Getting Hyperreal with... Andy Volk

Hyperreal Interviewer Extraordinaire Justin Norris sat down with filmmaker Andy Volk to talk about his short film Coffee & Sugar, animation inspirations, and the balance between honoring your family’s story and finding the core that others will relate to.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

Hyperreal Film Club: Talking about Coffee & Sugar, I got to say, this was a super short, super sweet, little documentary about your grandparents love story. I'm not going to lie; this is probably one of the more emotional works I've had the pleasure of catching from one of the filmmakers we show. So, I think a lot of people are going to resonate with this.

Andy Volk (Director, Writer, Editor): Thanks! I hope so.

HFC: Full props to you and everyone else who helped you on the animation side, the sound side, music side. One of my first questions is was this film always planned to be done with animation? Or did you kind of approach it from a different angle when he first started this project?

AV: Man, this was so long ago, when the genesis of it first started. But yeah, 90% sure that it was always animation. I think when I first got the idea, and I thought about my grandparents, and then you know, at this point, my grandma was 92 or something when I first thought of this. So, a lot of their life, the crux of the story was kind of in the 50s and 60s, and like, they didn't really have the access to record everything. There was a lot of photographs that I could go through but yeah, they didn’t have the VHS tapes that we probably grew up with so I figured the only way I could do it was probably through animation. I didn't want to do a typical documentary that is just like interview, throwing in photos, throwing in archive, throwing in B-roll... and so I kind of wanted to just like, spice it up a little bit. And I felt the animation kind of gave me and the team some room for flexibility, just to kind of figure out what kind of like feelings we wanted to try and explore. I felt it was more accessible that way.

HFC: Gotcha. And you mentioned feelings, was there any particular feelings that were sticking with you throughout making this or even before making this that you kind of wanted to capture? 

AV: I think I just like wanted to capture that feeling of being surprised about falling in love. I don't know. I mean, I was I was in a relationship at the time and so that kind of got me thinking about things. And I also had a late-night panic attack that my grandma was going to die someday, because she was 92. She's still kicking, she’s 96…97, almost. But yeah, it was just like that feeling of falling in love and having it wash over you in a way that is just so life giving, it just changes everything! It makes the greens greener and makes the sky brighter. It's these feelings that I feel like, you know, only movies or music can really capture sometimes that you can't really put words to. And so, I think I just wanted to try and capture that feeling and then kind of just dive deeper and find those anecdotes that people try to say about how they feel. And I don’t know, it was interesting to hear from that perspective, because my grandfather didn't talk about it all that often. My grandma always joked about it, but it was really interesting to hear about growing up and kind of learning what love is like, both self-love and partner love and love for friends and with new conversations about relationships and about what it means to date people. It was really interesting to kind of turn the dial back and hear about this old-fashioned concept of love.

HFC: Your grandfather, in his own words, touched on it there at the end, whether they thought it or felt it at any moment in time themselves, it did come across like that stuff you see in the movies. It's interesting how life can play like that! In how art can reflect life, or your life can become art, however you want to look at it. It's really impressive how your film does capture this feeling and just that general idea of simple connections blossoming into this beautiful life, time-spanning thing. Their story, whether they feel it or you feel it or not, is immortal through this work now. Not to get too romantic about a romance story but that's the power of art. It really can expand beyond time!

AV: Yeah, thank you for saying that! Because that was kind of a goal of mine, in part inspired out of the panic attack that my grandma was going to die! It was that immortalization, I guess, for lack of better word. Yeah, my grandfather had passed few years before and so you know, I just kind of wanted to do something as a thank you to them as well because I definitely would not be where I am without them. And I remember after I shared it with the family, after we kind of did a little virtual premiere, because it was during COVID, my cousin texted me saying, like, “Man, this is, like, I cried and I can't wait to watch it again!” And his kid was on the verge of being born and he was like, “I can't wait till they're old enough for me to show this to them so that they can learn who Popsy was, so that they can hear Popsy,” and for me, that’s what kind of made it all worth it. And now, maybe if I ever have kids, I can show it to them and be like “This was your grandfather. This was your great-grandma or my grandmother.” And yeah, what you said about art immortalizing feelings and people and memories, it's crazy. It's crazy how we can do that. We can access all that across time.

HFC: You mentioned you did a virtual screening for your family…I'm assuming your grandmother was in attendance. Has she watched this?

