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| Anything That Moves Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
One of the most impressive films at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, erotic thriller Anything That Moves follows sweet-natured young cycle courier and sex worker Liam (Hal Baum), whose happy-go-lucky life goes off track when somebody starts killing people he has slept with. Shot on film, it’s a beautifully observed tribute to past filmmaking traditions with performances and technical work that’s spot on. At the helm is Alex Phillips, who previously made a splash at Fantasia with his wildly inventive take on addiction All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms. He told me then that he was hoping to work with many of the same people on this project, so when we catch up, that’s the first thing I ask him about.
“It's not what happened,” he says. “There are some carryovers, like Cyle Williamson. He did a lot of the effects on this film. He worked on the Worms film. Trevor Dawkins, who played Benny Boom, he's the major dead body that sets off the story – we see him in his scene with Hal and Jiana [Nicole], but yeah. And then one of my producers from Worms, Georgia [Bernstein] also worked on this as well, so it's a little bit of mix and match.
“I found new collaborators in Hunter Zimny from New York and Conner Schuurmans as gaffer. So shot it and Connor was on the lights and they were great to work with. It was a fantastic collaboration. I had a great time working with them. Oh yeah, and Spencer [Parsons] also. Spencer helped out with Worms and he came on as a producer on this one as well. I think in partnering with Vinegar Syndrome and also with Edwin Linker, it opened up new doors and allowed the production to grow since Worms.”
We talk about Hal Baum playing Liam, and I tell him that I found that a really interesting choice because he's not an obvious choice for the role, but he's got an innocent look about him that's really important to the character.
“That's exactly why I chose him,” Alex says. “I've known Hal for a long time. He's from the south side of Chicago and he worked with me on one of my earliest shorts called Who's A Good Boy. I had desperately tried to work with him since then, and once the film All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms came out, he found me at a screening and was like, ‘I want to work with you again. I need to.’ So I was like, ‘Great, because I know exactly what to do with you.’
“I really wanted the wig to go on his head. That was part of my idea for the character, because Hal is a bald musician and singer/songwriter and I think that's part of what gives him his innocence. He has a very poetic way of looking at the world and you can kind of see it in his eyes. I just really love the way that he internalised the character and he approaches every one of his co-stars with a real gentle empathy. That's just the way he carries himself in life as well.”
That really shows in his early scene with Ginger Lynn Allen.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I didn't know what to expect with Ginger. I knew I wanted to work with her and I knew she had enormous star power, but getting the camera on her and getting her in that room, she really just lights up, literally and metaphorically. She really pulls the lens in. It was fantastic to work with her, and she was totally open to everything and anything that I wanted to do, both in terms of physicality, but then also with the dialogue and relationship with Hal. It is a great way to start the movie, just bringing us into a sort of safety and a sense of home. We're the sort beautiful suburbs and they have a very nurturing relationship with each other. So I kind of wanted to, in a traditional storytelling way, be like, ‘We're leaving home now,’ with him leaving being with her.
We discuss the prep for the film and the beautiful way that he recreated the aesthetics of a certain era of pornography.
“As a team, we watched a lot of Sixties and Seventies porn to get prepped. One of my favorites is Hot And Saucy Pizza Girls, which ironically has a similar plot structure in terms of there's like a serial killer out getting these delivery kids, which is completely unintentional. I didn't know that going into it. And then another one – I believe it's called Corruption – that was a really interesting. It's kind of like if Nic Roeg or Lynch made pornography. It's really not done for pleasure. It's done for storytelling. Even though there's hardcore sex in it, there's a sense of conflict in every sex scene you see. It's all about power dynamics and the complicated way that the characters are relating to each other. I don't know. It's a really interesting one.”
Looking for people who fit that vibe, he included a number of non-professionals in his cast.
“It's not just porn actors, but also non-actors or local actors. It's more about the collaboration than it is about star power, especially at the budget level that we're working at. It's just like everybody being dedicated to making the scene work, being dedicated to the characters, and then also being willing to play with the text. You know I'm handing them sometimes pretty strange things to say and do, but they all commit to it and really make the scene work and make it feel authentic. So, yeah, I'm very interested in working with people who aren't necessarily actors, even though there are a lot of great actors in this as well.
“Mixing and matching and creating the world with them, it gives it a more organic feel, I think, in this kind of story. Especially because the story is so heightened and we're playing with absurdity, but they have to ground the world with their bodies.”
The light and colours in the film are gorgeous, which I understand is thanks to the use of Kodak stock.
