The highest-grossing independent film of the year, Longlegs stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent in pursuit of the titular serial killer, played by Nicolas Cage.
Among the special features on the just-released physical media editions is a refreshingly forthright audio commentary by writer-director Osgood Perkins.
Here are nine things I learned from the Longlegs commentary track.
1. Perkins considers Longlegs a “pop horror movie.”
Perkins refers to the film as a “pop horror movie” several times in the commentary. “By that, I mean that it’s a horror movie that knows it’s a horror movie,” he explains. “There’s supposed to be sort of a modern quality to that.”
Referring to the opening credit sequence, he says “These big, red squares at the beginning of the movie feel ‘pop’ to me. Josef Albers is always an inspiration for things that are visual. Warhol. These big, red squares at the top of the picture felt sort of iconic and pointing to the horror genre in a way that’s about as simple as you can get, about as reduced as you can get.”
‘The Silence of the Lambs’
2. The film intentionally borrows from Silence of the Lambs.
Perkins intentionally borrowed familiar plot elements from Silence of the Lambs as a way to lull viewers into a false sense of security before introducing the occult angle.
“In keeping with the pop horror movie feeling or intention that we were using here, this is just Silence of the Lambs; using Silence of the Lambs as the way into the movie and making no bones about it, really. It’s not pretending to not be Silence of the Lambs. It’s sort of pretending to be Silence of the Lambs.”
Perkins later mentions, “I liked that I was sort of aping Silence of the Lambs. It felt like a good way into an otherwise pretty nontraditional movie.”
‘The Brood’
3. Other influences include Se7en and The Brood.
Speaking of his influences, Perkins expounds, “I don’t think there should be any shame or embarrassment or even self consciousness around borrowing or stealing or referencing or quoting. It’s all one big mess. We’re all just trying to get close to the source. As long as you’re stealing from the good stuff, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
He points out several nods, including purposefully drawing elements from Se7en and stealing young Lee Harker’s red snow jacket from David Cronenberg’s The Brood. He also refers to Harold and Maude, The Graduate, and My Own Private Idaho.
4. The snow in the opening scene was serendipitous.
Perkins notes that the opening shot, inspired by the drive up to his family’s home on Cape Cod where he spent his summers as a child, is a rare instance in which the final scene looks how he pictured it when writing.
“The snowy element here was one of these things that was meant to be. We had Nick Cage in the movie for two weeks.” He explains that Cage was originally supposed to start on a Monday but it got pushed to Tuesday at the last minute.
“Overnight on Monday, it snowed. It was the only time it snowed during the making of the movie, so we got this really pretty magnificent look on the day we needed it, and only on the day that we needed it.”
He also points out that visual effects were used to paint out footprints in the snow so it appeared clean after multiple takes.
5. Perkins and Cage both wanted T. Rex’s music in the film.
From an opening title card quoting the 1971 hit “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” to three needle drops, English rock band T. Rex is all over Longlegs. “This T. Rex song was always the song. Really early in the writing of the script, this was the song that I had in my mind,” says Perkins.
“I didn’t know anything about T. Rex until right around when I was writing this movie. It’s funny how these things happen and how they contribute to your understanding of the work you’re doing. The universe just gives you what it gives you.
“For whatever reason, I had watched this documentary called 1971 that was about that year in music and everything that happened. There was T. Rex. I had heard the name before but had never heard the music. Then I heard the music and I loved the music, and then it became something I was listening to all the time. And then it became part of the fabric of thought and the fabric of creation, and it works its way in.”
Upon his first meeting with Cage, Perkins discovered a bit of kismet. “I told Nick right up front, ‘It’s T. Rex.’ And he said, it’s the weirdest thing. He was just, the day before, talking to his son, who is learning how to play guitar, about T. Rex, about a backwards guitar solo in a song called ‘Cosmic Dancer.'”
6. Perkins makes a cameo in the film.
Before stepping behind the camera, Perkins began working in the industry as an actor, making his debut as young Norman Bates in Psycho II and going on to appear in the likes of Legally Blonde and Star Trek. In Longlegs, the filmmaker makes a brief, out-of-focus cameo on Ruth Harker’s bedroom TV.
“In pre-production in my office one night, we had a VHS camera and we dressed me up as a Heaven’s Gate-esque space-cult talking head weirdo. We got the VHS up on the tripod, we drank some beer, and we filmed me talking a bunch of nonsense about the universe.”
7. Longlegs was a Perkins family affair.
Perkins’ daughter, Beatrix, plays the teenage hardware store clerk accosted by Longlegs. “Came to Vancouver to do a little part in the movie and found herself one-on-one opposite Nicolas Cage,” he notes.
“Did she think it was a big deal to be opposite Nicolas Cage? I don’t think she thought of it that way. I think she just thought of it as something that was great to do. I made a point, of course, of showing my kids movies their whole lives. She knew Nicolas Cage probably from Raising Arizona, and this is a far cry from that,” he chuckles.
Several other family members were involved in the production: His brother, Elvis Perkins, composed the score under the pseudonym Zilgi. The song playing on the radio after Harker leaves Carter’s house is written and performed by Perkins’ wife, Melody Carrillo. Drawings by Perkins’ 3-year-old son, Tino, appear in Lee’s childhood bedroom.
8. The setting was changed to 1993 to avoid George Bush.
Agent Carter’s office prominently features a presidential portrait of Bill Clinton because Perkins changed the time the film takes place to avoid having to show George H.W. Bush.
“Originally it was written as 1992. I changed it to ’93 when I realized that it would have to be George Bush if it was ’92. We’d have to be looking at fucking pictures of George Bush all the time, so I just nudged it and you get Brother Bill in there instead.”
He also reveals that visual effects were used to add a Richard Nixon portrait in the Camera family house for flashbacks. “I thought it was funny, because we had so much Clinton, to put Nixon there.”
9. More fun facts!
- The upside-down triangle pattern was not part of the original script; it came at the suggestion of producer Dan Kagan to better coalescence the story. “He was totally right,” admits Perkins. “It’s one of the better parts of the movie.”
- Additional earrings that Monroe wore on the first day of shooting had to be removed by visual effects.
- Perkins kept the 1990 Crown Victoria driven by Agent Browning in the film.
- Kiernan Shipka’s voice as Carrie Anne Camera was pitched up in post-production to sound higher.
- Perkins refers to Cage as an encyclopedia of film knowledge, recalling that he was a fan of Monroe’s work in It Follows.
Longlegs is available now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
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