 |
| Black Eyed Susan Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
Probably the most divisive and challenging film at Fantasia this year, Scooter McCrae’s Black Eyed Susan tells the story of Derek (played by Damian Maffei), who is offered a job working for a tech company. The company sells increasingly realistic AI-powered sex dolls, and wants his hand-on assistance with testing and developing a doll who will deliver a satisfying response to being beaten – a doll marketed to potential domestic abusers. Towards the end of the festival, I got the opportunity to chat to Scooter, Damian, and Yvonne, who gives an uncanny performance as the robot, nicknamed ‘Susan’. I asked if they saw such products as an inevitable consequence of technological advances and capitalism.
“Yeah,” says Scooter. “I mean, what doesn't capitalism eventually take a hold of and try to squeeze money out? So of course this is next. And, you know, if you think these dolls are bad, I mean, come on. It's going to get worse. There's going to be a lot worse stuff to come. This movie, to me, is a trailer talking more about what is the purpose of science fiction in the modern world. And it's not spaceships and ray guns, not time travel bullshit. It’s this other stuff.
“I say this to someone who grew up loving science fiction, and I feel like it's become so degraded in the film landscape at this point, being written by people who have no idea what the fuck science fiction is to begin with and don't have to think through an idea. Really, any science fiction idea worth expanding upon is something that is dealing with how humans sociologically are going to deal with technological changes in the future. So to me, that is why Black Eyed Susan generates interest, because it's very tangible. And because I'm not an idiot, I was actually doing research and actually trying to figure out signs along the way that this is actually a possible thing.
“The wounding technology would be very difficult. The rest, though – the AI, the doll, and other factors are certainly something that we can see happen in the next five years, easily ten at most. [As for the rest], well, that's just a matter of figuring out how to circumvent whatever laws and ethics we hold dear now. And capitalism always finds a way.”
I’m tempted to raise the subject of self-healing bioplastics, which would seem to be a step towards the wound technology that he mentioned, but we have limited time, so I move on to address one of the key philosophical questions in the film. If somebody wants to be violent towards another person, does it help to give them a robot as an alternative outlet, or does that risk making the idea of violence towards other people seem more acceptable?
It’s a complex question, he acknowledges.
“I feel like there's a kind of moral or ethical judgment that comes towards the bdsm community that's probably a little unwarranted. I mean, these are adults doing things they want to do that may not be considered pleasurable to the mainstream community, but obviously, there's nothing wrong with that. But in terms of actual real violence and really abusing women, having a doll instead of a woman is certainly something that I would support.”
Damian interjects.”One of the more interesting things I thought of while we were filming is that I had done a movie about a peeping Tom before it, and I researched that. I thought about it a lot and, you know, pornography, shows or whatever, there was no replacement for that character or the actual humans who inspired that character. There was no replacement for that kind of real life interaction for him, and I was wondering if that would be a suitable replacement. For a serial killer, I don't think doing that to a doll or robot is going to replace that high you get from watching the life go out of someone. So is beating the shit out of a robot going to fill that void you have where you need to beat the shit out of a real person?”
Scooter nods. “And what would you say there makes me think that even if we did have dolls, well, eventually, the beauty of human species when it comes to violence is that we evolve to the next level always. Because you think of early pornography and it's simple sexual acts, and now it's like, how many cocks can someone fit in their ass? I just saw something on Twitter the other day, it was like a quadruple ass fuck. And I was like, ‘I didn’t know that's possible.’ I hope there was a medic standing by.”
The other two wince, and Damian looks at me apologetically. “I'm sorry.”
“That's where these things go,” Scooter continues. “So the same thing with violence. You know, eventually we have a doll to beat up, and then what's the next level we'll find?”
I observe that the thing psychologists tell us about this is that there's a risk that when things become normalised, people start acting them out in other contexts. Indeed, in this film we see Derek gradually being given permission to go further with the doll, and his own behaviour changes as a result of that.
“He is hesitant, obviously, going in,” says Damian. “And, you know, what’s interesting about Derek is that he would not refer to himself as an abusive person. And then when an incident in his past comes up, it's all ‘But that's been forgiven. That was a mistake. Oh, yeah, but that's not, like, a real thing.’ Or ‘I was drunk,’ which, you know, everyone's heard so many times. The real stuff comes out when the kettle is boiling there and you can't stop to think. And then all of a sudden it's like, ‘This is enough. I’ve got to get a fucking golf club.’ So that’s part of the real Derek.”
