‘Sound Of Violence’ (SXSW) Interview With Alex Noyer

My interview with the writer/director, Alex Noyer, took place on Thursday, March 18th at 8:20 am PST. His independent feature-length horror film, Sound of Violence, premiered at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival in that same week. The following article presented here is the conversation that took place.

Warning: Some minor spoilers ahead for those unfamiliar with the story and/or have not yet seen the film!

Introductions

I introduce myself to the filmmaker himself. I just finished watching his project not too long before the interview, and I told him how much I enjoyed it.

Cinematic and Musical Influences

John Tangalin: Hi, my name is John Daniel Tangalin, and I am a film and television critic for The Cinema Spot. We’re an international news and editorial site. My first question, Mr. Noyer, is what are some influences — film and music-wise — behind the making of this project?

Alex Noyer: First of all, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the filming and taking the time to talk to me. [With Sound of Violence], my influences go kind of far and wide. I became a horror buff [at] age nine when I watched Night of the Living Dead, the Romero one, the 1968 one. That just kind of changed my cinematic landscape. Similarly, I’ve always been crazy about music [and] I always had music involved in my life. I was listening to all sorts of music and organizing parties and deejaying. I was a terrible DJ, but I did DJ.

In my career after that, when I started my business in London in 2004, we worked a lot with music. We worked a lot with lifestyle, arts, music. So I always had this sort of this part of my career while personally watching a lot of horror movies. And I did a bunch of documentaries. [M]y biggest arguably is 808 which came out at South By [Southwest] in 2015, and then in 2016 on Apple Music. That movie took over five years of my life [and] was a pretty big undertaking music-wise and a drum machine obsession. I wanted to change my journey and my wife looked at me and [she] says, “You need to do what you’ve always loved,” and it is making a genre film.

Noyer’s Love for Horror

AN, con’t.: Tapping into all the movies I’ve loved through the years, it’s like anything from Evil Dead, American Psycho, and The Lights. I could go on with a list of titles. That’s crazy. I just felt that I had to write something new, and I was developing a feature project. It was completely different, but I felt that I was not fully done with drum machines. I had a light bulb moment that I needed to kill somebody with a drum machine on screen.

So that’s when I came up with the short film, Conductor, and it toured, won a bunch of awards, and that was like really tapping into sort of the vivid looks of Dawn of the Dead (2004) because it’s [set] in a mall. [I was] then tapping into more brutal horror movies, anything from Saw to Hostile. I wanted to also remind myself of Phantom of Paradise and the kind of movie where we could really cross music. Then, as a big Carpenter fan, I needed to also have a solid music take on it, really capitalizing on my experience.

That short [film] really came about to help me have closure with my long-standing relationship with the drum machine. [W]ith the journey it had — that toured some of the best genre festivals in the world and won a bunch of awards — I felt that we were not done. Frankly, I was really obsessed with the character, the character of Alexis [played by Jasmin Savoy Brown]. I felt the audience as well, we got praised for the look of the short and the effects and such. But the character is really the one that raised the most questions, so I had to get onto that journey. Then, that’s where … more recent movies, for example, Assassination Nation, allowed me to realize that there was a new dynamic in genre films. [This dynamic] would allow for a character like Alexis to live in this sort of modern genre world, mixing drama and horror.

Jasmin Savoy Brown as a Killer in Horror

Noyer loved the character Alexis so much that he accidentally referred to her as Jasmin, the lead actress from Sound of Violence.

JT: Okay. Since you brought up your love for horror, I’ve noticed Jasmin Savoy Brown in PlayStation’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which I just completed playing in January.

Behind me on my bookshelf is a stack of PlayStation 4 video games. There, I take my copy of Spider-Man: Miles Morales off the stack and show it to Noyer via the camera.

JT, con’t.: [Brown]’s in this game, and she’s going to be in the upcoming Scream film later next year. Given her fantastic performance in your film and just seeing what her character is capable of doing, do you think she has what it takes to be Ghostface? Because … when it comes to slasher films, everyone thinks, “Oh, this person’s the killer [or] that person’s the killer!”

