The Big Picture

J.T. Mollner’s Strange Darling is a must-watch riveting thriller with two killer lead performances from Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner. The movie covers “one day in the twisted love life of a serial killer.” While at Fantastic Fest, Mollner told us about the casting process, the reality of getting a green light on his second feature, shooting on 35mm, and more.

I saw a lot of great movies at Fantastic Fest 2023, but the best of the bunch is a movie that likely isn’t on your radar just yet. It’s J.T. Mollner’s second feature film, Strange Darling starring Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner.

Given the film’s nonlinear narrative structure, it’s a challenging one to synopsize without running the risk of ruining some of its brilliant twists and turns, so I’ll lean on the official Fantastic Fest description to provide context; “One day in the twisted love life of a serial killer.” Yes, that’s it. That’s all you’re getting for right now. But do know it’s an expertly executed premise with two jaw-dropping lead performances from Fitzgerald and Gallner.

While in Austin celebrating Strange Darling’s world premiere, Mollner visited the Collider interview studio for a spoiler-free discussion about the making of the film. He details the reality of getting a green light on a second feature, broke down why he chose Fitzgerald and Gallner for the lead roles, discussed the benefits of shooting Strange Darling on 35mm, and loads more. Hear all about it straight from Mollner in the video interview at the top of this article, or you can read our conversation in transcript form below.

Strange Darling doesn’t have a release date just yet, but trust me when I tell you, you’ll want to make it a priority as soon as it’s announced.

Image via Miramax

PERRI NEMIROFF: I know about your movie and I love your movie, but our audience has not heard of Strange Darling yet so can you give everyone a brief synopsis of the film?

J.T. MOLLNER: One day in the romantic twisted love life of a serial killer. That’s it.

I like asking filmmakers for a synopsis so our audience can be informed, of course, but also so I know where to stop with spoilers. This is a very difficult movie to talk about and fully convey how damn good it is without giving away certain details.

MOLLNER: Thank you for that! For me, I go see movies and I always hope that I’m gonna be surprised or it’s gonna take me in a direction – I always want my expectations subverted and so often they’re not, and so when I’m making a movie, I’m trying to do something that I enjoy myself, so the goal was definitely to go in interesting different directions. So I’m glad we surprised you a little bit.

Very much so! And I’ll emphasize, this interview is totally spoiler free. You are safe here.

I wanted to ask you about going from first to second feature. Two-part question on that. What would you say is one of the biggest misconceptions about getting a green light on your second film, but then also, what is something about the reception to your first that helped you get this movie off the ground in the way you wanted?

MOLLNER: It’s interesting. My first movie went to Sundance. I think it was seven years ago, which with the pandemic and the shutdown and everything, time got weird for all of us so it feels more like four years to me, but it’s been a while. I remember it took me about 10 years of making short films and doing things to finally get a feature greenlit. My first feature was never supposed to be a very commercial movie and we made it for very little money, and we’re really grateful that the people at Sundance wanted to play it there. And of course when it got released and got sold I thought I would just be doing that every year. I mean, not necessarily every year, but maybe every two years, develop and then make a movie.

The movie came out and it opened all kinds of doors for me. I was able to stop bartending and I was able to make a modest living as a director and a writer doing things, but I started developing my second feature and we’d have cast and no money, money and no cast. And the reviews were very mixed on my first movie and it wasn’t a massive hit or anything like that, so it opened all kinds of doors and allowed me to be taken seriously a little bit, but the second movie seemed much harder to make than the first one. It was bizarre. I’m not talking about writing now, but back then I wrote a bunch of scripts that I wanted to develop and it was just really weird because I kept running into brick walls, or we’d develop something and then it would fall apart for one reason or another.

This film was really weird because I had this thing ready to go and we took it around and then all of a sudden four months later we were shooting. It was weird because it was very, very difficult to get something made, but once I decided to make this, it was the quickest, easiest development. It was something that never happens. It was like a dream come true. I went in and sat down with Bill Block at Miramax and in the meeting he said, “Let’s make the movie.” It was bizarre. It was surreal. Now, once we made the movie, it was a very difficult, crazy – like everybody making a movie, it was a very trying experience, but the process of getting it made once I decided to make this one was quick. It was one of those weird things.