AV: So that was in ‘21. Yeah, it's March ‘21. So my grandmother, it was her birthday and all her kids, all her eight kids got together. Luckily, they got early vaccines. And so they got together, they went down to Tucson, a few of the cousins who are local went there. One of my uncles, he works in live event production and so he brought a projector and screen and they set this whole thing up in the backyard. And I opened a Zoom link for anybody who couldn't attend in person and then we just kind of watched it all together on Zoom and my aunt put her phone in front of the family, so I watched them watch it! So that was kind of like the premiere, that was like the informal premiere of it. I couldn't be there for that, which was a bummer, but I was just happy that my grandma got to see it with her kids. Like with some of the family, that's what she's about. And so yeah, it was just really special to kind of be there for that in that way.

HFC: That's awesome to hear. I'm glad the whole family got see it! Like you said, y'all have it to go back to go watch it anytime now and that's a beautiful thing to have. Kind of touching back around to the animation aspect and correct me if I'm getting this artist’s name wrong, Neely Goidonoisky…What led you to working with them and their animation style? What about their style gravitated you towards them?

AV: Yeah. A friend of ours, Tifa, back when I was still in Seattle, connected us. I met Tifa at a film festival and just kind of started talking about the idea still in its infantile stages and then just like three months later, I just had an email from Tifa that was like, “Hey Andy, meet Neely,” and then Neely and I grabbed coffee and we talked for like two hours just about the idea. I sent her a rough interview I had with my grandma, and we just started talking about images and feelings and motifs like what kind of symbol do we want to use just to represent them. And then she brought in the idea of stop motion and [the idea to] kind of make it fantastical, but then use these real world objects to still kind of remind us that it was a real story. And I mean, I just really love her style, because I just hadn't seen much quite like it. It wasn't like she was trying to recreate reality, or the ways that we just see the world when we walk out our door. I just felt she had this very fantastical approach with the shapes and colors and kind of abstract illustrations that she mixed all together with. And she just had all these crazy ideas and it was just so fun that I could sit there and just immediately kind of understand each other's conceptions of where the film was going, or what could be done with it. I saw some of her other shorts before I met with her and she just has a really unique way of capturing the feelings of people, the unexplainable feeling and she's done some other stuff. She did like a piece for New York Times about a soldier who returned home and was re-acclimating to be being a parent and kind of how the trauma from war was affecting that and how it was reminding him of his parents and how he could kind of unlearn certain things. She just captured like that, you know, a darker tale but she captured it in such a unique and vivid way that I felt that a more uplifting story about loving grandparents would have been piece of cake for her.

HFC: I agree. That was one of the things, obviously, that stands out: the animation style. For me, it was a simple style in a way, it was just very flowy. So, it felt like a memory, it felt like how maybe memories would look, these images flow together, they whisper through these moments. You mentioned you and Neely going back and forth. Touching on that a little more, I know that Taylor Delph helped out, Max Kaminsky and his jazz band were credited as well, with both of them, how involved were you with both of those sides of this picture? Did you let the artists interpret this story on their own? Or were you working with them throughout as they were concocting their ends?

AV: Yeah, that was that was a really fun process. As this is the first movie, I wasn't trying to approach it like I had all the answers or knew exactly what to do. You know, luckily, I worked on set for a few years before this as PA coordinator, so I got to see kind of how people on set talk to each other. And, you know, whether it was a commercial set or indie set, I saw things I liked and didn't like, and I really came to respect the way that on some sets that there was no kind of final say until the cameras were rolling, but then you can still change things. And so Neely [and I] met up a few times and just kind of talked about how do we want to depict certain parts of the story, how fantastical is this scene or how grounded is this scene and kind of like moving back and forth with that. And then we kind of found like a color palette together and that helped showcase the world and we talked a lot about the transition style…so a lot of the scenes kind of flow in and out of each other. There's no hard cuts or transitions and I kind of wanted it that way so that it keeps people in this moment in time. It's like when you're sharing a story, you know about your childhood, or about what you did last weekend, you might move back and forth between the beginning and the end but it just flows.