AN: That’s a good question. I haven’t managed to get any information from her about the movie, by the way. And that’s like, I called her when she was shooting it. It was like, I was looking at all the stories, all the actors. And I was trying to find a hint, and I got no hint. I know nothing about this project, and it’s just killing me because I’m a big, big fan of the Scream franchise. And I just have no [idea]. It’s like, I mean, if she is, hell yeah! That would be really interesting.

Working with the Lead

AN, con’t.: The interesting thing, because we’ve seen her in [HBO’s] The Leftovers and she had very nuanced characters already. When I met her, that’s where I knew her from. She took on this role [of Alexis], which … is not a traditional killer, [instead] she’s an artist. She has a sensibility to her environment, and she has the weight of trauma mixed with the artistic passion and craft. There’s a lot to be able to harness in a performance. [Thus], the way she took on this complex character for me means that she can take on any role. I mean, for me, Jasmin is one of those actresses to watch because she is a powerhouse. And her intelligence and understanding [of] all the dimensions of a character [are] second to none. Working with her has been an absolute privilege.

Fanboying for Brown’s Performances On-Screen

JT: Yeah. I know that this Spider-Man game is just motion capture —

AN: I haven’t played it because I haven’t had the time to play it. But I saw the images, and she posted [them] as well, with all the motion capture points and everything. I think she had a blast doing that then. From what I saw online, the love for her character has been as been far and wide.

JT: I think that like, with her performance in this game, and her performance in your film — With this game, she made me [feel] emotional. Just what happens with her character in that game and the same goes as in your film.

Commending Brown as a Performer

AN: Yeah. She can do that. There [are] very few actors who had this talent of reaching into your soul and your heart, and be able to manipulate you to — And actually for this film, this was needed because the audience is going to be so conflicted about Alexis. Whether they can accept the collateral damage of her art — Can they understand where it comes from, can they understand her trauma, [and] can they understand the journey? And is it possible?

I think this is where an actor like Jasmin [comes into play], to have this range. Very few people can do that convincingly, and she can, she can. She is just an all-encompassing actress. I’m so proud of her, and everything that has happened is happening to her now, with her new show and Scream and all that. It’s all for a reason. She is a force to be reckoned with.

JT: Yes. I agree with you there.

Attention to Some Detail

JT, con’t.: I do have a keen eye for detail when it comes to just watching film. I noted that the synopsis on the South By Southwest online website … is that Alexis recovers her hearing and gains synesthetic abilities during the brutal murder of her family.

With … that scene of her family — the way that scene was shot — it only looked like her mother [played by Dana L. Wilson] was murdered. Of course, Alexis does deliver the final blow to her father [Barry, played by Wes McGee]. Is there any indication, though, that her brother [Kevin, played by Mataeo Mingo] was also killed? Or could it be that he was maybe murdered in a different room of the house?

AN: The brother is under the mother. The mother is protecting her son.

JT: That’s a good one.

What A Way to Begin a Horror Film

AN: There’s a couple of details that show it, but we wanted the mother to be the protector. … That moment with Wes McGee and Dana Wilson, the parents, like that emotional dinner scene at the beginning, we had the whole set crying. Everybody was crying, I was crying, the camera operators were crying. It was an absolute mess. We were all like “[They’re] fantastic actors.” That family scene at the beginning is quite something.

JT: I agree with you.

Having a Young Actress in Sound of Violence

JT, con’t.: She was in hysterics, the actress playing young Alexis. I was happy for her at the same time. … Maybe her father could have sought therapy for his PTSD. But, you know, it’s one of those things that’s required for the plot that things need to be directed in a certain path.

AN: Kamia Benge, who plays Young Alexis is… I mean, I remember when I met her and her mother. The first time we had a video call, and she said to me that she’s 10 years old. She’s the same age as my older daughter, [although] my older daughter is a bit younger.