Let’s touch on the non-linear story idea. And again, we’re not gonna spoil anything about it, but I am curious, is it more or less challenging to pitch a nonlinear story to financiers and producers?

MOLLNER: It’s interesting because I think this movie, to me, would be boring if it were in order. Personally. It’s just me. [Laughs] Or just simplistic, right? It would be conventional, I think. It came to me, it was always supposed to be in this order, and the story plays that way for a reason and out of that order, it just wouldn’t make sense. It seems like it would be a hard thing to pitch, but in this case it wasn’t because people understood that.

It was weird because after I finished shooting it was when there were certain people, I mean, it was a mixed feeling. I didn’t have final cut on the movie, but it ended up being my cut. We reached an agreement and this is the cut that I wanted and I’m very happy with it. But, there was a time when the director’s cut was first submitted where some people who had influence over the movie wanted it to maybe be in sequence and some people didn’t. Nobody really knows when we’re in this vacuum watching, it’s 10 of us or something looking at a movie and I’m really close to it too at that period, so it’s like, “Should it be in sequence?” But I always felt that it couldn’t be. And so we ended up all coming to a consensus that we were gonna keep it out of sequence, thankfully, and now that’s the version you saw.

Usually I’m very open minded about other opinions, but not in this particular case. [Laughs] That was the right and only answer to that.

I have to talk about your cast here. I’m sure you go into filming with a great script, but I do think the success of a concept like this hinges on finding two perfect performers and you very much do with Willa and Kyle. Can you tell me something about each of them that made you think, “You are going to crush this role and be a good creative partner for me,” when you first met them?

MOLLNER: One of the great things that happened on this movie for me is that there was a period where we were talking about a little bit of value and names, but it was very quick. And actually, at Miramax, they told me at some point, “We want you to hire people in these leads who are accomplished and who are known and who have done things, but don’t worry about the level of star power or this or that. Don’t worry about it. Just cast who’s right,” and I’ve never had a financier do that before. And even though I’ve only made two movies, I’ve worked with many financiers and movies have been developed.

But this was great because I was able to really meet with people who I thought were right for it. And of course the studio had to approve, but they were very supportive. There’s an agent named Christy Hall, and agents get a real bad rap, but Christy Hall is an agent at Paradigm and she’s one of my favorite people in the world. I called her up and said, “I have this role and I have some people in mind. Who do you think?” And she started pitching Willa and Kyle, both of them right off the bat.

I wanted to cast the protagonist. I wanted to cast The Lady first and build around her, and we didn’t even care about age range. I just wanted a vulnerability and a charisma and something that you had to look at, just a really great actor to be in that role. My wish list had people who were 50 and people who were 20. It was just a big range and we figured we’d cast the villain against that, right? So, I met with Willa and she was actually a little younger than I initially thought would be right for it, but we had this amazing meeting, and the same thing happened with Kyle.

One thing I loved about both of them is, and this is what I was really looking for – I saw their work. I watched Dinner in America and I watched all the Reacher episodes. I was a big fan of The Goldfinch and Willa doesn’t have a huge role in that movie, but she’s one of the people I remember the most from the movie. It’s so different from this role, but I knew she had that quality. I could see her range. She kind of disappeared into different characters.

And so, for me, when I met her, it was about, how is she gonna work? How does she see this character? How does he see this character when I met with him? And both of them, the reason I fell in love with them as actors is because they had so much compassion for their characters. I had some other meetings where people didn’t have compassion for the characters. When I talked to both of these people, all they spoke about was what they related to in these characters, and how they could see their character’s point of view, and that’s what I wanted. I wanted them to really love who they were playing, for all their faults. That’s why I think, to me, there’s just a lot of humanity in the roles and it’s not because of how the roles were written, it’s because of the actors.

