Director Addison Heimann (Hypochondriac) has put together one of the weirdest and most hilarious movies of the year. Called Touch Me, the psychosexual horror-comedy stars Oliva Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jordan Gavaris, Marlene Forte, and Paget Brewster. Touch Me premieres on January 28 at 10:15 p.m. MT at The Ray Theatre as part of Sundance 2025’s Midnight Section.
“In Touch Me, after a series of unfortunate events leaves their house uninhabitable and reeking of poo, two co-dependent friends, Joey and Craig, find themselves homeless and out of options. That’s when Joey’s mysterious ex resurfaces. He wants her back. Along with being hot, Brian also happens to be an alien whose touch makes anxiety and depression disappear. The two venture to his compound for the weekend with the hope of being healed from past traumas, but underneath Brian’s veneer of healing is a sinister plot filled with murder, mayhem, and blood. Touch Me is an psychosexual horror-comedy about the nature of co-dependent friendships and how far we are willing to go for a slice of happiness,” reads the official description.
Tyler Treese: I wanted to congratulate you on having potentially the first movie to have a werewolf dildo monster.
Addison Heimann: Thank you.
Touch Me has a very funny sense of humor. Can you speak to the tone you found for this? Because it just constantly surprised me. I had such a fun time watching it.
Oh, thank you.
Well, honestly, I think it just comes from my own very traumatic childhood and also just like view on the world of people who suffer from… I have OCD, and so people who suffer from this. The only way to really kind of deal with it in this way and is have this kind of morose humor.
But also the entire movie is kind of like my love letter to pink films of the seventies and Japanese film. And those movies are like balls to the wall. Crazy. Like saturated color, just like fight scenes, just like weird sex. All just insanity.
I became obsessed with that when I started learning Japanese five years ago. I wanted to kind of hybridize like my love for the cinema of that era and my own kind of weird personal humor and view on how I kind of deal with my mental illness stuff. And that was how it was created and born.
You mentioned the weird sex. There’s definitely a lot of that in Touch Me. How is it filming those cross-species intercourse scenes? Because what possibly prepares you for doing such weird things with tentacles? What was your approach?
Yeah. you know, it’s so funny how kind of like technical sex scenes are in movies, especially kind of alien sex scenes. Especially alien sex scenes are very technical. But because we were doing like completely you know, practical effects, it was like all hands on deck.
Also we had a rigger to like pull Olivia and [Jordan Gavaris] into the air and have the tentacles kind of around. I wish there was a BTS of this, but basically like you know, there’s the camera as we’re like slowly going, and then there’s like two people over here. One with the remote control tentacle working a puppet tentacle in the back, moving it over there as my cinematographer is taking these weird lenses and kind of just like shoving them in front of the thing. All while my amazing actress Olivia is trying to sell this idea of being euphoric with an alien.
Fortunately, we had a really incredible intimacy coordinator, Sasha Smith, who helped us do all of that as well. We’re all trying to do these like different things and also keep our actors safe, but also make it sexy at the same time. And Sasha was able to do everything at the same time and make sure we were all there. But it was so funny how it just like, “Okay, well, like Olivia’s naked, or we’re doing these things,” and everybody’s just so focused and just making sure, like, the camera’s okay. And we’re all really respectful, but it ends up coming alive in the edit.
You mentioned Olivia Taylor Dudley. I wanted to ask about her because she’s the lead of Touch Me and she’s asked to really go for it and she completely does it. How was it getting her on board? And were you surprised she was willing to go all the way there for every single scene? It’s great.
She came about it in an interesting way. I had an actress that was attached to it that I wrote it for. [She] booked another gig, and unfortunately had to drop out. So Olivia actually came pretty late to the game, and we were a month out from shooting, and she was about to go shoot another movie.
My producer, Dave, was like, “I think Olivia likes weird.” And so he texted her and was like, “Do you like weird? Do you like technical sex?” And she was like, “These are buzzwords. Would you like to send me the script?”
