome when he was I think 10, and lots of 90s erotic thrillers. It was the door to fantasy where he found refuge from the real world. We see this pattern in a lot of people from his generation and younger. With the advent of instagram, youtube, video games and avatars, living a fantasy is now a more accessible thing. One has a chance to create their own alternative reality which they think they can control. It’s also a way of life recognized and accepted by their peers. To create that new reality, they sometimes process serious things happening in the real world and turn them into something camp, or give them some gloss, to forget about any concrete consequences. Until that fantasy eventually cracks. Playdurizm is that process for me. Now, the film reads very differently when you watch it a second time. What appeared as superficial, camp, or gratuitous in the new reality has its dramatic source in the traumatic event Demir went through and escaped from. It’s Checkov’s gun galore (the golf club, the glass of milk, the TVs…). My favorite one is also the most disturbing one. Joshua the piglet does not exist in Rebel Instinct, so Demir’s mind likely “brought” it in by processing the pig masks from his attackers.
I’m also curious about the different levels of performance, which is risky but pays off here. Some of the actors have to act in an elevated style (Chris Adamson, for example), while others (Gem and Austin Chunn, I think) seem to oscillate between something like melodrama (film-within-film) and a realist style. How was that handled? Were these different styles the goal? Austin actually has something like three styles if you include the trailer he’s in. Were you ever worried about the acting styles not meshing, or one overshadowing the other?
Steve: It was the hardest indeed for Austin, who did a great job working on his character. We knew that there was a risk of the film (and especially its performances) being judged only on a superficial level. As mentioned before, the whole concept was a bit risky. The biggest gamble was how the climax would be perceived by the audience. It was supposed to come as a shock to them of course, but they had to accept that they were lured into a B-movie homoerotica flavored storyline featuring a Nazi belt buckle pistol that was actually all about addressing a very serious topic. If the video store backroom scene would have been done in a distasteful way, we would have completely failed. If the audience did not relate with Demir and Andrew’s burgeoning romance, it would also have been all for nothing. Luckily, the actors did an excellent job giving us all this nuance. We just had a play around with it in the edit. For instance, we had to cut out some scenes for pacing issues, they were giving more clues into Demir’s memory loss and some more depth to Jeremy (Chris Adamson’s character) but the constant change in mood and tone was not helping in creating a good buildup for the last act. In the end we chose to highlight the strongest scenes where you can see Demir is having a lasting effect on Andrew’s persona, kind of reprogramming him in a way (I think the boat scene is a good example of that, where it comes at the right time to break things up, they have a beautiful heart-to-heart conversation and time seems kind of floating there).
Can you talk about the design of the main interior? What were some inspirations (I immediately thought of Sion Sono’s Antiporno)? How was the layout itself conceived? For practical reasons? Blocking reasons? Otherwise? You use it as something like a stage fairly frequently (opening and closing scenes), so I’m wondering if that played a role.
Martin: We were in long discussions to use an existing, possibly abandoned space and to try to remodel it towards Gem’s vision. The story required a certain arrangement of the flat and we just could not see a route to make it work in real life. The solution was to use a studio and build everything in there with all the freedom that offered. The only limitation was the size of the hall and so the set was built from wall to wall with a couple of meters on each side for service access. Because of this, the cast and crew were almost all the time together in this excessive neon world – there was no escape to reality.
The goal was to create a space that gears entirely towards the center space of the kitchen/living room space. I imagine this is also where most of Demir’s headspace in the story is located. The most important scenes happen here and we wanted to give this space great opportunities for entrances and blocking. It is the “grand” hall where all other rooms serve the simple purpose of supporting this stage. Andrew’s room for example had to be this celebrity’s forbidden lair at the end of the hallway. It had to be opposite of where the main action is, but close enough to be tempting to Demir. The studio layout gave Jitka Sivrova, the production designer the freedom to do all of this exactly.
Another factor that made it difficult to use a real location was Gem’s request to make this space feel glamorous like a luxury boutique shop window – so more than particular film references, Jitka drew most of the inspiration from luxury clothing brands of the likes such as Gucci or Louis Vuitton fused with a lot of neon purple and pink.
Steve: It’s funny that you mentioned Sono’s Antiporno. I only quite recently had a chance to discover the film. There certainly seems to have been similar thoughts in the overall use of one space as an inescapable mental cell for the protagonist. It’s also quite meta, and exploits the tropes of a specific genre only to reveal another side of the reality presented at first. But Antiporno breaks the fourth wall (sometimes literally). We were toying ourselves with the idea of revealing obvious clues that we are on a set, but dropped the idea when we thought it did not match Demir’s escape plan. He’s entirely remodeling the world of Rebel Instinct to fit him for an eternal life with Andrew, effectively taking Drew’s place.
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