Why Don’t You Just Die! is set to become the next foreign language sensation. Taking influence from early Tarantino, Russian physicist-turned-director Kirill Sokolov has made an off-kilter crime-thriller / Western / comedy that makes for a fun-filled watch. It had its first UK screening back in August at Arrow Video FrightFest and it took the audience by storm.
It’s obviously very strange and unusual times right now and sadly Why Don’t You Just Die! is one of the many films to fall foul of the cinema closures. Originally, the film was set for a limited cinema release before arriving onto home entertainment, however, now it releases directly into our homes, being available on both Blu-ray and Digital HD from Monday 20th April 2020.
Ahead of the release, we sat down (via the wonders of Zoom) with Kirill to discuss why he decided to shift his career focus from science to the arts, and just how Why Don’t You Just Die! came into life.
So where did the idea for the movie come from?
The biggest inspiration was the #MeToo movement. One of my friends told me a story from her life, how she was abused in her childhood by a relative. When a close friend tells you a story like that you feel angry, and you don’t know how to be that angry and you think about revenge, but nothing can fix the situation. So I took this pain and I decided on a story. I started to write about a guy who wanted revenge, as inspiration. But then when you start writing the script it takes a year, so some things are changed, some topics go to the background. Still, you can find these echoes inside of the story. It’s kind of a revenge movie. All three parts of this movie are about revenge, but from different points of view.
So would you say that you’re a big fan of the revenge movie?
I am a big movie fan, so I watch a lot of different movies, but of course revenge movies have this absolutely amazing animal primal quality. For example, Chan-wook Park’s trilogy – Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Lady Vengeance, they are amazing! I think about half of Hollywood movies are about revenge. They offer a big release for the viewer when you can’t afford the same in real life, but you can see it in a movie and feel how finally the good guy wins, or not, or tries to. Revenge is a big theme, I think it’s a very cinematic one. It’s a very literary theme too; we’ve been reading about it since The Odyssey and Shakespeare, so yeah it’s a big one.
You have an educational background in the sciences, when did you decide to move into the arts?
Yeah, I am a physicist. When I started in University, me and my friends decided, just for fun, to make small videos with fighting with ketchup instead of blood and guts – Troma style. We made a few of them, and then when I finished University and worked in a lab I understood that this hobby brings me much more fun than my regular job. So I decided to risk it and to try and become a filmmaker.
Now my husband is also a physicist and has this irritating habit sometimes of pointing out the scientific inaccuracies when we’re watching movies. Please tell me you’re not the same…
What kind of things?
For example, in an action film if something explodes that wouldn’t really, or if the rules of gravity are disregarded….
[Laughs] No, you have seen my movie, I really don’t give a fuck about the natural laws, gravity, and physics, and biology. I think that a regular movie has much less blood than we put into each character. My influence as a physicist on being a movie maker is that I’m crazy about preparation. I make storyboards, I make tests for everything. Why Don’t You Just Die! is really close to the storyboards for about 90% I think. My background as a physicist brings this structure work. You have to prepare everything, you have a time schedule etc.
So I’m guessing that the story-boarding and the planning really helped with that epic fight sequence that happens early on? It’s pretty intricate, and I’m guessing that the shoot length and budget were fairly modest?
Yes. It’s true it helps everywhere. Because only with the storyboards can you understand, ‘OK, I want to make this scene like that,’ so we have to prepare – I don’t know – the hole in the wall at that moment. Or, we have to give the opportunity to move this wall away. For example, we need this special equipment to do this shot. All this stuff, you can’t do it without the storyboard. You can’t imagine all this stuff on the set. You won’t have equipment, or you won’t have enough light for a camera lens or whatever. So yes, I’m a big fan of storyboards. It’s kind of weird though because in Russia most people in movies don’t use storyboards. that’s probably why Russian movies look like they do.
It is quite a long fight sequence; you’ve done a shorter one before in The Flame, but this one is much longer. How long did that take to choreograph?
That’s funny, The Flame – thank you for watching that movie – it was my diploma. We made it without any budget. The budget of the The Flame was $1000. I didn’t have any stunts. I didn’t have any special equipment to make that fight. So when we shot it I used – the actress who plays the lead is my wife – so I just dropped her onto the wardrobe, into the wardrobe…it was really difficult. Actors are not stunt guys, but it was a big inspiration [for Why Don’t You Just Die!] and I really liked it. I wanted to put the same kind of fight into Why Don’t You Just Die!, but to make it bigger. To make it with stunt guys. We drew it. We drew everything. I think it was very important to make it not look like a real-life fight, just to let people into the genre. When you start to watch the movie and you start to see this fight you understand inside of yourself, ‘oh I see, it’s that type of movie, fuck yeah, let’s do this!’. [Laughs]
Your films also seem to rely a lot on music. In many ways in Why Don’t You Just Die! it sets the tone. The music is so buoyant and jovial, without it, the film could be way more bleak. How important is it to use music in this way?
