Sound And Vision: The Big Joseph Kahn Interview, Part Two
In the second part of our two-article interview juggernaut with music video and film director Joseph Kahn we talk post-irony, Spielberg, Scorsese, the philosophy of laughter and how having children changes your vision on life.
(Editor's note: the interviewer is Theodoor unless mentioned differently.)
You have mentioned Get Yourself High and Knights of Cydonia and I had a question about those music videos, and Detention and Ick especially. You pay homage to styles and genres of the past in those. Like Ick is a monster movie in the style of 80s horror comedies. Detention is everything and the kitchen sink, a body swap-body horror-time travel feature, but all with a very definite Joseph Kahn twist. How do you find the balance between pastiche and making something your own?
Joseph: It's an interesting question because the answer is I make it my own by being lazy.
And what I mean by that is that when I watch movies, it's a combination of being a tactician studying every movie and breaking down the techniques and the reasons and the storytelling and the lighting and the acting; everything. You just break it down like crazy. But then I'm also obsessed with movies, so I just enjoy the process of watching a movie. If there's a new movie out there that sounds fascinating, I cannot wait to see it. It's been a while, but it seems to be less and less. But like there, if there's something out there that really seems to be like capturing my imagination. I cannot wait in the same sense where I watch an older movie just because I just want to be in that world again. But after I've done all that work, I am actually different from a lot of other directors. A lot of directors, I think they watch a movie and then in order to construct their next work, they break that movie down and then essentially replicate parts of it.By the time I get to the point where I'm actually making something, I don't do that. I've already absorbed everything and I'm almost too lazy to go back and look at it. I've already done it and it was already exhausting, you know.
So by the time I go on set, I just interpret it and it all mixes up with my vague recollection of how it's done. It's usually wrong. You remember things wrong, "It was like this and that". And it gets mixed up with another idea like that from some other movie I have seen.And maybe a dream I had gets sprinkled in there, and by the time I reinterpret it and I'm emotionally like putting it forth, maybe it has some of those things that were in the original, but it's been mixed up with other things. And I haven't done the amount of research that other people do at the time that we do it. To the point that my laziness makes it fresh again, because I'm just interpreting it incorrectly. You know, that's really kind of the thing. And that's part of what I hate about my commercial business because everybody always wants you to lock everything down and make it so precise and so specific. And this tie and that color and it goes against everything I do.
For instance, believe it or not, Blank space by Taylor Swift, you know what that's mostly based off of? Kubrick! But it does not look like Kubrick, right? But I remember there's symmetrical framing in Kubrick. There's mansions. When she called me up and she pitched me the idea of doing Blank space I was watching A Clockwork Orange at that time, right? And so I was just in a Kubrick phase, you know, but it doesn't get interpreted and regurgitated as Kubrick. No, it's Joseph Kahn sort of being inspired by Kubrick and maybe using some techniques, but really just adapting it and making his break up comedy, you know?
But now you say it here, are several scenes in there that are slightly Kubrickian, Barry Lyndonesque.
But not, right?
But not, it is very Joseph Kahn.
I think that one of your most clearly satirical videos. You often use a lot of satire, especially also in Ick. How do you approach satire in your work?
Well, my thing about satire is it's a there's a line in Detention where he goes.... "It's called post irony, right?" And I think I'm a post-ironic filmmaker in that you don't know if it is ironic or not. You know, like, clearly there are things that are truly ironic. Like for instance, everything right now, whether it's Deadpool and Wolverine or all Marvel movies, they're just seeped in pure irony. The audience, any idiot can walk in and go "That over there... That is satire." You know, "That is truly being made fun of. That's amazing." And the audience all feel smart about it. But when they watch one of mine they don't know if it's meant to be serious or meant in jest. You know, there's emotions going through that you take seriously, but then at the same time I'm making fun of it. That's post irony, you know, where you can't really quite identify where the satire begins and ends. And that's the way I feel about it. That's what I'm trying to make. I'm not trying to delineate the line of serious and un-serious. It can be both.
Is that also the reason why some people fully didn't get Ick and the comments online about the parody of the woke character?