Initially it seems that Derek doesn't want to hit Susan but he's trying to get the hang of it in order to get the job. Is he acting then, or is he acting all the rest of the time when he's pretending to not be a violent person?”
That was something he was uncertain about as an actor, Damian says, because he’d never had the experience of interacting with a doll like that. He was trying to find a way of relating to the experience.
“You're asking, in some ways, about when does the mask come on?” asks Scooter. “I mean, it's hard to say. You know, it's one thing in the writing of it. It's another in the performing of it. It's not something that we discussed, because strangely enough, as a writer, I like when an actor has their own space, and I don't like to step in and say ‘You should be like this. I hope you're thinking that.’ I feel like those kind of thoughts for Damian are in his private domain. I never tried to direct him as to whether or not he’s enjoying this or whether he’s just doing it for money, which is a whole other discussion, I suppose.”
There are things addressed in the film that horrify him, Damian says, and he’s haunted by a question raised by Derek’s boss, who wants to know why Derek finds some things unacceptable but is – by that point – fine with hitting Susan. We all draw lines in different places. He’s keen to make clear, though, that none of it reflects the kind of person that he is, and explains that he doesn’t even drink much – which created its own challenges.
“I'm about a two beers a year kind of person, for special occasions, so any drinking and whatnot, I have to imagine. I have previously recorded myself becoming inebriated and putting myself in real life circumstances to see how I would behave. I've never put myself in a sex doll robot situation. I have had to watch myself be drunk.”
Yvonne says that they want to add a word on behalf of Scott Fowler, who plays the man who was working with Susan before Derek took over the job, and was unable to join us for the interview. “He said something to me on set. The scenes with him were the first scenes I filmed, and we only had that one day together, but he said something that stuck with me. He was like, ‘You know, it's funny, my wife has read my lines and everything, and she said, “Your character, Alan, is so different from who you are.” She was like, “It's so funny that you're playing this kind of a rage filled character who likes to see women cry and beat them up during sex because you're such a softie, really. It's the opposite of who you are.”’ So, yeah, I think both Scott and Damian are quite soft.”
Susan must be a fascinating character to play, I suggest, because she or it – we settle on ‘she’ – is not reacting to the situation or to other people, exactly, but to a set of rules or programming. How did they approach that as an actor?
“I definitely wanted to develop Susan as somebody that was not completely robotic, but also not completely human,” they say. “I talked with Scooter about developing Susan's voice because I felt like that was a really important part of it. I mean, the physicality of Susan is also important, but she doesn't have a ton of very physical movements. She can move her arms, but they're kind of stiff and she can't walk, so that was a little easier to do. But developing the voice, I was like, ‘Here's what I'm thinking. I’m thinking of doing it in between robotic and human, maybe a little bit more human on one side, robot on the other side, maybe a little bit more towards human than robot, but still in between’ – because I wanted her to be very advanced.
“I didn't want to sound like that annoying TikTok voice. God, if I never hear that voice again, I will live a happy life. But I wanted her to still have these somewhat rote responses and inflections. And I think I definitely tapped into the autistic side of me. I am autistic, and sometimes in real life I can have a more bland response or bland face if I'm not trying to fit in more. I was like, ‘I'm going to use this.’ And you know, there's a long history of characters being coded as autistic in Sci-Fi: all the Vulcans, basically, in Star Trek. I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I wasn't really consciously thinking this, but I was probably subconsciously thinking about Spock and Data, because I've watched so much of it.”
Scooter suggests that ‘bland’ might be the wrong word, and they agree.
“It's neutrality, right? It's not bland. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes that is a factor in my everyday life, depending on circumstances, but I felt like, ‘Okay, I can tap into this for this role and really make it very obvious that there's a neutrality, despite the emotion that she may be performing at any given moment. There is that kind of base neutrality that comes from being a machine. And I am not in any way comparing autistics to machines, but I think I was just tapping into that history of autistic people feeling like, ‘Okay, we don't really have adequate representation on screen for the most part, in terms of autistic actors playing autistic characters. So where do we see ourselves?’
“We see ourselves in the Vulcans, the androids, and their acceptance, for better and worse. And they are accepted by the Star Trek societies. So we find representation where we can.”
I tell them that I love the physicality of Susan because there are moments when she does just switch off from what people expect a human to be doing. She's very still, and it creates that uncanny valley feeling, because in other parts of the film we are encouraged to think of her as a person.
