To say that Neon’s horror movie “Together,” starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, made a splash at this year’s Sundance Film Festival would be an understatement. After being bought by the company for $17 million, the romantic comedy (literally fused together with body horror) has taken Australian-based filmmaker Michael Shanks around the world while promoting the film.
“Together” follows Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie) a decade into their relationship as they move to the countryside from the city. This raises tensions between the couple as they begin to notice their codependency and reliance on one another. After an horrifying incident finds them literally drawn closer together, the couple begin to find themselves confronted with an unseen supernatural force that threatens not only their relationship, but their flesh.
Shanks spoke to Variety about working with Brie and Franco as executive producers on his first indie film, using his own relationship as inspiration and what type of couples should see “Together” in theaters as free relationship therapy.
During the talk-back after the first SXSW screening of “Together,” you said that the starting point of this film was inspired by the fact that you had been with your partner for over 16 years.
We’ve been together for 16 years. We’re coming on 17 years in a couple of months and not only that, we’re having a baby. We’re having a first child at the end of the year. So you know, this is a very strange time for our relationship. We’ve kind of birthed the baby that is this film, and now we’re birthing a real human baby, and who knows which one I will love more.
Was there a specific moment in your relationship that inspired the movie?
It came gradually, but being with my partner for a long time certainly inspired it. At the time of writing the film we were approaching 10 years into our relationship and starting to live together. It was when I really was confronted with the fact that me and my partner have the exact same life. We have the exact same friends we know, listen to the same music, eat the same food and we breathe the same air. Also, It wasn’t just my own relationship, it was also inspired by the relationships in our friendship group and the couples around me, where a lot of my friends are in couples that have been together since high school. These people that are now in their mid-30s that met when they were 15 or 16, and they never departed from their other half. I thought that as you get older, you kind of think back about what people are like when they’re 15 years old [in relationships] and it’s a strange commitment but it’s something interesting to examine.
Were there any personal stories that you had in your relationship that inspired Tim and Millie’s backstories?
So much of Tim specifically is based on myself, but he’s sort of based on a slightly darker and hopefully a little more pathetic version of myself. But, it’s a lot drawn from real life, like the scenes in the film where Tim has got this supernatural sort of imprint on him, once Millie gets further away from him, he starts to feel sick and unsafe when he’s drawn towards her, because that’s kind of all he can do to feel safe. I’m somebody that had chronic panic attacks for years. I was directing Dave and being like “Hey, have you ever had a panic attack?” and he was like “No, I don’t think so. What does it look like? Can you film it so I can study?” And now, Dave has these videos on his phone of me walking around the room and simulating the panic attacks that I’ve had. If that footage ever gets out, it would be so embarrassing.
Alison and Dave are a real-life couple, and it’s their first time working together on screen. How much of their own personal relationship did they bring to Millie and Tim?
I think what they really brought to their characters was this sense of familiarity and the sense of history. The couple in the film have been together for around a decade and in real life, they’ve been together for 12 or 13 years. They just have that chemistry and familiarity. I think when you watch the film, you can feel that there’s a history there in a way that we probably wouldn’t have gotten from actors that were meeting on set.
How did the two of them get hands-on as producers for the film?
Having them as producers was incredible. I’ve been making films in my own way for about 17 years now but those have been short-form YouTube videos. I’ve done a couple of series in Australia, but nothing serious. Then to work with Dave and Alison who are not only amazing actors, but they’ve both directed and written before, and have both produced in the past. So when you make an indie film without a lot of money, it feels like there’s a lot of pitfalls. There’s a lot of traps. There’s a lot of people telling you to cut certain scenes, or to not do this or that every step of the way. But Dave and Alison would just be like “Leave that to us,” and they acted as this shield, protecting my creative vision and the vision of the film.
I’ve never said this before in an interview, but Dave had this no assholes policy, which I really liked. He was like “Look, I’ve directed two movies. It’s not worth working with assholes,” so anytime we were hiring and interviewing heads of department, Dave would always call people that he knew in Australia and ask “Hey, have you worked with this guy? Are they cool?” If the answer was yes, we would hire them. We’d rather work with a nice person than a bad person. I really wanted Damon Herriman for the role of Jamie in the film, and Dave called up Joel Edgerton to see what he thought of Damon.
It’s hard to discuss this movie without spoilers, but a lot of people are calling it a horror rom-com. How do you feel about people calling it that?
I’m very happy for people to see the film that way. When I sat down to write the film, I was telling myself, “Michael, your background is comedy, but you’re going to write the scariest horror movie that’s super serious.” While writing it, I kept coming up with scenes that I thought were funny and sort of resisting them. And then at a certain point, I got out of my own way and realized that this premise is so absurd that the further the premise reveals itself, the crazier the situation for our main characters. That’s really kind of paid off in watching it with an audience, because there’s moments in the film that get a really loud audience reaction where people genuinely scream, and burst out into laughter.
What kind of person should see “Together?” Do you think people should take their partners with them, somebody that they’re maybe beginning to see, or if their relationship is on the decline?
I’ve had mixed reactions. We’ve had some couples come up to us after screenings saying that the film sorted out some arguments they’ve been having. And then there’s other couples, like during the second Sundance screening, this guy came up to me and said “My wife’s been begging me not to talk to you, but I have to. I think this film is about me and that’s my relationship, and I think I need to end it.” Dude, I’m not a therapist. I need to get out of here.
So people shouldn’t trauma-dump their relationship problems on you if they see you at a screening.
But you’re welcome to! I love that it’s getting such visceral reactions. I do think it’s a great date night movie. If my relationship can endure this movie, then yours probably can, unless it’s incredibly toxic. This is me writing about my own relationship and putting my dirty laundry out for the world to see. In answer to your question about who should come see this movie, I am obsessed with horror and it’s kind of all I watch. And this was kind of dumping all the horror scenes I could think of into a film, but that being said, some people who don’t like horror enjoy the film.
I’ve had so many people come up to me saying, “Look, I don’t normally like horror, but I came to see this because of Dave and Alison, but I really loved it.” At Sundance, my mom flew out to Sundance with me because her son made a movie. I was telling her beforehand that she was going to hate this movie because my mom only likes movies starring Judi Dench. And then afterwards, she was like, “I quite liked that!” and when we had our Australian premiere, she brought her bridge club with a bunch of 70 year old bridge players. Apparently they all loved it. It was designed to be kind of a crowd pleaser and hopefully it is.