Yeah, I mean, if you want a very literal movie, my movies will fail if you take them fully seriously. But then if you take them completely unseriously, they will fail too. It's a very fine balance of feeling both at any given time, you know. And that's the magic of life. I feel that at any given point, you can have a very serious emotion and an unserious emotion at the same time. You can literally see someone die and you can say this is the saddest moment and also weirdly funny at the same time. And that's a very valid feeling. It's because it's confusing to be a human being.
Yeah.
It's confusing to live. Like, for instance, I'm an atheist, right? I don't believe in a God. But at the same time, I have a conscious idea. The entire idea of existence is odd. The fact that there was possibly a Big Bang and there are things that are atoms and things floating around and you can't quite explain it. And there's nothing. And the only sort of explanation that anyone has come up with that that is valid for most people in the world is that there's a conscious being that did all this.But then you then you have like Elon Musk saying that we're in a simulation, which is essentially saying there's a God somewhere anyways, you know, just in a different formulation.So do you walk around life going I cannot take anything seriously because there are no answers? No, you do both. You take the things that you experience seriously. Like I take my daughter very seriously. I take her life seriously. I take my wife very seriously. But at the same time, it's all absurd. Yeah, it's both.
That's a beautiful answer.
You mentioned Marvel and the irony in there. I think it's a very different form of irony than the post irony you do.
Yeah, it's obvious irony.
It's obvious irony and there is no depth to it. And you also mentioned that there are less less films that you are excited about. Are there things you're still excited about and what are those?
I realized that, but I myself am changing as a human being as we all do. The movies that I loved when I was 12 years old will not impress me as an older man, because you're a different person. You have had different experiences. So I think the entire idea of movies is not the same for me at this age as it was. And it's, and by the way, having kids makes it very clear, like how they process information differently and when they process it and when, when you can introduce certain ideas to them and when you know that they can even register. Like my 6 year old still hasn't seen E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, but I know at some point she's going to watch it. It's going to wreck her. But I know if I show it too early, she won't get it. But I also know that if you wait too long, certain movies won't have the same effect either, you know? So, it's the same thing. My brain is constantly changing. So it's very hard for certain types of movies to penetrate and make me take notice. Like for instance, Deadpool and Wolverine, if I was a 15 year old boy, it would blow my mind. But now I see all the seams. I see the simulation it's doing and the attempt at trying to appease me and I see all this sort of formulations and mathematics of it. So, you know, and that part of it is just the cynical nature of being an old man, you know? It would take a very different type of movie to impress me these days. And I don't think it's just the fault of the film business. It is the nature of your brain aging and your life experience changing your expectations.
What was the last time you were impressed?
I will say this all the time. I think it was The Wolf of Wall Street by Scorsese. And you know, that movie is how old is that movie now? Is that like 12 years old or something?
10 or 12?
Yeah, 10 years.
Ard: That long?
2013, I think it came out.
I think so, yeah.
Ard: I'm getting old.
Theodoor: We are all getting old...
So that was that was a different time, that was me 12 years ago. And that was Scorsese still having that sort of youthful energy in his filmmaking. And it was Leo DiCaprio at a certain age, it was the right time. And I just felt like for me, I can still watch that movie right now and I enjoy every scene. I enjoy every single scene of that movie. I laugh constantly. It, on a certain level, it's the type of filmmaking I like to do. But in the Scorsese version, I mean much better version, frankly, you know, where it's like every scene is funny, but there's empathy and, and there's emotional involvement, but at the same time it's ironic. And that, is that post ironic thing. Am I supposed to be taking him seriously? Am I supposed to be hating the things he's doing? Am I supposed to be enjoying it? You know the moral code of that movie is very vague. And I love that.
And there there were many people again who misinterpreted the hell out of the film. They were like, how can this film glorify this asshole?
