A stranded man on a small island is moments away from suicide when a mysterious corpse washes ashore. Instead of ending his life he uses the corpse in many practical and questionable ways in the new movie Swiss Army Man, a story so bizarre and engaging that it has inspired word-of-mouth since its controversial premiere at this year’s Sundance film festival.
The film stars Paul Dano as the castaway and Daniel Radcliffe as the dead body whose flatulence is used for plenty of comic effect. The two minds behind Swiss Army Man are writer-directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, the popular music video duo known as The Daniels. This is their first feature together and they recently sat down with us to talk about the movie’s origins, Sundance mythology and why Daniel Radcliffe insisted on being tossed around on set. This is a transcription of that conversation.
Daniel Kwan: I think we surprise each other now and then. Even though we’ve worked together for so long we are still two working, thinking pieces who have plenty of stuff to say.
Daniel Scheinert: Maybe we’ll give you new answers during this interview.
Kwan: We will dig deep just for you.
Q: That’s great and since you both collaborate on a lot of different ideas there must be disagreements from time to time. How do you handle those when you’re on set?
Scheinert: Usually when we disagree it’s because there’s a bigger problem. Unless you’re like a dictator-type of director, you have to learn to embrace those disagreements and try to make things better.
Kwan: When we first started this project we would agree and disagree, but we would always find a way to make it work. Then when we got to set we almost never disagreed because we were one linked mind who needed to get things done. Since we didn’t have a lot of money to make this movie, we needed to be as efficient as possible. We have such different creative approaches to what we do that when we both like an idea, that means we’re really on to something.
Q: Since this is your first feature together and you’re coming from a video background, how confident or intimidating did you find jumping into a movie like this?
Scheinert: What made it less scary is that we got to drag along our whole crew. Our financiers were extra generous because not only did they finance our movie, but they also let us hire the people we are used to working with behind the scenes.
Q: That’s a huge help on set.
Scheinert: Massive! For most of them it was also their first feature, so we weren’t pedigreed.
Kwan: That was the fun part, but writing-wise it was an interesting nightmare. We were cognizant that making a movie about farts was an insane and horrible nightmare. We knew that we had to fight as hard as possible to make this movie right because we were starting with a handicap.
Scheinert: The handicap being a farting corpse.
Kwan: When people see this movie they think we must have been smoking weed when we made it, but I started smoking because of the stress we were under after we finished shooting it. Making the Sundance deadline was incredibly tough.
Q: OK, let’s talk about that. I was at Sundance and gave the film a positive review, but when that first premiere screening happened, people didn’t know what to make of it. Reviews of the movie weren’t actual reviews of the movie; it just became known as “the farting corpse movie.” Were you guys affected at all by the confusing buzz or did you just brush it off?
Scheinert: I had never experienced having my ego boosted followed by getting kicked in the nuts followed by having my ego boosted again. Every screening, including that first screening, went great. The premise of the movie was going viral and the walkout rumor was going viral. People weren’t saying the movie sucked, so we had that as an interesting cultural experiment. We just saw some of the press articles as misinformed since they were focusing on walkouts and the farting corpse.
Kwan: One reporter was irritated that the movie started late and that started all these headlines. Because he was the first one to leave, his tweet was the first reaction to the movie and that snowballed into all these other headlines. At first it was scary, but then all of our friends started to proudly post those headlines declaring that we were shaking things up at Sundance. It reminded us that this is not meant to be an easy movie to put out into the world. A lot of think pieces later came out chastising that reporter for walking out, tweeting about it and trying to destroy it. I think any other movie would’ve died under that pressure but because this film has so much more to say, that’s why we’re still talking about it months after Sundance. We had plenty of cheers and praise at the second screening the morning after the premiere, but of course nobody reported it.
Q: You are obviously tossing around Daniel Radcliffe like a rag doll in this movie. How many of the stunts was he game for?
Scheinert: He was game to a fault.
Kwan: Yeah, we would have to put limits on him.
Scheinert: On day one he didn’t want to put on the safety pads and in the scene Paul and Daniel are climbing out of a ravine. Paul let go of Daniel to cheer and he went limp, fell down and slid down a hill. We figured that stunt looks great because Daniel’s got his safety pads on, but then he told us he didn’t put them on. We went crazy because we didn’t want him to get hurt.
Kwan: That was part of his arsenal of acting tools. He wanted to throw his body around and feel all the hits and bruises.
Q: You guys are getting a lot of the same questions on this press tour. Is there one question you wish would go away?
Kwan: The one I get the most is where did this idea come from and that one’s tough to answer because who knows where ideas come from.
Scheinert: I guess the real question should be why did you decide to make this movie? It’s so fun to talk about this movie because, like it or hate it, I’m just glad it’s not being ignored.
Swiss Army Man is now playing in theaters nationwide.
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