Accused of misogyny and artlessness by his critics, McKee (May, The Woods, Red) mounted a convincing artist's defense of his film, about a feral woman captured by a sadistic family man, as difficult by design. "The stuff is dark and hard," he said, "but there's a catharsis I get out of doing it, putting it out there and sharing it with people like, 'Look, I see this stuff. Do you see it, too?'"
It's been a crazy few days, huh?
It's been pretty wild -- and crazy and disturbing, a mixture of all sorts of emotions.
Judging from reports of your Q&A and the post-screening video that circulated afterward, we were 80 percent sure that what happened was real. For the record, we have to ask: Was the infamous shouting angry man a plant?
No, absolutely not. If you had been there and seen my reaction to it, you'd see that it was genuine. For one thing I've been working on this for two years with a few collaborators. This stuff gets really personal after a while, then all of a sudden you're in a situation where you have to share it with 500 people. It's almost physically debilitating for me.
And that's just having your film premiere, not even with someone shouting at you.
Yeah, you put so much stuff in this and watch the audience, and obviously there are a lot of people walking out. And I knew that would happen, it's happened with stuff I've made in the past, so I get it. Some stuff is a little too much for some people, and there's stuff they don't want to confront. I was sitting there watching the movie, and the ending is pretty intense, and I saw this girl trying to get out of her row but the seats are so tight in that theater that she was having trouble getting out. She was getting kind of panicky and she walked right by me and heard this terrible sound. I got up and walked back there and this girl had really taken a bad spill, I guess she just fainted. I was like, "Stop the movie, somebody help this girl!" Nobody seemed to know what to do, and they didn't stop the film.
It was just so bizarre. But that was really concerning to me and it upset me. There are a lot of people who were like, this is great for publicity, this is great for the movie, but it's like, you know, she could have really hurt herself! So that really bothered me.
What happened next?
I went outside to have a cigarette and saw the emergency people showed up, and I told the volunteer to tell them where to go. I went back upstairs, and I was walking through the lobby and I saw this guy standing there with a lady and he was talking to himself. He was saying a lot of the things he ended up screaming in the theater, and on the video that ended up online. It looked like he was trying to work it up in his head; this is while the credits were running. As he was saying this stuff out loud -- "This isn't art, this is bullsh*t, what kind of a sick person would do something like that?" -- I just happened to walk right by him. And I introduced the film, so he knew who I was. Three steps behind me after I walked in he came in and made this big scene. I just went to my chair and wanted to crawl inside myself. It was awful, you know?
What drove you to make this brutal story, and why did it need to go as far as it did?
I know the movie's extreme and it deals with abuse, but for someone to say I'm condoning abuse and I'm condoning misogyny... I mean, these things exist in our world, and the whole point of me making this film was that I've been tagged as a horror director but had never felt like I'd really made a horror film. And I was like, OK, if you really want a horror film let's get into some really scary stuff, and let's not do it with monsters -- let's do it with people. For the audience, these people that you see doing these things look just like you, they talk just like you, and they mingle with you. That kid is a kid you went to school with, or that's a girl that you know. Maybe what it is, is that people have been abused and in rough situations in life -- which happens to just about everybody. It pushes those emotional buttons and it's just too much for their hearts and for their minds.
The idea of it is that it's supposed to get people to think about how they treat people, how they treat themselves. It's supposed to spark that sort of stuff in an emotional way, and it's supposed to scare you! There's nothing more scary than a f*cking human being. We do some pretty awful things, and the thing that's scary about it is we know what we're doing, we're conscious of it. That being said, it's not going to be for anybody. But I don't want to make stuff for everybody, I want to just make stuff I want to make.
You must have known going in that this film could be very divisive...
Yeah, and I know how people react to stuff that goes that deep and doesn't turn away when you think it should. It really is eliciting physical responses from people, which really kind of blows my mind. Just the right succession of pictures and sounds can do that to somebody, which says a lot about the art form.
How do you respond to accusations that your film is anti-female due to the violence done to women, especially your lead character?
I've read one negative review by a fellow who was very upset with me, and very upset that I'm adding to all this negative stuff around women. But I adore women! Watch all of my films! It's like Hitchcock's movies always had scary mothers in them, but if you read about his life he loved his mother dearly. So having a scary mother in a film is what's scary to him. Your mom is the person who's supposed to protect you, and if that person's bad, that's scary. That was scary to him. And to me, women that can be put under the thumb of a man is scary, so I wanted to explore that. Sorry if it's hurting people.
No, the kind of film that challenges its audience to think about what they're watching is sadly rare.
When I started making horror films, I put myself in there -- my personal observations and things that had happened to me, I tried to just put my heart in there. And the stuff is dark and hard, but there's a catharsis I get out of doing it, putting it out there and sharing it with people like, "Look, I see this stuff. Do you see it, too?" Going to horror conventions and having kids come up to me asking, "Did you see that movie where the guy got ripped in half? It was so cool!" And I'm like, yeah I saw it, but I didn't think it was cool. Horror films are starting to be treated like roller coaster rides at amusement parks. You go to a meeting in Hollywood and they're like, "This is what we want to do -- what do you think the good kills will be?"
How many times have you had that kind of conversation?
Multiple times! And how do you announce that? What are our kills... Just to turn it into an amusement park ride is a little disturbing in itself to me. Obviously those movies are very popular and entertaining to people, but I'm not capable of that. I can't just brush over our subject matter, especially death. It's the one we're all most afraid of. So I want the movie to make people question why they watch this kind of stuff. What is it that makes me and you and everybody fascinated to see these dark things take place on screen?
Besides the obvious boost in profile, what were the immediate benefits of having the spotlight shown on your film's visceral power?
It's definitely helpful; it makes people realize that this movie really pushed people's buttons. The thing I've seen the most online is people saying, "I want to see it!" And that feeds right into that: Why are we all fascinated with this stuff? We watch horror on the news every night, you know, but instead of just telling it in some sort of emotionally honest way they're selling Viagra and all that kind of stuff in between. They put all sorts of awful images in your head, and it's just a show! I've had my dinner ruined a couple of times just from the things they show. This film is one of those awful stories you hear on the top of the 6 'o clock news: "Here's the most awful thing that happened today!" But this is making you sit in it and examine it and live in that situation. And if you're sitting in a movie theater and you forget you're watching a movie and you start having a physical reaction to it, that's pretty awesome. That's better than 3-D, I can tell you that much.
If The Woman were to come with a warning label, what sort of warning would you give to folks like the man from the Q&A?
That's a really good question. If you're afraid of something being brutally honest about the awful things that happen in this world, then don't watch it. It's nothing if not honest, and it very much plays like a nightmare because nobody's reacting to what's happening in a correct way and you don't know why that is until you've been through the film once. It's designed to be watched multiple times, and its designed to be completely different the second, third, and fourth time you watch it. But if you can't get past the first viewing... But if someone's getting physically upset and it's hurting them in some way, by all means don't watch it, get out!
[Top Lucky McKee photo: Getty Images]
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