Alix Turner
The plot of Devil’s Workshop, written and directed by Chris von Hoffmann, is described succinctly like this: “A struggling actor spends a weekend with a female demonologist to prepare for an audition.” Intriguing for sure, and after watching the film, I had a few questions I wanted to ask the man behind it, mostly around the subject of acting…but watch out, this conversation does feature a spoiler or two.
We actually see two actors preparing for a part in Devil’s Workshop, not just the one that the above description referred to. The film’s protagonist Clayton (played by Timothy Granaderos) is competing for a role against fellow actor Donald (Emile Hirsch), and their preparations in order to win the role form the heart of the story. But as I watched the film, I had to wonder is this what it’s really like to be an actor? It seemed gruelling and demoralising…so after a little introduction, I jumped in and asked Chris whether that is what the life of an actor is really like. “I studied acting for six years in high school and after,” said Chris. “I came from a theatre background in New York, so I was definitely around a lot of actors; and many of my friends are actors, both struggling and professional. I myself never had a lot of success as an actor, but I can tell you it is a grind. It can indeed be demoralising, but you have to keep going forward, I guess. There are a lot of hilarious things that go on in the world of acting, with rivals and jealousy in the pursuit of goals; but I think that’s part of all creative pursuits, whether it’s singing, or acting, or whatever.”
I had the impression that Chris’s script was making a point about competition when presenting those two actors side by side. I asked Chris what preparation Devil’s Workshop required of his cast. “Timothy Granaderos, who you might have seen in Thirteen Reasons Why,” said Chris, “he was softly testing the movie for a few months, doing his own internal preparation. I’m not sure what preparation he was doing, or do I really want to know: I just let him do his thing. We had a lot of conversations, though. Then Emile Hirsch, who was softly attached to the movie but didn’t really dive into it until a couple of weeks before we shot; but he had a lot of ideas and was interested in different ways the character could go. And he certainly knows a lot of the type of people he was playing, and he’s been acting since he was a kid, so he’s been in that Hollywood lifestyle for a long while. It was second nature for him to tap into that.
“Then Radha Mitchell [who played Eliza, the demonologist], she had virtually no preparation time. She came on less than a month before we were to shoot, but I think that kind of helped her. She just went moment to moment, not overthinking things. The majority of the research was just having conversations and us discussing the characters in detail, along with life in general.”
No late-night parties or talks with demonologists for this cast then? “No,” Chris said and considered: “I wish that did happen. For me, it was more about the themes, the subtexts, and the characters of the story, stripping away the horror elements and approaching them as human beings.”
Human beings, sure; but from what I saw as a viewer, these three characters were more like “types”: the main character was fairly straight and sincere, but the other two were almost caricatures. I asked Chris what themes he had hoped for his audience to draw from this trio. “I think because all three of them are actors playing actors,” he said, “and someone like Donald is a character who’s been doing this for some time (as has Emile Hirsch), so he’s always on, always trying to play it up, doesn’t know how to be a real person. I’ve met so many actors who are so obsessed with their social media promotion and so they’re on all the time, whether they’re on camera or not. Then Radha’s character is in fact not technically a real person, but evolving into this demon throughout the film; so she’s obviously going to appear a little heightened herself here and there.”
I had enjoyed Emile Hirsch’s work for a long time, ever since seeing Speed Racer, then especially Freaks, and more recently The Price We Pay. In Devil’s Workshop, he must have had lots of fun, playing his Donald pretty much to the max. Chris had mentioned Emile’s involvement in working out the direction of his character, so I asked how that worked. “It was a collaboration,” Chris said. “My philosophy is that I’ll write out all the dialogue, make it as entertaining as I can, so that it flows well, and the character seems right on the page. Then once we start working on set and the words start spilling out of the actors’ mouths, then we start to nip and tuck and adjust things, make sure they come out of their mouths naturally. If they have ideas, then I’m all for it. If they say, ‘I want to change this, because it flows more naturally,’ as long as it hits the beat on certain lines, I’m flexible. Emile was great, though, and all three were excellent collaborators with the dialogue, changing things on the day to make it all sound as natural as possible and not so rigid.”
