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

Touch Me Director & Cast Talk Japanese Pink Film Influences & More

Touch Me director Addison Heimann and stars Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jordan Gavaris, and Marlene Forte discuss thriller.

Sometimes, some of the deepest, darkest regions of the mind can produce some of the most impressive visuals, not to mention act as a form of therapeutic subterfuge as is the case for writer-director Addison Heimann's (Hypochondriac) works with his latest in Touch Me. The psychosexual horror-comedy follows two co-dependent friends, Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Craig (Jordan Gavaris), as they battle their insecurities and toxicity when Joey's ex, Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), resurfaces. Brian is an alien who can use his touch to take away someone's anxiety and depression in a moment of euphoria. While promoting the film at the Sundance Film Festival, Heimann, Dudley, Gavaris, Pucci, and co-star Marlene Forte spoke to Bleeding Cool about Heimann's inspiration for the film and how his writing resonated with the cast.

Touch Me Director & Cast on Film's Empathy

Bleeding Cool: Addison, what's the inspiration behind 'Touch Me?'

Heimann: All my ideas came out of beautiful and sad depression, and I was dealing with a sorrowful time with a friendship breakup at the time. And I was miserable. I watched a movie called 'The Untamed' (2016), which was about an alien who was in a shack that fucks people and gives them euphoric touch. I was like, "I want to feel that. I wish I could if I could find that in my life."

I had been recently diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, so I was like, "What would that look like? How could I marry that beautiful thought process with what I was going through? I've been learning Japanese for five years and became obsessed with Japanese cinema of the 60s and 70s, Pink films, like 'Lady Snowblood' (1973), 'House' (1977), 'Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion' (1972), and 'Sex & Fury' (1973). They had such a beautiful theatricality with incredibly saturated color built on these theatrical sets. I was like, "This is my way," and so I created this world with this alien who has this hip-hop dancing and wears tracksuits, but at the core, it's the story of a friendship break up and two broken people living with their mental illnesses, who ultimately need to learn to overcome it.

Olivia and Lou. Did you both build a backstory for your characters in addition to what Addison had established in the script for your characters?

Dudley: With Joey, I shouldn't have to build too much of a backstory. I read the script, and I immediately related to her. We have so much in common. We both have OCD and anxiety and have spent a lot of time around narcissists. I've been in codependent relationships and had so much to pull from my personal life, which doesn't always happen with characters. There was such a rich world already inside me that I felt like Joey, and I didn't build that much of a backstory with her. I also didn't have much prep time on this, so it was more scouring my mind and soul of "Who is she" versus writing down what her favorite music is or something like that. I made Joey myself.

Pucci: It's more about the connection we had on screen in the present than the backstory because our backstory was we had this massive two-week experience where I thought I fell in love with how surface-hot you were and couldn't ever get over it. For five years, you ran away from me because I almost exploded your head with my tentacles.

The question also goes to Jordan and Marlene. Do you guys have any notes for your 'Touch Me' characters aside from Addison's script?

Gavaris: I was last into the casting process, the last piece. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare. The one thing I knew, despite the creative and colorful allegories and wild circumstances of the movie, this was at its heart, a personal story for Addison based on real things that had happened to him. I knew to an extent [my character] Craig was his shadow avatar, so it's not obvious who Addison is as a person, but maybe some of the deep fears we have of who we could be or how we're seen by other people, which also goes to the heart of OCD and intrusive thoughts.

At least I had Addison as a resource because otherwise, I didn't have the time; Addison believed in Olivia so much and was so confident in the process by his belief, believed in myself, and that I was going to do it properly. What was tricky with Craig, more than anything, was knowing you must love this guy. Otherwise, the end of the movie doesn't work, and his arc as a character doesn't work; despite him being a narcissistic mess at times, you do have to love him. I kept that in the back of my mind the whole time, and humor's always a great access point for me in terms of making sure that the characters…I hate these words, but stay "likable" or "relatable." I was lucky in the way that I thought too much was happening, and it was happening too fast. I didn't have time to think.

Forte: Addison scripts dialog and the worlds he creates are so easily absorbed that…this is the second time I have worked with him. They're so relatable and human, and like Olivia said, "Joey is me." That's in some weird way. Both these characters are me, whether this is a genre so I can get crazy in my inner voice and smash somebody's head into the bed, which we all think about doing in certain moments in life but don't. We answer politely, but with his characters, we can just do it, especially with [my character] Laura, who I think is the monster in this script.

Touch Me, which also stars Paget Brewster, premieres at the Sundance Festival on January 28th and runs through February 2nd.

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