Posted in: Exclusive, Film Festival, Horror, Interview, Movies, Sundance | Tagged: Addison Heimann, Jordan Gavaris, Lou Taylor Pucci, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Touch Me

Touch Me Director and Stars on Choreography & Lovecraftian Themes

Touch Me director Addison Heimann and stars Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Jordan Gavaris on constructing creature & more.

When it comes to testing the limits on how far one is willing to express him/her/themselves physically and visually, the imagination can travel to some deep creative places, as writer-director Addison Heimann demonstrated in his 2002 film Hypochondriac. In his latest film, Touch Me, he explores the lives of two co-dependent people, Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Craig (Jordan Gavaris), who struggle to find the balance between friendship, insecurity, anxiety, and financial stability. One day, Joey's ex, Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), comes back into her life, and the two seize the opportunity despite his mysterious nature as an alien gifted with the ability to remove any anxiety and depression with a single touch, leaving the recipient in a state of euphoria. While promoting the film at the Sundance Film Festival, Heimann, Dudley, Gavaris, and Pucci spoke to Bleeding Cool about the dance choreography, how Pucci channeled Brian's seductive charisma, constructing the creature, and more. The following contains some spoilers.

Touch Me Director and Stars on Constructing the Lovecraftian-Inspired Creature

Bleeding Cool: Those choreography numbers, what went into the planning?

Pucci: A lot of classes. I got cast in this about 30 days before we started, and my stipulation was I must be able to go to hip-hop class every day until we started. Meredith [Kirkman], the choreographer, and I came up with all the choreography…75 percent of it all her, but I was taking hip hop. I was scared shitless. I'd never done it.

Heimann: Which is crazy because he could dance before he got into it. He's like, "I don't know if I could dance," and then he sent me a video of him dancing all like, literally he was fine. It was beautiful, so even if you were nervous, I believed in you.

Pucci: I'm a perfectionist, and I hate everything I do unless it's fucking perfect.

Lou, was there anything for Brian you tapped into to build his charisma and seductive nature?

Pucci: The type of charisma I was coming from was a person who could offer you something like my influences were Tim Curry from 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' (1975), who's offering that sex at all times, and then Gene Wilder from 'Willy Wonka' (1971), who was offering like a world of magic and imagination that can fix all of your problems. Those were the two influences I was coming from.

Gavaris: That was smart. Can I say, "That's so smart? That's so bloody artistic and cool."

Pucci: Thanks, dude [laughs]! That's so sweet, Jordi!

The last question goes to all of you. There are so many different colors used and Lovecraftian influences. What went into playing into the shape of what the monster ultimately ended up looking like, and what was the most difficult part about filming those tentacle scenes if you want to get to the gritty of it?

Heimann: We could start with the design. Josh and Sierra from Russell Effects took everything I liked. They asked me to storyboard the entire technical stuff because I wanted to know what they would do and what we would shoot so they could know what to build. I have a stick-figure version of the actual alien that we ended up using. That is what I drew, which is so silly when you think about it. I was like, "Okay, yeah." It's interesting because it's like a weird head, and it's got bad cartoon teeth, and they took that and then made it in a way I did not expect. It was so unreal. They were so wonderful to work with, and in terms of the puppet, it's visually comparable to the alien we put in a two-foot tank and floated around. It had a bunch of puppeteers going around, and then on the set, we had tentacle appendages where the P.O.V. that's like a bunch of people being puppeted and everything. Olivia, I'll let you talk about intimacy and all that stuff.

Dudley: Yeah, the tentacle sex was great. It was fun to shoot [laughs], and it was something that, when I got the script, I had a lot of questions about and wanted to make sure it was done right. That could be done distastefully and not on the page. It's hard to know what the vision was, and Addison made the set so wonderful, and he was so collaborative. He wanted to make sure everyone felt comfortable at all times, so we worked with an intimacy coordinator and worked with Russell Effects and we narrowed down how to shoot that.

It was fun on the day. It was a long day, but a bunch of people put tentacles around my body, and it was surreal. Ultimately, I'm so happy with how it turned out and worked. All the practical alien effects play into the movie. We're dealing with such heavy stuff that it does something to your mind when you watch it and see the juxtaposition of the heavy human stuff. Then, like a puppet, your brain makes it real because everything else feels real. Your imagination takes off while watching this movie, and I'm hoping it's what I feel when I watch the movie. It is that our brains will take over and make all those things, even though they're practical and silly, feel very real.

Were there other endings you considered?

Heimann: We made the ending in the edit, which was funny.

Gavaris: What?

Heimann: I don't think you've seen the actual ending, Jordan.

Gavaris: I see. [laughs]

Heimann: That's funny. No, it was always going to be; essentially, he would always be her going off to hunt the other Brians. The way we shot it, we weren't even thinking. We were just people who were like, "I don't understand what's happening." then, in the edit, we were all brainstorming, and it was like, "Oh no! Like the Duolingo. What if we just like having an extended where it turns to this metaphorical sense of, like, tree clone, alien kill, kill, kill, as another Brian as popping out to be born? We're all thankfully like, "Well, it works, but yeah, it was always a plan of her going off to hunt the other Brians."

Touch Me, which also stars Marlene Forte and Paget Brewster, premiered at the Sundance Festival.

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