And so I wanted the animation to reflect that. Like, interviewing my grandmother, the coffee and sugar anecdote that makes up the whole film, after an hour and a half of talking to her, that was the final thing she told me. We were about to cut the camera and she's like, “Oh, whoa, wait, wait, I should tell you this one last thing!” And that's what made the whole movie! So it’s funny that after going through 60 years of history, she tells us that! But to go back to the kind of the process, Neely and I had all that stuff together, we had some storyboards that we were using, and she put together a quick teaser trailer so we kind of had the style there. And then my friend Taylor, who works as a sound mixer on set, I knew he was musician and then like another friend of ours, we used one of his songs in a movie that I was helping him on and I saw it in the cut and I'm like, “Oh, my God, like, this is beautiful!” Like, I've heard this song before and hearing it within the context in this real emotional moment in my friend’s movie, it just like hit me. I'm like, “Oh, my God!” It was just so cinematic in a quiet way. So I hit him up and we talked about style, definitely going through a little bit of like, early jazz age and then transition into more ambient, Brian Eno-type stuff. And then I sent him kind of like a rough cut with storyboards and music that I pulled. I even like put Brian Eno’s The Ship during the end montage so then when we were talking about them, like, “Oh, yeah, this is The Ship moment!” And I would just send them a couple other songs here and there and then he sent me like a cut. And I think pretty much the music in the film is like cut number two. I’d get one cut and I would have like very little notes for him and then that was it. I got really lucky that I was able to find people that shared the same language, that it was easy to kind of learn how to communicate the craziest ideas to! I know that now going forward, if I meet somebody and it's easy to talk to them about big ideas, that's a good person to keep around.

HFC: You kind of touched on this but when you were interviewing your grandmother and when you came up with this idea for the film, and as you were working on it, and then taking a break with it, did you ever think about covering more material about your grandparents’ story? Or did you get everything you felt like you needed? 

AV: There were some times in editing when I was thinking about getting more but really, I interviewed her twice for around an hour. Sometimes I asked the same question just to kind of get the same story but with different inflection and sometimes, she would remember something different like remembering somebody's name in a story. Sometimes that’s what made that story work. So I did those two interviews with her and I remember I went home once and spent a couple of days just like scanning all these photographs. She just had like a closet full of scrapbooks. So I scanned all the photographs of our family, and was trying to figure out how I wanted to tell that story. I mean, I had everything from their first wedding to all her kids growing up to all the weddings. There was a time where I thought about getting more B-roll with her, you see some of that in the intro montage, so I thought about getting more that. There was one time when there's that VHS tape that shows up where I thought about inserting my grandfather's narration in between to kind of make it feel like they're both telling the story and then being like “Psyche, he died!”[Chuckles]. But yeah, then I didn't want it to just be about him dying so then that's why I put that in the beginning, that he died so that people could just focus on the romance and just like the fact that this crazy thing happened. Yeah, and I think I tried with that a little bit, but you can figure out how to make it work in a way that was telling a better story than just her telling a story and so I just chose to stick with just her as like the main narrator. Because it's her story now. Her story. This film was just like a vehicle for that.

HFC: Was there any material that you did film, whether you edited or any animation sequences that didn't make the final version of this short that you either wanted to have and it just didn't make it to the final cut for whatever reason?

AV: Yeah. Not so much the animation because given that Neely was being so generous with their time and talent, I didn't want her to animate anything that we just weren't going to use. And so, I just worked as hard as I could to get the narration to exactly where I wanted it to be, that way she could just animate off of that. She’d know the exact time, the exact amount of frames that she'll need for each story, how A flows into B, flows into C so there wasn't any animation but there were some stories that I really loved. Like the first cut was I think 20 minutes. I think there were stories about my grandfather being the Mr. Fixit. You know, there's something about his generation where they learn how to fix everything, right? He was the kind of guy that would put duct tape around your faucet and super glue your car bumper back on. There's a scene in the movie they mentioned about going on these road trips and so with one RV motorhome he fashioned all these cots to the ceiling, so there’d just be cot after cot after cot, almost like a train car! And sometimes when he was driving around these country roads or whatever going through the mountains and the kids would be in the cots just swaying back and forth, sometimes falling, sometimes not! But my grandma didn't phrase it as like, “Oh my God, he's being so dangerous!” It was kind of like the kids enjoyed it? Maybe they saw it like a roller coaster! So that was like a story I really loved! There was one in the VHS tape that I wanted to try and get but the audio was messed up, where my grandfather had some false teeth from the war and when one time my grandma, like the guy that she knew in Florida, their families were staying next to each other in these homes, and my grandfather was at the guy's house. And so my grandma came over, she found my grandfather napping because he had a few too many drinks and then when he’s woken up, he turns and his teeth fall out because he was just so shocked to find her standing there! And I was like, “Oh my god, like he would be so embarrassed!” but he was also a jokester, so those are like the two stories that really stuck out that that couldn't quite fit in.