I’m just so proud of both of them and so grateful that they wanted to do this with me. I had dinner with Willow a little while ago, and I was looking at her across the table and she didn’t change her appearance that much, but I just said, “You’re not The Lady. You’re Willa.” When somebody can do that, it’s just remarkable. And I love actors because I was an actor for a little while early on, I always wanted to be behind the camera, but because I’ve tried it and I’ve done it, I know how difficult it is. So, yeah, I’m just blown away by both of them. I think the movie wouldn’t work if they hadn’t been cast properly.

You can totally tell that this is a movie made by a director who loves and respects the craft of acting.

Image via Miramax

To build on that a little more, can you tell me something about each of their approaches to the work that calls for something different from you as an actor’s director?

MOLLNER: I’ve realized that I think being a director, for me, is about finding the proper language to communicate with each actor. So every actor that I’ve worked with has a different language. Sometimes you’re feeling that out over the course of the first few days, and the language for Kyle was much different than the language for Willa. I think an ineffective director probably wouldn’t pay attention to that language and be like, “This is how I say things. This is how I want you to do things and you’re gonna do it.” But one thing I’m fascinated by and really interested in is finding out what makes them tick, what will help them reach their best level.

Willa’s an excellent communicator. We’d never worked with each other and we spent the first two days trying to figure it out, and we had a talk after a couple of days and she explained to me what helps her best and what she needs to know about her character in order to perform at her highest level. And so I made sure I facilitated that at all times for her.

And then Kyle was like, “This is how I like it and this is what I do.” It’s like a dance, and both of them take their job so seriously and care so much that it really helps. You don’t have to do much as a director when the actors care so much about their performance that they’re protecting it at all times, too.

Willa, many times, I thought I had what I needed, and I did have what I needed, it would have worked, but she’d be like, “Can we get one more because I’d like to try it this way?” She maybe did that three or four times over the shoot, and I think every one of the times she did that, I used that take. So she knew best, really.

And then of course we had Barbara Hershey and Ed Bagley Jr. on set mentoring all of us, and they were just amazing. But I want to work with these two actors over and over and over again. I hope I get lots of opportunities.

I do not blame you one bit.

I have so many other elements of this production I need to touch on. One thing I wanted to ask you about was the wardrobe for both characters because Kyle’s character is basically wearing the same thing the entire time, and it needs to speak to who he is, and then with Willa’s character, there are so many iconic looks that she rocks in this film. What was the approach to finding the right thing for Kyle, and of all of Willa’s looks, which one went through the biggest evolution as you worked on it with your costume designer?

MOLLNER: It’s weird, I have this, I think it’s a subconscious thing, when I’m directing a movie and thinking of things and colors, I’m not usually consciously trying to make a statement or do a certain thing, but then later I’ll watch and I’ll know where something came from, right? It’s interesting, I was thinking as we were watching the movie last night that, in my first film, there’s a transformation that the lead character makes. I was watching the movie last night and I was like, “I think I like this weird superhero concept where people can transform,” it’s a chrysalis–type thing. I had all these different ideas of different versions of Willa’s character I wanted to see, and a couple of different versions of Kyle’s that I wanted to see, but I also knew how we wanted to make the audience feel through the whole movie. And so, more than anything else, I thought color would be the best way to make the audience feel.

I enlisted Priscilla Elliott, who’s one of the greatest production designers, the greatest production designer in the world, and I begged her to do the movie. She was referred by a friend, Richard Kelly who directed Donnie Darko, and he raved about her. I brought her on and then Rudy Rojas was the costume designer and we worked really closely together because we talked about color control and how we wanted to stick with a certain color palette for everything for the entire movie. Everything you see on The Lady, everything you see on The Demon were things that we had extensive discussions about for the entire eight weeks of prep or whatever. You never know how many people are gonna see your movie, maybe 10 people will see this movie, but I remember talking to Willa and being like, “I just want people to dress up like you for Halloween.”

Yes! In all honesty, that’s one of the first things that I thought from the moment the movie opened, and then you keep delivering more options. I want everyone to see the movie ASAP so I can see some Willa costumes this year, but I’ll take costumes next year, too.

MOLLNER: [Laughs] Yeah, we had a lot of fun with her clothing. Everything was just a lot of fun.

