5 Questions with Laura Moss and Tony Grayson
The brilliant and strangely disturbing, “Allen Anders - Live at the Comedy Castle (circa 1987),” presents the on-stage meltdown (or quality performance, if you prefer) of a “professional” comedian. We asked the film’s director, Laura Moss, and its writer and star, Tony Grayson, about the origins of the project, how they captured the performance, and the connection between corny 80’s comedy aesthetic and existential dread…
1) To start, can you talk a bit about your background(s), and how you first got interested in movies?
LAURA: I come from a production design background, I started up working art department gigs here in NYC about fifteen years ago. I was always into movies, particularly horror movies. I had a very cool older cousin who would share his Cinefex magazines with me and I became obsessed with movie special effects. In second grade when they asked us to all write down what we wanted to be when we grew up I wrote 'special effects makeup artist for horror movies.'
TONY: My mother is an abstract visual artist, so I always have had a bent toward the visual. I snuck into a whole lot of terrible movies growing up, but it didn’t click for me until much later when I realized that film is a combination of so many different forms of expression. I grew up playing bass in metal bands (until I realized I hated metal), performed stand-up comedy in high school, studied playwriting in college, started dance when I was twenty one -- I love that you can combine all of these forms – directly and indirectly - in the way in which you make films.
2) What about this project? What was the spark, and how did it get rolling?
LAURA: Tony and I had met and hit it off at SXSW, and later that year I went to Chicago and saw them perform this act live (minus the endless loop). I was blown away.
TONY: I had started doing this magical realism hack 80’s stand-up character named Jerry Jerry. I was doing poetry and comedy at the time and wanted to combine the two. I think comedy has a way of making everything so much more accessible. The spark for the actual content of the piece was just, ya know, the fact that I’ve felt like an alien in my body for most of my life along with my paralyzing obsessive thinking and morbid sense of humor. Laura’s incredible found footage style work, along with her equally morbid sensibilities made this a no brainer that we should adapt this thing together.
3) Can you talk a little about the production of this? How long did take to film? How many takes did you do? This is real footage of an audience you filmed, correct? Did they know what to expect?
LAURA: We shot it at Standup NY in half a day (we had to clear out by mid-afternoon to make room for an improv class). We shot Tony for six takes, then turned around and filmed the audience for about six takes and then we were out. It was a whirlwind.
The audience were all extras we recruited online or crew, and they had varying degrees of understanding of what they were watching, but they were all really game. One of the nicest compliments we get about the short is that people tend to think the shots of the extras are found footage. Kelsey Sasportas (costume designer) and JoJo Keane (HMU) did an terrific job styling them to look authentically period.
4) This is an incredible performance. It goes from being this hacky basic punchline thing into something utterly strange while keeping the same tone of voice and cadence. I’m not sure what the question is, other than how did you do (or they) that? What was the preparation process like?
TONY: That’s nice, thanks. I performed it a ton on stage over several months and tweaked it in small ways each time. The entire piece only exists because of this recurring live show, 'The Shithole', in Chicago. There’s a handful of people who have seen it every single time I have ever performed it, and they were for sure living in their own loop of endless hell.
The performance that is captured on film is all because of the way Laura ran the set. She’s extremely empowering to work with. She allowed me the freedom to mess up, and lean into the weirdness. The willingness to be messy is what made this what it is.
LAURA: Tony was so captivating, so possessed, when I saw them perform this onstage, and I wanted to create an environment where they had the same freedom to really go for it. We shot three cameras, so we could edit with each take, and the style is deliberately messy, so we didn't worry too much about continuity. I also encouraged Tony to ad-lib in between set beats, and they would go into some wild impromptu standup bits and get lost for a second before returning to script.
TONY: Some of the moments of existential despair are honestly me just fully losing my place in the routine with a room full of people staring at me. Performing that set six times back to back, I was genuinely losing my mind.
LAURA: You're welcome.
5) What was it about the format of stand-up comedy, especially set in the 1980’s, that you thought would make for an interesting take on existential meaninglessness?
TONY: So much of 80s comedy was void of content. There was a hollowness underneath it all. It was more about the formula of the joke than what was being said. Comedians often said things in the right tone, which would then evoke the feeling of laughter… It felt like you could say gibberish -- it doesn’t matter -- and people would laugh as normal… Something about that dichotomy is terrifying to me. The medium and period alone inspire this real sense of dread.
LAURA: The VHS medium also feels thematically appropriate. So often when I'm watching a rerun or a classic film, and I see a glitch or evidence of degradation, I am hit with a realization that many or all of the people I'm watching are now dead. I'm actually watching shadows of people who are constantly being resurrected to perform the same lines again and again. We wanted to evoke that kind of feeling.
Bonus question: What comes next for you?
TONY: I’m in post-production for a short I devised with this amazing puppetry duo, Poncili Creación, and am about to shoot a five song music show with The Metalliques. It will be like a found Top of the Pops broadcasting from another dimension. Some serious Klaus Nomi, Grace Jones, Gary Numan vibes.
LAURA: I'm in development on my first feature film, an all female adaptation of the Frankenstein story. Also in development on a body horror TV series. 'In development' is basically its own repeating loop of existential meaninglessness.
Contact Info:
Laura Moss IG: @msmoss774.
https://www.retrospecterfilms.com/
Tony Grayson IG: @tony_grayson