HFC: What was the most challenging aspects when making this film?

AV: Kind of on those stories, it was cutting out some of the stories, you know? I'm telling this tale about my grandparents, about the family I grew up with and I kind of had to step outside of myself and my own kind of bias towards these heartwarming stories and try to figure out and question, what is this story like? What’s it talking about? Are other people going to relate to this or is it just kind of like a cute little family story? And so that was a challenge: learning how to cut those out to just make the most streamlined, but also sincere and open stories that people could find something else in it to connect to. I think that was it and then just always, you know, you're making something, you're doubting if it's going to work, you're doubting if anybody's going to watch or listen to it, and that can be the scariest thing! But I just figured, I'm in it. I just had to keep going! And I had to see what it was like and, you know, some people like it, some people don't. And that's just how it goes.

HFC: That's interesting! From that filmmaker’s perspective, you're covering such personal material here. For you, for your grandmother, just for your family in general. Did you feel a certain pressure of responsibility to tell the story right, or do good by your grandparents? Because I feel like when we relay these stories as family members of people who have lived these lives before us, I feel like it can be hard to be like, “Who am I to say that this memory isn't important enough to put in?”

AV: A little bit. If anything, I put that pressure on myself. You know, I'm learning to let go of that pressure. It's so easy to just put pressure on yourself when you're creating something. That it has to be perfect, that it has to be more than good, you know? Sometimes that takes away from just making it, from enjoying those moments and sometimes you can find little beautiful things in the imperfections. And, you know, I wanted it to be good for them, I did. I wanted it to show that there was something there because I remember when I called my grandmother about this, and over the two years that I was off and on making it, she was always like, “Yeah, you can come interview me, but I don't know what people want to listen to it. It's just my story. Why are people going to want to watch it? But sure, come interview me!” And I'm just like, “I'm going to prove you wrong!” and I think I did. I think I did. My brother told me that she teared up after the first like, minute. So I'm like, “I win!”

HFC: Touching on your grandfather, you mentioned he had passed when you were a teenager. If he was still around, and you were just making this, what would you want to ask your grandfather? Whether in regard to this story, or just any questions you would want to ask him that you're comfortable sharing?

AV: Yeah, there's a lot that I wish it could have asked him and I think that's part of why I did this was because I never did ask him those questions. You know, he died when I was in high school, I was 15. So, you know, I think that was like the age where I was starting to understand the impermanence of things. And you know, you start thinking about those bigger, loftier ideas in life like where you're going, who you're meeting… you really start to see kind of more of who you are. And I wish I asked him some stuff but I think I would ask him a lot of the same questions I asked my grandmother. You know, I'd be really curious to hear what it was about my grandmother that made him take that leap? You know, she can recount it so many times and he kind of talks a bit about it in the VHS but yeah, I just really wanted to try to just get to know him a little bit differently than I guess I did. You know, he was stern, but he's also a goofball like a lot of grandparents. He had some prankster in him. One time when Bluetooth came out, I remember sitting at the kitchen table and he was really committed, he was so committed to this bit that Bluetooth was an actual tooth that you put in and it’s blue and that's what you need to talk to people! And I was just in it! I believed him for so long! And my brother was sitting there, and my grandmother was just kind of going like this [hands on his head, shaking], just laughing, but I was just so zoned in and so I would have loved to use this as a way to try and like reconnect like that part of our relationship. Before I got all angsty teenager.

HFC: Your grandmother kind of name dropped that Radio Club place and I was curious to see if you thought of doing this: Did you ever think of visiting these places in person to kind of get a feel or just kind of steep yourself, so to speak, in history?

AV: Not really. You know, I tried to do a lot of digging online just to try and see if they were still there. And then I tried to find like old photos of like, the town of like Fort Lauderdale in the 50s and, you know, I looked through a lot of photos that my grandparents had early in their life, like before they moved from New Jersey. And so, a lot of it for me was just trying to get an idea of it. But yeah, I don't think I really thought about visiting all these places. Maybe in another project, if, if I had like more things I needed to track down, you know, National Treasure style, I would do it!

