Theodore Collatos
Tormenting the Hen, Theodore Collatos (2017)
Theodore Collatos is a Brooklyn-based screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and film director. His first feature film, The Chosen One, is a black-and-white experiment in mystery and horror; his second feature, Dipso, hauntingly portrays a failed comedian. Collatos's Tormenting the Hen, which deconstructs contemporary gender dynamics as lesbian couple embarks on an artistic retreat upstate, premiered at SXSW - South by Southwest, IndieMemphis, AFI Fest, and Berlin Critics Week. Co-directed with Tormenting the Hen collaborator Carolina Monnerat, his latest work, Queen of Lapa, premiered at Göteborg, Sheffield, and the Rhode Island Film Festival, where it won the Alternative Spirit Award.
In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Collatos discusses representing the current sociopolitical state of America onscreen, aesthetics of implied aggression, shooting his first documentary in Rio de Janeiro, and upcoming projects.
//
FILMATIQUE: Both of your narrative features—Dipso (2015) and Tormenting the Hen (2017)—approach situations not usually seen in American indies. The stories are riddled with so much tension, confrontation, and anxiety, but simultaneously engrained with dark humor. While one could say that everything is somehow political, you seem to openly frame your work in that way.
I really appreciate how you keenly portrayed the hostility faced by Claire (Dameka Hayes) and Monica (Carolina Monnerat), the protagonists in Tormenting the Hen. They are confronted with open disregard by almost everybody surrounding them—the fundamental aspects of who they are, as a couple and as individuals, are ignored. There is a lot of craft and care in the construction of these two characters (both women of color), who are also quite different, and your approach to increasingly salient topics of racism and sexism. I am curious to know how you wrote these two roles.
THEODORE COLLATOS: Thank you, that means a lot to me. To be honest, I approached the writing of these two women as I'd write any relationship. In this case, with Monica, a Brazilian, and Claire, from New York City, I wanted to focus on their opposing cultural viewpoints on work, family, meaning, and commitment. I feel these are universal topics in any romantic relationship—I wanted the women to live and breathe outside of their cultural identifications and to hone in on the personal dynamics of their unique partnership.
Many films that focus on identity tend to zero in on that point alone, so I wanted to make a film that didn't treat it as such, but rather as a matter-of-fact part of the story. It's a relationship between two petite, sophisticated, multi-cultural, bi-lingual, highly educated, artistic, scientific, citified women, contrasting with a large, Caucasian, beast-like rural man who experiences difficulty expressing himself and has gross lack of social boundaries. I thought this wonderful dynamic would give opportunity for massive misunderstandings, which is the central theme of the film. I wanted every character, including the two men starring in the play-within-the-film, to be constantly confronted with opposing cultural viewpoints, to the extent that their exhaustion with each other creates the paranoia and mistrust that they all feel by the end. His or her assumptions regarding intention are always being misguided by assumed micro-aggressions, taken to personal offense and resulting in moral tragedy.
Tormenting the Hen, Theodore Collatos (2017)
FLMTQ: There is great appeal in your most recent shorts Congress Cares, Not Make Dreams Your Master and Confirmation Bias. A disjunction between images and sound, and high doses of irony, function as means to represent the current political reality that seems almost impossible to grasp using realism. How did you make those stylistic choices?
TC: Well you nailed it… it's absolutely impossible to comprehend or represent anything happening politically in terms of reality. As a society, we're completely disconnected and subverted from actual facts or truth. The coldness of our system of government, and the violent rhetoric of that man, is in stark contrast with our long overdue revolution, and it's all absolutely shocking to me. Ultimately, the disconnection of images, sounds, and meaning seemed seamless with our current state of mind.
Congress Cares, about "The Cares Act" bailout, and Confirmation Bias, about the Bret "Beer" Kavanaugh confirmation, are two parts of a series I call The Banality of Evil, where I want to expose the formality of geriatric deliberation, the absolute ignorance of most of our elected officials, and the gears of government churning against common sense, consensus, decency, and the good of the people. The fact is, we really don't get to know our elected officials personally, so I wanted to show bare who they are, what they represent and the non-ironic lack of separation between Church and State, and set that in contrast with all-too-few heroic gestures from the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others. "The Cares Act" is one of the biggest bailouts of the 1% in American history and the fact that it was conducted via a 'voice vote' is shameful. As our officials quibble over $600 unemployment checks the stock market continues to rise, laying bare how our economy has nothing to do with a market owned by the richest among us. Not one Congressperson wanted their name documented on this bill.
Confirmation Bias, is much more confrontational then the absurd humor of Congress Cares, and focuses on the confirmation of a second supreme court justice credibly accused of sexual misconduct and its potential impact on a human rights. Not Make Dreams Your Master, is a disconnected cultural mash-up between rural and city life that we as a nation can't seem to reconcile.
FLMTQ: Tormenting the Hen's cinematography really stands out. The abundance of close-ups creates a sense of intimacy between people, things, and landscape. Outdoor scenes, despite the openness and brightness of the space, often emphasize the tension that permeates the story and the multiple conflicts between characters. Would you like to talk about these framing choices?
TC: When you live in rural settings, individuals in your life take on great personal space both physically and mentally. The intimacy, whether you know the person or not, is felt and framed in contrast to the vastness of the psychologically empty landscape. Personalities naturally become more extreme and noticed. With the congested, confrontational implications of the dialogue in the film I was going for a kind of smothering grind-house-y type of psychological horror that implied aggression that may or may not be present.
Tormenting the Hen Theodore Collatos (2017)
FLMTQ: The writing in both of your features is very strong. You combine weighty stories that nonetheless flow lightly, mostly because of your uses of humor and lack of sentimentalism. The solid screenplays are also serviced by the skills displayed by your actors. The family members in Dipso, the couple and the characters playing actors in Tormenting the Hen show astonishing chemistry. How was your casting process for both films?
TC: The entire cast of Dipso was composed of non-professional actors and the story was directly connected to the rural area I was living in at the time. I formulated the script based partly on Matt Shaw's real life and combined that with other aspects of life I'd been living and witnessing. For instance, I had a friend that was having issues after he came back from Iraq, which a character is based on, and the town I was bartending in is a post-industrial GE town that suffers greatly from alcoholism, drugs, thievery and violence.
A lot of the scenes in Dipso had layers of improvisation and no one in the cast actually saw the script. I'd tell them what to say in each scene, where they needed to get to and start from, to say the lines in their own words and to live the scene. Also, two of the brothers in the film are actual brothers and Tommy's girlfriend was the actor's actual ex-girlfriend, so all that lead to the realism I wanted and I think everyone did an amazing job.
Tormenting the Hen was entirely different. It was the first time I've worked with trained actors and the script was extensively written with scenes, morals and dialogue. The play within the movie was based on a documentary I had shot years earlier. 'Monica' is played by my wife Carolina Monnerat, 'Mutty' by Matt Shaw from Dipso, and 'Joel' by Brian Brooks, an actor and a friend for many years, so there was great chemistry, intimacy and trust amongst everyone in dealing with topics of race and sexuality. Dameka Hayes (Claire) and David Malinsky (Adam) are professional actors, and Josephine Decker (Sarah) is a filmmaker I casted. I also think everyone did an amazing job.
Tormenting the Hen , Theodore Collatos (2017)