Zach Clark is the writer-director of The Becomers, Little Sister, White Reindeer, Vacation! and Modern Love is Automatic. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
I wouldn’t have met Russell Mael were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic. In the summer of 2020, I was regularly attending a secret Zoom movie club that had recently begun featuring special guests, among whom were Russell and his brother Ron, founding members of the seminal pop band Sparks. Within a few weeks, they had seen my 2016 feature, Little Sister, and we all got on a video call to say hi. Less than a year later, I accepted a challenge of sorts from Joe Swanberg, to make a genre movie on a shoestring budget in Chicago with a non-union cast and crew. The resulting film was the sci-fi/horror/romance/comedy/melodrama The Becomers, which I set in midst of the pandemic, something that almost nobody else in film and television seemed to be doing. When it came time to cast the narrator, who tells the story of our extraterrestrial protagonists’ life on their home planet, I immediately reached out to Russell — known to all for his iconic, otherworldly singing voice.
Covid turned us all into the other, a world of masked figures, alone in crowds. I’m still struck by how many people have related to The Becomers’ body-snatching alien lovers, despite the body count they leave behind. For better or worse, the movie feels just as current now as it did when we made it. And with it out now on VOD and America still seemingly in the throes of collective amnesia, I figured what better time to catch up with Russell and talk about his experience of the pandemic, and what he’s been up to since.
Zach Clark: What was that first year of the pandemic like for you?
Russell Mael: Like for everybody, you know, a nightmare. I mean, the only upside to it was that we have our own little studio set up in my place. So, despite the restrictions that were imposed, and even though Ron didn’t come over all the time, I could work here and be productive. And then Ron has a small setup in his place, so he could be productive. So, despite the horrible nature of Covid, which was an absolute nightmare for everybody, having the technology to be able to continue working in your own environment was so lucky, because it was a completely different situation than people with normal jobs, whatever those are. So, from a creative end, it wasn’t as restrictive as it might have been. I mean, we had a tour planned that had gotten postponed, and that we later did. And Sparks released an album during that time period, too. So, we didn’t want it to be all consuming.
Clark: Did you find that it helped you focus at all? I sort of had the experience of thinking, “When else will I have all this time to devote to personal projects?” but then the world kept creeping in.
Mael: I mean, it made it like, “Well, there’s nothing else to do, so. So you better do it.” Ron and I are both fortunately, really self-motivated, it’s what we enjoy doing. And we’re really driven to keep active. So if anything, Covid made that even more obvious. We didn’t want to be stagnant during that whole period and succumb to thinking about the reality of what was actually going on.
Clark: Were there net positives for your work from Covid?
Mael: I don’t know that there were any real positives, I think we were just really fortunate to have the tools to be able to continue to work during that period. For a lot of people from the movie world, it forced people to be creative, like you were, and to do things where you’re not reliant on, for better or worse, a mega studio. So I think for the crafty artists like yourselves, you were able to do work on your own that maybe you couldn’t do if you were in a bigger system.
Clark: Yeah, The Becomers is a movie that came out of a challenge: could I make something during Covid for very little money and very few resources? As you just said, it’s hard to say that there were any net positives from that time, but for me, making something very quickly and cheaply reminded me how resilient I could be as a creator.
Mael: It’s good, because if you can do it under those circumstances, you can do anything. I think it’s really great you were able to do all of that during that time. So there’s positives there. And also for your own self satisfaction that you not only were productive, but that you came up with something really, really good, too.
Clark: Do you remember when I reached out to you and sent you a cut of the movie? What led you to want to become involved in it?
Mael: I think both Ron and I respond to things that aren’t right down the middle, that are taking a stance and doing something in a different way. And then especially, having to be crafty because you are working with more limited funding. To be able to do something that’s good, but does not have a multi-million dollar budget I think it makes it that much more exciting. It forces you to be crafty. And I think you did that with The Becomers.
When you first sent it through, I was honored to be considered to do it, and then I felt the responsibility. “God, I better not screw up this guy’s film. He’s got a perfectly good film, and it can only go downhill for him.” But you also had done the original voice for the narrator. So it gave a clue for me to follow, and I didn’t have to completely take a stance that seemed foreign. I felt really honored to be asked to do it because the narrator plays a big role in the film, even though it’s unseen, moving the story along and helping to fill in some of the blanks.
Clark: I think you did a beautiful job; everything is taken at face value.
Mael: Yeah, that’s what I liked. Not winking at some of the things that might be absurd or unusual. But to play it with a really straight face and not turn it into something overly campy.
Clark: The Becomers is really about what Covid felt like for me. Everything is there to point to how strange normal life became. So it’s the not winking that actually points to how strange things were, if that makes any sense.
Mael: No, it really did capture that. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but the whole oppressed situation that everybody was in at that time.
Clark: I was listening to Sparks earlier today and I was struck by how so many of your songs are from the point of view of a specific character, and there could be multiple characters over the course of an album. When you get a set of lyrics or as you’re talking about a song with Ron, do you guys discuss that character and where that point of view is coming from for that specific song?
Mael: Well, we tend not to talk to each other. I mean, we talk to each other, but not about what’s happening in the song. I trust the lyric and, not only trust it, but I like the lyrical slant that Sparks has. And so I don’t question things too often, because I like to rely on my instincts. And I’m sure you do too, as a filmmaker.
Clark: Of course, of course.