Yeah, but I mean, I understand where people are coming from because there's a lack of religion. You know, you find that, for instance, the more religious you are, the less meaning you need out of the movies on a certain level because you already have your own moral code going into it. So you can already make a judgement call. This is sinful. This is not sinful. You know, this aligns with my religious point of view. It doesn't. But the ones that that aren't religious and sort of live vicariously through the storytelling of the movies... it makes each movie becomes a blanket thing. They bring their own moral code into it and they, they don't realize that they're judging these movies. A lot of movies, like a lot of people that hate Ick are ones that simply do not agree with me making fun of woke people. You know, that's it, simple as that, simple as that.
They hear a few jokes that they, they feel like they're being made fun of.The movie is done. Half a star, you know. I cannot blame them because that's their perception of life. Can I really judge them for living life in a way that gives them that perspective? I don't know. You know, it's not the way I would personally do it, but you know, then the movies just aren't made for them, you know, and so be it.
But speaking of the audience, I think your films often play very interesting to several audiences at the same time. Like you told in the Q&A that Ick is playing for both 15 year old girls and 40 year old guys. Bodied is, I think, a film that tries to straddle a line between being very honest about culturally sensitive language and also making fun of it. How do you build your audience into your movies? Or do you just make them for yourself?
I cannot make that judgment call right now. And probably it's one of the reasons I'm not a big Hollywood filmmaker right now, you know, because I simply make it calibrated to myself.
Bodied had a very similar reaction. You know, in my mind, my lead character is a villain, you know, like, you know, he starts off kind of heroic and you empathize with them, but you realize as the thing goes on, he becomes very selfish and he does whatever it takes to win. He is an amoral character, right? That's the point of the movie and he wins, but he loses, right? There's a lot of people that walked out that movie going, I hate this movie because the white guy won, you know? That's not the point of the fucking movie.
I know there's a lot of black battle rappers and black people that watch the movie and go, it's another one of those Hollywood movies where white people win. "I hate this movie." They completely missed the point, you know, that he didn't win. He lost. He lost his soul to all these battles. That was the point. And I think part of the thing is that I didn't telegraph it like a Hollywood movie would. They play the dark music and it's really dark and he comes off really evil and looks like he's about to die. So it's absolutely clear that he lost his soul, right?
What do I do? I play happy music. It's victorious. You know, the emotion is there and he's smiling and he looks at the camera and he's strong. But that's the post-irony. You know, I'm not telegraphing to you the lesson of the movie. You got to walk away with it yourself after you think about it.
And you still have Ben Grimm in there basically saying actions and words do have consequences, which is the point of the movie I think.
But I think that the issue is that I immediately follow that up with happy music and that confuses the audience, which is on purpose.
One thing I noticed about Ick and Detention and Bodied is that they all end on a note of uncertainty. That's also on purpose, I think, right?
Yes, 1000%. I don't wrap these movies up with.... I wrap them up with generally up tempo ideas. But you're up tempo about confusion.Most Hollywood movies end on a happy note.And you're like, "yes, happy emotion!" I'm giving you a happy emotion on an uncertain note. Like "yay...I'm confused!"
Ard: I like the fact that you don't answer the paternity question at the end of Ick because it didn't really matter in the story at that point. "Oh it's him" "Oh, it's not him."
You could have made an easy joke about it. Like "Who the hell is Ed?" You know, something like that, but well.
Well, let's think about it like is the movie really going to be better... Whether you know that answer?
Theodoor and Ard in unison: No! No!
Ard: And I love that you just left it out, saying that actually does not matter for their relationship, to be honest. If he says oh, you're not my daughter and walks off, he would be an asshole at that point. They're friends, they have a sort of relationship, whatever.
They went through an experience together. They made a connection, that's what matters.
Ard: That's what matters.
Yeah, the bloodline question is not relevant.
It's very irrelevant to the core of the movie.
Are we going to just judge each other on bloodlines? Like it's not a real question.
That's what I feel.
And the same I think with Bodied it doesn't really matter what his name is, it matters that he lost his soul in the process of finding out his character.
The question is who is he? And we know who he is.
He's a piece of shit.
Ard: Yes.
Theodoor: Yeah, I had a few more questions. The first is about music. In your work, how do you go about setting the soundtrack for a film and what comes first, the visuals or the music picks?