Radha Mitchell played quite a different character from what I’ve seen her in before; subtly guarded and intriguing. I asked Chris how he selected her for that part and how he sold it to her. “She was the last person to come on,” said Chris, “and kind of saved the film. Her and I got on the phone, and she asked a lot of questions about the character and the kind of aesthetic I go for. She made it clear that she was interested in playing a character that leaned towards a dark side, and she’s Australian, so I know that dark side is in her; she’s done some weird stuff!”
Not that weird, I declared! “No, no,” Chris agreed, “not that weird. But it’s always nice to play against type, and she’s such a solid actress. She’s played the wife, mother, girlfriend in so many films, but it’s good to show someone in a different light, not the same thing yet again. So that was really exciting, and I think she felt that too.”
I recalled her performances in Rogue and Pitch Black, where she played trustworthy characters; so I had wondered when she first appeared in Devil’s Workshop whether I’d find it easy to see her in a different way, but it certainly worked (as JP attested to in his review, too). “Yeah, she’s awesome,” Chris agreed. “We went back and forth to get the tone right, and she definitely delivered.”
I had one more (fairly obvious) question about the plot of Devil’s Workshop, before moving on to other things: I asked Chris where the idea had come from. Did it start with the rival actors, the mysterious demonologist, or something else? “I was pitching a TV show in 2017 which never got off the ground,” Chris said. “Almost every network in town, or so it felt. It was to be an anthology show, sort of Twilight Zone meets Entourage, so it would play with satire and horror combined. My job at the time was looking at a bunch of different concepts for that show, and this was one of them. Everybody seemed to like it, and it was always on a list; my manager would look at it, and friends would look at it, and this concept would always get circled. It was simple, makeable, kind of a character piece and an exercise in performance and tone at the same time. So it went in the drawer when I focused on other things, including a movie that fell through in 2019. I had to kind of go back to my roots then, and I dusted the concept out of the drawer and turned it into a screenplay. I always loved theatre, and I’d always wanted to write something that felt like a weird play on film, and I loved the world of actors, so it was nice to go back to that.”
Previously, Chris had written and directed Monster Party and Drifter; I asked him whether he has any interest in another director putting a story of his on screen. “Yeah,” Chris said, “I’m a pretty flexible person. I’d definitely be up to it. I love the Safdie brothers, I think they’re pretty awesome. I love their energy and their DIY, hand-made feel. Jeremy Saulnier is great, too; I loved Green Room…and I’m drawing a blank now, but those are some I’d be thrilled to work with. There’s something I’m circulating right now that I’d be happy for someone else to direct, almost wrote for someone else really, so I could easily go back and forth on that, depending on the story.”
Interesting that these aren’t really considered horror directors (though, of course, Green Room was to a degree). So considering the filmmakers Chris admires are less genre-based, I had a curious question that I’d rarely asked others: why does Chris von Hoffmann make horror? “It was definitely the genre that introduced me to film when I was growing up,” he said. “I’m definitely a horror fan, for sure. I consider myself to be relatively knowledgeable about horror franchises, as well as weird, obscure movies. I enjoy intense storytelling, and horror is a great outlet for that, a great way to purge yourself in a lot of ways. I like extreme violence in movies and have no problem with watching a hardcore splatter-fest, and I guess Monster Party is a quasi-splatter-fest; but I think I’m more interested in violence when it’s spread out, like seventies horror, when it’s roughly done and character-driven. That’s probably what I want to lean towards. A clichéd example is probably The Exorcist.”
His description there had brought The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to my mind. “The original Texas is great,” Chris agreed. “It’s a ferocious film, with more of an intense tone, rather than lots of screen violence. I do enjoy a good violent tone. Devil’s Workshop is much more sedated, a low-key film in comparison; performance-based, maybe, rather than jumping out at you. But that was a choice, the sort of film I’d wanted to make for a while, an exercise that I had to get out of my system. Now I’m kind of excited to go back to unleashing and going nuts again.”
So what is coming next then? “There’s a cat-and-mouse sniper script that’s pretty full-on,” said Chris. “It’s more of a thriller than a horror film, but it has horrific violence. It’s pretty close to being locked, we’re just putting together a cast list for it. There are other things, but that’s probably the major one that I’m hoping will be next.”
Devil’s Workshop is available now on demand and digital from Lionsgate and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on November 8.
