What could be scarier than the dead rising from their graves, summoning the apocalypse as they come back to life?
In the satirical monster movie Rumours, directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson have a definitive answer – making the only people who can save humanity be the clueless, out-of-touch leaders of the free world. This is what happens when the G7 unite in Germany for their annual meeting, with the likes of the uptight German chancellor (Cate Blanchett) and the elderly, forgetful American President (Charles Dance) tasked with getting to the bottom of what’s going on.
The filmmakers never set out to make a political comedy, but like the best works of art, they ended up doing so after a personal joke got out of hand.
Maddin explained to Zavvi: “We were writing a lot of scripts where we’d be struggling with the direction of the story, and whenever things were going haywire, we’d add the G7 to the story. There’s a moment in Days Of Heaven when the flying circus suddenly comes to town, and that’s what it was like when they appeared in these completely different scripts – from that, we grew to love the moments where the cavalry rocked in, so we decided to focus on them entirely.
“It imposed a level of discipline on us, because our other scripts were very unwieldy, and now, we had seven characters, a limited location, and a narrative goal that was the same as all G7 meetings: they had to write a statement they’d all agree on. You need obstructions to write, and we love having them!”
Whereas most political satire requires an in-depth knowledge of the subjects, the trio quickly realised there was no point here.
Evan explained: “The end result would have been the same if we didn’t research it all! Plus, it’s hard to research specific G7 summits, because it’s rarely reported, so you have to look at people’s memoirs, and they are usually self-aggrandising and unreliable.”
When they started work on the film, Donald Trump was still in his first Presidential term, and the directors took pains to ensure none of the world leaders looked like the real ones. The American President here speaks with Charles Dance’s usual British accent, despite saying he’s American, a deliberately nonsensical idea – but one undercut by this character sharing many traits with the current occupier of the White House.
“It didn’t even occur to me that people would compare Dance and Joe Biden”, Maddin added. “They’re similar in age, but Dance is far more robust – and when we wrote this, Biden wasn’t nicknamed as “Sleepy Joe”, so we weren’t trying to remind people of that.
“We know that this is something sketch comedy does better. We wouldn’t want to make anything with someone showing up and doing a Trump impression!”
The group knew they wanted to make a monster movie – and as their film is being distributed by Universal in the UK, they were overjoyed when I pointed out they had made a Universal Monsters movie by accident – but had “no desire” to make anything scary. One of the most crucial stages of their creative process was working out what a horror movie that doesn’t want to scare people could look like.
“I have no idea how to scare anybody!”, Maddin laughed. “So a horror movie without those scary elements is more like a fairy tale, or something allegorical.
“But I hate allegories; now, my favourite things about Frankenstein or Dracula are the allegorical elements, but when I first saw them, I was too young to figure those out. And by twelfth grade, I still couldn’t, and I kept getting failing grades in high school – because of that, we make a concerted effort to turn away from allegories whenever they begin materialising in our writing.
“It’s strange, as I love this idea of horror, but I’ve never been able to get past that. I think I’m drawn to self-cancelling miracles in film, which in this case, is pulling off something that has the flavour of an allegory, only to immediately undermine that.”
Or, as Evan calls it, “Turning the water into wine, then back into water when nobody’s looking!”
It should be highlighted that the monsters of Rumours aren’t zombies, but rather Bog People, naturally mummified beings that have been preserved underground in peat. Unlike mummies, these bog bodies vary wildly in how much has been maintained, with many returning with skin and internal organs intact, if nothing else.
“I don’t mind zombie movies, especially some of the older ones”, Evan added. “But we didn’t want to make one as the competition was stiff – and where zombies are stiff, our creatures are floppy!
“They’re novel in that they’re boneless and don’t really pose a real threat. They’re not going to come and eat your brains, as they were all victims themselves in their own time, murdered and thrown into a bog, where nobody assumed they would be preserved.”
So, if Rumours is not inspired by horror, but is shaped by a looming apocalypse – which Maddin says is deliberately designed so you don’t know if it’s “minutes or years away” - then does that make the film an offbeat take on the all-star disaster movie, closer in spirit to Mars Attacks! than Contagion?
Maddin continued: “We were far too humble to think we ever could have assembled a cast like this, but we knew that getting a movie like this made required a star – and when Cate Blanchett joins your film, your first choice for every role wants to be in it!
“Our first order of business was getting Roy Dupuis to star as the Canadian Prime Minister, as we wrote the part for him, and only had him in mind for the whole process. We worked with him ten years ago and really needed him, but it never occurred to us to check in at any point and see if he would be available, so it was a huge relief when he was – I don’t think the movie would have happened if he wasn’t.”
Thanks to the charm of actors like Dance and Dupuis, the world leaders risk become oddly empathetic, even if the film never shies away from highlighting that they are responsible for everything that’s gone wrong. This was one of the biggest writing challengers the directors faced.
Evan said: “We started from a place where we viewed all of these people as to blame for the worst things in the world. There are other world leaders who belong in their company, but the G7 are bad enough as it is!
“But my problem with writing a movie about people doing a bad job at something is that I will start to feel for them. There’s so much pathos in seeing someone failing.”
“If we wrote in a scene where you see them sign off on dropping bombs or giving people the death sentence, that would be a different matter”, Maddin added. “But when they’re failing in this way, there’s a vulnerability to them that makes you have a little bit of empathy.”
Evan describes the project as having a “troubling paradox” at its heart; to poke fun at these politicians, you must make them vulnerable, which can invite audience empathy. However, there’s one character who they’ve been surprised to hear viewers have liked the most: the scandal-ridden Italian Prime Minister (Rolando Ravello), whose gaffes included dressing up as Mussolini for Halloween.
“I like some of them more than others, and I think the reason people like the Italian is because he has soulful eyes and seems innocent. It’s powerlessness that makes people seem more likable, and this guy probably leads a weird coalition government that will crumble the minute he gets home; he seems less in control than anybody else, which can make him more empathetic.”
With the marketing for Rumours cheekily billing it as “the official film of the G7”, I wondered; do the directors believe that their film feels in any way realistic to how the apocalypse would play out?
“There does seem to be a triumphal march into the apocalypse, with these summits happening with great fanfare every year and achieving nothing, and I think the end of our movie crystalises that frustration”, Evan concluded. “It can often feel like we’re on a hopeless, intractable race towards the apocalypse – and I’m not sure what kind of movie can help fix that!”
Rumours is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 6th December.
