Longlegs is one of those rare instances where a movie crawls inside of you and settles beneath your skin, quite possibly sticking to your insides forever. The viral marketing campaign has been something to behold with cryptic coded messages, freaky phone calls, and all the mystery surrounding Nicolas Cage’s character. Writer-director Oz Perkins and star Maika Monroe joined us to discuss the origins of our new collective nightmare, Silence of the Lambs, and the T. Rex of it all.
Tell me the origin of my new nightmare. Did this start as a concept of the Longlegs character? Was it a concept of the story? What happened?
Osgood Perkins: It started with a character, and he was a character that I had tried to find a place for in other projects. It was an entity that existed for me, this kind of greasy guy that shows up at your kid’s birthday uninvited and unannounced and somehow knows it’s your kid’s birthday and has a little show to put on, but the show is only a distraction for something else that he’s doing. I really only had as much as that.
Then, I figured the way to connect with a bigger audience would be to trick them into thinking that they were watching Silence of the Lambs, and then do a thing where it was obviously not that at all.
It comes from the intention to have a good time. The intention is never to brutalize anybody or make anybody feel bad. Also, just to reference and to be in reverence of things that matter to me. The experience of Silence of the Lambs was something that really mattered to me on a cinematic level when I was a certain age, and I saw it for the first time at the City Walk Cinemas.
My parents are going to buy a ticket to see this movie, thinking it’s kind of like Silence of the Lambs. They’re not prepared for what it actually is going to unfold, and I love that.
Maika, you’re carving out a space in the world of contemporary horror — It Follows,Watcher. Longlegs is going to end up on that list as well. So, at this point, you’re like an oracle. If Maika Monroe is in your movie, it’s going to end up as an all-timer. When you receive these scripts, what are you looking for? What is the hook for you?
Maika Monroe: It’s different with every project. With It Follows, I read the script and I thought it was the weirdest, maybe worst. I was like, “What is STD? What in the… Who wrote this?” I was doing it from a place of, I needed to pay my rent, and that’s how It Follows happened.
Watcher, I had seen Chloe Okuno’s short film, Slut, and was obsessed long before I was sent Watcher. I was just telling my team, we got to stay on this girl.
And Oz is Oz. He’s made incredible films. Then I was sent this script, which was one of my favorite scripts I’ve read in a long, long time. It was just, again, that feeling of I need to do this.
I’m curious about the T. rex of it all. Why T. rex? Why not another band? I mean, they’ve got some great lines that work really well with this, but I’m curious if it was that or something else.
OP: I think the answer is sort of in the question. Sort of why not? If the impetus is on me as one person to be generating this world and generating this material, at least laying out a blueprint for all the other artists who are going to contribute to the movie, I can’t just make everything up. Not everything can be made out of whole cloth. You have to borrow from what’s around.
So it becomes what’s in my environment? What’s my kid saying? How does my teenager speak? What does my wife feel about this? What is that book that I just read? Oh, I just saw a movie that had a thing in it that I thought was really great. T. rex was just a group, an entity that I didn’t know very well, and then it just sort of happened that I started listening to them and really dug it.
As I was writing it’s just part of what’s playing on the big radio of life. You just tune in, and at a certain point, my job is just decision-making. If the universe starts saying, “Hey, I think it’s T. Rex.” Then I can either be like, “I think you’re wrong: or “Let me look into that.”
So you look into it, and then you start getting into it. You start reading lyrics and find things like, “The teeth of the Hydra.” Oh, that’s a many-headed monster. Oh, the Bible phrase is the same thing. A beast with horns is a thing. It just takes its shape, and you start saying yes to the things that come your way.
I’m glad the universe was right on this one, and you chose to say yes.
Longlegs is now in theaters. For more, check out our latest issue, FANGORIA #24, featuring Nicolas Cage interviewing Oz Perkins. Currently on newsstands.
Watch the full interview below and stay tuned with more from Longlegs cast Alicia Witt and Blair Underwood.