We really wanted Kyle to look a certain way and just be a fierce presence, and a very intimidating presence. He wears some glasses and they were what I saw in some old pictures, Jeffrey Dahmer was wearing glasses like that. We wanted them also to have, because we’re talking a lot about good and evil and how there’s all this gray area in between, and so we wanted some of their colors to match because we didn’t want such a clear cut divide. Somebody might be a killer and somebody might not be, but it doesn’t mean they’re not flawed. It also doesn’t mean if they’re a killer, they don’t have some compassion within them.

Image via Miramax

I wanted to follow up on something because over the course of this conversation, I get the sense that you’re a filmmaker with a great attention to detail. Can you give us an example of something in this movie that might seem small, but it was something that required one of those lengthy conversations in order to find the perfect way to bring it to life on screen?

MOLLNER: There’s a scene where The Lady’s escaping into the woods and she ends up coming upon a cottage. If you noticed, there’s a lot of flowers and colors, flowers everywhere, all outside of the cottage, reds, blues, yellows, primary colors. Priscilla and I, the first thing we talked about was blood on the flower bed. We wanted the movie to have a candy coating.

My first movie, we desaturated it. It was like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, we wanted it washed out. This movie was a different approach. We looked at movies like Dead Ringers, we looked at Blue Velvet, and we really wanted it to have that sort of candy coating. The dichotomy between the violence and the colors and the richness, we wanted to feel kind of like a fairy tale, right? And so, all the flowers as she’s approaching the house, everything was put there by the art department. They brought in truckloads of flowers. So that’s something, every time I see it, I’m really proud of Priscilla and her whole department for doing that. And that’s just one of the many things that we did.

The last thing I’ll ask you about is the choice to film this in 35mm. Why do many filmmakers often veer towards digital? What are some of the challenges one must face when they want to shoot on film? But then also, what was it about shooting on film that you thought would best enhance this story on screen?

MOLLNER: For me it’s never been a choice. I started shooting short films when digital was at its peak. In 2009, 2010, 2011, everybody who was doing short films or low budget films were shooting digitally, a lot of people. We went to Sundance with my first movie, we shot on film, and I think the only other film there that year that was on film was Kelly Reichardt’s movie. And now, I think last year there were like 20 movies. It’s had this great resurgence in large part because of Steve Bellamy and Vanessa Bendetti. Steve is the president of Kodak and she runs it with him. I just believe so much that moving pictures, light through images, it’s so powerful and not only is the texture and the look of it just unsurpassed by any camera, and I know there’s really good digital cameras out there, but there’s a feeling you get from film that you can’t match.

And also there’s something on set that happens when you’re shooting film. The whole level of approach, the cast, the crew – I grew up reading books about Sam Peckinpah’s process and [Ingmar] Bergman’s process, and you’re watching the reverence around the process. And so for me, every short film I did, except for one, and it was for a very specific reason, was shot on film, and both my features were shot on film. And maybe I would have made a few more movies, but I’ve always said I’d rather direct plays than shoot not on film, so I hope I can stick to that.

But this movie had to be. You probably noticed, it takes place in modern times, but it was influenced by movies from a different time, and so we knew in order to find that aesthetic the only way to go was 35mm. And that’s how Giovanni Ribisi and I bonded over film stock. He’s a cinematographer and we just loved film in the process, and so it was never a choice. And everybody we’d pitch this movie to, I would just say, “Listen, I know I haven’t made a movie in a few years, I know maybe my stock’s not super high right now, but if we’re doing this movie, we have to shoot on film.”

And the last thing I’ll say about it is, I don’t think it’s much more expensive to shoot on film, as long as you’re not making a movie for $50,000 or $100,000. If it’s a low budget movie that still has somewhat of a budget – I believe that I have to shoot very efficiently so my shooting ratio is I think much more efficient than if I was just shooting and shooting and shooting. There’s a lot of planning that has to go in ahead of time. And I think even though there’s one line item or two line items, there’s the scanning and the film that adds some money to the budget, I think we save in so many other line items in post because what we shoot – I mean, when we went into color, all we were doing was leveling things out and dialing them in, but we weren’t creating a look at all in color in post. So we really saved a lot of money because we were shooting film.