How David Bruckner Nailed the ‘V/H/S/85’ Wraparound Segment
Oct 1, 2023
The Big Picture
Hellraiser and The Night House director David Bruckner returns to the V/H/S franchise to tackle the wraparound segment in V/H/S/85. “Total Copy” is the film’s connective tissue and sees a group of scientists examining an unknown being they dub Rory. Bruckner took the time to chat with Collider at Fantastic Fest 2023 and explained how he and writer Evan Dickson crafted a “taped-off-the-TV” documentary that felt like a 1985 mixtape, one that delivers an epic and very bloody seven-minute oner to close out the film.
There’s lots to love in every V/H/S film courtesy of the highly encouraged and well-supported unique filmmaking voices behind each segment. But, one specific part of these movies has emerged as the greatest challenge to tackle — the wraparound component, the segment that ties all the other pieces together.
Some function as framing devices that reveal where the “found footage” we’re watching came from while others create connective tissue via thematic overlap. And then there’s V/H/S/99, which did away with narrative framing altogether and instead, includes shorts of stop-motion animation toy soldiers between each segment.
While I do think some past wraparounds have found success in turning the V/H/S anthology films into cohesive experiences, bolstering tension and core ideas in the process, none are as powerful as the one we get in V/H/S/85, “Total Copy,” a piece that heavily contributes to giving the film consistency in vibes and ideas, and also functions as a satisfying standalone story in and of itself. “Total Copy” involves a group of scientists examining an unknown being they dub Rory. The group hopes to communicate with Rory and teach him humankind’s way of life, but, as one might expect from a V/H/S segment, their experiment takes a violent and very bloody turn.
While in Austin for V/H/S/85’s World Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2023, “Total Copy” director David Bruckner visited the Collider interview studio to revisit his journey with the V/H/S series as a director and producer, and to discuss his approach to crafting a winning wraparound film. You can catch the non-spoiler portion of our chat in the video at the top of this article or in transcript form below. And stay tuned! We’ll have the spoiler part of this interview for you when V/H/S/85 is available to stream on Shudder on October 6th.
Image via Shudder
PERRI NEMIROFF: You’ve been part of this franchise since the very beginning. Not only did you direct on the first V/H/S movie, but you also produced a number of them, so what is something about how you all produce these movies that’s evolved over the years, perhaps something to better support the individual voices that come to these V/H/S films?
DAVID BRUCKNER: The last three movies, we call them “The Years Trilogy” in the V/H/S history, it would just be 94, 99 and 85. We had the benefit of being able to see all the V/H/S films that have been made, what had worked, what hadn’t worked quite as well. I think this is a place where everybody can run amok, entertain themselves, take a few risks. We try to encourage everyone to get weird and do the kinds of things they can’t normally do. Mike Nelson was describing earlier that it was a place where he got to literally do the things that he was told he could not do in a different situation. So, if anything, the challenge is to not limit yourself. There are the natural constraints of found footage, but sometimes those constraints breed a special kind of creativity.
I did have a question that lined up with that. There’s a quote from someone in our production notes that said they were excited to be a part of this movie because it was making a short film without any restrictions on the necessary violence of the content was very exciting.
BRUCKNER: That sounds right.
Can you give us an example of a time when you ran into that problem on a previous film, but then also an example of something you do here in 85 that you know you were only able to accomplish because there were no restrictions and rules?
BRUCKNER: We had a few things in Hellraiser we had to slide by the ratings folks. And then you do the thing where you put things in there that you know you’re gonna lose just so, in case they ask, you can go, “Okay, fine. We’ll lose this one shot. We did something for you.”
With V/H/S, I can’t imagine. There’s no editorial oversight in anything that anybody is creating. If anything, we’re just encouraging people to go further. Also, a practical approach is strongly encouraged. So there’s, you know, gallons of blood getting thrown around the set. If anything, the only frustration is that the found footage is dark and murky enough that you sometimes can’t see on camera how much blood there is in the room. The BTS photos are quite revealing.
Image Via Hulu
You should share some of those, but I will say, even with it darkened, I feel like the amount of blood was still quite clear and evident in all of these shorts.
BRUCKNER: It was apparent, good.
I want to go back to my first question but apply it to your experience as a director. What is the biggest difference between your experience directing “Amateur Night” versus your segment of 85?
BRUCKNER: Well, there was about 11 years of filmmaking between the two, which was part of the reason I wanted to come back and direct another segment of V/H/S. I kind of wanted to get back to that. We all started making tiny indie films, we like to say, held together by duct tape and bubble gum, and then doing a studio movie is a bit like steering an aircraft carrier. So wanting to not lose our footing in a terrain that had less friction, where you could really, really experiment, was something that I just wanted to have that experience again. But the difference, I’ve changed, what you can get away with logistically has changed a little bit, but I think overall it was kind of the same sandbox.
I want to see you make more big studio films because I like all of your movies. Is there any particular part of the V/H/S production process that maybe they don’t think would benefit films of that size, but you think would change those movies for the better? Where maybe it’s better to forego the fancy tools and the big budgets in exchange for how you do something here?