Mael: And so you want to have a strong sense of what you want and not be questioning things about your own stuff or nitpicking over things, because there’s enough outside forces with opinions about what you should or shouldn’t be doing. So I like to not have any kind of questioning — “Well, what did you mean by that?” Or, “Should we really be saying that?” My feeling about that becomes even stronger when I go back and look at some of the old stuff. When I go back to some of the lyrics that at the time maybe I didn’t appreciate as much as I do now, they seem even more unique and more in their own world. So it reinforces my opinion about not questioning and just kind of doing it, you know?
Clark: Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. Because The Becomers operates in a unique way, I’ve gotten a lot of questions like, “What did you mean by that? What was your intention with this scene?” And a lot of the time, the answer is, it felt right. It seemed like it made the most sense at the time.
Mael: That’s the best answer, because if you have to spell out something, then either you’re being really specific and then the other person might go, “Oh no, that’s not what I thought.” Or else somebody else has their own good idea of what you meant by something. And that’s fine, too. We don’t always know exactly what something means, but we like what it is. The best of both worlds is where someone else has an opinion that maybe wasn’t exactly what you thought of, but you go, “God, I hadn’t thought of that. But yeah, now that you mention it, it’s a valid comment or valid interpretation.”
Clark: I will sometimes watch a movie I’ve made in the past, and they usually tell me a lot about who I was at the time in a way that I couldn’t have wrapped my head around when I made them. I can see what I was going through emotionally and it shows because in certain scenes, but none of that stuff was at the forefront of why I was making those decisions at the time.
Mael: Yeah. Exactly.
Clark: But to get back to this question of character, when you approach a song that is from a specific point of view, do you find yourself imagining a character, a certain person that you’re embodying?
Mael: Yeah, I mean, sometimes it is kind of like acting, in that way, where you’re becoming a role. You’re taking on a character. And the thing we discussed earlier about not tipping your hand so much as to what you’re actually feeling, sometimes with the lyrics of the songs, when I’m singing them, I want that same kind of attitude where I’m playing it really straight, the character within the song, even if what is being said by the character may not be so down the middle of the road.
But by not giving away too much about what the attitude of the character is, hopefully the lyrics themselves tell you a lot and you don’t have to hammer it down over someone’s head. Sometimes the ambivalence of the tone is what makes it interesting, too.
Clark: Are you and Ron working on any other film projects?
Mael: Yeah. Annette was a really satisfying thing for us, to be able to channel what we were doing into an uncharted area. We really like Leos Carax’s work, and we knew he was a fan of our music, but then to have a story that he would relate to in such a strong way, was just really exciting for us. And that whole experience was so great. We have done a new musical project and it’s moving along really well. I won’t get too specific about it right now, but it’s called X Crucior.
After the Edgar Wright documentary about Sparks came out, Focus Features came to us and said, “Are you working on anything new, moviewise?” We said, as a matter of fact, we did and we told them this idea and they really liked it a lot. So they told us to go ahead and write the thing. When it’s a musical, it’s got two sides to it: somebody does the book and then somebody else does the music. We really enjoy doing both things, but the process is really unwieldy because you’re writing a story. And for us, sometimes the story isn’t completely finished, but we’re doing the music and the story at the same time. And then as you’re going along, a new story element might come to mind. And so you start doing that, but then have to do the music as well. So in any case, when Focus came to us and said they liked this idea, we went away for a year and we did all of the music for it and the screenplay. There wasn’t yet a director attached or a producer. We had seen an interview in the L.A. Times with John Woo, of all people, and he mentioned at the end of the article, “I really look forward to doing a musical someday.” And we thought. “John Woo? A musical?” And we said, “We’ve got a musical.”
But then we stopped ourselves. John. Woo. You know, we love his films, but John Woo and us and our story that we had? So, we got in touch with him, fortunately. And it turns out he lives in L.A. too, which made it convenient because we’re here. He came out within a few days after he was contacted, and he sat through the whole two hours of the music and the story and said, “It’s the best musical I’ve ever heard. Let’s do it.” And so we went, “Oh my God.” So he’s been on so he’s been on board with us since the beginning of this year.
We also have the producers, which again are seemingly unlikely: Patrick Crowley and Frank Marshall, who produce all the Jurassic Park and Bourne Identity movies. A lot of their films are these really big tentpole films, but we initially had met with Frank Marshall and he’s a real music person and he’s done music documentaries. He directed one on the Beach Boys and one on the Bee Gees. He really responded to the story that we had, but also the music really hit him, as well.
Clark: That project sounds incredible. So much of creative work is just being open to the universe. You and Ron working with John Woo because you read an interview in the paper isn’t dissimilar to the series of circumstances that lead to you narrating The Becomers. You know, you follow the pathways when they present themselves to you.
Mael: A lot of unexpected things, and sometimes you just have to take it. With Annette, it wasn’t meant to even be a movie. It was going to be our next album, in fact. We wanted to try something in a different vein, where we could tour with it and have an opera singer with us on stage, and then Ron and I each taking one of the roles. It was just by chance that we met Leos Carax at Cannes. And just because he was a fan of our music, we thought it would be interesting for him just to hear what we were up to. We weren’t hitting him up to direct it, but he said, “I’d really like to direct this.” So then that whole project veered into something else that we hadn’t expected, but which was really amazing.
Clark: I think that’s probably a great way to end this. Russell. Zoom is going to kick me off in about five minutes.
