Niko Stathakopoulos fronts the Seattle band Scarves; Tim Kasher fronts the bands Cursive and The Good Life, and is a writer and director whose latest film, Who’s Watching — a psychological horror movie about a metalhead loner named Caleb who becomes obsessed with his coworker — will out this Friday via Dark Sky Films. The new Scarves record Strays Forever will be out the same day, so to celebrate, Niko and Tim got on a call to catch up about it all.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Niko Stathakopoulos: First of all, congrats on the movie, man. It was really fun to watch.
Tim Kasher: Oh, thanks. Congrats likewise — I listened to the record the other day. It's sounding really nice.
Niko: Thank you so much.
This is somewhat of a difficult movie to talk about without spoiling anything. [Laughs.] But the scene where the two characters are talking about the band name for the first time during that one interview — it made my skin crawl in a very particular way. It's heightened or whatever, but it's like, I know this guy. I have talked to this exact musician before about bands and been like, Oh, no.
Tim: Yeah, it's really leaning on that old band dude trope. Also just, like, the metal scrawl of a band name that's basically indecipherable — like, “Oh, you can't read it? You don't know that band?”
Niko: Even just the arrogance of the guy at one point being like, “Yeah, we’re probably gonna have female fans. It's cool.” I mean, we've met a million of these guys on the road. In my experience, it's always like you're playing an empty venue in Phoenix, Arizona and the bassist of the opener is telling you about his real band, which is his, like, tech death band. He's like, “We're pretty cool. We're opening for AJJ in six months.”
Tim: [Laughs.]
Niko: [Laughs.] And you're like, “Sick… What are you doing here?” And he's like, “Well, you know, until I get the drinking under control, I'm not really allowed in the practice space again…” And you're like, “OK, got it.”
This leads me into: I was thinking a lot about your career and one thing I really appreciated about this movie is there's so much weird humor integrated into a lot of the shock value of it all. The way you leverage humor with the darker themes of everything was really fascinating to me because I feel like it does that sugar-bitter thing where it allows this heightening. I've noticed it's sort of always been prevalent in your writing, in particular with characters, allowing them to be somewhat silly despite dealing with really heavy things.
Tim: Yeah, it's weird… With Who's Watching, doing these screenings, it was a big reminder for me of, Oh, that's right, this is a funny movie too. I don't think of it as a funny movie. But that would be dishonest of me because, I mean, there's literally jokes inserted into the movie. And there's other things that are just funny because they're weird. I think I forgot that there's humor to it because it's just natural to turn to humor for things. I think that I naturally turn to humor in songwriting as well. A lot of times, it's a way of expressing some other issue. Doing it through humor can offer a little levity to something heavier that you're trying to express.
Niko: Yeah, I think about that a lot too. Our record’s got some kind of funny lines on it — I wouldn't say jokes, but there's definitely some funny moments. And I feel like I forget they're there until somebody else points them out. Like we have that line, “I love you like a cat loves cardboard,” after the Texas Chainsaw reference on the record, and I don't think about it as funny because I've also lived in that world for so long. When somebody is kind of new to it, they're like, “That was really funny,” and you're like, “Oh, huh…” I guess that is sort of my defense mechanisms coming out.
Tim: I think that humor that came out throughout this film, sometimes it's sardonic and sometimes it’s pointing the finger at how absurd people can be and just being able to laugh at it. But with the script, I never went through like, “I gotta punch this up.” But that said, there are specific points where there are jokes written into it.
Niko: And I get it, too, because the subject matter is not something you're trying to point a joke at. I don't think it feels like you're making a comedy because it would be a weird thing to make a comedy about this particular subject matter. But I think there's humor embedded in it, mostly because it's so extreme. It's a natural reaction to shock.
Tim: I think actually that hits the nail on the head — Caleb is a really extreme character, and so the more that you color that in, the more it just gets funny because you're like, “God, this is ridiculous. This is just a ridiculous fucking person”... You have an hour-and-a-half to tell the story, so [I’m] just trying to bring these people to life as much as I can.
