BEYOND THE GASSY CORPSE
Swiss Army Man directors speak out
Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert want moviegoers to know their new film Swiss Army Man is more than just the story of a farting corpse.
That was the descriptor that emerged in headlines after the fanciful film — in which Daniel Radcliffe plays a flatulent dead body that washes up on a deserted shore inhabited by Paul Dano’s character — debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Kwan and Scheinert, known for their collective nickname Daniels and their work on music videos including Turn Down For What, admit the gassy rep may have some judging the film from afar.
In fact, the film’s scatological elements had some Sundance audience members walking out early.
“I think it would be really upsetting if it weren’t for the fact that the movie is so much more than that and people are realizing that,” Scheinert said in a recent telephone interview. “As long as people go and see it, I don’t care what they call it, because I think the movie speaks for itself, to a certain degree. But I think it’s important that the trailers and the journalism that’s coming out is helping colour in a little bit more of what’s there.”
Dano’s character Hank is suicidal in his deserted space until the corpse comes ashore.
Hank takes the body on a wacky and whimsical adventure through the woods and at sea (in one scene, he rides the flatulent corpse on the water like a boat).
The story emerged out of a “joke,” said the directors, who won a directing award at Sundance.
They were on an airplane and came up with the idea for the opening scene, not thinking it could turn into a film. “That very early stage, we were thinking of it in terms of music videos,” said Scheinert. “We were always collecting funny images that we thought we’d love to see onscreen but that’s simply what it was.”
They initially felt “ashamed” making a movie featuring flatulence and other gross-out scenes, said Kwan. “Then we realized that was kind of what the point of the movie was, where it’s like: ‘Oh man, the movie is just about shame, it’s about the things that keep us apart,”’ he added.