BRUCKNER: There’s a lot of surprises in found footage. I mean, found footage is harder than it seems, I think, to a lot of folks on the surface. You’re still filmmaking, so everything’s designed. You’re still lighting everything, there’s still costuming that has to happen, the performers are still having to create a reality in front of the camera the way you would on a normal film, but you just can’t get caught doing so. You have to strive for a level of authenticity. We like to say you have to make a movie but not get caught making a movie. But inherent in that challenge are opportunities to hang with a persistent shot. Sometimes you’re not cutting the camera, sometimes that changes the metric of how you cover a situation in some ways, and so sometimes you actually have more time paradoxically to do things. There were takes in this that we shot 15, 16 times just to kind of experiment. In my experience, performers, if there’s a reason to keep doing it, can get very, very excited about the opportunity to continue to play. So, again, I go back to that word friction. There’s less friction in the creative process at times, and that can allow you to push it in ways you maybe can’t do when you have a giant machine that you’re trying to control or operate.
Image via Shudder
Are you able to tease the scene that took 15, 16 takes in a spoiler-free manner?
BRUCKNER: Well, in the wraparound, towards the end of it, there is something that culminates in like a seven-minute oner. So you’ve got running, jumping, screaming, practical effects, there’s blood hitting the wall. There’s a lot happening all at once. As a director looking at the monitor, I can’t even comprehend everything that’s going down in that moment of time between action and cut. So sometimes in the amount of time we could take to stop and talk it all through, we just say, “Let’s go again,” and while the energy is up, what if it’s faster, harder? Let’s break the moment, and we just push it even further. But yeah, there’s some dizzying running around moments, not to be too specific.
It’s an epic shot right there.
I do want to go back to the idea of you directing the wraparound. Because you were a producer on some of these movies, what were the conversations like going into 99 in terms of determining that that movie did not need to have a traditional wraparound, and then what were the takeaways from that film that made you decide that not only did this movie need one but that you wanted to direct it yourself?
BRUCKNER: The wraparound’s been a moving target since the beginning. It’s been something that has evolved quite a bit over the course of the franchise. I think it was after V/H/S 2, any consistent mythology, like canon was abandoned on the wraparound. It would have seemed odd to try to go back and get it or resurrect it necessarily, and it really became a place to experiment. It’s just always changing. When we got to 99, we decided to stop exploring the origin of the tapes at all in a way. Someone had thrown out the idea of just a mixtape, and there was something appropriately detached about an era-specific mixtape where things had been taped over, and you’re only getting fragments of what you’re seeing necessarily. There was kind of a wraparound element in V/H/S/99 in that respect. It was the home video, the animation video that had been seen.
By the time we got to 85, we thought, well, let’s just build upon that. Let’s do another mixtape. Let’s do another incomplete, taped-over piece of media. Evan Dickson, who wrote the piece, and myself had come across some old Unsolved Mysteries, like Robert Stack supercuts on YouTube, and just fell in love with the idea of something slightly adjacent to found footage where it is a curated, edited, finished piece of media that gives you total vibes from the era, but that you’re only getting pieces of it, that it’s a story that’s eerily incomplete. That was really the draw.
When you two decided on the subject that you would roll with, did you immediately pinpoint Rory from the start or did you ever toss around other ideas, maybe inspired by Unsolved Mysteries you guys came across?
BRUCKNER: There were a lot of dead soldiers along the way. [Laughs] So we had a lot of different things that we explored. A lot of dead ends. We had the benefit also, just process-wise, and this was kind of the plan from the beginning, to finish all the other shorts first. They weren’t finished, finished, but they were near completion in post. So we had a kind of 30,000-foot view of what the other shorts were, and so part of the inspiration that led us to the ultimate conceit of it, to Rory, the subject that’s being studied in our research doc, was we’re trying to harmonize some of the ideas and vibes from the other pieces, and it just felt like something that could run through the middle of it all.
Image via Shudder
Can you give us a specific example of something that you changed in your own wraparound segment based on what someone else did in their segment?
BRUCKNER: Not so much changed, but I’ll just say we were pulling from everything a bit. In Gigi [Saul Guerrero’s] piece and Scott [Derrickson’s] piece, you have professional characters, you have people with a sense of duty that has to be performed, which is different sometimes than what you find in a horror film, which are a bunch of unsuspecting everybodies that are found in a situation. We drew from that, we drew from the body horror in Mike’s piece, the sci-fi in Natasha [Kermani’s] piece, the procedural elements in Scott’s. All of that, I think, inspired us to some degree or another. We wanted the wraparound to not leave any of the shorts on an island by themselves, that there would just be something in the flavor of those that was kind of running through the current in the middle of the film.
It’s very impressive how uniquely their own every single short in this film feels, but that it also feels like a cohesive V/H/S movie, too. I feel like that’s one of the most difficult things to do with any anthology, and you guys excel with that here.
Before I ask my spoiler question, I do have to ask you about the future of the V/H/S franchise. Is it safe to assume that the plan is to continue and do more?
BRUCKNER: They have to keep going! I mean, there’s no reason to stop now. We’re not bored, we’re fascinated. I feel like the energy is there. I mean, we’ll hear from the audience, but it would be my hope to see the party ongoing.
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