The Editor feels like a big warm hug to Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. You obviously love these movies, so how did you find a way to spoof them without condescending to them?
ADAM BROOKS People have asked us how we find that balance between parody and homage and authenticity – and I’ve realized that we didn’t think about it at all. It just comes from a pure, honest place of actually loving this stuff. This was our good time, just sitting and watching these giallo movies as a group.
Which giallo elements absolutely had to be included in The Editor?
BROOKS The stilted dubbing is inherently funny it’s a bizarre cadence that gets created by [being] written by Italians in English for an American audience and dubbed in later. It becomes a mishmash when they try to match the mouth movements. And we always loved the set pieces – the music, the bright colours. I’m a huge fan of super-saturated colourful stuff that you feel like you could take a bite out of. But then that also can be funny when it’s in a movie like Inferno and everything’s pink and blue for no reason [laughs]. There’s not even an attempt at excusing where this light is coming from….
You included cult actor Udo Kier, who instantly connects us to movies like Suspiria and the Warhol horror movies.
BROOKS Udo. Let us praise that guy. That guy was a dream. A dream. He was so cool, so nice, so generous. He came and he got it. Instantly.
MATTHEW KENNEDY And then he wouldn’t leave. He just wanted to hang out.
Maybe he just wanted to see whether you were going to take off those -ridiculous moustaches and sideburns.
BROOKS There’s certain things we could actually beat better movies on. Like, Berberian Sound Studio is a better, classier movie with more money and more artistry – but we did way more authentic hairstyles than they did. And I think it’s because we had more preparation time, probably.
KENNEDY We grew our own [70s] sideburns and moustaches.
BROOKS Yeah, our sideburns and moustaches were way better than theirs! Theirs are very thin, very 2000s. They’re not authentic.
Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks on the lucky breaks they caught making The Editor, starting with casting Sheila Campbell, a dead ringer for The Beyond’s Catriona MacColl:
Check out my review of the film here.
