Keeping it surreal
How director Jim Hosking followed up his strange debut The Greasy Strangler
JIM HOSKING ONLY makes movies for Jim Hosking. That’s not arrogance — he just doesn’t know who else to make them for. “The only person who I know how they experience things is me,” the British filmmaker explains, carefully. “I make films that people always think are really weird. And I always think, ‘Oh come on, everybody would enjoy this!’” A chuckle. “I guess I’m not a good gauge.”
People do think his films are weird. They certainly thought that of The Greasy Strangler, his 2016 debut, which featured more prosthetic penises on nude, greasedup septuagenarian non-actors than most films; and they think that of Hosking’s follow-up, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn. Like Greasy, Luff Linn premiered at Sundance, and like its predecessor, it polarised opinions. The midnight crowd was effusive; one baffled critic, meanwhile, called it “a vexing anti-comedy”. Hosking is fine with that. “I have no problem with somebody not liking what I make. I know that what I make has quite a strong character. It’s like a strong character going to a dinner party. Some people will like speaking to them, and some people will wish they were sitting two seats away.”
Luff Linn, loosely about an unsatisfying marriage, a hapless robbery, and a “magical night” of performance at a low-rent hotel, continues the strain of surreal absurdism. (One character is named Rodney Von Donkensteiger.) But it’s a different kind of absurd: no prosthetic penises here. “We felt as we were writing it that it reminded us of Bogdanovich or Hal Ashby or Robert Altman, those 1970s screwball films with an eclectic ensemble cast. I was definitely
keen to explore something that felt a bit romantic, or sentimental,” says Hosking. Indeed, amid the strangeness, there’s a tender love triangle between the titular Luff Linn (Craig Robinson), the aloof Lulu Danger (Aubrey Plaza), and hitman Colin Threadener (Jemaine Clement).
There is a singular Hosking style, but his next projects are defiantly esoteric: he’s currently filming a TV show for subversive US network Adult Swim called Tropical Cop Tales; in development are a trippy children’s film and an erotic mystery set in Japan. “I’m keen to try something where I can express my idiosyncratic side, but not in a comedic way,” he says. However they turn out, you can be sure he has one audience member in mind.
An Evening With Beverly luff linn is in cinemas from 23 october and on dvd, blu-ray and download from 29 october