HFC: I'm interested because obviously you're a filmmaker so I'm assuming you're into film in some form or fashion. Were either of your grandparents into film?

AV: Yeah, not so much. You know, they were as into it as the next family. In the 50s, that's when commercial television was accessible, people were able to have a TV in the house and so I think that they enjoyed it. There is some of that love in some of my aunts and uncles. And I think that there is that way of stories acting as connective tissue between people. Every holiday me, my brother, and a few of us other cousins and uncles would go out to the movies, it was kind of like a tradition. And I think for me, that was a way of finding something to talk to people about or finding something connected there. But my grandparents, like a lot of people in their generation, they had a TV, there were movies, but that was before movies became so central in our living spaces that they still instilled a sense of adventure and curiosity in the kids. They all had go-karts and we're going on crazy trips and riding bikes up the mountain, so I think they had more of an active household.

HFC: So kind of going off that, how did you get in the film? You mentioned your aunts and uncles, you had some that were into film, but how did you get into film? Was it through them? Or was there just a film you watched and you're just like, “This is it. I love this stuff!”

AV: I don't know if there was a clear moment, but probably like so many people I just love going on these adventures with people. Whether it was my brother and I rewinding the VHS of Star Wars: A New Hope and watching that on our living room floor all day, every weekend. Or you know, I'd be the last kid to fall asleep at the movie night because I had to see how the movie ended! Even if it was bad, I just had to see how it ended! You know, when I was a kid, there wasn't always stuff to do so I think sometimes movies kind of filled out that gap. And there's just something about movies that acts as a language between people. I was thinking about this the other day, with like Blockbuster. My friend and I, maybe after school, we'd go back to his house, and then we'd ride our bikes a mile to the used movie bookstore, and just walk away with an armful of movies, and then those movies became our childhood! And like, you don't do this much. Now it feels like it's maybe like a competition or like a badge of honor when I’m like “Hey, man! You gotta see this movie!” but it's like, I just remember also going to a friend's house with a DVD in hand being like, “We have to watch this movie!” There's just something about that thrill, that passion of also exploring unknown worlds and times and learning about people. So when I think about what I want to do, I want to do that! I don't know what it is but I wanted to be in that world. I wanted to be a part of that.

HFC: Kind of coming back around to Coffee & Sugar, you mentioned Brian Eno was a little bit operating with you when it came to the music. Were there any other artistic inspirations, other pieces of work, like music, books, that were operating in the back of your mind while you were making this? 

AV: Yeah, there was this animator named Hannah Jacobs. She's out of the UK and I remember seeing a music video of hers for the song, It’s Okay by Tom Rosenthal and she does it all with a crayon and paper so it feels physical and it's a little bit abstract and the song is kind of like a sad love song. But I remember just seeing that, it just blew me away! Like the song itself was just so gutting and raw and I just was like, “This animation is just so different!” We're so used to seeing Pixar and Disney or these really big 3D worlds that I just said like, “Yeah, but like this is a crayon, but it's like telling such an evocative story.” And then funnily enough when I referenced her, Neely said she went to school with her!

HFC: Nice!

AV: Small world! So that that was a big one for me was just seeing that and you know, I really love like the other side of the coin: Don Hertzfeldt. You know, it's a little bit similar in that he has this ethos that anybody can be an animator. You don't have to be able to draw well and so I just really loved his early works that were so vivid and just out of this world but without needing the craziest amount of production value or script writing to really tell a complete story. There were some other music videos I saw that I just can't think of off the top of my head but then Brian Eno was huge, M83, they always come back to me. I always find myself returning to him throughout different parts of my life. And there was one song I remember seeing on Spotify…I can’t remember the name of the artists, but it was called like, Let's Hear That B Section Again but they had an album cover that was the unicorn from Blade Runner. So it was an ambient album inspired by movies and that song was like, I used it as a temp song but it had a record spin in the background at one point so then that's where I got the idea of them dancing on the record, and then to the song that my friend Taylor made. So yeah, I think I think those are kind of the main ones really.

HFC: Kind of moving from that and putting it to you, how would you want your story to be told? Whether it's your kid or some family members, some stranger, if you had a preference, how would you want it to be told? Through film? Through a novel? Through music?

