What are some movies that inspired you? What movies, both horror and not, should people watch alongside yours?
Danny: “The Exorcist,” “Let the Right One In,” “Memories of Murder,” “The Vanishing.”
Michael: “Return.”
Danny: Yeah, those films feel pretty good.
Let’s pick at random. Let’s pick “Memories of Murder.” What about that film did you draw from?
Danny: The way that Bong Joon-ho is able to merge tone. He’s able to go to horror, to drama, to comedy in a matter of minutes, and it all feels like one coherent piece. It’s blending genre seamlessly, which he’s a master of.
Are you guys happy being horror guys? When I interviewed [“Hereditary” director] Ari Aster, he made it very clear to me he liked horror, but he didn’t want to be a horror guy forever. Whereas other directors are like, “Horror for life!” Where do you feel you fall?
Danny: I think I will always return to horror. But we want to experiment with different things. Like, we really want to do an action film as well. We’ve written a romantic comedy. I don’t know, I just like to jump around and tell the story that’s exciting us the most at that time.
Michael: Yeah, I feel like we want to tackle different genres, but horror has always been … it’s the first thing that we’ve loved when we were kids, and it’s the first genre of stuff that we liked as kids was horror. So it’s always going to be with us and we always want to do it, but definitely don’t want to be just tied to horror.
Having seen “Talk to Me,” I have to hear about what the hell kind of romcom that you two would write.
Danny: Well, me and Michael don’t write together, just so you know. I wish we … [jokes] it sucks that we have to do press tours together, we do not enjoy each other’s company. Yeah. But yeah, it was just a personal, fun, romantic comedy story that I’ve put out, but I don’t think I’d want to direct that next. I’m not comfortable directing that yet.
Michael: Oh, we’ve got a coming of age thing as well.
Danny: Yeah.
Michael: More coming of age adventure one, as well. Yeah, a bunch of different genre stuff.
I’m increasingly impressed by the quality of the storytelling and the technical craft that people are bringing to online videos. What advice would you give people who are working on TikTok, on YouTube, and creating their films there? What should they be doing to become storytellers as opposed to just, you know, content creators?
Danny: I think that constantly experimenting with their craft online and not letting low views or anything make you feel sad or whatever, ’cause people can always return to that video, and over time a video can get an audience and find its audience. So it’s like, just constantly make stuff, ’cause you constantly keep improving. And then also on the side, if you can, be trying to work on that bigger thing and always be chipping away at a bigger project, like a feature film script. That’s the first step of trying to get into the feature film side, is just to have a solid script that you can start showing people.
Michael: And there’s a weird stigma that comes from being a YouTuber. But I feel directors from the past generations, if YouTube was a thing, they’d be uploading to it. It’s a way to access and interact with an international audience. If we didn’t have YouTube, we’d go the route of climbing the ladder of short films. Whereas YouTube gives you a whole other way to do it, and I hope that this film shows that YouTube stigma shouldn’t really be a thing. If you’re a storyteller, you’re a storyteller. It doesn’t matter what medium you come from.
I feel like between “Talk to Me” and “Skinamarink,” there’s this generation of filmmakers who are just emerging from this world, that’s really exciting. Is there anybody else who we should have our eye on?
Danny: Oh yeah, there was one guy that we — I think his name is… D-E-G-O. Is that his name?
Michael: Diego, Dego?
Danny: Dego? Let me quickly double check this.
Michael: This guy’s really cool. We love him. He’s recent. We found him and we were like, “Whoa.”
Danny: He’s very creative and he’s got a dark tinge on as well.
Michael: I’m going to find it, I’m going to find it, I’m going to find it.
Danny: It’s Dego. D … D-E-G-O? Sorry, we’ll give him a good shout out. Yeah, D-E-G-O. Dego.
Michael: Dego Boop. Dego Boop. B-O-O-P. You should watch his stuff.
“Talk to Me” hits theaters on July 28, 2023.
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