[THE MAIN EVENT]
Former GQ Style Guy Mark Anthony Green is bringing his elevated editorial taste to cinema. His horror-comedy, Opus, starring Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich, debuts at Sundance on Monday. Prior to its premiere, Green gave insight on his "pulpy, visceral, fun ride."
UpRising: How and when did you come up with the story for Opus?
Mark Anthony Green: When is way easier than the how. I started writing this five years ago. My approach to filmmaking is there's a pot of things that I want to say about the world—"I believe this, there's too much of this, there's not enough of that"—and then there's a pot of visual worlds that I want to see and play around with. If ever there's two that pair well together, then I think there's a film in it. With Opus, I felt there was this extremely pulpy, visceral, very fun ride to this point, and we pulled it off.
What is the point that you're trying to make with the film?
One of the great things about being on this side is that filmmakers—we don't have to have the answers. We just need to make something that is provocative enough to make people ask the questions and let smarter people answer those. The question that I really want people to ask, and the thing I want them to interrogate, is "Has tribalism and our instinct and dependency on belonging to something or a group bigger than ourselves—is it still serving us as a people? As a species?"
The questions I deduced from the trailer was whether the cult of celebrity is a good thing.
Yeah. Good trailer.
There's a dry, smart humor to several of the lines in the trailer. Is that the tone of the film?
I'm a smartass—been a smartass my whole life. It has gotten me in and out of trouble for 36 years. There's a level of self-inspection that making a film forces you to do, especially when you show it to people that have known you forever. We showed it to Elvis Mitchell; he's one of my favorite brains on the planet. He's known me since I was 20 or something like that. So he's picking out all of these deeply personal things that are in the film that I think that when you submit and make a piece of art as honestly [as I did], there's so much of that in it that you don't see until you show it to somebody that knows you. So I think that the humor in it, that's just who I am. If I made a movie about the Vietnam War, there's probably still that humor.
Is there a line you’ve written that you go back and say, “Damn, that was hilarious”?
I don't know that there's a line, but I will say there's no better feeling in the world than when you write something and someone as talented as Ayo Edebiri or John Malkovich knocks it out of the park. This cast is so talented that the writer in me during production was so happy and had the best time because I got to see the words live and be brought to life.
Did you have Ayo and John in mind as you were writing?
Yeah. I started writing it before The Bear came out, but I knew Ayo. I had gotten some screeners of The Bear that they had sent to GQs office, and I am good friends with Lionel Boyce. So I was going to pull for the show and I was watching it to support a good friend. This was maybe a couple of weeks before the episodes came out and I mailed the screener to Noah Sacco, our exec at A24. I was like, “Yo, I really think this is Ariel [the main character].”
Being around Ayo, you immediately find out how talented [she is]. And then John, I didn't go to film school and one of the things that you see a lot on sites and books is to have actors in mind when you're writing. So I had a short list of actors and John was on it. John is probably on everyone's short list of actors to do everything.
Did your time at GQ have any influence on the story?
Yes and no. My time at GQ has had an enormous influence on me as a creative and as a man. My closest friend in the world is [GQ Editor-in-Chief] Will Welch. I started writing for them when I was 19, so it's kind of all I know. But when I say GQ, I'm thinking of Jim Nelson and Will and Fred Woodward and these people that nurtured me and taught me how to find my voice and what is original about what I want to say. But then Ariel’s story, the magazine itself, the experience in the movie is not my experience. It's not based on a real thing that happened to me.
There's a richness and a vibrancy to the colors in the trailer. Was that an intentional style aesthetic?
There's a thing that me and my [director of photography], Tommy Maddox-Upshaw, talked about. There's three worlds—pre-Moretti, Moretti, post-Moretti. Moretti is John's character. But it's all through Ariel's gazes [who is played by Ayo Edebiri]. And so New York and her job in the beginning has a certain feel and then you get transported to this place, and things happen and when she gets back, the world looks different. And so there's a lot of things that we play around with. Some are super subtle, but the coloring is at the forefront of that.
It looks as if you guys hired Dave LaChapelle to do the color—looks rich.
He's one of the G.O.A.T.s! It's cool, too, because we definitely were not rich in money making this movie.
The-Dream and Nile Rogers are listed as executive producers. What were their contributions to the film?
There are three original songs in this movie that Nile and Dream wrote and produced that John Malkovich sings that are absolutely fucking incredible.
There's a point in time where Dream and Nile were going back and forth. They were working on two projects. They were working with me in a studio making these songs and then they were working with a singer named Beyoncé. I don't know if you've heard of her [laughs]. And then they would come back and we'd do some weird shit and then they'd go back and make a hit for Beyoncé. I would tell John, “You are working with the best and you got to outdo Beyoncé today.” We would laugh but that is such an integral part of the ride of this film, and I'm really hoping that they resonate with people and therefore the message of the film resonates with folks.
What genre songs did they make?
So I love that question. You know that Michael Jackson album Invincible?
Absolutely.
That album has a couple really good songs on it—"You Rock My World,” “Butterflies.”
Then it has some bad songs on it. And he's the greatest pop star of all time. He's a contemporary of Moretti [in the film], and depending on who you’re asking, Moretti is their Michael Jackson. And so I wanted to use that album, Michael Jackson going into a studio and [replicate] that same challenge. You made the best music of a certain era, and now you have to make something that feels like you, but it can't sound like it's from the '90s. And so there's one song that is in the story that is from the '90s, and then there's two contemporary songs. And that was one of the reasons why Nile was so important, because when Nile picks up a guitar, I fully believe that God is present. It’s the reason why a song like “Get Lucky” is so infectious. You can't date it. He and Dream knocked it out the park. —Jermaine Hall
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Watch the trailer for Opus and catch the film in theaters in March.
Photo credit: Kenny St. George
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