TIFF 2018 Interview: Co-Writers/Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein on Building the World of FREAKS

This weekend, the filmmaking duo of Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky are celebrating the world premiere of Freaks, their psychological/sci-fi thriller centered around seven-year-old Chloe (Lexy Kolker), who lives in isolation with her dad (Emile Hirsch), fearful of attacks from the outside world. One day, she heads out into the world, at the insistence of the mysterious Mr. Snowcone (Bruce Dern), and Chloe learns the shocking truth behind the world at large, and the life-changing secrets her well-meaning dad has been hiding all along.

Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with both Lipovsky and Stein earlier this week in advance of their big premiere, and the co-writers/directors discussed their approach to their ambitious genre-bending feature, the challenges they faced during production, and collaborating with their brilliant cast as well.

Freaks premieres at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, September 8th.

Great to speak with you guys today. Can you start off by discussing developing this story? Parts of this feel like a family drama, then there’s the science fiction elements, then it evolves into something even bigger than that. Can you talk about your approach to blending all these different elements together and then making them work in service with each other?

Adam Stein: Yeah, that's really perceptive. We definitely came at it from a few different directions. One of the first inspirations came from my son. I had just become a father when we first started developing the script, and Zach and I were both just fascinated by my son’s perspective on the world and how he saw things that were completely normal to us and they seemed amazing and strange to him. We just realized that a child's perspective on the world is such a fun place to be, and we kept thinking it could be really cool to approach a sci-fi world from that perspective of a kid trying to figure out what's going on in their world. So, that was one of the first moments of genesis for the story idea.

Another thought we had was that we are huge sci-fi fans, big fans of all kinds of genre films, but a lot of times you see a genre film and it doesn't feel very real. It has a patina of fakeness on it, on the performances and on the way the world feels. It's shiny and poppy, and we really wanted to approach a sci-fi story from that really grounded perspective that would make you feel like this was really unfolding before your eyes. So, from the script stage to directing the performances, we were really focused on getting that sense of realism so that you could believe what was happening to the characters in a deeper way.

Zach Lipovsky: And a lot of the world building just came from that. We kept asking ourselves, “What would really happen? What happens in our world when this happens?” We just kept drawing from all these real-world events and incorporated them into the rules of our world. And we always came at it from that reality because we thought that that would give the film a second layer to it, where the thematic elements that are happening in it feel very realistic.

Let’s talk about the talent you’ve assembled here for Freaks. Bruce Dern is, of course, a legend, and Emile is really good in this, too. And then there’s Lexy, who is just so wonderful in this. There is so much of this movie that rides on her character and her performance, and she’s excellent. Can you talk about working with them and building these different dynamics between their characters?

Zach Lipovsky: Lexy is really the discovery of the film. And when we wrote this, like Adam said, we were basing it on our experience with his son, but we realized at some point we were going to need to find a little girl that could carry every scene of the movie. So, we also approached Lexy’s performance and even the audition process very differently than you would normally do on a film. We didn't really just run the scene as scripted and said 'cut'; we really used a heavy amount of improvisation around the scenes as written and would roll for half an hour saying the lines over and over again and just living within the moments.

We would do a lot of rehearsal first, just improvising from moments from her life or abstract situations just to get into the right emotion of the scene, and Emile was a huge partner with Lexy in creating her performance, too. He would work with her and we would just let the cameras roll, so we could create that realism for Lexy, and give her the space to have strong emotions when she needed to and support her. It created a very unique experience for all of us.

It was a very small crew and we just wanted to build these moments where she could become incredibly real and very powerful in a safe way. It was just a great experience, and one of the best parts and biggest surprises of the film was the way that she came out of her shell and delivered this incredible performance. She stands her ground next to Bruce Dern and shows him how it's done, and that's hard to do.

There’s a lot of ambition on the screen in Freaks, and you guys really pull off some big moments here. Were there challenges that you faced while making this film, and how did you guys work to overcome those challenges?

Adam Stein: Yeah, we just felt like we wanted to go for it, and we wanted to keep raising the stakes for these characters. To have them strictly in the house makes sense in the beginning of the film, because Chloe's trapped in the house, but we didn't want it to be the kind of movie where you felt like they're still in the house because they couldn't afford to get out of it. So, we just tried to plan carefully and use the resources that we did have to make the most exciting experience for the audience that we could.

Zach Lipovsky: Yeah, we also just approached it as, 'What would happen in this scenario?' And we kept coming up with ideas that sounded incredibly difficult to achieve, but totally made sense with the characters that we had. We just said, "We can actually pull this off if we're very, very smart about it.” We knew that if we planned meticulously and used all the resources we had, we could actually do what these characters would actually do in this world we’ve created.

Adam Stein: The one thing that was interesting in the last half was the feeling of this story was getting a bit “crazy pants.” We've got characters in different places and materializing in each other's spaces. Will the audience even understand what's going on here? We just plowed forward with the faith that we'd be able to figure out how to communicate it.

It's interesting, one of the things that Zach and I tried to do is a lot of testing with friends and family as we were in the writing process and in the editing process. Some early versions of the movie, at the script stage and then even at the cutting stage, people were very confused. But we were able to find little ways of making it all make sense so that now, I think, pretty much everyone understands what's happening when it starts getting really kooky.

Zach Lipovsky: One of the fun parts of Freaks was being able to work with Bruce Dern. He hasn't been in a science fiction movie since Silent Running in 1972. He’s an actor who wants to be in character pieces and he feels like science fiction doesn't always allow for that, so that's what attracted him to this movie. But on set, I don't think he quite yet understood all of the craziness that was happening at the end of the movie. We had walked him through it and he'd look at us like we were a bit insane and kept saying cryptic things like, "If you guys pull this off, this is going to be crazy.” I don't think he understood anything that was going on at the time, but then when we showed him the movie, he was just totally in awe and finally saw all the pieces come together. It was pretty cool to see.

Adam Stein: But I think what he did connect to was this very simple idea of protecting your family and wanting your daughter back, and that's what he latched onto with full force and power. That’s what was driving his instincts in those final moments of the movie. He was great.