SHOCK discusses the hidden horror in the new Sarah Silverman addiction drama I SMILE BACK.
As we started discussing explicitly in Lee Gambins new Secretly Scary column, horror in cinema doesnt always hide behind phantasmagorical images of monsters, masked madmen or spectral visitors. These are but hooks that the genre uses to sugar coat the deeper truths and anxieties that define a bulk of the make-up of the human condition.
And so, when you strip the aesthetics away from the horror film you simply find life.
In Lees column on the 1962 drama THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, he attributes alcoholism to vampirism. In Darren Aronofskys harrowing 2000 nightmare REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, the director called it a monster movie and mentioned that the monster in this case was the smack that his characters jam endlessly into their bodies.
The same comparisons can be made for director Adam Salkys nightmarish new drama I SMILE BACK, based on the novel by author Amy Koppelman (who adapts her own work with writer Paige Dylan).
The film, which had been garnering positive reviews on the festival circuit before seeing limited release in the US and select Canadian territories (it’s also on VOD everywhere), casts beloved gonzo comedian Sarah Silverman in the lead, her typical absurdist humor shelved in favor of delving deep into the heart of domestic darkness.
In it, she plays Laney, beautiful suburban wife with a loving husband (Josh Charles) and two perfect children. On the surface, all is well. But beneath that thin veneer, Laney is falling apart. Plagued with a rapidly accelerating mental illness and adrift in her addictions to chemicals and poisons of every sort, Laney has unprotected extra-marital sex with family friends and exhibits an endless array of self-destructive behaviours. Shes sinking. Fast.
But Laneys choices dont just serve to smother her soul, they batter down the people that love her the most, with her son starting to exhibit the same tics that she herself has now allowed to spiral into the stratosphere.
I SMILE BACK is a drama. Marketed as one. Classified as one. But the effect it has on an audience, at least on this writer, is one of palpable horror.
Indeed after seeing the film at the Toronto International Film Festival this past year, I was ruined for other legitimate horror films I would also watch during that run. Nothing even came close to unraveling me the same way.
In light of my reading of I SMILE BACK as a horror movie, I contacted Salky to discuss his film and get his own thoughts about its possible role in the genre.
SHOCK: Lets start by getting your take on I SMILE BACK playing as a horror film. Does this make sense to you?
SALKY: Hmmm. Well, I know that a specific audience could see I SMILE BACK and see it as terrifying. There are so many things Laney is grappling with, her mental illness, her addiction and inner turmoil; these things are all terrifying because they cannot be controlled. So if viewers feel that a lack of self-control is scary then they would totally see it as that sort of film, I get that.
SHOCK: I understand that Laney is a character adapted from a literary source, but do you know people like Laney?
SALKY: My first exposure to the story was the screenplay actually and then I read the novel. I was moved by both sources. This is first and foremost a human story, a universal story because I think everyone knows someone like Laney. So the answer is yes, I do. And I wouldnt choose to direct something unless I had a personal connection to it.
SHOCK: On the genre film train of thought, its nice to see great Chris Sarandon (FRIGHT NIGHT) again on-screen and given a real role to work with
SALKY: For sure. Chris plays Laneys father and we were so lucky to get him. He was recommended by our casting director and I was thrilled when he said hed do it. The day we shot with him, however, was one of the most challenging days of shooting in my life. We did a location shoot for and sent tech scouts before we started shooting in upstate New York and it all checked out. But on the day we were filming, there was weird weather and both JFK and La Guardia Airports re-routed all the planes and I mean, all of them directly over the spot we were filming in. We have some hilarious B-roll footage of the planes flying right over the actors heads and man, it made recording sound very difficult. But Chris was so steady. We rolled and suddenly planes would fly by; hed wait, then snap back in to character. We all rallied around him that day
SHOCK: Sarah has done nudity in film before (see Sarah Polleys TAKE THIS WALTZ) but nothing as raw or explicit as she does here. Not only does she engage in transgressive consensual sex, theres at least one scene of sexual violence which was almost impossible to watch. Was it difficult to shoot these sequences?
SALKY: Sarahs an artist, first and foremost. It really felt that every scene was difficult to shoot because there was so much emotional and psychological baggage and it got very intense, all the time. As far as the sex is concerned, Its understandable how people would be curious about those scenes and how those scenes would play out while shooting, but to me its just a part of being prepared as a director and going in with a vision; its about everything down to the blocking and having an open discussion. You know the scenes between Laney and her lover Donny?
SHOCK: Yes incredibly intense stuff
SALKY: Yeah, well that was meant to be shot much later in the schedule but we had some production difficulties shooting here in NYC in the winter and, because of weather they had to shoot that first scene on the first day!
SHOCK: Yikes! Did they even know each other?
SALKY: Well, we had the chance to rehearse the night before. But we had no choice because of the weather and these were the only scenes we could shoot. We told them this and they were like, yeah well do it, and I think it ended up being a bonding moment for the whole crew; we saw we could do this incredibly challenging and vulnerable kind of work on the first day and after that, we were ready for anything.
SHOCK: Going forward, would you shoot the more intense stuff first by intent, then?
SALKY: Its interesting but yes, the answer is that now, Im not afraid of it. Its a well-known technique to do something easy on the first day, when the crew is just getting to know each other. In this case it was the opposite and it worked out great.
MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT BELOW!
SHOCK: The ending of the film is devastating in that Laney, battered and bloody, just eyeballs her husband and walks away into the sunset so to speak. Its an ambiguous and haunting denouement. What is your take on Laneys fate, post-credits?
SALKY: There are two answers to that question. The best answer that Ive heard, from the world of recovery, is that she can either die, go to jail or get help. When I heard that, that was it. But the thing that was most important to me about the ending is that Laney is leaving her family; when she walks out that door, she comes out of the most authentic place in the entire story. She realizes she cannot be there for them so she leaves.
SHOCK: So, when read like that is it a happy ending? Does it climax on a grace note?
SALKY: Yeah, for me it does. She knows it would be dangerous for her to stay. It also hearkens back to Chris character, implying that there is some sort of ongoing, multi-generational thing happening here, a familial curse of illness and addiction, our past and family’s past, the cycle continues until it’s broken.