Absolutely important! It’s not only about the music though. It’s about how the actors walk on the set, how we use the blood. If we use less blood, the story would be much more serious and depressed, but because of the cartoonish violence, it’s so fun. It’s the same with the music. There are two ways how I use music in this movie. One way, it’s a counterpoint. When you see a weird and violent scene, but the music is really lyrical, and makes this relaxed fun feeling. The other is like Western music, which is so bold that it becomes fun too. We spent a lot of time to make the right sounds. I think I spent about half a year combining different ways of making the soundtrack.
The film tells the story of several characters, was the story always written in this way, or did that come during the writing process?
No, no, no. When I finished the first draft it was from the point of view only of Matvei. Then I understood that I had a big problem, because my main character after thirty pages of the script, just sits on the sofa and does nothing. That’s a big problem because the hero must push the story forwards. I then got the idea that if take the point of view of different characters the story will go forwards. There are three small stories and you can separate them, it’s like the Pulp Fiction structure. One situation, one location, the same characters, but you see the same situation from three different points of view. Each point of view turns everything upside down and changes everything, your feelings about these people and the situation.
You mentioned Pulp Fiction, I definitely got that vibe when watching it. I also found elements of Western and (oddly) silent movies, given how the music is utilised and the sparse amount of dialogue. Where there any films in particular that inspired you?
Of course I’m a big fan of Tarantino. At the same time I’m a big fan of South Korean movies. I tried to bring colours and some visual movements from South Korean movies, like Chan-wook Park as we talked about the revenge trilogy. I’m a huge fan of Westerns and Sergio Leone. We even called this movie ‘Apartment Western’ when we made it. When I wrote it, I was really inspired by Martin McDonagh and I always re-read his plays, and I like his movies very much. This mix of very sad and dark stories, and this absolutely strange irony. When the themes are so bad that they become funny this is much more from McDonagh than from Tarantino. I like Danny Boyle too for how he edits his movies, how he’s very free with his story-telling. He breaks the rules all the time. I’m a big movie fan and there are a lot of inspirations.
Ahead of its release, the film has screened at a few festivals, what has the reaction been?
It was cool. It’s funny because in Russia there is no strong community of genre movie fans. In Russia we’ve only had Comic Con for the last two or three years. We don’t have such strong pop culture. But this movie, first of all for people who watch movies a lot will get more fun from this movie, because there are a lot of references. I was really surprised travelling for the last year all over the world. I’ve showed it in Brazil, Texas, in LA, in Europe, and it’s a crazy feeling when people from different countries from really different cultures and mentalities, they all react the same to the story you tell. They laugh at the same points, they feel sad in the same points. You feel that you made something absolutely understandable, that people all over the world get. It’s the best feeling you can get from you work.
Whenever a foreign language movie generates buzz, there’s the inevitable English language remake. Are you ready for Hollywood to come talk to you about a rework of this film?
Me and my producer talked with two countries about remakes, which was really fun. I would really like to see them, one of them is Asian, which can bring really interesting culture differences. For me, this story is told. I don’t want to make a remake by myself. But after this movie I got an agent and a manager and we’ve talked about some stories that we can make in Hollywood which is really interesting for us because of course in Russia the film industry is much smaller. It’s very young. I spent two weeks in LA and travelled through the studios; this amazing level of film industry makes you go crazy. I really would be happy to try and do a movie there because it could be a very interesting experience. But I’m not sure I want to make a remake of Why Don’t You Just Die! by myself. I will go see it if someone does it.
The film comes to UK audiences very soon, what do you hope that the audience will take from the film and experience when they watch it?
I hope that they will have fun. [Laughs] I’m really sad about this Coronavirus situation because it was going to be in cinemas in the UK in ten cities, and in the US in twenty cities. But now it will be online and on physical media. But you know, I will be happy if people will see it. The interesting thing when you watch a movie is you go to the cinema, you watch a movie, spend ninety minutes watching, and then leave the cinema and say, ‘it was ok’, and you forget about it. But the filmmakers when they make a movie, they spend two or three years of their lives, they put a lot of love, a lot of struggle, and all this passion to make the movie. Of course for a filmmaker it’s very important to bring this movie to audience, to make this movie live. So I will be happy if many people from the UK watch it.
So have you got your follow-up lined up?
Yeah. We are in the middle of pre-production, but now we are frozen because of the virus. I hope it will be a cool adventure movie. It’s about three women, three generations of women from one family who are in struggles with each other and this brings about a huge chase, which includes corrupt cops, stolen cars, boats, shootings, wild animals. I hope it will be a lot of fun. We were going to start it in the beginning of May, but now because of the quarantine everything will be moved to the middle of summer. I hope not later.
Why Don’t You Just Die! arrives on Blu-Ray and Digital HD on 20th April 2020. It will also arrive on the Arrow Video Channel on 4th May 2020.