She was like, “Oh yeah, no, I’ve watched your short [film]s, and also I watched The Walking Dead. I watch all those things. … I love horror, nothing phases me.” And it’s true. Nothing phased her. The whole scene, she was fine. She was just cool as a cucumber. She was like, “Yeah, no problem”. That was incredible because she really kept it together in those really intense scenes. Actually, she really helped ground the whole crew, because she was so cool about it. She’s such a young actress, but so precise, so that really helped.

Simmons as Sotker

JT: Lili Simmons has an important role in your film playing as character Marie Sotker. May you please explain a little bit more about her purpose in [Sound of Violence‘s] story?

AN: Well we wanted to ground Alexis into a real human relation[ship]. We didn’t want Alexis to be just isolated, an introvert like many killers are. We didn’t want cliches, so nothing brings more out of anyone than their best friends. Having Marie alongside Alexis was important to just also show the experimentation that is purely on a — They’re music professionals, so this is all very sort of … their daily grind.

Marie and Alexis’s Character Dynamic

At this point in the interview, I only had a few minutes left to speak with Noyer, so I started to wrap up.

AN, con’t.: Marie is not aware of how far Alexis takes it, but fundamentally this ability of being able to bounce idea[s] and have a creative partner. I’ll tell you, even when writing the script, my producing partner, Hannu Aukia. Having him there for me to bounce ideas off of when I was writing was necessary because the script would not get where it is. So Marie plays an unwitting role in Alexis’s improvement as much as escalation.

I think it was important to have somebody who was genuinely really in that sort of tension between friends and more. And just somebody who knew how to push Alexis’ buttons as well. This is where, as well, Duke [played by James Jagger] comes in. This sort of triangle was important to make the character [Alexis] relatable and not just a cold-blooded killer. I wanted her to be an artist, and an artist takes inspiration from everything around [them]. It was important that the human presence around her would make sense to also create little moments of inspiration for Alexis. And that’s where — I mean, Marie is her muse.

JT: Thank you [for the response].

Having Two Female Leads in a Horror Project

JT, con’t.: Last question before I leave. Having two female leads to talk about literally anything in this film, in this story — aside from men — is already a passing grade for the Bechtle test. I’m not sure if you’re aware of it.

AN: Yeah, I’m aware of it.

JT: What was it like crafting a story around two powerful women, rather than having it be about men?

AN: Well, I grew up surrounded by powerful and inspiring women. My mother all the way to my daughters, my sister, my wife, and everybody. All the people I interacted with a lot in my work, as well. My bosses were generally women. A lot of my clients, when I created the company, were women. It’s kind of a natural environment for me. So when I wrote the story, it kind of flowed that way.

Casting a Female Antagonist

AN, con’t.: I never envisioned Alexis as a man. Also, I felt the artistic sophistication of her craft was suited better [for] a woman. And if I’m going to have the audience conflicted, … there’s a projection and predictability in having a male serial killer and actor, which I find ludicrous, frankly. And I think this is why, going back to Assassination Nation, I thought that was so cool about this.

Looking at that is just like, if you took American Psycho, transfer that character to be a woman, [that is] how the movie would be. Now, of course, American Psycho is set in a male-dominated finance world of the ’80s, which, you know [the context of that era]. But here, the dynamic just would not work. And fundamentally also, this is how the story came to my mind and inspired by all the wonderful women I’ve had the privilege of interacting with throughout my life. None of them were killers, though, as far as I know.

Noyer’s joke was a fun way to wrap up the interview. I could relate to his love for horror and cinema.

Gratitude to a Revered Filmmaker

JT: Thank you for having me in your Q & A. I look forward to seeing more success in the future for you, as well as Jasmin and Lili. Thank you so much.

AN: Thank you.

sNoyer’s film, Sound of Violence, is now available to watch via video-on-demand. It is an incredible horror experience that praises the essence of the genre.

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Also, take a look at our review of Sound of Violence!