Austin Film Festival spotlight: Todd Berger on killing The Scenesters
They're young. They're hip. They're dead.
Todd Berger (left) and Kevin Brennan find another one in 'The Scenesters'
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Chances are that if you recognize Todd Berger it’s from his sketch group The Vacationeers, which had one of the most lucrative web series ever with “The Googling.” But Berger would prefer you forget about The Vacationeers altogether when entering The Scenesters (premièring this week at the Austin Film Festival): The Austin-bred director doesn’t want those expectations of wackiness muddying up his thriller, a genuinely suspenseful whodunit about a team of wannabe filmmakers exploiting a rash of L.A. murders targeting hipsters. While The Scenesters is definitely, if dryly funny in its satirical take on fame-seeking indie-rock types—boosted by a literally killer soundtrack (compiled by A.V. Club contributor Chris Martins) featuring real L.A. bands like The Airborne Toxic Event, whose names hold clues to the murderer’s pattern—it’s first and foremost a mystery, told through a clever blend of tense, documentary-style video and noirish black-and-white film-within-a-film. The A.V. Club spoke with Berger about the trickiness of setting the appropriate tone, the inherent self-loathing of hipsters, the relative cult value of Sherilyn Fenn, and how he remade Julia Stiles into someone you might actually want to hang out with.
The A.V. Club: Balancing horror with comedy this deadpan is tricky. Were you worried about the tonal shifts being jarring?
Todd Berger: I was, especially because I’d prefer people go into it thinking they’re seeing a murder mystery, and it’s one that just happens to be funny. I’ve shown it to friends and they’re like, “Why is it not funny for the last 20 minutes?” It’s not like we’re trying to be funny and failing; it’s supposed to get serious. My big inspiration was Scream, which I think is a really funny movie, more than something like Broken Lizard’s Club Dread. But yeah, I was freaking out. But on a marketing level, we were like, “We could always just put a bloody knife on the box and sell it as a horror, or we could put us in funny wigs and sell it as a comedy.”
AVC: One selling point is that it’s a serial killer murdering hipsters, which it seems like everyone can get behind.
TB: [Laughs.] It’s funny, because the people who like it are hipsters, who are like, “Oh, it’s so awesome you’re killing hipsters. They’re so obnoxious.” They don’t admit that they themselves are, in fact, hipsters. And I fall into that camp. I’ll make fun of hipsters and my friends will be like, “Dude, have you seen the way you dress?” But I feel like I’ve never seen a film that tries to capture the “hipster lifestyle,” really. Maybe that’s because no hipster filmmaker wants to admit he’s a hipster.
AVC: Or maybe they’re all making stuff like the “mumblecore” films you parody in the fake trailer at the beginning of Scenesters.
TB: You’re totally right, actually. And I appreciate what those guys are doing, but I just feel like we, as upper middle-class white people, should try to do something more interesting than talk about ourselves. Films should teach you something on some level, and the kinds of people who go see mumblecore movies are the kind of people that mumblecore movies are about. My 12-year-old cousin is not gonna go see Hannah Takes The Stairs and walk out going, “Wow, I learned a lot about what it means to be young and in love.” I do like the Duplass brothers. Baghead was amazing, because it was like a mumblecore horror movie. But the majority of them I can’t stand.
AVC: The Scenesters has a lot in common with Baghead, actually, in that rather than sympathizing with mumblecore people, you’re stabbing them.
TB: Because we’re all awful people! In [The Scenesters], they’re all self-indulgent and looking out for themselves—it’s sort of a mumblecore murder-mystery, you could say.
AVC: How was it directing John Landis in his cameo as the judge?
TB: He was giving me a really hard time on purpose. He took over the courtroom set, but in a really playful way. He had a line that he kept messing up, and every time he’d yell, “Cut!” And I was like, “John, I get to yell cut.” I’ve known him for years, and I have this playful relationship with him—and he likes to playfully act like a tyrant to you. And I get it, but not everyone else does. So on set he’d be like, “Todd, this is terrible! What are you doing? You don’t know how to direct!” And I was like, “Ha ha, he’s giving me a hard time,” but everyone else was like, “Oh my God, I hope Todd doesn’t freak out.”
AVC: Did you always have Sherilyn Fenn in mind for the prosecutor?
TB: We always wanted to have some sort of cult figure to play the D.A. We thought it would be an easy job for some known actor, and we came up with this list of cult actors that would fit the type. At the top of the list were ridiculous “gets” who would never do it, because probably every indie film calls them up—people like Bruce Campbell and Parker Posey. But Bruce Campbell was off doing Burn Notice, and Parker Posey was doing a play. We knew they would never do it, but we figured we might as well ask.
AVC: Speaking personally, I was way more excited to see Sherilyn Fenn than yet another Parker Posey cameo.
TB: Yeah, that was the cool thing that we realized: There’s not an over-saturation of Sherilyn Fenn.
AVC: What can you tell us about your short, Excuse Me, that’s also premièring at AFF?
TB: It’s another film that The Vacationeers made with Julia Stiles, shot at the same time as “Stiles Styles.” It’s kind of a play on the fan-celebrity interaction, where The Vacationeers—just four normal dudes—are trying to have lunch, and Julia Stiles keeps bothering us.
AVC: You guys sure have done wonders for Julia Stiles’ image.
TB: [Laughs.] Yeah. She’s actually going to be on The View, and they contacted us to see if they could use “Stiles Styles.” And there was recently this two-page thing in the National Enquirer, about how Julia Roberts was upset at Julia Stiles because she was making fun of the environment. We were like, “What? We’re not making fun of the environment.” But whatever. It was one of the greatest things to ever happen to me.
AVC: What’s next for you? What’s happening with your puppet comedy, The Happytime Murders?
TB: Happytime Murders is moving forward. Brian Henson is on board to direct. It’s funny, because it’s a “hard R” puppet movie, and when the Henson Company came on board, they said, “Why don’t we do a PG-13 draft?” And the PG-13 draft, we all looked at it and were like, “No.” So Brian Henson said, “Todd, I want you to ‘R’ this script up. I want all the puppet sex, violence, and cursing you can put in there. I’ll let you know if you’ve gone too far.” That was one of the greatest writing experiences of my life.
AVC: Both Happytime Murders and The Scenesters fuse film noir with comedy. Are you determined to make “comedy noir” your thing?
TB: I could take that as my genre, sure. If someone said, “Todd, we want to sign a contract with you to make comedy noir for the rest of your life,” I’d be all right with that. I think there are limitless noir stories, and limitless ways to make them funny.