AV: I would want a good friend to make maybe like a mockumentary? You know, I don't know if I have anything in my life that's worthy of a biopic, but I think a friend is someone you trust, they know you, they can show the good sides of you and they can they can kind of also pry under the surface and make you laugh. But also, I wouldn't want to take it too seriously. I think a mockumentary would be fun! And just having a friend that I feel you would just be shooting the shit with over a weekend and seeing what happens.

HFC: Who would you want to play you?

AV: Who would I want to play me…Oh, man, who can? Do they have to be a redhead?

HFC: No, they don't. It's whoever you want! If some producers came up to you, and were going to listen to you on who you want to play you, who is it going to be? And they have to do it! 

AV: Yeah if this was like a mockumentary and there was somebody that kind of has that lackadaisical humor that would work…maybe like Paul Rudd, you know? Not that I’m nearly as charming or attractive as Paul or ageless but he just seems like he'd be down for like hanging out and shooting the shit and not caring too much. But also like, you know, he's good! He's good with improv. And he came up with like, Wet Hot American Summer, and I love that whole era of humor. So, I'm like, let's get Paul Rudd in there, I think that would be fun. Or, like Ben Schwartz. Because my high school buddies and I, we love Ben Schwartz. And like, all the stuff that he did, so just someone that like in that realm of humor.

HFC: Good choices. Yeah, I think I think they'd be able to pull it off. I don't know if they would capture the full essence of Andy but I think they’d do a good swing at it. Obviously, you've done this work, which can be considered a documentary and I saw in some of the background notes that you've worked on another documentary. Kind of going off that do you have a favorite documentary made by someone else that you liked?

AV: I totally do. And I have to reference my Letterboxd right now. You know, for being a movie buff and working in movies, sometimes I just have a really bad memory with these things. Okay, there are three that kind of really stand out to me. There's this film called Dick Johnson Is Dead. Fantastic movie. I think I saw it after all this, but it made me just sob. I thought it was such a cathartic exploration of telling somebody's story and also like, proactively dealing with death through all of his deaths. I mean, hilarious!  And the fact that he was up for it, I thought was just genius. I love that one. There's this film called Minding the Gap, which I think it's on Criterion but it's also a newer one. It's about this filmmaker who grew up in some small Midwest town and he just was always recording him and his friends when they were skating and biking and stuff like that and so, it's kind of follows their trajectory growing up as kids and teenagers and being young adults. You see the evolution of his filmmaking talent as well, but it starts off as like an exploration of childhood and being free and young and then also, it dives deeper into his parents and all these kids and kind of like, what makes us become who we are and how we respond to situations like some of his friends deal with. He starts to see that one of his friends who's struggling with relationships, being a father, that was probably abused as a kid and then he starts to talk to his mom about like, his dad leaving and so it's like, all these things that kind of fuel him but it's also so beautiful, the celebration of like, friendship and family. And then the Mr. Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Gosh, I think I started crying within the first 30 seconds of that. I was like, “Oh, it hits!” Nobody does it like Mr. Rogers.

HFC: Dick Johnson Is Dead was just super interesting. I think your film would make a perfect appetizer if they were to premiere that over again! Is there a dream subject you want to tackle? A dream documentary you want to make down the road? 

AV: You know, I never really saw myself as a documentary filmmaker. I think this just kind of like presented itself and then the one I'm working on now, it’s a similar thing, like I just came across this community like, “Oh, I want to capture that,” but if I was to make something I think it would either be about some new space exploration technology or something because I'm a sucker for Carl Sagan and anything astronomy. That doc, Good Night Oppy that came out this last year, stunning. You know, it's crazy that a robot made me cry but I'd say that or just like one of those docs that unravels like some type of conspiracy. You know, there's an initial premise and then the film keeps happening, keeps discovering new things. Like Three Identical Strangers. I don't know if you saw that but yeah, like there's these three triplets that eventually find each other, but then that's the hook but then it uncovers this huge kind of conspiracy with like, adoption and genetics and media and just like, mental health. That's one of the things where it’s just so fascinating because it just keeps evolving and then I feel like it would just be amazing to kind of be there for that sense of discovery and then also challenge yourself as a filmmaker, like how you're capturing that and then telling it as it's happening. Yeah, so maybe something around those lines, those stranger than fiction stories.