And so she read the script, and we met an hour later. We didn’t know each other. It was one of those things where we kind of have to make the decision really quickly, but we bonded over our shared OCD and we talked for a while about that. Then I was like, “okay, yeah, you’re on board, you wanna do the movie?” And she was like, “hell yeah. “
She went away for a month, did another movie, and she came back. That first day — so that first opening monologue — that’s like eight minutes? That was her first take. First day. So she came right about just like swinging. I would work with her again in a heartbeat. A
She’s also an executive producer on the movie because ultimately that was it, right? When you’re doing something like this and I’m asking you to do all these things, I can’t help but give you creative help to create this movie and create the look and have some agency and creative control of over this. And she was wildly helpful. She was with us from the shoot through the edit, through all of the design stuff. [She] helped shape it. I owed that to her because I asked her to do crazy.
I’m glad you mentioned the opening scene in Touch Me because I wanted to ask about that because she tells this very long story about an alien encounter. It’s mostly the camera’s just shot on her face, zooming in. It’s a very long shot. What made you wanna start that way? Because it really sucked me in. And that’s a credit to really her performance and her storytelling there. It’s a great scene.
Yeah, thank you.
There’s like a million ways that could have gone very wrong, you know?
Oh, trust me, I got questions about it. People were like, “Are you sure?” And I’m just like, “Mm-hmm. Yep.”
Ultimately the entirety of this movie is a big swing after big swing after big swing that could either succeed or it could fail. And I wanted to do it because I watched this movie Resurrection – that Rebecca Hall is the star of – and the monologue in there is about halfway through. I remember watching that movie because I was engrossed by it. But the entire time, you’re like, “What did this guy do to her?” And then she gives the monologue and it’s a single take. Never cuts away. And she tells the most bad thing you’ve ever heard in your life to someone who goes, “is this a joke?”
And I was like, “That is some of the coolest…” Then the movie keeps going.
That was one of the most arresting moments for me that I’ve ever seen in cinema. I wanted to recreate that. And I started with it instead of doing it halfway through.
I think something I found in the filmmaking is it’s supposed to be set up as if it’s not real, and then you find out that it’s real. But I think I’ve realized that with the movie, when you get the description, it’s like everyone’s gonna know that it’s an actual alien.
But you’re right, it’s really a testament to Olivia’s performance. And like I said, it was her first take, first day. And I am so grateful for her because I think, yeah, she’s a big part of how she sold it. And you know, I think also the movie is so wild or gets so wild by the end that everything in that monologue preps you for the rest of the movie. And that’s kind of my impetus of wanting to start that way.
Yeah, that’s a great point. I’m glad you mentioned Resurrection. I didn’t put those two together, but now I can totally see that throughline. That film is just crazy as well. It’s wonderful.
Also, I really love the idea that aliens just all wear tracksuits. Where did you come up with this?
I need to lie and be like, “Yeah, this is…” But I really just thought it was funny. Like, I really wish it was just like, “Oh, yeah, there was a friend I knew who always wore tracksuits and did hip-hop dancing.” [But] it’s like an alien who’s like an alien, but also does that Lilo and Stitch thing where they try to act like people.
Brian’s version of that is to like always wear like different multicolored track suits and learn hip hop dancing. And like, that’s his version of “being normal” and also eats like chicken tenders and french fries. Because also essentially he’s just like a child at heart. And that’s kind of where that where that came from.
I love it. It’s so fun seeing his different tracksuits throughout this. What was the genesis for Touch Me? Did you have an interest in aliens? What sparked this wonderful weirdness?
There’s this movie I watched when I was in the deep dark depression called The Untamed, which was about a kind of alien that people go to. And I was so sad and I was like, I want that to happen to me. Like, that’s what I really want, you know?
I’ve been learning Japanese for five years, and I was really entrenched in the cinema of the seventies. And obviously that is all a part of that kind of world. I couldn’t make my anxiety and depression go away, and I wanted to use that and explore.