That's a good question. Okay, so when it usually comes to the origin of creativity, whether it's a music choice or a plot choice or whatever, there is no one answer for the most part. I might, if I had to give it a real forensic point of view and think about it, really, maybe I could come up with an answer. But my general inclination is to say that ideas are ideas, and it might start from a piece of music, it might start from an image, it might start from a concept, it might start from a plot point. I don't know where it comes from. But I build and the way I build is always multi-layered. So things tend to mesh together at some point.
The music starts up and then the visuals come up and then the thematic part comes in and these things change too. You know, like the thematics of Ick changed over the years that I made it because I became a father. And so the experience of, of raising a child affects your perception of what you can get out of that particular relationship. The movie was very different before I had a kid.
Ard: Getting a child, for me he was the most life changing event ever. I mean, marrying OK, getting a job, OK, you could still get some normalcy out of your regular life, but having a kid that completely changed up everything.
Well, that is the thing. That's an interesting thing. I think anyone that's a parent that watches Ick and if you're young enough that your brain isn't too slow by the time you watch it, you will bring things to that that a young person will not. For instance, I think a lot of 20 year olds will not connect to the movie because they have no sense of what it's like to be a parent.
And that is a value system that simply cannot exist until you have a child. When you have a child and suddenly you, you suddenly realize you're a very selfish person and now you will do whatever it takes to give everything to your child. And there's a moment in a parent's life that it becomes very evident. It's the first time your child becomes super sick and you take your child to the hospital and all of a sudden the stakes have raised so much that you suddenly realize, you know, I would give up my life to have my child live. And I never thought about that and anything, you know, my dog got sick, whatever. I'm not going to give up my life for my dog. Even my parents, that's a tragedy. Some people might be willing to go there, but it's on the fence.
But your child? No doubt about it. You will give up your life, you know? And that like when Hank is up there and he's fighting for his child, like all parents will just give that more value. But 21 year olds in college will go "what the fuck is he doing?"
Ard: He'd jump if it helped.
So it's a different value system, you know. Another good example is A.I: Artificial Intelligence, the Steven Spielberg movie, when I watched it as a 20 year old, I saw it from the child's perspective. I missed my mom after I watched it... As a parent, it's the most devastating movie about giving up on your children. You know of the guilt that you feel that you did not do what you should have done. You left your child in a forest. It's a completely different movie.
And when your child is suffering, you're watching the perception of a parent who failed, whereas when you're watching as a young person you're watching a parent who abandoned you. Two different experiences.
Do you build that changing view of life into your movies?
I mean, yeah, sometimes consciously, sometimes I mean, it changes your perception of art. It does, you know. So it just is a certain thing. I guess I'm, I'm looking at life from the perception of a parent now. So it changes the way that what appeals to me emotionally and what I get out of art, you know. It just depends on the person, right? Like I always say this, like people always think that there's a universal thing called comedy. And I do not think that is true. I think when people laugh, it is we are all animals and we make a laughing sounds as connective tissue. And if you want to break it down on a pure evolutionary level, animals don't make sounds unless there's a reason, a mating call. Laughter is a very strange sound. What is laughter? Laughter is a safety sound. You know, it's a tribal safety sound that says I can make this noise because this means this is a safe space. That means other animals can come together. We laugh together and there are no predators. We are so much together that we can clear the space out and saying this is a safe space for you to go because clearly they're laughing there. There must be no predators, right? But that can be used in the wrong way.
You know what the one of the biggest laughing scenes is that's the most awful I've ever seen in a movie? Schindler's List. In the beginning.... you never think of Schindler's List as a comedy... but there's a "comedy" scene in there. There's Nazis, who as they're clearing out Poland, they're clipping the hair of Jewish people right? What are they doing? They're laughing, you know? So for them, they're in safety, you know, that's their space now.
