Q & A : Joshua
George Ratliff's tense and haunting psychological thriller Joshua is about a spooky little boy who keeps himself occupied performing mind-control games on his increasingly wary and frightened family. But don't think of that campy classic The Bad Seed: Joshua deftly walks the line between horror and comedy. Ratliff, who has a documentary background, joined actress Vera Farmiga and his co-writer David Gilbert, along with other cast and crew members, after the film's screening yesterday at the Eccles Theatre.
Director George Ratliff and Actor Jacob Kogan, answer questions about the film Joshua. -- Photo By Jemal Countess, Wireimage.com |
“The only problem was that he didn’t play piano. We thought we’d give it a shot with lessons while we were auditioning hand doubles and we gave him a Beethoven sonata - that particular sonata is one of the most difficult pieces out there, and he learned it in two weeks.”
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George Ratliff dir. Joshua |
Q: The music really played a big part in the film, almost like it was its own character. Can you talk about that a bit?
Ratliff: The music was done by a composer named Nico Muhly who's 25 years old; he's basically Joshua with 15 extra years under his belt. He's a genius but he's so young that it took everyone a while to believe in him, so he just on spec did this "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" that devolves into chaos and we all became obsessed with it and hired him. He's fantastic.
Q: Was it an original story and how long did it take to write and how did Vera Farmiga work that whole character up to that crescendo - I’ve never seen anything like it.
Ratliff: The first part will be answered by our writer, David Gilbert.
Gilbert: I have two children.
Farmiga: I never want to have children! There were some murky depths. Spring had just arrived, I was overworked, and everything was burgeoning, giving birth around me, it was tough. I didn’t know much about psychotic post-partum depression - it’s a pretty big women’s health issue - I went online and read testimony after testimony of women who had suffered through it and overcome it. Printed up a bunch of testimonies for Sam [Rockwell] of their husbands who were dealing with it; read Brooke Shields’ book, Down from the Rain, and I was so struck by her candor and how this wonderful, vivacious, bright, intelligent woman turns into this violent individual. I wanted to understand it. Someone in my family very, very close to me, at the very time we were filming was suffering a psychosis and was horribly depressed. In the middle of shooting scenes where I had to degenerate, I would be on the phone with this person talking her into a reason to live, so it informed me. Her situation was very real to me.
Q: Has the actor playing Joshua [Jacob Kogan] seen the movie?
Ratliff: He was here; he had to go back to school. He loves it, his parents love it. He’s the polar opposite kind of kid than Joshua and I could go on forever, but he was the smartest guy on the set. The only problem was that he didn’t play piano. We thought we’d give it a shot with lessons while we were auditioning hand doubles and we gave him a Beethoven sonata - that particular sonata is one of the most difficult pieces out there, and he learned it in two weeks. We were all very scared of him.
Q: It’s so amazing that the song that Dave Matthews wrote fit so perfectly... was the song first, or the movie?
Ratliff: The fact of the matter is that when we wrote the script, we had a song in the end that was a little misleading that already existed and [production company] ATO Pictures is an offshoot of ATO Records, which is owned by Dave Matthews, so Dave Matthews was a part of this. And he agreed to write the song in the end and we were very happy about that, but the song never came. And he was on tour and production started, we were waiting for the song, and so we pushed that shooting date and it never came, never came. Then two days before we were shooting that, he landed in Pittsburgh, just found a studio and recorded the song. It was one of the happier days because my big worry was, Well, what if the song sucks? But the song was amazing, it was perfect, and he drew from the script and then Jacob Kogan learned it in two days and we were all very scared.
Q: What was your inspiration for writing the film and are you trying to get a message across?
Ratliff: This is definitely a population-control movie.
Q: How influenced were you by the 1950s movie The Bad Seed?
Ratliff: You might not believe this, but we didn’t even know about The Bad Seed. We started writing it and when we started mapping it out, we heard about The Bad Seed and we went and saw it. It’s going to be compared with The Bad Seed from here on out but I think Jacob could take on [Bad Seed star] Rhoda Penmark.
Q: How did you decide to balance out the comedic tone and the really creepy, scary tone?
Ratliff: Well, I think there’s a real connection between anxiety and laughter and David and I really tried to explore that with the script and we were really walking a fine line with that, letting the laugh happen when there’s a tension release that could work in there. I believe in integrating those two; I really like laughter with tension. |
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