“It's interesting that you bring this up,” says Scooter, “because initially, what I wanted to do was shoot the scenes with Susan two ways. I wanted to shoot with Yvonne there for me, and then I wanted to shoot angles with a real sex doll sitting there in the same lighting. So it's going to be a question in the movie, whether or not what we were seeing was what Susan actually looked like, or if what we were seeing was Derek's idea of what he thought Susan looked like. These shots, again, they were just kind of neutral, off the side from the same angle. So the point you bring up is actually very interesting and one that I wanted to explore. But because of the limitations of budget and time – we shot this in nine days on $100,000, and on film – it meant that we had to do it as quickly as possible, so the few dial shots that are in the movie were basically all I was able to shoot and salvage and put in. But there would have been a lot more of that. I think it would have spoken to what you're talking about in terms of the idea of stillness. What's really going on in this room right now?”
“Like Mannequin,” ventures Damian.
Scooter grins. “Exactly. I wanted to do Mannequin.”
I ask how he feels about the prospects of the film now. Is it going to be a challenge to sell, with the subject matter it takes on?
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation.
“You know, I was in an Uber on the way here,” says Yvonne. “My Uber driver was asking me why I was here and stuff like that. And I told her. I was just like, ‘Yeah, there’s this movie I've done.’ And she was so excited, and she was like, ‘Oh, can I see you in this movie?’ And I was like, ‘Well, you know, it is an indie movie. It's small. It's probably not going to be in theatres here, but you can probably stream it eventually.’
“There was a little bit of a language barrier. Her English was much better than my French, but I was using Google Translate sometimes. But I did try to warn her. I said, you know, ‘It's called Black Eyed Susan.’ She was so excited to see it and so excited to have an actor in her car. I had to tell her ‘It is kind of controversial, and there's some violence.’ I was trying not to turn her off of the film, but I didn't want her to start the film and be, like, ‘This degenerate in my car that I drove told me to watch this film!’”
“Degenerates need rides too,” says Damian. “Cut the cord. Let the bird leave the nest. She'll find her way.”
“I think it is a film that, you know, some people are going to hate it, and that's okay,” Yvonne continues. “I think there's going to be a lot of people on one end hating it, and a lot of people on the opposite end absolutely loving it, and not a ton in the middle. I think it is going to be kind of divisive in that way. And that's great, I think. And I think Scooter loves that.”
“The polarisation is just fantastic,” Scooter agrees. “I've seen some reviews so far that are like A or B, which is great, and it just drops immediately to F.” They all laugh. “It made me so happy, actually, because it was fascinating,” he says. “Every review is like a Rorschach test at this point. When you read it, if it's a long enough, well written review, you start to get an idea of where the critic was coming from. Maybe their upbringing, their family life. You just start to get this feel based on how they describe things and what points they pick up on. And in the bad review, which was endless, by the way, the thing that fascinated about me was her hatred of the movie. And it's hatred.
“We got a one out of ten, but all she kept saying was ‘A woman's point of view is not represented at all in this movie.’ And I'm going, ‘Yes. You've actually described exactly how the movie works and what it's all about. But somehow you didn't quite cross the bridge. It’s because it's from a male point of view. It's about toxic masculinity. It's about how men see things. That's why.”
He clarifies that that’s why the female company representative whose voice we hear never appears in person, and why, although we watch Derek talking to his wife on the phone, we never actually hear her voice. He then tells me that that review is his favourite so far.
Damian, on the other hand, is annoyed at having had his performance described as robotic. “You see that crutches scene? Fucking robot couldn't do that. I was charming in that instance.” He laughs.
Yvonne says that one of the toughest parts for them was a scene near the end when Derek is very angry.
“At one point he's in my face and he's yelling. I have to maintain this very bland expression with someone yelling in my face. Obviously we've all been yelled at, but I've never had someone truly be like that. I mean, it was a little...” They hesitate. “I was like, ‘Oh, okay, this is what it's like to be yelled at right in the face. Oh, that's a little scary.’” Still, they’re happy with the result, as long as some people like it.
“The script was brilliant. The experience of filming it was great. I love everything about it. I love the way it looks. So I'm very pleased with it,” says Damian.
“Obviously, it wouldn't be challenging if everybody loved it,” Yvonne adds.
Damian nods. “Lovely people will be furious at it, but it's going to go out there and do whatever it does.”