Your perception of what you're trying to get out of art is based on what your value system is that you have learned over your life. You know my value system has changed since I was a 20 year old man.The value systems for those Nazis are different. Clearly, you know, something happened in their lives to get to that point where they think that this dehuminization is funny. Bodied is also all about that. And as for Ick, the value system is going to read differently depending on your age bracket. If you're a 20 year old, all you're going to see is they're making fun of woke people. If you're an older person, you'll see, you know, the value of like trying to find your way and be a parent. And if you're a younger person, just that that fear of survival, you know?
Ard: I like the writer Terry Pratchett. He made all the Discworld books. He wrote a small novel called The Carpet People about tiny people living in your carpet. And he rewrote the book later, and the later editions are completely different from the earlier ones.
So there's a different ending. And he said, because as a young man, I thought this was going to be a fantasy about war and winning the war. As an older man, my fantasy is now stopping the war from happening.
Well, look at Steven Spielberg. Close Encounters? That is a young man's movie. Yeah, it's about a man with a family but obviously, clearly made by a man who has no family.
He abandons everything.
Ard: Yay, Let's go travel.
There's no way in hell that if you have a kid you would put that ending in. I'm going to leave my fucking kids to go on a sightseeing tour forever with a bunch of fucking aliens. That is the perspective of a fucking 25 year old kid.
Ard: François Truffaut is in that film. And he said to Steven Spielberg, "you should work with children."
And then next time he did a space alien movie, what happens?
They do not get on the ship, no.
Ard: Exactly.
Well, it's a perspective of a boy and in his world, I guess he would not have left his parents because that's not what he wanted. I guess it's true he made Close Encounters about his dad who left him and I guess E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial is about himself in that stage.
That does make sense, yeah.
Ard: I like that he also said that after Schindler's List and all the research that went into it about Nazis that he could not make another Indiana Jones film in which he just kills German people.
Well, and I think that's a shame because he's really good at it.
I had just one more final question, which is me a bit nerding out because I saw some nods to Detention in Ick including a shared newscaster character called Ceausescu. Are they set in the same universe?
In the same way that Mad Max is set in the same universe. Maybe they're legendary universes. You know, if you, there's actually, if you look closely at the newspaper, there's a, there's a shot of in the beginning when he explains the Ick and there's a shot of someone that's been zombified and he's there, the homeless guy. There's a newspaper on him. If you pause it and you look at it, it says that Eastbrook has been destroyed, you know, so theoretically, that's the ending of the previous movie. Oh, well, yeah.
Ard: When you create a movie, you create it from scratch. It's your idea. You pick the music with it, the visuals in your mind. When you do a music video, most of the time you'll be getting the music beforehand. So how much in the creative process during the scripting... you also said you listen to the ideas of the artists themselves... but the music itself. How does that influence your idea?
Sometimes it does. Sometimes I'll hear a song and and think about like how I will shoot it according to the song or the vibe of it and stuff like that. I didn't know that I have one specific recollection of as I was storyboarding Ick, I wanted to have a sequence to Teenage Dirtbag, you know. And I also knew that there were different songs I knew that I wanted. I knew that I wanted to have Swing, Swing for the opening of the movie, you know. And I knew that it's funny, I did actually design the second-half of of his fall at the beginning with several pieces of music.
Like the first half is all this happy music and then it goes into sad music. And I originally wanted Lightning Strikes by Live, you know, it played really well. It was the saddest version of it and there were very few songs that were that sad, you know. And I played a ton of different songs under it and it was the only one that was that sad, but they didn't want to do it. Then I played with Superman by 5 for fighting, but it was a little too obvious. And then I really wanted Green Day. There's an amazing version where if you play it and I cut it to Green Day. It was amazing. But of course I couldn't get that. But then I was like, OK, then I should just stay in the pop punk world and it's going to be quite as sad as I wanted, but it hopefully works. Did it feel sad to you or not?
When he had the fall and you have the montage scene going on? It scanned as fairly sad, yes.
Ard: I felt it was sad.
You felt sad? That's good. There were other songs that were much sadder, and it really made it even more intensely sad. But I kept them out of it. I kept that pop punk version of it, so it feels a little removed for me. Not quite as sad as it could have been, but still.
It still scans, still works.
