SXSW 2019 Interview: Director Adam Egypt Mortimer Talks DANIEL ISN’T REAL

Last week, director Adam Egypt Mortimer (Some Kind of Hate, Holidays) celebrated the world premiere of his latest project, Daniel Isn’t Real, at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival. A psychologically driven descent into hell (you can read my review HERE), Daniel Isn’t Real is based on Brian DeLeeuw’s novel In This Way I Was Saved, and follows an unassuming college kid Luke (Miles Robbins), who finds himself reconnected with his childhood imaginary friend named Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who helps him find confidence as Luke navigates his way in the world. But the more brazen Luke is feeling, the more Daniel’s true colors are revealed, leading to an epic showdown between the duo in an epic battle for Luke’s very soul.

While in Austin, Daily Dead caught up with Mortimer to talk about his adaptation of DeLeeuw’s story, and he chatted about wanting to tear down patriarchal views with Daniel Isn’t Real, creating these two very different characters in Luke and Daniel, and more.

It was really refreshing for me to see a film like this that takes on a very different male perspective, and I feel so weird saying this because I know we're trying to get more female perspectives in film, and get more women involved, but I think at the same time, there are a lot of issues that males are facing in society today that we just don't talk about. And you really take them on here. Was that conscientious in the back of your mind, that this type of a story is something we really aren't seeing very much of right now?

Adam Egypt Mortimer: Absolutely. And I agree with you. It's funny to say, “Hey, this movie's cool because it's about men’s points of view.” And you're like, “Wait, why is that cool? That's what we've had for 100 years.” But I guess I would counter and say that it's not that we've been saying we need movies that aren't from men's points of view. What we need are movies that are not from the patriarchal point of view, and that's why inclusion is so helpful to that end.

So, just from the idea of it as a genre film where a young man is as vulnerable and victimized as what we've seen in the history of horror movies with women, I thought that was interesting. I feel like usually when we make movies about men, they are either heroic or ridiculous, and what happened was originally when we started writing this, I was interested in it being a movie about nihilism. About how we live in this awful world where dark forces are controlling us. It can feel like they're controlling us.

But after 2016, I felt like everybody knows that now. So, doing a movie whose only purpose is to stay dark, now dark is irrelevant. In the mainstream conversation, the world is a dumpster fire, so you don't need me to make another movie about how miserable it is. That's when I found the idea of it being about empathy, and that Luke is a character who is struggling as a young man to have empathy for other people, and the thing that saves him is Cassie's empathy for him, where it’s this idea of these people connecting in an almost cosmic way using empathy.

Miles ended up being one of my favorite parts of the new Halloween, so I was excited to see him in this. But now, I also think Patrick was a really interesting choice to play Daniel, and he’s great, too. Could you talk about putting them in these roles and then working with them on these performances? It’s so interesting watching their back-and-forth because, in some ways, it feels like Patrick is almost playing the id of Miles’ character.

Adam Egypt Mortimer: Oh, 100 percent, he is. Conceptually, that's how I was thinking about it. And any human being has dark impulses. You walk into a room at a party and you go, "Oh, I'm at a party. Great," and then a voice in your head goes, "And everybody here hates me." And I wanted to explore what that dynamic would look like if it's two friends instead of a voice in your head.

There's a little moment early on where Luke is looking at Cassie's painting, and Daniel says, "Hey, I know what this painting is really about," but Luke doesn't say it. That reminded me of all the times, especially when I was in college, when I would know the answer to something, but then I would be too nervous to say it out loud, and then somebody else would say it. That’s when I learned that I need to trust the thoughts in my head.

But then also the thoughts in your head tell you to do horrible things, too, because we just are dark animals with horrible impulses, so juggling what's the top level of your conscious thought with all of these voices, or what you describe as the id, how do you turn that into a story of two humans, two characters who appear like humans? And that was, to me, the most interesting challenge in the movie.

And then getting Patrick and Miles to interact like friends, I was really drawing on all of my memories of being that age, and the way that really close friends, two men who are close friends, young men fall over each other, and constantly have this weird amoeba reality together that I don't see depicted very much, but I experienced it constantly with my own friends.

For as much as this story takes on the toxicity of growing up these days and navigating those waters, there's also a lot that this film says about mental illness and the weight of that. How conscientious were you of the fact that there might be something in Daniel Isn’t Real that could potentially reach someone who is struggling with these types of issues?

Adam Egypt Mortimer: My hope and dream is that it would connect, right? The idea of art is there to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. Horror movies are so extreme because we have these extreme, emotional feelings. You see it portrayed on screen, and that's catharsis. Hopefully, this depicts that sort of experience. And with Luke, he's haunted by his mother's mental illness, and his concern about whether or not he is going insane, and the movie is structured to feel like a real manic episode, with the ups and downs that you experience in that.

When Brian wrote the book, he was dealing with a lot of research that he did into mental illness, and then when I came on and turned it into a movie, it was more about drawing on my personal relationships specifically with somebody I knew when we were younger who went through a very longterm battle with manic depression and bipolar disorder, and what that felt like to be around. It became very important to me to capture that authentically.

But also, we all have our own fears. It's the idea we all feel like we're being gaslighted by the government now. That creates mental anxiety. The patriarchy is a form of mental illness. Creating a socially wide understanding of the exact limits of how men can communicate, and how they're supposed to talk to women, and how they're supposed to deal with their sexuality just creates insanity. As humans, we all need to treat each other better.

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