And so when I, when I kind of created this character, I was also going through like a pretty devastating friendship breakup at the time. No one talks about friendship breakups. It’s like, “Oh, they suck,” and they can really hurt. And so I wanted to make a movie that explored mental illness and also be like a wild tentacle alien sex romp world where I could just make you laugh and make you think. But also really make you have fun and go on this wild ride. And that kind of all glommed on and thus was the genesis for the movie.
You’ve mentioned trauma and learning Japanese. When you watch Touch Me, clearly so much of that is you, and comes from you. And you’ve written and directed both of your films so far. How is that just experience of really putting yourself into these pieces of art? Feeling brave enough to share that all with the world? Because I would be terrified.
It’s true. When I was growing up and going through all this stuff, I was always afraid to talk about it and then slowly became an open book about it. And I think art has a way to create community in the type of way that like that I love. And when I made my first movie, I found that very, very gratifying and very cathartic. Because it’s about my mental breakdown. It was my first one, and it was like, people would come and talk to me and they would like regale me with their stories, and we would kind of find community in the idea that we all feel kind of less alone.
And I think if I can like volunteer as tribute in order to just talk, and it’s also therapeutic for me because I think I’m gonna spend my entire kind of career deep diving into this like, nebulous world of mental crap that I’ve been forced to deal with.
If I can put it in a way that feels palatable to be viewed, if I can make you laugh, if I can make you maybe cry or like say, “ew”… If I could do all these things, and at the same time entertain you and we can have a conversation about it. What’s funny is the amount of people who I’ve talked to this movie about and then like come up. I’ve like found the community of people who have OCD.
It’s so funny because it’s such like an invisible [disorder] – like no one knows. No one knows how to necessarily communicate that because a lot of it exists like in your head and you hide a lot of it. So if I can, it’s terrifying, obviously. But I also love the amount of community that it fosters when somebody else could come to me and talk about their own because of something that I’ve done. And that’s very meaningful to me.
One of my favorite scenes in Touch Me is a flashback sequence. This guy’s on Grindr, but it’s presented as a silent film. What led to that aesthetic choice? I’d love to hear more about that. That just cracked me up so much.
Yeah, no, it makes me laugh too.
Honestly, it’s twofold. One, it’s still targeting old Universal Monster movies and also Japanese monster movies, like Godzilla. The whole 4:3 aspect ratio. But because it was such a modern context, we were like, “If we’re gonna shoot a black-and-white sequence, how can we have phones in this movie?”
I was like, “Well, what if we did silent film records as Grindr notifications?” And then everybody was like, “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” And I was like, “I really hope this works.” And it tickles me a lot, I think.
I feel like a lot of it is just like, “Why?” Because I thought it was so funny. Like, that’s essentially why. Because it just made me laugh. And that whole sequence is just back in time monster movie aesthetic. We do the Psycho music, and of course we can’t use a phone, so we’re gonna do a silent foam block instead.
My last question for you, what does it mean for you to be showing this film at Sundance and for this festival to really be celebrating such unique and weird and wonderful films like yours?
It’s kind of euphoric in a way I can’t describe. Like, we got into Sundance. And I’m like, “I knew it.” And I’m like, “No, you didn’t.”
No one just gets into Sundance, and you’re like, “Yeah, I deserve it. Like, I deserve Sundance.”
I’m just really grateful to the programmers. And to be honest, shocked that they are choosing to program this weird little story like mine. And what’s even crazier is like Adam Montgomery – who did our little blurb on Sundance – got the movie exact. They understood it in a way that I didn’t expect like anybody to, ’cause you do something and go, “This might go over a lot of people’s heads, I don’t know.” But they got it in a way that and I’m like, Anne Hathaway, winning an Oscar.
It came true. It really is that thing where I’m like – I’ll probably never get this again. And obviously, it’s nerve-wracking, and there are all these stakes to it.
But at the same time, I made an ascendance that’s so crazy. And I can put that in my bucket. My little feather in my hat. And that’ll take me at least until next year and then I’ll get sad again. But that to me, I mean, it means the world.
Thanks to Addison Heimann for taking the time to talk about Touch Me. More info can be found on Sundance’s website.