So, yeah, I try, but you know, that's the hard part... When you play with remixology as I do, yeah, you're not gonna get all the songs that you want. And It affects the tone of the movie, you know?
Are there there any songs in your other films that you kind of lost out on?
Joseph: Oh yeah, tons, all sorts of places. I think like in Detention I played Hole for the grunge part of it, but I think I had a bunch of other more famous grunge songs that would have been like.... obviously if you played Nirvana or something like that it makes it that much clearer that's what I'm saying, you know. And then I think Bodied, I had a Jay-Z song for Adams montage when he's coming up with stuff and it just seemed too obvious. Like "it's Jay-z". But yeah, whatever, it all worked out. You know, at the end of the day, you press it, you finish it, and that's the movie.
You said your Q&A that this is the 7th iteration of Ick.
Do you do that with all your movies that you keep re-editing?
I do minor things, but this one has been more problematic because of how fast I cut the initial thing. And also it wasn't finished, you know, not that it I don't think it really mattered for those that understood the movie. It's funny, our initial screening at TIFF, a lot of the big critics love the movie. You know, a lot of the smaller critics hated it, you know, so it's like this weird mix. It was very mixed, but ultimately it was in our favor. At the end of the day, I made a movie that is based on some happy vibes at the end of it. It's more emotional.
It's more based on the relationship between a father daughter possibly. And I don't know in this world where people don't have kids that this is that meaningful to them. Because think about a lot of, for instance, film critics who don't have kids.
You know, guilty as charged...
So they don't feel there's a way to penetrate into that particular story.You know, they can look at it from the outside, but are they ever going to really feel that sort of like want of protecting your daughter? If you haven't had that particular feeling, you're only going to simulate it, but you will never know it until you actually have it. Do you know what I'm saying?
And it's like I guess it's like a Gulf War veteran, for instance, watching Saving Private Ryan, right? It's going to affect a regular audience member at a certain point even if you've never been to war. But if you're a veteran watching Saving Private Ryan? That shit will fuck you up. It will give you PTSD flashbacks, you know.
So what you bring into a movie... You can only get out of a movie as much as you bring into it. I said this at the Q&A. I calibrated this movie for a very weird tiny audience. It's 45 year old men that have had daughters, you know. And little girls that are scared of the world. And in between everybody else will be trying to bring their own experience and find their own way to relate to it, you know, but that's my demographic. That's who I made it for. I made it for me. I'm the 40 plus year old guy. And then I made it for my daughter so that she will watch it in 10 years, you know?
Ard: I think it is interesting that some people that would love it didn't like it much in my neighborhood. We have several film festivals in the Netherlands, including a few genre film festivals. And there is one where I felt the film could've played well and it probably would've lit up the stage.
I don't know, a lot of times when people think it would play well to hardcore genre fans, I actually find that a lot of the hardcore fans do not like it because it is not gory enough.
Ard: And that is exactly what happened because some people at that particular festival didn't like it much.
The reality of it is that I am not trying to please that crowd necessarily. It is not supposed to be the scariest movie. You know. It is really meant to be a starter horror. I place it more along the lines of the classic King Kong or Dracula or those types of movies. They aren't scary, but they are comfort films. They are great starting places. So for me it is i'm not out-Terrify Terrifier. And this is me studying film, but I noticed that different types of movies do well at different times. Because of where the world is. And right now the world is not afraid of death. The world is afraid of reputational damage. Because we live online. So you notice a lot of movies are out right now, that are in the horror space, like the A24 movies, are about a get-together. Mixed-race couple. They get together at a dinner party. And they call each other out. "You are a bastard", "you aren't as good as you could have been." And that's the fear. The real fear right now is the fear of being exposed. That is the danger. My movie is not about that. My movie is about "I want to live so I can raise a daughter". And that is not valid in today's world. Today's world is about reputational damage. "I don't want to be called a conservative. I don't want to be considered racist". Ick is a movie that is a bit out of time, but I hope that when people become parents they will learn to appreciate it more.
And on that note, the interview ended.
And, like with the previous part of the interview, below are some of Kahn's music videos, showing his signature style.
