![]() Greenwich Entertainment releases Coup! nationwide on August 2nd, 2024 in theaters nationwide. NYC MOVIE GURU: What do you think is so appealing about exploring the dark side of human nature in cinema? Joseph SchumanS: What else is there but the dark side of human nature? In the dark side, there's the comedic side of human nature---having fun with those taboos and outrageous situations. That's what appealed to us about the dark side. Comedy and horror begin to blend into one another. I can think of a bunch of horror movies that at their really scary limit, they actually go into subtle comedy. So, the dark side lends itself to both satire and suspense. NYC MOVIE GURU: What was the process like to decide how much exposition to include and when to include it? JS: Working backwards from what would be the most fun and engaging desired effect---are you going for mystery, suspense or curiousity? And what would create the most delight in the audience. At first, showing Floyd with the body inherently creates this suspense and even a sense of dread, but then you begin to question your own assumptions. We then wanted to move that into a mystery where we're uncertain of what's actually motivating Floyd. That helps to identify the audience with Jay who wants to know what Floyd's doing and why he's doing what he's doing. NYC MOVIE GURU: How did you find the right balance of different tones? Austin Stark: One of the most challenging and also gratifying of making this film was finding the Coup! tone. What we think is unique is this balance of mystery, tension and comedy. We ended up with this lingo of what felt like Coup! and what didn't. Joseph and I would have this shorthand. Everything would fall into Coup! world or fall into not-<>Coup! world. With tone, we tried to set it up from the very top. You're right that that cigarette moment is something that, on the page, it's a very short scene---a quarter of a page. But in the film, it's so meaningful because it's establishing that tone within the first few minutes of the film. You picked up on a key moment that we spent a lot of time thinking about for something that seems so insignificant on the page. NYC MOVIE GURU: What about the stylish design of the title card? Did you always intend to include the exclamation point? AS: Yes. The exclamation point was always there. The font was something that we must've gone through 50 different versions before we settled on that one font. So, yes, it's establishing tone at a key point. And then finding a tone for the other titles in the beginning that wasn't exactly the same, that still complimented it and didn't feel over-the-top because you want the Coup! font to really pop when you see it, so you can't have everything else in the same font before that with the production company titles. So, we needed to find something that's a little bit whimsical, but that still allows that font to really pop when you see it. NYC MOVIE GURU: How would you define the term "cinematic"? AS: It's certainly a marriage of photography, story, acting and design, for me. It's tied into mise-en-scene, in a way. I think "cinematic" has become more of an emotion than anything else---it's what feels cinematic is what's cinematic to people. Breaking it down, I think that it's all of those factors that makes something cinematic. JS: I think that there's something apropo about Deadpool & Wolverine. There's something inherently operatic about cinema. It's the grandest form of storytelling that we still have and it also yields all of these disparate parts--production design, photography, acting, writing. That's what opera used to be before the technology was there. People would roam across the Earth just to see the latest piece of stage design or sound design. It's not just the blending of those mediums; there's a grandness to it of storytelling and keeping the audience entertained. It's grand, visual storytelling that has all of these multimedia elements. NYC MOVIE GURU: How conscious were you of playing around with audience's expectations and pre-conceived notions? AS: I think that we do that quite a bit. One of the things that we were conscious of with this film, specifically, is that we never view Jay or Floyd as the protagonist or as the antagonist. So, it wasn't black-or-white for us. What we tried to do was to create a world where the audience can project their own meaning and politics on these characters. In our experience, it becomes who they end up rooting for or who they feel is the protagonist vs the antagonist. I think that that's one of the things that's interesting about Coup!. JS: That chess game because the audience and writer in terms of structuring the mystery is definitely one of the most fun aspects of writing because "When can you mislead? When is it fair to mislead?" It helps to create that relay of identification between these two characters. So, messing with the audience's expectation is definitely the heart of narrative art. NYC MOVIE GURU: In the scene with Floyd and Julie on the floor as she's tending his wound, she asks him if he's lonely, but he doesn't reply. Do you think that they're both lonely? AS: I'm glad that you brought up that scene because it's one of my favorites as well. It shows Floyd's vulnerability which is so rare. I do think that she feels lonely and distant from her husband. At the same time, I think that he's, ultimately, a lonely soul. He's a grifter and certainly colorful. You can call him shifty. But, at the end of the day, that scene gives you a window into his soul as well which you're not always given with that