At first glance, many may have assumed that Bob Odenkirk’s new film, Normal, was another sequel in the Nobody franchise. With the same star, writer, and producer, the two films do share much of the same DNA. However, the team’s new movie is not only a completely new story but attempts to blend genres in a way that further separates it from its predecessor.
Mashable’s Entertainment Editor, Kristy Puchko, caught up with the Normal team at SXSW to talk about the film, its themes, and why they chose to film on 35mm.
The film’s writer, Derek Kolstad (John Wick, Nobody), noted how this film differs from Nobody, the team’s previous collaboration. “To this point, you know, in Nobody, if there’s a house on fire, Hutch is going to run into it and hopefully fight anyone who’s in there. In Normal, he’s going to look at the house on fire and say, ‘I don’t know.'”
Odenkirk added, “It’s not that much fire.” The Normal star described the film as “a story of a guy who has lost trust in himself, his instincts. In the course of interacting with the people of this small town who are hiding something from him, he is desperately trying to avoid seeing it. And then his hand is forced. Once he sees it, he has to re-engage with the situation and the world around him. And then there’s a flip-floppery of allegiances that is very surprising and probably a bit inscrutable. When asked to define, sort of, the subtextual themes, I’m like, ‘Wow, there’s like six of them,’ and they’re a little bit conflicting. And that’s what’s great about it.”
Ben Wheatley (The Meg, Kill List, Rebecca), the latest addition to the production team, when asked what attracted him to the film, replied, “In the kind of range of things I still want to make. It basically has the DNA of a cowboy movie, and it has it has the white hat, black hat kind of style. It has a sheriff, which is a point of morality in the middle. But it still speaks to my kind of slightly twisted kind of sense of morality as well.”
In the full interview on YouTube, the team also talks about the undeniable difference of filming with practical effects as opposed to CGI, the way certain movies hit differently as we get older, and why it was important that Normal be an homage to the classic action-thriller genre. “I think one of the reasons we’re projecting this on 35 millimeter is because we want to point to that quality,” Odenkirk said. “There’s a satisfaction, I hope, that we’re achieving. That was the reason for the poster that we have. The poster is really a throwback visual.”
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