“I loved shooting on film, and that was one of the perks of working with Vinegar Syndrome. They brought in the film stock and helped us work with the post-processing lab, the Metro Post, and Kodak. All of my references, all of the movies that I was watching, were shot on film. With All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms, when I made that, I was trying to emulate film, so to be able to do it authentically was a real treat. And then, like you said, you know, you can really push colour, push shadow, push light. The way that the highlights blow out is just impossible to replicate digitally.
“People treat film very carefully. We didn't do that. We shot in a more run and gun, cowboy sort of way, just trying to have as much fun and punch in as much cool colour and moves as we possibly could afford in the day.”
I tell him that I love the way that he conveys orgasm, with overexposure and then glitter eyeshadow. What did that idea come from?
“Where did it come from? That's a great question.” He thinks for a moment. “I wanted to convey the connection and power that Liam has with his clients and kind of push it over the top and show that what he does is extremely special and that that's part of the desperation and what's at stake in the movie. But why it literally became blowing out with these long lights and the eyeshadow, I guess I don't really know. It's what felt right when I was writing it. But I should mention that the glitter, that was something that both Jade and Jiana came up with. They did their own eyeshadow and make-up every day, so that was them.”
It’s notable that although it’s a film about sex workers with a lot of sex scenes in it, the actors are no more exposed than they might be in a more mainstream thriller.
“I don't ever go into blocking a scene or blocking actors or blocking the camera in a way to capture people's bodies in an objectifying way,” he says. “It really is about movement and relationships between the characters. So it's what makes it in front of the lens and what doesn't. I didn't really think about how I was going to frame something out. I just like let people naturally move through the room. That was part of the conversation with the actors too: ‘There will be sex and nudity in this, but it isn't going to be one where we're going to get extreme close-ups of your body parts to cut in as a long take shot.’ So, yeah, that's just part of the way that the movie works.”
It's going to be interesting, I suggest, to see how censors respond, because there's a sense of there being a lot more shown than there really is.
“Yeah, absolutely. It's something we've talked a lot about because we want to do a theatrical run of this. I think it ultimately comes down to the distributors and the theatres and what they want.”
A lot of the story hinges on emotional intimacy, which is interesting because it's something that a lot of sex workers avoid for fear of over-attachment and potential stalking. Obviously some of that is going on in the film, but that gentleness that Liam has is very important.
“Yeah, yeah definitely. And we see the repercussions of it with where that's why he's so wanted, and wanted by a serial killer. That that was really important to me too, as the whole heart of the film is that this intimacy is often a problem in our everyday lives. This sort of deep empathy is something that creates conflict. I think that's something that you can apply to anybody's life.”
Then, in opposition to that, there are the characters of the cops, who are perfect 1970s stereotypes. He grins. “Oh, yeah, those guys are great. They're really, really fun. I watched this one movie, Busting – that was a film that I was looking at to think about these cops. That and The French Connection. They were super fun. And they know each other. They're both indie filmmakers in their own right, so they were buddies beforehand, but they were absolutely down to make themselves as awful as possible. And then going back to what you're saying about openness and empathy, part of the deal with them is that they are stunted. They're blocking themselves off from accessing this thing that Liam is so open to – more open than anybody else.”
I ask the night shoots, because those seemed quite a challenging thing to take on when working with a small team on a small budget.
“Yeah, especially on film.” He nods. “For the beach scene we shot all night, and we were trying to think creatively about how to light it out there, especially with a low budget. So, like, part of choosing that location is this water treatment plants that's in the distance with insanely bright security lights that you can see. That light washed over the beach and helped us. And then we did get a couple of HMIs with generators. That was a big rental for that day.
“Also part of the deal was shooting a lot of stuff in front of this flare that Jack [Dunphy], who plays Dodge, is waving around. He lights this flare, that's what lights Liam's face, and that's what lights Johnny Chicago. That is kind of a fun way to heighten the stakes of the scene and create a real sense of conflict, but then also a real practical way to light these people's faces. So, yeah, it was just about thinking creatively and working within our limited budget.
How does it feel to be back at Fantasia with this, two years after Worms?
“It feels really good. It's like coming home and I'm excited for the audience because now that I know how great the audiences are there, I'm just excited for them to see this movie.”
He does have another film in the works, and it’s one that, if all goes well, might see him return for a third time.
“I'm working on a sort of a surreal horror western. It’s not a period piece. It will be set in the present day. I'm working towards that right now.”
