Interview: Writer/Director Adam Egypt Mortimer Talks Casting Against Type and the Visual Style of ARCHENEMY

Over the last few years, it’s been fun to watch filmmaker Adam Egypt Mortimer’s career evolve from films like Some Kind of Hate to Daniel Isn’t Real to his contribution in the anthology film Holidays. And now his latest, Archenemy, has Mortimer traversing new cinematic terrain with his story of an interdimensional superhero named Max Fist (played by Joe Manganiello) who finds himself down on his luck here on planet Earth, and must confront his past so that he can put an end to the reign of tyranny that his sworn enemy, Cleo (Amy Seimetz), is prepared to unleash on our planet.

Archenemy also stars Skylan Brooks, Zolee Griggs, Glenn Howerton, and Paul Scheer and will be released in theaters, on digital, and on demand today, courtesy of RLJE Films.

Daily Dead recently had the opportunity to speak with Mortimer about his latest film, and he discussed his approach to creating a superhero film that doesn’t tread the same territory as many other films of the same ilk that we’ve seen as of late, as well as the inspiration behind the visual style of Archenemy, collaborating with both Manganiello and Seimetz, and more.

What I think is really fascinating about your career is that you never set out to duplicate yourself. Everything feels very different from everything else that you've done, and I really appreciate that and I love that Archenemy really feels like nothing else we've seen from you before. What was the inspiration behind this project?

Adam Egypt Mortimer: I have always been interested in superheroes. I've always been reading comic books and I started writing this all the way back around 2015. Part of my inspiration, weirdly enough, was that some people who I'm friends with had been involved with making Bone Tomahawk, the Kurt Russell Western. That was like this really low-budget movie that put their resources in very specific places and was able to make this super brutal Western. I was like, I wonder if I could do this with a superhero movie now. I wonder if I could do something that has this grounded approach that was sort of scrappy, but has a whole mythology and everything.

I had been thinking about, how in comic books, they do so much with superheroes and they really talk to their readers. They talk to their audience on a really heightened and sophisticated level. If you go to read Electra: Assassin, it's completely insane. The artwork is so expressive and the storytelling is so fractured and psychological, and they're not expecting you to not understand what a superhero is or what these mythological relationships are, or why there's brain transplants. You just get it because you read comic books.  I felt like we were getting to the point where moviegoing audiences have seen so many superhero movies now that we can treat them in a sophisticated way, and also start the story in a really crazy place with a guy flying from dimension to dimension and punching black holes and all this stuff.

So I wanted to take the story in a completely different place, aesthetically speaking, and make a movie that doesn't feel like a superhero movie, while still being about a superhero. That was the thing that excited me about Archenemy, because I really like doing genre movies and I always want to take a genre and then play around with it, and figure out how can I do something different with it once you know what the rules are.

I think the way you were able to play around with the visuals in Archenemy and what you guys were able to create was really impressive to me because it wasn’t like you were working with a Marvel budget, so you don't have millions at your disposal. Can you discuss the animation in this and how that overlaps with the real-world visuals? It’s a very innovative style.

Adam Egypt Mortimer: I'm glad that you liked that stuff. Our approach was like Roger Rabbit meets Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I wanted it to feel as expressive as possible without being very literal in how we articulated anything that's about his superhero past. We wanted to make it feel like: is it a dream or is it a fantasy or is it the mind of a madman or is it just a memory from somebody who's drinking a lot? It was more about the feeling of it and how it relates to the story.

You have Joe playing your hero in this movie, and I've been a huge fan of his for a really long time. It was really great to see a movie centered around him, because we usually see him playing roles that are part of an ensemble, and his character Max is the driving force in like 90 percent of this movie. How was it working on this character with him? Was it all there on the page and he just embraced it, or was the process a more collaborative back-and-forth?

Adam Egypt Mortimer: You totally nailed it when you're talking about Joe, and how we've seen him as part of an ensemble so many times. There's just something really wonderful about seeing him really lead this world, and I think that was what drew him to the project. He had the opportunity to play around with all the different colors that this character has, where he's an action hero, but he is a tragic broken man and he's a superhero, but he's also a meth addict. So, for him to be able to dig deep and find all of those different beats, but still retaining his charm, was great to watch. I love looking at him and I love hearing him talk because he's charming, but he's also playing this odious person, too, who's doing really violent things here.

We bonded over all of that stuff really early on. He's known most for True Blood and Magic Mike, but he studied theater and he's done A Streetcar Named Desire. He's this awesome actor who is almost cursed by being as incredibly handsome and beautiful and charming as he is. So, how could I help him undo that curse? He got really excited about how much we were going to do to deconstruct him. At one point, he pointed out how he had these two teeth that are fake teeth because he had an accident while he was playing baseball. He talked about yanking them out, but I told him that wouldn’t be necessary [laughs]; we could just do it with makeup. He also brought on a meth coach who shared stories with Joe about what it's like to live on the street and to be addicted to drugs and things like that, so that Joe could really embody the truth of this character.

I wanted to talk about bringing Amy in as the villain, because I've never seen her get to do a role like this, and I think it’s really cool that with this film, you were giving opportunities to people to play things so against type. Because when you’re talking villains and superhero movies, Amy's not a name that normally would come to mind.

Adam Egypt Mortimer: But now that you've seen her, you're probably like, “I want to see a whole movie where she's a super villain.” Like, she's great at it, but she's just such an incredible actor and I've always wanted to work with her, as far back as when I saw her in A Horrible Way to Die or The Sacrament. But I think that if you have somebody who's a great actor, that's something that is going to get you everywhere as a filmmaker.

When we started talking about the part, we talked about her character in terms of very real things, like, what is it like to be in a relationship with this man who is getting all the credit and he's the hero of the city, but really, you're the smart one?

I don't want to spoil it, but there's a whole relationship going on with them that’s really complicated and that's how she approached it. Then, I  was so excited when we started going over how she was going to wear this crazy wig and this eye makeup, and everything about her costume was just wonderful. It was a joy to be able to put her in the movie and it is probably one of the most rewarding experiences I've had with an actor.

Looking at your experiences working on Archenemy, what was your biggest takeaway from working on this film?

Adam Egypt Mortimer: I think I had confidence in my ability to understand what this movie was about and what I was trying to do with it, so that when things go brutally wrong on the day and things are just crashing down, I can still improvise a way into what a scene should be or find a way to still make sure we get to make this movie. I've learned how to think about so much in advance about what the movie was, so there was an incredible confidence in that, even though this was the most difficult movie I've made yet.

It was just really hard and painful and exhausting and everything went wrong, but finding a way to still have the style that I want it to have or make this movie feel the way I want it to feel, no matter what goes wrong. I had to learn along the way, but I think that because I was able to come into this with that sense of confidence, it really helped with what we were able to do.

[Photo Credit: Above photo of Adam Egypt Mortimer courtesy of Izzy Lee.]