Niko: I think you did a really good job. You are somebody who I think is attracted to writing in a similar way that I am, which is these characters — I always hate to say “concept record,” as someone who does it too, who writes these kind of threaded narratives, but the thing we're putting out is that too — it feels like you have three minutes to tell a section of a story, and maybe you have 45 to 50 minutes total to tell what can be a years-long story. So I think you have to get really obsessed with character. And for me, when I'm writing these shorter pieces for, it feels like form poetry. How do you drop just enough hints to tell the broader story?
Was it freeing to get to do that on a larger form with characters where you get to give them whole lines that don't have to rhyme?
Tim: Completely. It's just such liberation to not be confined to meter. And then you go back to music and it's just a totally different beast. You don't have to write a full three act story in your song, or in your album even. If that's something that you yearn to do, then once you start screenwriting, you get to scratch that itch that way. And it is really liberating for me.
Niko: So do you feel like becoming a director-slash-writer has genuinely impacted the way you engage with music then?
Tim: Oh, yeah, completely. I think there's a mental health that I've benefited from where music doesn't have to fulfill the demands that a screenplay fills for me now.
Niko: That's awesome. How does it feel right now to put out a somewhat low budget film in the era of that being sort of lauded again? I feel like we're seeing the rise of the Duplass-inspired earnest attempts at low budget, you're seeing every penny on screen. Like, I think that we will forever call this the post-Obsession era…
Tim: As a creator of whatever, you can feel like there's so many bad breaks — like bad timing — and it's always something you can lean on and be like, “Oh, well, I put this record out on 9/11…” or some story like that. “People weren't really looking for the record at that time.” I feel like this is a unique situation where this is a really good time to put this movie out. So that's great. I don't know that that will really generate more interest, but at least it's good footing for it to come out just a few months after Obsession and Backrooms. Everybody's, at least for the moment, probably the most open to low budget horror as they may ever be. [Laughs.] And this window probably won't be open for very long. I think it's good timing for Who's Watching to come out. But, again, will I be a recipient of any of that? Probably not…
Niko: I think you will. Infinite laurels are coming your way.
Growing up, what was your exposure to horror movies? How did you come into them?
Tim: My cousin David lived on the same block when we were very young — maybe unusual and precocious young, like young-young — and he just loved horror movies. I thought that was cool. His parents, my aunt and uncle, must have just thought it was so strange but for his 8th birthday, he got this big coffee table book of horror and we would look through that thing just daydreaming about the movies that we wanted to see so badly. That was a big introduction for me. And then I had my scarring moments…
Niko: What movie did it for you?
Tim: There's a few and they're mostly predictable — seeing The Shining way too early, The Exorcist way too early. And then my sister and I were left alone one Sunday afternoon at a parent's friend's house and we watched all of Salem's Lot.
Niko: Woah.
Tim: The scars are still there. Great movie though.
Niko: I had this friend named Drew and he was the same type of guy who just loved horror movies. I was younger than him, and he would babysit me sometimes, so I saw Saw pretty young. And it's funny because as a kid, that movie was terrifying; as adult, I didn't realize it's kind of like a satire. Same with Chucky, where it really tortured me mentally ‘til I saw them like, Oh, these are something else. But the one — and no one remembers this movie — this movie scarred me so badly growing up — Darkness Falls. Do you remember Darkness Falls?
Tim: Not really. I recognize the title.
Niko: It’s the worst. It's about the tooth fairy. It's like an American rip off of The Grudge, but the idea is, you're in this small New England town — I think because every horror movie has to ape that from King — and when you lose a tooth, you put it under your pillow and then the tooth fairy comes, but if you wake up in the middle of the night and you see the tooth fairy, she's this horrific beast that has to kill you. It's like Final Destination, she chases you… unless you're in the light. I think it's hovering at 1-2% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. But it got me, and it got me bad.
Tim: Good for them.
Niko: [Laughs.] Well, we're getting close to time. Any questions for me?
Tim: No, everything's great for me. I'm sure we gave them plenty to work with.
Niko: Cool. Are there any parting words of wisdom you want to give?
Tim: Don't skip meals.
Niko: Don't skip meals, everybody… Thanks so much for chatting, bud. It was great to catch up.
Tim: Yeah, likewise. And good luck with the record. I wish the world.
Niko: I wish the world for you, too. I can't wait to see all the gruesome shit you come up with.