character. JS: Since his motives are always suspicious, a lot can be interpreted as him just putting on an act or some sinister agenda. But when it comes to certain moments like that scene, the interactions of him with the kids and when he gets into a more contemplative stage, that's when the audience is seeing dimensionality. They're now wondering, "Have I gotten this character wrong?" He's not your standard sociopath; he has all of these layers. NYC MOVIE GURU: Which emotion or emotions were most challenging for you to capture? AS: I think that when you're subverting expectations of a character, whatever those emotions are is making that feel organic. If you're going to have a character who's set up as an antagonist, there are moments when you're trying to humanize and make that feel organic that I think are the most challenging as a filmmaker. Or whether you're taking a protagonist and creating flaws within the character that aren't things that people are going to necessarily identify with---and how to really balance that and make it feel true to the character. NYC MOVIE GURU: How introspective do you think Julie is? JS: Julie is certainly the most grounded character. She's almost a moral compass in the film flanked by these two characters who are very extreme in their ways. Where her sympathies go toward her husband or toward Floyd, the audience is likely to go with her. She does go through this arc from having grown up in a very privileged and patriarchal world, her wild side never really being allowed to flourish. Because of the circumstances of the film and Floyd, she gets in touch with that dark, wild, sensual aspect. She definitely has self-awareness. NYC MOVIE GURU: At what point do you think that the film's visual style becomes part of its substance? AS: Especially when you're making a period film, you want to get all of that right and create something beautiful. So, we were fortunate to work with a very talented cinematographer named Conor Murphy and Deana Sidney was our production designer with a ton of experience. She was almost like a storyboard---she really knew that time period as well as anybody I've ever met. And there's Stacy Jensson, a talented costume designer. We spent a lot of time figuring out every single moment and how the sets were going to be designed and how the film would be photographed and what they'd be wearing. We made sure that it was cohesive to our vision and that it would elevate what we were trying to accomplish at the script stage. NYC MOVIE GURU: How did you decide what music to play during the pivotal scene where Jay is eating the piece of meat off the floor? JS: That particular song is from Phillip Glass' opera, Akhnaten- The Window of Appearances. The process of finding it is, believe or not, trying loads of different stuff and seeing what sticks. For that particular scene, it's the climax; on the other hand, only because of the circumstances do the stakes seem that much bigger than they actually should be. So, like the other department's decisions from the set design to the customs to the cinematography, it's finding what would hit that tone, but sometimes you want to contradict the tone with the grandness and intensity and the power of a musical piece. If the scene doesn't have it, then there's a sort of dark, droll irony the match between the substance and the music. So, in that particular scene, it was precisely that. NYC MOVIE GURU: How fair would it be to consider the mansion as a character in itself? AS: That's very fair. That mansion is actually three different mansions that we cobbled together in order to create the Horton estate---one mansion for the exterior, one mansion for the interior, and one for the indoor pool. We found them in New Jersey. It was a very intensive scouting process in order to do that. After we did find the locations, there was a lot of storyboarding in order to figure out how they piece together and whether the windows from one work with the interior windows of the other. There's a lot of thought that goes into that to make sure that it's all going to piece together properly. NYC MOVIE GURU: What do you think the pool symbolizes? JS: Whatever symbolism you find, you're welcome to. Not in terms of a baptismal cleansing, but definitely in terms of the sacred spot of Jay's mansion for reasons of propriety and custom. It would be absurd for the staff to think that they could swim there unless one of the staff happens to be an anarchist of Floyd's sensibility who then takes the rest of the staff swimming with him. I think that it's really symbolic of the arbitrariness which certains haves have access to and certain have-nots shouldn't. AS: It was funny for us to imagine Floyd swimming in Jay's pool. It's just so deeply offensive. There's probably nothing more offensive that he could do where he could spend time in his household than the guy's pool. NYC MOVIE GURU: Given that poetry is a form of protest, what do you think Coup! is a protest for or against? JS: I think that it's a protest against the arbitrariness of certain norms. I don't know what we're protesting for, but it's a protest against our incapability of acting spontaneously and doing what we could be doing or should be doing. It's also a protest against a growing and alarming tendency to individuals not as individuals, but members of a group or a faction. In a way, that dehumanizes them. I think, at times, either characters are certainly guilty of that kind of behavior. Main Page Interviews Menu Alphabetical Menu Chronological Menu ______________________________________________________ |