HFC: I got two more questions for you. First question is, and I try to ask this to everyone I get to interview because I'm always curious: What was your favorite piece of work that you saw from this past year in 2022? 

AV: Man, there’s so much really—I'm looking at my Letterboxd right now…Definitely not Men. I'll say that. I hated that!  Alex Garland, you could do so much better! I don't know if it's even out yet because I technically watched it for festival stuff so I don't know if we can use it but there is this documentary about Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy. I thought it was such an engrossing documentary that wasn't like padded or really trying to make a big deal out of just like this guy who wrote a comic book. But I loved the Del Toro movies growing up, my friend and I, we pretended to play Hellboy in his backyard, because he had a random hockey glove so like that was Hellboy's hand and we weren't allowed to call him Hellboy, we had to be like, “Hey, let's go watch H-boy!” So there was something really fascinating about this doc in this exploration of what Hellboy meant to the world and why it became such a big phenomenon in comics. I had no idea that there's all this kind of backstory of his art style not fitting in and stuff, but just like Hellboy when he was an outcast, Mike Mignola was too because his style was so unique that he just like couldn't hold jobs within the normal comic industry.

But I thought it was really fascinating because it really touched upon what Hellboy as a character meant to so many people across the globe and how that translated into the movies. And it made me think about why I connected with those movies as a kid, I think rather than it just being like these fantasy adventures. So, I thought that was a really fascinating story that I just didn't even think about and then I bought the Hellboy comic books while watching the movie! [Laughs]. If there's a another one I would say honestly like Barbarian. I know not everyone loves that movie but as a horror fan, I thought it was so surprising the way it oscillates between horror and comedy, but also mixes those two things, it was just ingenious! I feel like it's rare to have a movie these days where everybody's just there to watch this movie and experience this thing together without having any gatekeeping or having to have a history of what all the other movies are or are having it be like inaccessible, because it's like part of some larger discourse like Marvel, or whatever. So, I'm like, “That was just so fun!” and I don't know the last time I had as much fun at the movies outside of Barbarian. 

HFC: What are you looking forward to in 2023, whether that's your own future projects that you want to bring up or plug or if there's any other projects from other people that you're excited for? 

AV: You know, I do have a couple of things in development, but you know, they're early enough that it just feels unnecessary to plug them. But you know, I'm excited to just to just be jumping back into something and collaborating with friends and making something because I work in film festivals now and so I haven't had much time to be on set. I miss the energy of being on set, where you're just kind of in the moment [and] you're always problem solving, you're always creating with people and you're putting all these pieces together to just create something so different and so unique. And that's an extension of everybody there. So I do miss that. And so I'm excited to kind of tap back into that spirit a little bit but I think it's going to be a really good year for horror films. I just saw Skinamarink last night.

HFC: I have to catch that, because I've been hearing nothing but things, just various things, but all interesting, about it. 

AV: I'll say you'll either love it or you'll hate it. It's something that I think is made for a very specific type of person because I mean, it's hard to spoil but I won’t try to go too far into it but it really taps into something so primal about being a child and kind of growing up around television and maybe the emptiness that can come around television. You know, movies in a way helped me feel things about the world and figure shit out in my life so this movie just brought up kind of some memories that I forgot about just like sitting there you know, waking up and the TV's blaring and all the lights are off you're afraid to go to your bedroom and turn off the light, so you turn off the light then you run to your bedroom and then you just like wait, and you wait…and then you’re like all right, nothing's there! But it was very unnerving, but I think I think it just going to be a really unique year for horror films because I think after Barbarian, hopefully people are more susceptible to these newer ones that might be coming out. Especially the smaller ones—Barbarian is built on word-of-mouth, Skinamarink was built on word of mouth and now there's a couple others are coming out and then also Evil Dead is happening again.

HFC: Andy, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much for making this putting this out there. I appreciate it. I'm sure your family members, your grandmother, your grandfather appreciates it. I'm excited to that you get to show this in front of an audience! Is there anything else you want to plug or?

AV: No, thank you for doing this! Thank you for your time to just talk to me and other people and write for the club, because it's… Hyperreal is the community that I found when I moved here. I didn't know anybody, and it's a place for all of us, weirdos and outcasts to find a shared love and, and celebrate one another! So, thank you for doing what you do!